speng31b posted:

Worse than that, they're citing unnamed "Kyiv military officials"

Cerebral Bore posted:

never trust a post, he said with a post

Regarde Aduck posted:

what there are punishments less than ban+30?

Frosted Flake posted:

fits my needs posted:

https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1623757380017090561?s=20

quote:

Lesson No. 4: War empowers extremists and makes compromise harder.

Because the stakes are high, war is a time when cool reasoning and careful calculation should be especially prized. Unfortunately, it is often instead a time when bluster, wishful thinking, moral posturing, patriotic chest-thumping, and groupthink take over and hard-line views drown out more measured voices. As a result, it becomes harder to discuss any sort of compromise, even when neither side has a clear path to victory. That’s not the only reason wars are hard to end, but it is an important one.

As I described at length a couple of months ago, public debate on Ukraine has been extraordinarily vituperative, with hawkish pundits competing to outdo each other in expressing support for Kyiv, while smearing alternative perspectives as naive, immoral, pro-Russian, or worse. (Something similar may be happening on the other side as well: Although it is hard to draw reliable inferences from Russian commentary on the war, Putin’s most vocal Russian critics appear to be mostly hard-liners accusing him of not executing the war with sufficient vigor or ruthlessness.)

It is possible that Ukraine’s most ardent supporters are correct and the West should do “whatever it takes” to enable Kyiv to liberate all its territory. But I wonder if all those hawkish voices at the Atlantic or Atlantic Council (not to mention some outspoken Eastern European politicians) have ever stopped to ask themselves if they might be wrong. Is it barely possible that helping prolong the war could lead to a worse outcome for Ukraine? There’s a rather disturbing track record here: Generous external support for local forces in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan kept those wars going but didn’t leave those countries in better shape when the United States finally decided that victory was not possible and went home. It’s true that U.S. and NATO forces are not fighting in Ukraine, but we have a lot of skin in the game. Peace or a cease-fire may still be a long way off, but thinking about how to shut it down is in everyone’s interest, and especially Ukraine’s.

Lesson No. 5: A strategy of restraint would have reduced the risk of war.

The final lesson—and arguably the most important—is that this war would have been far less likely if the United States had adopted a strategy of foreign-policy restraint. Had U.S. and Western policymakers heeded repeated warnings about the consequences of open-ended NATO enlargement (including the advice of George F. Kennan; this wide-ranging, bipartisan group of experienced experts; this group of similarly distinguished diplomats and defense officials; or CIA Director William Burns, who is also a former ambassador to Russia) instead of trying to incorporate Ukraine into Western security and economic institutions, Russia’s incentive to invade would have been greatly reduced. Putin bears primary responsibility for launching a brutal and illegal war, but the Biden administration and its predecessors are far from blameless. The Ukrainian people are now suffering from Putin’s ruthlessness, but also from Western officials’ hubris and naivete.

Frosted Flake posted:

I support freeing all political prisoners but mostly Fly Molo and Sex Pig.

Majorian posted:

It's the Post, so lol

Slavvy posted:

Has there ever been a case of fascists quietly taking down their symbols without being obliterated in a war first?

Majorian posted:

Steve Walt has a decent piece up on Foreign Policy, entitled "The Top Five Lessons from Year One of Ukraine's War." Some of it is the obligatory Western media "Zelensky is a great leader" succ but there's also some good takes in it:

Nothing we don't already know itt but it's nice someone with a platform is saying it.

Fat-Lip-Sum-41.mp3 posted:

He's just doing laundry. The point of the piece is not to point out that the US could have avoided this, but to reinforce the myth that the United States wanted to avoid it, that the U.S. wanted something, anything else to happen than what is happening right now.

We never choose these conflicts. We never meticulously create the conditions for them to happen. We never provoke. We are always just falling into these things, due to our "hubris and naivete," which we will absolutely remember for next time!

Raskolnikov38 posted:

is the 500k number for everyone in the war or did Russia manage to mobilize a half million man offensive army group in the rear

mila kunis posted:

the usa did everything correctly. they've slammed the door shut on any cooperation between russia and europe and cowed the EU into subservience to american producers and interests. russian soldiers are dying without having to shed any american blood.

the next step is cutting europe off from china, and also china off from south america/africa. it'd take a lot of creativity to pull off but never write off the defending champions

genericnick posted:

Honestly doesnt sound like a crazy number to me? They claim they have mobilized 350k and the existing force at some point was on the order of 150k, no?

mila kunis posted:

the usa did everything correctly. they've slammed the door shut on any cooperation between russia and europe and cowed the EU into subservience to american producers and interests. russian soldiers are dying without having to shed any american blood.

the next step is cutting europe off from china, and also china off from south america/africa. it'd take a lot of creativity to pull off but never write off the defending champions

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/PeImeniPusha/status/1623770418984124416

Danann posted:

https://twitter.com/PeImeniPusha/status/1623770418984124416

massaro's going to be flying a few more ss symbols and quietly take it down when the war ends at this rate

Starsfan posted:

Ukraine and some other western sources have been pushing the narrative ever since the mobilization was announced that Russia secretly mobilized in excess of 500k soldiers instead of the claimed 300k. I think partly to try to imply that the war is going worse for Russia than they will admit and partly to try and cause panic in Russia that more people than announced were going to be effected by the mobilization order.

Regarde Aduck posted:

the EU was always going to be little neoliberal piggies

maybe it wasn't so clear before this but it is now. They're rudderless and slowly falling into fascism so they might as well get rich and then gently caress off to NZ or somewhere. The EU hosed itself. America just kinda stood there and went 'cool, cool'.

January 6 Survivor posted:

I browsed the feed of that account and lmao

https://twitter.com/PeImeniPusha/status/1623773187103424512?cxt=HHwWgIDU0YnH5ogtAAAA

Majorian posted:

I think you’re assigning the wrong motive to Walt here. His whole shtick isn’t “the US doesn’t want conflicts but just stumbles into them.” He’s a dyed-in-the-wool Realist, and like Mearscheimer, he is all about going “See? SEE?! International relations are anarchic, states are black boxes, the only thing that matters are power dynamics between states, non-intervention is often to states’ benefit,” etc. He’s often on the defensive in his work, but it’s not really about defending the West per se.

Ardennes posted:

Supposedly some Ukrainian pilots may use some British trainers at some point, but the Brits even before the war had a real issue with pilot training and it is probably going to be hard to push their capacity farther than it already. Also, it takes months in a trainer before you get even a change to fly an actual combat jet then start practicing tactics and building up experience.

euphronius posted:

1,800 tanks ? when do the leopards show up

mawarannahr posted:

too soon?

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/europa-universalis-iv-development-diary-7th-of-february-2023-russia.1567595/

comedyblissoption posted:

"Lesson No. 5: A strategy of restraint would have reduced the risk of war" neglects to explicitly point out that the US oligarchy wanted the war and seems to only scold them for being irresponsible

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was checking out Anbennar, the EU megamod full conversion, and the game specifically starts with the Not-Eastern Europe countries being invaded by a tide of orcs pouring out of Not-Russia. Like it's not even subtle.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was checking out Anbennar, the EU megamod full conversion, and the game specifically starts with the Not-Eastern Europe countries being invaded by a tide of orcs pouring out of Not-Russia. Like it's not even subtle.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I was checking out Anbennar, the EU megamod full conversion, and the game specifically starts with the Not-Eastern Europe countries being invaded by a tide of orcs pouring out of Not-Russia. Like it's not even subtle.