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Acebuckeye13 posted:Are Nazis in control of Ukraine's government? No. As other people have said, they Nazis in question came up when people uncritically passed around media reports that whitewashed the fact that they were covering literal Nazis. You can't post poo poo about heroic resistance fighters ready to stand up against Russian aggression and then get mad when people go hey that individual, not all Ukrainians or all Ukrainian armed forces, but that person, was a Nazi. The only reason to get angry when someone points that out is if you think "good" Nazis can and should be embraced as long as they have the right enemies. Which, coincidentally, is a view the West has often had about fascists. Even outside of that specific context, I think it's pretty questionable to suggest it should be verboten to point out the existence of armed quasi-official Nazi organizations in a country. Hell even the US Congress stripped out provisions requiring that military assistance not trickle down to Azov Battalion until 2018, which seems pretty bad to me. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 20:04
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steinrokkan posted:Unironically stanning for this worldview itt That's definitely not my worldview, and you're a bad person for casually suggesting it is.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:10
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I don't think anybody's said the existence of Azov Battalion justifies a Russian invasion, and you guys are punching pretty hard at strawmen.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:32
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pippy posted:I don't think it's too far off what some of them actually believe. I'll admit that I've fallen short of this before, but at least under the current D&D guidelines my understanding is that we're meant to engage with each other's arguments, not what we imagine to be in their heads.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:52
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Funny how the mistranslations always seem to be in the direction of ramping up tensions. FWIW I disagree with a lot of the left/anti-imperialist crowd in that I think a Russian invasion is extremely plausible, but US media may as well be cheerleading for it at this point whether it ultimately happens or not.
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Feb 14, 2022 20:56
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How are u posted:If a democracy wants to join NATO and the existing members agree, why shouldn't they be allowed? It is a defensive alliance. More nations joining together in a defensive alliance seems like a good thing, in and of itself. It's only a bad thing for nations that are interested in conquest, who might be thwarted by a defensive alliance of nations that they would otherwise be interested in conquering. NATO isn't just a defensive alliance though. See Kosovo. Edit: Yeah, and Libya. I'm inclined to say Afghanistan at least involved self defense, even if the end result was obviously horrifying.
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Feb 14, 2022 21:28
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Paladinus posted:Are you sure Azov specifically get American weapons? I am legitimately not sure if it's the case, considering there was a push the US State Department to designate Azov a foreign terrorist organisation. Would it be fine if America only gave weapons to be used by non-nazi military units? They did until 2018 when the Pentagon stopped succeeding in getting Congress to strip out a provision in aid to Ukraine that made is so Azov Battalion wouldn't get it. If that was something the US was officially willing to overlook until 2018, I don't think it's super implausible that something might still trickle down today, whether through less official channels or corruption on Ukraine's end, but I can't prove it.
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Feb 14, 2022 22:00
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cinci zoo sniper posted:If someone tells me they lost a dad in Iraq I’ll let them know that it was for the lulz, since America didn’t request assistance. Now, you may argue that NATO and US are different things, but that would contradict your previous posts here. Latvia lost three lives in Iraq and four in Afghanistan, and that's a shame, but I don't think the US guarantees your country's security because of that tremendous contribution. It sucks that you got dragged into Iraq in particular, but probably the most valuable contribution in the eyes of the Bush Admin was getting to add 1 to the number of supporting countries.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:11
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I don’t consider Latvia to be victim of Iraqi aggression - that is not a precondition for us to recognise American request for aid. How is this not a parting shot?
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Feb 14, 2022 23:33
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cinci zoo sniper posted:Because nothing prevents you from continuing the topic of Latvian membership of NATO in EEPol, which is the more appropriate thread for it. I'm more than happy to continue the discussion there, with the small request of clearly restating the argument or position you'd like to discuss with me or anyone else. And yet you chose to get the last word in right there before deciding the topic doesn't belong. On that note, does it really make sense for cinci to be IK for both this thread and the other thread? The OP of this thread sure reads like it's a containment thread for dissenting views they find distasteful, and I don't see the point of having two threads if they're going to be moderated the same.
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Feb 14, 2022 23:39
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I don't view them separately myself That gets to my other concern. If the threads are going to be functionally identical, it would be nice if that would be made clear from the top so some of us know not to bother posting in it after the skew of the last one. Like I genuinely thought part of the point of this thread was to have somewhere people could be more free to express opinions that might offend the sensibilities of regular EE posters without tracking mud on their carpet. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 23:55 on Feb 14, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 23:52
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cinci zoo sniper posted:What prevents you from doing so? I don't trust you, frankly. I'm not saying you're a bad person or a liar, just that you very clearly have a perspective on all of this, and I think it very clearly colors your moderation of these threads, so you being the IK in this one as well as the other one makes me less interested in posting here, particularly when you say you view the threads as the same. If that's just a me problem, cool, I'll post somewhere else. Dr Kool-AIDS fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 14, 2022 23:59
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cinci zoo sniper posted:I’ve scanned the text diagonally. Russia is signalling that they’re interested in working on arms controls topics with the U.S., but otherwise they’re mostly indignant, if not outright mocking, about primacy of their requirements in the earlier absolute. There goes all the hand wringing about “surely Russia is actually interesting in making concessions”. Keep punching at strawmen dude, nobody said vague noises about arms control were going to get it done. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Feb 17, 2022 15:38
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Alchenar posted:Hypothetical missiles that don't actually exist not actually deployed anywhere. The missiles do exist, you overreached there.
