You need to look up the definition of ‘invaded’. Not saying Panama was right, but we basically took it so that Morgan Stanley could hide taxes for billionaires…why do you think Trump wants to make it fully ours now?
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there is no appeasement. Russia could not invade Ukraine if that is what it wanted to do, they lost. If that is not what it wanted to do i.e. invade the whole of Ukraine (yes seriously consider that) then it is working back to where they were before: neutrality for Ukraine and no NATO. The US is ready to give them that and to correct a mistake. There are no benefit to continue fighting Russia on that.
Russia wants peace because it hasn’t been able to take Kiev after 3 years. If Zelensky does not seek peace then Russia will take more territory, and guess what, he will not get any of it back.
You want this war to continue? more deaths, for what? because you think Russia won and you just can’t let it win? It won in the sense that they are getting Ukraine back to neutrality. They didn’t gain anything. Why are you against that? Pushing Ukraine was not to our benefit.
Putin will attack willy Nelly like an enraged bear? This is fantasy. Do you think Putin is stupid? We clearly see today that Russia is not the powerful Soviet Union it once was. He invades as a hobby? what is this?
A supposed power? an ex-superpower. The US is not looking an adversary worth its while.
@thejusticier
Russia, except for the Arctic Ocean, is landlocked, and so to prosper through trade has needed and NEEDS trading access to the Seas and Oceans of the world; for that Russia NEEDS either a prosperous and mutually respectful peace with Finland and the Baltics, or NEEDS to have CONTROL over them.
Historically, especially after being invaded and conquered by Lithuania/Poland, the Russians never attempted peaceful relations beyond the short term with any of these peoples, let alone their states, and for centuries sought instead to control and subjugate them. (As also were Sweden, Germany, and Austro-Hungary).
Then came the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, then Perestroika, and then came the dissolution of the collapsing communist state system of Russia, achieved only by allowing the Baltic adjacent states and peoples to leave and claim a mutually agreed peaceful independence.
Then came Putin…. and, it seems, he is threatened by the mere prosperity of his neighbors, who are showing the Russian people what is possible when idiotic oligarchical tyrannical thieving central govenment is discarded. He saw Belorussians and Ukrainians (immediately next door to and beginning to imitate Finland, Poland and the Baltics) as deadly dangerous channels transmitting powerful images of what life could be like with true economic and social reform.
Not A Chance, sayeth the KGB graduate.
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Who are you, I have never heard anyone try to make the convoluted statements you are making while avoiding any semblance of current news or logic.
Zelensky was in talks for a long time, they didn’t work out. Putin has NOT reached out to ANYONE to help gain peace. He doubled down with the North Korean military.
Where the HECK are you getting any of these thoughts? Are you AI, that would make a bit of sense. But otherwise, you sound like a Russian bot with good English but no rational path in your statements.
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I’m seeking clarification on your perspective. Are you suggesting that when we intervene, it’s justified, but when others do, it’s not? I believe our discussion should focus on the broader context in understanding what is going on in Ukraine.
You ask me if I follow history like you might follow the news. I don’t follow history. I want to understand history. You can only make sense of the contemporary dynamics with an understanding of history as a starting point.
History is not an enumeration of facts. It had a dynamic that extends into the present. Such understanding is rare nowadays despite the multiplicity of experts and commentators of all sorts.
If you re-read what he wrote it is quite clear what he meant. We did not invade those countries in order to make them vassal states under our thumbs. Russia has done that repeatedly.
Putin is trying to rebuild the USSR. You seem unable to recognize this.
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Russian INVADED AND KILLED…they did not intervene. They shut down power, they tried to get rid of food, they blew up hospitals, the targeted civilians. They INVADED.
Why are you trying to relate it to ‘intervention’? Again, are you a real person, and are you a Russian bot trying to sway us?
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Don’t forget about stealing Ukranian children!
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Putin has to hold down the Russians at home. He is measuring out the army.
Eventually he takes Ukraine and moves on to other targets. If he fights harder he can not defend himself. He would draw down the military.
Agreed. I miss him. But I’m pretty sure I know exactly what he is thinking…
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This is a typical dig from the other echo chamber. So we are doomed in our respective little worlds?
I can’t fight you guys. I have entered your echo chamber. That is not my intention.
I really don’t think Putin would take the view that Russia is weak and he has lost in Ukraine. But it is not about Putin or Trump the Big Men they are. It is about the strategic positioning of states. It is about geopolitics, and the powers are shifting as we speak. That is what should be the big headline.
Some of you have asked if I know history. Strange question. I understand their question to be quite narrow about what Putin has done. That is NOT what I am talking about here.
For some of you to understand realism, you can read or listen to Mersheimer, Morgenthau, Waltz, Kissinger and a less academic but interesting geopolitical analyst George Friedman…then maybe there would be space for discussion…
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Kissinger would laugh at you.
He did the opposite in every instance.
Realism is not your claim. Vacuous language.
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It’s irrelevant what I want. If Ukrainians decide they want to keep fighting for their freedom and self-determination, I support them. They were invaded. Russia started the war. They can end it now. All they have to do is withdraw from Ukraine.
Imagine someone coming into your house, taking your children, blowing up your stuff and killing your family. Then imagine your “friend” coercing you to negotiate with the bastard and let them live in your garage.
As for what Putin is getting - he’s successfully divided the western alliance. Our compromised president has alligned US foreign policy with a thug. Russia is on the brink of having all sanctions lifted and being welcomed back in the G7. Putin didn’t gain anything? Get real.
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The shame of it he does not give a crap about Ukrainian lives.
