How is the conflict in Ukraine “existential” to Russia? They were fine before they invaded, selling oil to Europe, making oligarchs rich, no threat of internal revolution that I’m aware of.
And I don’t get the part about us “making a fortune from war while EU countries suffer.” To start, we are energy self-sufficient. Not perfectly in every respect, but we are a net exporter. Europe is - and has been for as long as I recall - a huge net importer. Following the OPEC embargo of the 70’s, did they learn? *(Yes, France has nuclear, and cars get better mileage, but they are still way behind the curve.)
We made a fortune in World War I. We made another fortune inh World War II. We sort of evaporated a lot of it in Vietnam and Afghanistan, but that’s how it goes sometimes.
Putin wants to believe NATO is an offensive power that threatens. The problem is Russian Czars can only have men march forward. If men come back to Moscow Russian leaders can fall.
Putin is shedding the Russian men who would take him down in the fields of Ukraine.
Games within games.
If Putin orders a nuclear tactical strike we will absolutely have to take him out. Because no one can order such a strike and ever survive. If he orders one strike, he orders more strikes. He has to be killed right away not matter how many good reasons we can think of.
If Nato enters Ukraine with boots Putin can get away with tactical nuclear weapons. Or he begins and we have to finish him but we can lose tens of thousands of men in NATO in the process. The Russian public would support Putin if our boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Russians are super cynical culturally. Putin’s days are numbered. Lets push him.
What a bunch of BS! The US government is spending tens of billions (of borrowed money!) to finance the war … and of those tens of billions, US companies are making a few billion. Big deal, it’s our money to begin with. Time for Europe to finance their own conflicts … that they seem to keep having/causing every 50-100 years.
And I agree, the only way this ends in a reasonable manner is with Putin assuming room temperature.
“What good are the nukes if we can’t use them?” I’m not going to mention who said that, but fortunately he was kept in check by much calmer, sane minds.
I certainly hope Peter is wrong and that you are correct. And I certainly hope Vlad is just bluffing when he talks about the nuclear option being a valid first-strike option for Russia. But I simply do not believe he will stop with Ukraine. He will head into Poland. They are NATO. We (USA, Germany, England, etc.) will HAVE to get directly involved. And there is simply no way that NATO doesn’t run over him like a 6th grade football team against the Chiefs (or the Eagles even). And that is when the bluffing starts. And I really don’t want to get into that situation.
Leap1 “When someone quotes the ZH credibility is not their strong point.”
Zerohedge utilized quotes from the Financial Times.
Zerohedge article quotes from Financial Times article.
But here’s another source:
“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of ammunition,” Stoltenberg said. “The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current production rates. This puts our defense industries under strain. (…) So we need to ramp up new production and invest in our production capacities.”
“I’ve met commanders of howitzers, of artillery pieces, who’ve told me that they don’t know how long they can keep on doing their job, if they will be forced to withdraw and move away from positions and wait for more artillery,” Connolly said. “This is a very real problem.”
“Right now you’re seeing Ukraine and its allies scrambling around the world — looking as far afield as Pakistan and South Korea for artillery munitions,” Connolly said.
It seems obvious to me that Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. We are obviously hoping that they do enough damage to keep Russian from attacking Poland.
On the other hand, I don’t think Russian can occupy Ukraine. We must be hoping that Russian stays tied down there and will be unable to move further.
If Russia does feel that their existence as a nation is threatened, they absolutely would drop missiles on Berlin, Paris, London, Brussels, and a few other places. As for Zeihan, he does not think Putin would be crazy enough to launch a full-scale attack. I hope that Putin realizes that Americans are always crazier than people think and that our first response would essentially be a full-scale attempt to wipe out Russia’s nuclear capability.
Or the western press is goading Russian war planners, getting support for western financing of this war and not accurate in the least in the process.
How would it play if the western press reported that Ukraine was heavily armed? Then the cheap idiots would say lets save some money here. But in fact Ukraine is heavily armed. Not in comparison to the US but in comparison to Russia.
From time to time criminals come to power in nations and engage in military conflicts with other nations. That does usually lead to war. Unless means can be found to stop the criminal activity peacefully. But that is not easy. Hitler and Napoleon are often cited as examples.
Our well known weakness is we won’t continue to support a long war. We get tired of spending the money, would rather spend it elsewhere, make excuses backed by media and move on.
I disagree. Afghanistan, Iraq & Vietnam are examples. The push back against the Ukraine war is not the cheapness of the American people but a protest of the US war machine that has found support by the military-industrial-congressional complex. It is a demand that monies be spent in a more productive manner rather than intervening in Central America, the Middle East & Africa. Most US interventions have been failures & some started by use of lies from our government. And some individuals that point out the wrongs of the US government are prosecuted by the US government–Assange, Snowden or Kirkiakou are 3 examples.
Besides the money spent, tens of thousands of innocent civilians were killed by US weapons, and still are in the Yemni Civil War, and millions of refugees created by US foreign policy interventions.
We will see how the protest this Sunday against permanent war turns out in attendance and how the media reports upon the protest. The Main Stream Media so far has not reported on the planned protest. Protesters will be from the left and right of the political spectrum. A bit amazing that within our divisive country political opposites can unite in opposing the US permanent war agenda.
…realizing I am treading on thin ice…some “thought leaders” in Shiny-land have openly expressed support for Putin over the years. Are we sure the “America first” narrative being pushed as justification for cutting off support for Ukraine is really based on the well-being of US citizens, or camouflaged support for Putin?
Steve…noticed, some years ago, “The Manchurian Candidate” was running on TV, a lot.
Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian forces appeared to be adding manpower: “We’re seeing a very tough battle in which the Russians aren’t sparing neither themselves nor us.”
Moscow controls both main roads into the city, leaving one back route left – a slender supply line, the BBC reports.
“They have been trying to take the city since July,” Iryna Rybakova, press officer for Ukraine’s 93rd Brigade, told BBC. "Little by little they are winning now. They have more resources, so if they play the long game they will win. I can’t say how long it will take.
While making a push for the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin remains intent on retaining control of the southern Zaporizhzhia province, the British Defense Ministry says in its latest assessment of the war.
The reason is Russia wants to establish a "land bridge’’ from its Rostov region to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula it illegally annexed in 2014. That land connector would be threatened if Ukraine recaptured Zaporizhzhia.
The bolded portion is strategically important. If the land bridge is broken, Crimea is lost. Slugging it out with Russia in a war of attrition is a losing strategy. Russia has ~3.5 times the population of Ukraine. Even though the Ukrainians are killing 1.8 Russian soldier to their loss of one, according to the US estimates, they will run out of soldiers.
Ah. Russiagate raises it’s ugly head again.
I guess it is a question of who is the “useful idiot” is.
If we don’t hold our own leaders accountable for their illegal wars, how do we hold other leaders accountable? In effect we are immune to international laws.
I would like a new “Church committee” investigation of the Twitter-FBI relationship. We only learn of that by Musk opening Twitter files & emails.
One example was from an email sent by the FBI’s National Election Command Post on November 5, which included 25 accounts that the department said “may warrant additional action due to the accounts being utilized to spread misinformation” regarding the 2022 midterm elections.
Three days later, a Twitter employee responded with a list of the accounts that were either permanently or temporarily suspended for policy violations, including “spam behaviors” and “excessive misinformation strikes,” the correspondence said. Other accounts also had tweets “bounced for civic misinformation policy violations.”
Taibbi also reported that officials from the Department of Homeland Security and state government officials also flagged tweets to the company.