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Feb 19, 2022 19:38
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Not in Germany or Turkey they don't. The existence of the missiles and their deployment were two different things in OP's post. The missiles clearly do exist even if they aren't deployed.
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Feb 19, 2022 19:41
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coelomate posted:I'm scared about what happens when the world tries to stop a belligerent nuclear super power. Russia's not going to nuke anyone over sanctions, calm down.
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Feb 20, 2022 01:26
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Conspiratiorist posted:About that... It's insane how far they fell behind Belarus, especially considering it happened well before 2014. I guess one piece of poo poo dictator is actually better in some ways than a succession of corrupt morons.
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Feb 20, 2022 03:31
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Inner Light posted:Hello thread. Has anyone made this style of post yet? If not may I say, if the missiles start flying, it's been a ride boys and girls. It's been a privilege having lived with you One person did that I saw, and they shouldn't have either. The US isn't going to confront Russia militarily over Ukraine, so there's nothing to worry about in terms of WW3.
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Feb 20, 2022 03:48
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Cugel the Clever posted:I agree that the fears of a NATO/Russia conflict over the current crisis generally reflect either a shallow understanding of the events in motion or just outright paranoia. On this, though, I'd quibble that the obvious truth of "Putin isn't going to start a war with NATO in 2022" should not be taken as indication that his aspirations are limited by anything other than the state of the Russian economy and the alliances protecting Russia's former imperial subjects. Russia has long been at work trying to destabilize and divide Western nations and will maintain those pressures so long as Putin holds the reins of power. Were either the obstacles to imperial aggrandizement removed or Putin to lose his inhibitions, one could easily imagine armies on the march to take what he can get. I really don't think Russia has the manpower these days to take on Eastern Europe even if the US went home. Like yeah the Baltics would be in trouble, but assuming nuclear blackmail would be off the table (the UK and France would still exist), I wouldn't bet against Poland. Not that Poland could defeat Russia on the battlefield or anything, but even the Soviets wouldn't have occupied Eastern Europe the way they did without the devastation and total war circumstances of World War II. Today, even Ukraine's probably too big to comfortably digest, which is why only the most hysterical voices are talking about anything beyond Kiev. Despera posted:Death of Stalin sucked anyway 
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Feb 20, 2022 04:53
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Inner Light posted:Have you learned nothing from 2020? How predictable were events in 2020? At this point Syria was a bigger 'what if' for nuclear war than anything involving Ukraine has the potential to be, since the US and Russia were (and still are) operating at cross purposes in the country, to the point where the US killed a shitload of Wagner mercs who decided to test the limits of what was possible. I'm very thankful that aside from that incident and a couple instances of road rage neither side seemed too interested in upsetting the status quo too heavily once one or the other was entrenched in part of the country, so we never got to any level of serious risk (to the disappointment of some hawks who really wanted to push them aside), but even that wariness has nothing on the US flat out saying there will be no military response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:09
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Despera posted:Good point Poland wasnt invaded for '80" years because Russia wasnt going to invade a vassel state. Tell it to Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The Soviets did decide not to intervene even if Solidarity took control in Poland in the early 80's though.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:15
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Despera posted:El oh loving el If that was an expression of interest in learning more, here's a starter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_crisis_of_1980%E2%80%931981#Final_decision
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Feb 20, 2022 05:20
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Despera posted:Nothings going to convince me that poland wasnt a soviet vassel state You don't seem to have understood my post, because I never said they weren't. Of course they were, as were two countries the Soviets did invade earlier in the Cold War to maintain their control over those countries, but the Soviets weren't going to invade to maintain that vassalage in Poland by the 80's, and obviously didn't fight to keep it anywhere in the Warsaw Pact later in the decade.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:24
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Inner Light posted:Why do you believe this statement by the military? No NATO country is going to get drawn in, so it doesn't matter what Putin said about that circumstance. And it wasn't a statement by the military, it was Biden dismissing the possibility because Americans and Russians shooting at each other would be World War 3.