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Please elaborate on how Ukraine, a non-NATO country prior to the invasion, is NOW back to “neutrality.”
Russia murdered thousands of Ukrainians. They kidnapped their children. Ukraine will NEVER be neutral toward Russia after this, regardless of any NATO membership.
Your entire premise is flawed.
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Hawkwin,
Every last word he has is vacuous.
There has been a part of our society that has worked hard and not had time to publish. Their thoughts are very unreliable. Their ideas are simplistic. Now online they all quasi publish. That is being nice before the conspiracy theories enter into it. That is before their claim to normalization of nonsense.
I do too, but Tim had such wonderful way of putting things.
An interesting reading list, all well worth more than a brief summary. Glad you show some good roots.
Mersheimer I respect, especially his profound works through the 1990’s (including and very to the point of this thread his joint German Ukrainian nuclear partnership fantasy) but since then have increasingly respectfully disagreed with much of his analysis. I regret his current poor comprehension both of the new structure of our main conflicts and of the ongoing international restructuring of our post Soviet time.
Morgenthau is an interesting choice for your list as his most significant Realist stance in international affairs was his thankfully never implemented
I am glad Morgenthau’s one major foray into international policymaking (he truly was an amazing political analyst and a public finance genius) was not accepted by Roosevelt nor Truman, who instead implemented the
which proved to be the foundation of European cold war peace and economic prosperity for over 40 years.
I worship Waltz, founder of Neo-Realist foreign policy theory, and am glad to see him on your list. After reading Man the State and War I went to a small lecture/discussion he gave at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs in I think 1973 or 74 when I was a student there and was blown away. I would love to have been able to hear him speak on today’s situation.
Kissinger I hold in great esteem for his brilliance and execution, but found myself often disagreeing with where he placed his balance point between conflicting views on post soviet era power realities (yes, I am an arrogant buzzard). Despite the tremendous success using Vietnam War ploys to drive a deep wedge between China and Russia, and his follow on shaping of the end of the dying communist era, I never accepted his acceptance of the carnage he needlessly extended in Southeast Asia. However, on that one I might will be wrong.
George Friedman I considerred an acutely interesting maverick observer of international economics and politics. I often gained financially from careful readings of his musings, but never trusted the stability of his foreign policy thoughts and guesses. I tuned in to one of his recent podcasts only a couple weeks ago and was dismayed by the muddiness of his presentation, but even more to hear and see what seemed to me to be early cues of mental decline of some sort.
I do not think your posts on this board reflect an accurate application of the theoretical structures created by these men to our current events. Instead you seem to post (as others have noted) simple slogans and stances echoing the new USAian administration.
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You are not wrong. I don’t want to get into it too much, but Kissinger apologists don’t get to accept his successes without also accepting his blunders, of which he made quite a number.
The Sino-Russian split was well under way before Kissinger took power. Sure, he threw some gas on the fire, but that relationship was done already. Kissinger did the obvious thing by trying to engage China, but some of his tactics were barf-inducing. Bangladesh, for example.
Kissinger sabotaged LBJ’s peace talks with North Vietnam in order to gain personal power. This is not in dispute. This certainly was not in the best interests of the US at the time.
History doesn’t allow us to do counter-factuals, but in hindsight Kissinger made a number of clear blunders, and he made the same type of blunder several times. One of his key strategic issues was preventing the domino effect.
Kissinger hoped that by extending and expanding the Vietnam war he could negotiate better peace terms. This included massive bombing campaigns in Cambodia and Laos–who were not parties to the war–to interdict North Vietnamese supply lines and troop movements. Kissinger ordered (and yes, he gave the order) full scale bombing against all targets regardless of military value. Additionally, Kissinger feared left wing groups would overthrow the governments of Laos and Cambodia and believed attacking the civilian population in border areas would tamp down the rebels.
Kissinger completely misunderstood how the Vietnamese viewed the war. Kissinger viewed it as the West vs. Communism. The Vietnamese viewed it as independence vs. Western Imperialism. The more Kissinger bombed them, the more they resented the west.
Sure, the communists were bad, but the South Vietnam government was just as bad, and western puppets. Easy choice. Ultimately, Kissinger negotiated the Paris Accords and the war ended. But before the ink was dry, North Vietnam invaded and the south quickly collapsed.
The same thing happened in Laos and Cambodia. The rural populations especially were radicalized against the US-backed governments and quickly overthrew them. The domino theory became a reality because of Kissinger’s policies, not in spite of them.
This was an unforced error. After WWII the US conducted a big study on the effects of strategic bombing and found while there were some clear benefits, one clear downside was that it rallied the German population. Kissinger should have known this would happen in southeast Asia as well.
This is a long post already, but the hits just keep coming. Kissinger made the same blunder again in East Timor. At the time East Timor was a colony of Portugal, which was in the process of fighting for independence, lead by some left wing groups. Kissinger gave Indonesia the green light to invade (illegally using US weapons) and tamp down the commies. Surprise! This threw popular support towards the rebels, which enabled radical groups to seize power, and the whole thing has been crapshow ever since.
Again, we can’t do counterfactuals, but in each case it is hard to see how things might have turned out was worse than how things actually did turn out. Kissinger has a reputation as a genius strategist, which doesn’t quite hold up when you see that almost everything he touched turned to crap.
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Yes. Be creative. Start other fronts elsewhere on Russia’s borders–drawing even more and more resources from an already over-extended military. Start carving Russia like a turkey at Thanksgiving. He really is stupid. Nukes to end things? If he tries, he dies.