Russian default ramifications

Stocks A to Z
21

We’re not litigating the Iraq War.

But we are litigating the proportion of the response.
US invaded a sovereign country with false pretext and (occupied)stationed its troops there for over a decade. Where were the sanctions and sports bans and security council votes and US bycott ?
It is rhetorical question. The answer is US is very powerful and most governments (including allies) and people are cowards and dare not go against the US

Which brings me to my point.

Saddam was a bad dude. Putin is also a bad dude. He however has nuclear weapons and is pushing against NATO and the US. Zelensky is irrelevant.
NATO better be careful and back off and give Putin a way out. He is not going to allow Ukraine to be a NATO member. That would be end of Russia in his view.

The world is squeezing him and he has addressed this hypocrisy to his people.

Not to be dramatic but (although still early), the probability of nuclear war has gone up quite a bit in my view.

4 Likes
22

Syke,
nobody is defending Putin (I don’t think even Divi is, he is trying to show us how Putin is thinking.) I wish someone would take Putin out and put an end to the suffering of Ukrainian civilians.
Nor am I making a false equivalence between Western democracies and Russia, in general. I am just reacting against this self-serving rhetoric:

“However, I would suggest that a rules based international finance system can only endure by serving a rules based system for global security and prosperity. This includes respecting a nation’s right to secure borders when it is not threatening another sovereign state. It also includes a nation’s right to engage with other nations to further their mutual security and prosperity.
… The slaughter of innocents and the taking of a nation state’s land and resources by force are problems of another order altogether. I would submit that there are times when the civilized world may need to “weaponize the dollar” to manage events that could ultimately upend its reserve status anyway. History is littered with the tragic costs of appeasement.”

Yeah the “civilized world” knew quite well that it is wrong to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, and kill hundreds of thousands. And did it anyway. The “civilized world” does this all the time, knowing fully well what they are doing is wrong, because it is convenient or lucrative or maybe the “civilized world” people have some delusions of grandeur and/or bloodlust in their brains. I have no idea, I am not one of the “civilized” ones.

So my humble quest is to get the “civilized world” off their high horse.

War, except in self defense, is state-sanctioned murder on a mass scale. Neither time nor distance should dim our conscience. So OK, onwards to Ukraine.

5 Likes
23

Whatever the US did in Iraq is zero justification for Putin killing innocent people. Full stop. And whatever handwaving you can come up with to defend Putin’s atrocities, it still isn’t justification for…

That’s exactly what I was afraid of when I seconded Divi’s “NATO expansion is part of the problem”: That explaining would be seen as defending and justifying. It’s not. Explaining something is not automatically defending and justifying it.

Btw: Saying XYZ is part of the problem also is not claiming “That’s the reason for…”. Is it so difficult to differentiate a little?

24

- Yeah the “civilized world” knew quite well that it is wrong to…And did it anyway…
- The “civilized world” does this all the time, knowing fully well what they are doing is wrong…
- So my humble quest is to get the “civilized world” off their high horse.

- War, except in self defense, is state-sanctioned murder on a mass scale

Can I please recommend this post a Hundred times?

1 Like
25

Knight,

A heart can be in the right place, while the head hopelessly wanders in the land of the bowel.

There was arguably a genocide committed by the US Army on the American plains of the late 19th century. There were appalling acts committed in US campaigns across our borders as well.

However, this fact didn’t exempt or disqualify the US from entering WW1 in 1917 or from acting to launch the D-day invasion, ultimately bringing the madness of Hitler’s Nazi regime to a close.
We now have the luxury of imaging the world’s fate if we had NOT gotten on some “high horse”.

The stain of the Vietnam War in our nation’s history is a permanent one. It was never-the-less critical for the US to summon a coalition in Gulf War 1 to liberate Kuwait. Surely you can hold such universal human contradiction in your mind, without the lethal threat of shock.

Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Putin … our species will at times need more than pacifism in its humble quest toward a “civilized world”. This is not a drumbeat for war, but a warning against appeasement.

18 Likes
26

However, I would suggest that a rules based international finance system can only endure by serving a rules based system for global security and prosperity

With due respect, just a grandstanding statement.

Don’t forget USA has waged more war’s in lands very very far away from its soils with it getting attacked or any justification.

Bush jr war on Iraq, that had no justification. Frankly Putin’s war has at least a valid reason of Ukraine joining NATO will be a security threat to them. What justification US had when it invaded Iraq?

West is morally bankrupt, just uses its financial muscles. Anyone taking a step back and reads such statements can see the emptiness.

This board should just stick to obsessing about BV and what multiple to BV is right.

2 Likes
27

I firmly believe those victims in Iraq are imploring us from their graves to keep our collective eyes and conscience on this moment of horror that we can confront and the perpetrator we can condemn and indict.

More grandstanding.

May be those dead Iraq’s are cheering the enemy of America. They are dead, for all we know they may be even cheering for a nuclear war, where America pays the price for killing them??

Stop grandstanding posts. It is stilly.

1 Like
28

NATO expansion is part of the problem.

That’s Russian propaganda.

May be Russia is speaking the truth, Perhaps? The cold war is over, West emerged as the ultimate superpower and we are/ were in a uni-polar world. So what is the reason/ need to keep expanding NATO? especially to scoop up ex-USSR splinter states?

If US thinks missiles in Cuba is a security thread to America, why not the same logic applies to Russia?

The only lesson the world is going to take from this is, if you are not a nuclear state, west will attack you mercilessly they don’t need reasons for that. If you are a nuclear state, they will wage other kinds of war. So the world will slowly but surely break free of western financial order, systems and everyone will go nuclear.

Humans learn dark, wrong lessons more often, don’t forget that.

2 Likes
29

Knight,

A heart can be in the right place, while the head hopelessly wanders in the land of the bowel.

There was arguably a genocide committed by the US Army on the American plains of the late 19th century. There were appalling acts committed in US campaigns across our borders as well.

However, this fact didn’t exempt or disqualify the US from entering WW1 in 1917 or from acting to launch the D-day invasion, ultimately bringing the madness of Hitler’s Nazi regime to a close.
We now have the luxury of imaging the world’s fate if we had NOT gotten on some “high horse”.

The stain of the Vietnam War in our nation’s history is a permanent one. It was never-the-less critical for the US to summon a coalition in Gulf War 1 to liberate Kuwait. Surely you can hold such universal human contradiction in your mind, without the lethal threat of shock.

Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Putin … our species will at times need more than pacifism in its humble quest toward a “civilized world”. This is not a drumbeat for war, but a warning against appeasement.

Hey, where I rest my weary head is my business. At least I can find the resting place with my two hands unlike some on this board.

WWII - here you are doing “time travel” 80 years back. Modern America is different and Generl Eisenhower’s dire warnings about the military-industrial complex look pretty accurate. I dod not mention a litany of American invasions, all ending in defeats or stalemates, undertaken with flimsy justifications. Viet Nam and Iraq were just the biggest. America has murdered more people in other countries than any democracy has, with less reason.

I am not a pacifist. Violence to repel invaders is justified. You are wilfully distorting what I said but hey what can you expect from the civilized?

Stopping Putin is good for many reasons. Love for truth and justice and what should be the American Way would be the noblest. But have you noticed that America is not joining the war? They know Russia is not Panama or Grenada, to “time travel” some more.