(Thread IKs:
fart simpson)
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Torpor posted:so not a couple hundred thousand reservists? not a mass call up that is usually a warning sign? heres the text of the decree if anyone can read russian since i can't select the text to paste into a translator http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202202180067?index=1&rangeSize=1
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:50 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:19 |
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But loving around in Ukraine seems to be broadly unpopular so I don't understand the play here. His poll numbers aren't going up. Even if all of this super secret intel about Putin is true then I don't see any advantage to Biden/dems to do all this pageantry nonsense. The only one benefiting is the US media as I assume they are pulled great numbers for clicks/views so I know why they hype every single thing, but it's still requiring a lot of active help from the Biden admin.
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:52 |
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https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1455834135931486212
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:54 |
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Frosted Flake posted:What’s the issue for Zelensky here? Zelensky doesn't want to follow Minsk 2, which includes a ton about giving autonomy and independence to Donbas and...the other territory I always forget. Minsk 2 isn't great, it's a pretty sloppy deal, but it's a deal and Zelensky's excuse of 'well my predecessor did that' is about as valid as Trump using the same to tear up the Iran deal and all, technically not wrong but it makes you look like a complete bitch that can't be trusted as a national power. It's especially stupid because he's also using the fact that the last guy slid a last minute 'btw Ukraine has to join NATO/the EU' into the constitution as proof that NATO has to admit them, so he's fine honoring past lovely ideas when it helps him. Basically it's what happens when a comedian with no actual agenda wins an election because everyone else was hated by enough people to lose, he likely sees his political future as doomed if he even slightly looks like he's cowering in front of Russia, but the US is banging the war drum so hard he's kinda hosed from the usual status quo of 'Ukraine says 'oh noooo Russia's soooo scary guys!!!!!' and gets a blank check from the US or NATO'.
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:55 |
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FuzzySlippers posted:But loving around in Ukraine seems to be broadly unpopular so I don't understand the play here. His poll numbers aren't going up. Even if all of this super secret intel about Putin is true then I don't see any advantage to Biden/dems to do all this pageantry nonsense. The only one benefiting is the US media as I assume they are pulled great numbers for clicks/views so I know why they hype every single thing, but it's still requiring a lot of active help from the Biden admin. Yeah I think they think their numbers will improve if something actually does happen that proves they were right all along, but spoiler alert, they won't.
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:57 |
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sexpig by night posted:Zelensky doesn't want to follow Minsk 2, which includes a ton about giving autonomy and independence to Donbas and...the other territory I always forget. tbf to Zelensky, there's a good chance he'll just outright get couped by nationalists if he starts enforcing Russia's vision of Minsk II. But he should probably still do it, and then loving flee for his life or something.
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# ? Feb 18, 2022 23:58 |
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FuzzySlippers posted:But loving around in Ukraine seems to be broadly unpopular so I don't understand the play here. His poll numbers aren't going up. Even if all of this super secret intel about Putin is true then I don't see any advantage to Biden/dems to do all this pageantry nonsense. The only one benefiting is the US media as I assume they are pulled great numbers for clicks/views so I know why they hype every single thing, but it's still requiring a lot of active help from the Biden admin. while it is nominally a distraction; but if Putin does decide to roll the dice and invade Ukraine Biden is finished because he has firmly hitched his wagon to this horse without doing a concomitant escalation that could credibly stop an invasion. if Putin doesn’t decide to roll the dice, Biden and the defense establishment look like a bunch of weird losers that need a fainting couch every time Putin glances at them and have hurt their credibility. edit: it’s like Biden has expertly parsed the issue to figure out to lose no matter what. Torpor has issued a correction as of 00:02 on Feb 19, 2022 |
# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:00 |
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sexpig by night posted:Basically it's what happens when a comedian with no actual agenda wins an election because everyone else was hated by enough people to lose, he likely sees his political future as doomed if he even slightly looks like he's cowering in front of Russia, but the US is banging the war drum so hard he's kinda hosed from the usual status quo of 'Ukraine says 'oh noooo Russia's soooo scary guys!!!!!' and gets a blank check from the US or NATO'. Doesn’t that mean the comedian with no actual agenda is the only one who can deescalate right now? The US is itching to fight to the last Ukrainian, but hasn’t actually promised any sort of support for him, he must see that by now. Russia is not going to back down without Minsk II, and his paramilitaries risk the fate of his nation daily unless he can rein them in by having a ceasefire and either pulling them out of the line or demobilizing them.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:02 |
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Majorian posted:tbf to Zelensky, there's a good chance he'll just outright get couped by nationalists if he starts enforcing Russia's vision of Minsk II. But he should probably still do it, and then loving flee for his life or something. yea I mean I do kinda feel for the guy because there's no real 'win' for him. If he follows Minsk he gets Azov perverts and their friends probably trying to kill him for being a 'Russian puppet', if he doesn't Putin can just forever (rightly) go 'we have a deal, why are you acting like the victim when I'm telling you to follow our deal?' and he'll forever be our proxy for loving with Russia under fake pretenses. But yea the correct path is to just do what was agreed on (the people in these territories pretty overwhelmingly consider themselves Russian so that's more why I support that than 'THE LAW IS THE LAW', just to be clear) and then fuckin bail, not like he'd be the first guy in the region to do a midnight run to the airport.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:03 |
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FuzzySlippers posted:But loving around in Ukraine seems to be broadly unpopular so I don't understand the play here. His poll numbers aren't going up. Even if all of this super secret intel about Putin is true then I don't see any advantage to Biden/dems to do all this pageantry nonsense. The only one benefiting is the US media as I assume they are pulled great numbers for clicks/views so I know why they hype every single thing, but it's still requiring a lot of active help from the Biden admin. They are rusophobic American exceptionalists. This isn't about having a domestic distraction, it's about imposing maximum cost on Russian moves to reassert their sphere of influence. So the play is magnify the threat to try and spook Putin and, failing that, justify to the voter base whatever future moves (sanctions, arms sales, etc) are taken in response, and a whole lot of bluster.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:04 |
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Is there a good breakdown of what's going on? People keep spouting off anecdotes without any sources.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:06 |
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Frosted Flake posted:Doesn’t that mean the comedian with no actual agenda is the only one who can deescalate right now? I mean he could, but that's where the 'no actual agenda' thing kinda bites us all in the rear end. He's not really a hardline nationalist or a big fan of Russia but his coalition kinda requires elements of both of those to think he's somewhat on their side. Plus I'm sure he's (probably correctly) been warned by his guys that if he strays too hard off the US script he's gonna find the aid (both ~lethal~ and ~non-lethal~) a lot less generous. He and his cabinet have been pretty steady, for whatever it's worth, in telling people not to panic and trying to tamp down US hysterics so I think you're right that he does have an ability to keep things steady since I'm sure if he went the other way and went full "YEA MAN gently caress RUSSIA GIVE MY NAZIS GUNS AND GET YOUR ASSES IN HERE AMERICA!!!!" that'd probably be a way worse situation.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:06 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:They are rusophobic American exceptionalists. This isn't about having a domestic distraction, it's about imposing maximum cost on Russian moves to reassert their sphere of influence. Americans don’t want to get involved in Ukraine and nobody cares if they sanction Russia either.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:07 |
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Panfilo posted:Is there a good breakdown of what's going on? People keep spouting off anecdotes without any sources. Russian troops on Ukrainian border, Biden is freaking out and acting like the boy who cried wolf. but by unnecessarily inserting himself in the situation Biden stands to lose no matter what happens. Russia is most likely not invading be they probably could win without much trouble depending on where they drive their tanks.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:09 |
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Raskolnikov38 posted:heres the text of the decree if anyone can read russian since i can't select the text to paste into a translator
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:09 |
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Torpor posted:Americans don’t want to get involved in Ukraine and nobody cares if they sanction Russia either. Correct! Nobody wants dead Are Troops, but the US is also the big boy superpower that doesn't let others have big wars in their Pax Americana, so they have to pretend they're doing something, anything, and that Putin is just a madman dictator of a pariah state and everyone else agrees right guys we're all in this together. https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1494686976527769603 Conspiratiorist has issued a correction as of 00:12 on Feb 19, 2022 |
# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:09 |
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sexpig by night posted:what'd they do Neuberger said if Russia did cyber attacks against USA companies or infrastructure the usa is "prepared to respond". Reuters quoted her as saying "prepared to attack."
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:14 |
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Torpor posted:Americans don’t want to get involved in Ukraine and nobody cares if they sanction Russia either. Yeah I feel like twitter/foreign policy blob have their head up their asses and forget that the great mass of the US doesn't care about other countries or actually like foreign wars. They like to feel bad rear end and pointlessly murder brown people, but actual 'oh poo poo this could affect me negatively' wars are not popular. No one cares about Ukraine and countering Russian aggression is only relevant to a sense of feeling vaguely bad rear end. A few muscular speeches would've been enough. No one cares about what sanctions we do or don't do. I don't think anything short of Russia attacking the continental US is going to get a patriotic polling bounce.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:19 |
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"Oh so NOW we're supposed to arm Nazis????"
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:20 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:They are rusophobic American exceptionalists. This isn't about having a domestic distraction, it's about imposing maximum cost on Russian moves to reassert their sphere of influence. I was thinking about this: In 1991 they won. The USSR was dissolved, they were able to not only pry away members of Warsaw Pact but get them in NATO, Russia was in ruins. They got to watch Shock Therapy and national humiliation after humiliation. They got to bomb Serbia, which Russia had entered a world war to protect. Russia posed no military, economic or geopolitical threat for 30 years. It’s not Russia’s fault they squandered that 30 year period. They were on top of the world, and they blew it. Politically and militarily they chose to squander American power on the War on Terror. The thing that weakened America tremendously? Russia was not involved at all. Squandering unparalleled financial power with the ‘08 Crash and all of the poo poo that’s come after? Also not Russia’s fault. In 30 years without an adversary the two major blows to America were not struck by Russia but in the total absence of Russia on the world stage. If they’re mad because they feel like there’s more they need to accomplish, they had their chance. That’s what I don’t get. They were on top, alone, for 30 years. Not only was this going to end, that it ended with America teetering is also their fault because the policies of the GWOT and financial policies after the Crash were also their own doing! When France eventually recovered from the Napoleonic Wars, say 30 years on, were there people furious that France regain its standing? Serious question, because Great Nations nearly always bounce back. I’m just confused about their position here. This is a world of their own making.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:22 |
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Mr Hootington posted:Neuberger said if Russia did cyber attacks against USA companies or infrastructure the usa is "prepared to respond". Reuters quoted her as saying "prepared to attack." Putin just needs to invade because the us natsec blob is just in shambles, completely embarrassing. he needs to do it out of professional obligation at this point and nobody could blame him.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:22 |
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A bipartisan push to pass the “mother of all sanctions” collapsed after Republicans insisted on imposing broad penalties before an invasion and Democrats, backing the White House, refused. US Senate has failed to come to an agreement on that "mother of all sanctions" bill. Republicans want sanctions to be imposed now and not in response to an invasion. Some Democratic Senators appear open to that, but the Senate is in recess now for a week. They may quote:For weeks, senators used language such as “fine-tuning” and “one-yard line” to describe how close they were to reaching a deal. Mr. Menendez suggested that senators might even plow over objections from the White House to imposing sanctions before an invasion, a move that Republicans had pushed for but the Biden administration had lobbied hard to head off.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:23 |
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Hey! We're not the baddies!
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:25 |
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Was there ever a point after the dissolution of the USSR that Russia could have integrated into the neo-liberal world order successfully? Or was gloating over a fallen adversary and looting the country basically the only option?
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:27 |
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Minenfeld! posted:Was there ever a point after the dissolution of the USSR that Russia could have integrated into the neo-liberal world order successfully? Or was gloating over a fallen adversary and looting the country basically the only option? Yeah before shock therapy it was a genuine possibility but capitalists decided to loot the state instead and here we are
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:29 |
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Minenfeld! posted:Was there ever a point after the dissolution of the USSR that Russia could have integrated into the neo-liberal world order successfully? Or was gloating over a fallen adversary and looting the country basically the only option? no absolutely not. the amount of internalized russophobia in dc is just insane. they never stood a chance edit: they were always going to get parted out and looted and a victory dance done on their corpse. the specter of communism was so all encompassing that the policy makers of the time were hide bound and determined to ensure that nothing would rise from the ashes of the USSR or certainly nothing with Russia at the helm. by god Europeans have lost too many boys in western Russia and that’s not happening again! Torpor has issued a correction as of 00:34 on Feb 19, 2022 |
# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:30 |
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OhFunny posted:A bipartisan push to pass the “mother of all sanctions” collapsed after Republicans insisted on imposing broad penalties before an invasion and Democrats, backing the White House, refused. Incredible. Republicans are so horny for a conflict they can't even wait for Russia to go first.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:32 |
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Minenfeld! posted:Was there ever a point after the dissolution of the USSR that Russia could have integrated into the neo-liberal world order successfully? Or was gloating over a fallen adversary and looting the country basically the only option? Bush Sr. and Clinton. Particularly Clinton. The US intervened to guarantee Yeltsin who himself handpicked Putin as successor, and both proceeded to do everything right with the promise to integrate with the US/European world order, and were left hung to dry. By the time of Bush Jr. there was no interest to even engage with Russia, and by Obama 'containment policy' was adopted.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:32 |
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Libshits crying about Putin being the antichrist for intervening in the 2016 POTUS elections have zero sense of irony.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:35 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:Libshits crying about Putin being the antichrist for intervening in the 2016 POTUS elections have zero sense of irony. I can agree with you on that, it’s loving deranged in general and with regard to Russia in particular edit: I disagree with the above posters that Russia ever had a chance to have normal relations with the west, there might have been faint glimmers but I think they were just that, faint.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:37 |
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Conspiratiorist posted:Bush Sr. and Clinton. Particularly Clinton. Wasn't the US containment policy explicitly based around containing CHYNA?
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:38 |
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quote:A structural theory cannot predict which collapsed empires will revive; it can only point to the structural conditions that make revival possible and likely. In so doing, the theory need not go beyond its domain and thereby flirt with theorizing everything. Collapse comes about from the chance intervention of shocks that push a system, however vigorous or de- cayed, over the edge. Revival, in contrast, is not serendipitous: it can occur only if the empire that collapsed possessed certain characteristics when the shock struck. As a result, revival is not just a return to the status quo ante. In a very real sense, revival is the continuation of the status quo ante: revival is what would have happened if shocks had not intervened. As we know, such a counterfactual conditional can hold only if a theory underpins it. That theory is, for better or for worse, the theory of decline presented in this book. - Imperial Ends Alright so here’s what stands out to me: These dipshit emigres and Westerners looting the poo poo out of THEE Ukraine actually made Russia reasserting itself much more likely! Geographically contiguous, disputed borders at partition, linguistic minorities - and then they looted the country making it the weak periphery! On the spectrum between a Russia-oriented independent country, a Commonwealth like suggested with Belarus, or an even more unequal relationship all seem more likely than Ukraine being in the rival US/EU/NATO world system because of the Shock Therapy they did to Ukraine.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:39 |
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OhFunny posted:A bipartisan push to pass the “mother of all sanctions” collapsed after Republicans insisted on imposing broad penalties before an invasion and Democrats, backing the White House, refused. Yet again, all I can do at this point is laugh.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:42 |
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Tankbuster posted:Wasn't the US containment policy explicitly based around containing CHYNA? Obama got embarrassed by what happened with Georgia.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:43 |
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Frosted Flake posted:On the spectrum between a Russia-oriented independent country, a Commonwealth like suggested with Belarus, or an even more unequal relationship all seem more likely than Ukraine being in the rival US/EU/NATO world system because of the Shock Therapy they did to Ukraine. I mean at this point Ukraine looks like a US puppet government being propped up with guns and money. The difference when compared to middle east is the external threat instead of internal. Although there is also an internal threat.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:46 |
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why would you impose the sanctions that were meant to operate as an explicit threat to punish an invasion before the invasion? it isn’t much of a deterrent at that point
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:54 |
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https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1494808254068801544?s=20&t=HJyXj7r1YhSqKZbVO-i0-w https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1494818324491948037?s=20&t=HJyXj7r1YhSqKZbVO-i0-w
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:55 |
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Torpor posted:why would you impose sanctions meant to operate as an explicit threat to punish an invasion before the invasion? it isn’t much of a deterrent at that point they're throwing a tantrum because they can't bomb russians since they'll shoot back
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:56 |
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Frosted Flake posted:When France eventually recovered from the Napoleonic Wars, say 30 years on, were there people furious that France regain its standing? Serious question, because Great Nations nearly always bounce back. Tzar Nicholas I of Russia freaked out in 1830 when the July Revolution happened and toppled the Barbons again and set about to contain France because he feared a renewed European wide war against a second Revolutionary France. He was shocked when Britain refused to join such an effort. I suppose that's not a great 1:1.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:57 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:19 |
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Lostconfused posted:I mean at this point Ukraine looks like a US puppet government being propped up with guns and money. The difference when compared to middle east is the external threat instead of internal. Although there is also an internal threat. The thing is, the US is a decaying empire and yet another commitment… I mean, it’s hilarious like I said. They had 30 years and they blew it. No one forced them into the GWOT or the response to the Great Recession. Which makes Biden and the punditry class response even weirder. Instead of stopping the bleeding, they’re lashing out. They’re no resolving any of the internal causes of US decay.
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# ? Feb 19, 2022 00:57 |