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Feb 20, 2022 05:31
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Majorian posted:I mean, NATO and Russia are rival empires. It kind of feels to me like you're describing imperial geopolitics and jostling over smaller states in between their spheres of influence. Putin may or may not have those aspirations in his mind, but A, he's nothing if not a realist about his country's capabilities, and B, if it were someone else in power, I honestly don't think Russia would be behaving all that differently from how it currently is. The incentives for Russia to behave like an empire would still remain. I think the biggest example of Medvedev behaving differently from Putin is when he allowed the UN resolution against Libya to go through (openly rebuking Putin for calling it a Western crusade), and then the US immediately used it as a pretext for outright regime change instead of the no fly zone Medvedev reasonably understood it to be. I'm pretty sure that's been referenced as the moment when Putin lost any faith in Medvedev as an independent leader, and it was pretty much the last straw for any sort of real cooperation between NATO and Russia as it massively vindicated Putin's suspicions about Western intentions. It's pretty insane to look back at Libya and realize how many different catastrophic consequences that war had.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:04
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Ukraine hasn't joined, and certainly isn't going to join in the next few weeks as we see how this crisis unfolds, so don't worry about it.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:29
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NATO itself isn't an empire, but the US has characteristics of an empire, and NATO is an instrument of that empire. It's not super clear that the US as a collective whole actually benefits tangibly from this arrangement, but numerous business and political interests do, and that dichotomy has been true for other empires as well.
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Feb 20, 2022 06:35
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golden bubble posted:https://twitter.com/noahbarkin/status/1494999291802312708 I don't think that's real opposition so much as China not wanting their reputation harmed by appearing to sign on. I'm sure we've all seen calls for sanctions on China for not stopping Russia, and while I don't think that's a real threat, it seems like China doesn't want to take any chances regardless. Russia's definitely the subordinate power in that relationship, largely because of how little it has to offer the rest of the world in comparison (so the West can more easily afford to cut off relations (even with pipeline politics, China's gotten some cut rate deals out of being a trading partner Russia can depend on), so China can afford to be stingy with their support, while Russia has to more openly sign on in support of Beijing's foreign policy initiatives. Plus China tries to stick to a pretty consistent line about non-interference with state sovereignty, since they can whack the US over that pretty regularly while saying their human rights issues are none of anybody else's business, and isn't willing to throw the principle in the trash just for Russia's benefit.
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Feb 20, 2022 07:38
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If Belarus is already a pliant enough ally that they're allowing Russia to station this number of troops in their territory for potential offensive operations, I think it takes a truly galaxy brain reading to think Putin stands enough to gain from actually overthrowing Lukashenko to make it worth signaling to every other Russian client or potential ally that allowing Russian troops on your territory is just going to backfire dramatically on you. Russia has enough difficulty finding friends as it is, and if they were going to murk some idiot it probably would have been Assad a long time ago.
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Feb 20, 2022 23:07
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Comstar posted:Isn't that what they did with Afghanistan when they has a go in '79? I assume they learned something from the experience, and I think Russia's in a far worse diplomatic position than the Soviets were, with more viable alternatives for countries to turn to as well, so they can less afford to alienate their allies with old school poo poo like that, particularly when there's nothing really to be gained from doing so in the first place. If Putin really wanted Lukashenko gone he probably could have done it during the protests anyway without all this massive military buildup.
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Feb 21, 2022 00:05
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CommieGIR posted:Nothing Russia is doing right now is very wise and is unlikely to result in much in the way of any gains. Even the annexation of Crimea and assisting in the Donbass has questionable returns of value. You obviously don't think Russia's doing all of this to overthrow Lukashenko either, so I don't know what point you're trying to make with that response.
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Feb 21, 2022 00:46
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Conspiratiorist posted:Invading Ukraine "in its entirety" is something Russia's military is logistically incapable of, and they know it. More importantly, trying to occupy the entire country would result in far too many dead Russians and Ukrainian relatives of Russians to be acceptable domestically. If they do invade, I think bluffing that they intend the attack to be more serious than it really is so they can intimidate the government into collapse and/or send the country into disarray and/or appear to make concessions when they stop short of those maximalist goals might make sense, but yeah I really really don't think anything beyond Kiev seems very realistic, and even Kiev seems like a longshot to me.
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Feb 21, 2022 02:39
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Knightsoul posted:It's not a question of "rights" or "wrongs", it's just the reality of geopolitics. I'm obviously sympathetic to that viewpoint in an amoral pure geopolitics sense, but the ant on the shoulder of the Russian bear part seriously reads like comic book villain language. Or maybe Erdogan.
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Feb 21, 2022 03:01
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Majorian posted:https://twitter.com/carolinerkenny/status/1495558039646187521 I genuinely think someone who says something like that shouldn't be invited back to speak really anywhere because it's both embarrassing and insulting. Like that's not a difference of opinion, or even the usual bullshit Americans do where every leader they don't like is Hitler--it's actually minimizing Hitler's atrocities by suggesting what Putin may do now is somehow even worse.
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Feb 21, 2022 04:21
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Brogeoisie posted:The number of Hitler comparisons now in last 72 hours of media is giving me flashbacks to media ahead of Iraq War build up with Saddam. This is not a good thing and feels like a pretext for major US involvement The US isn't going to intervene militarily no matter how insane the media wants to go, but they're really really not crowning themselves in glory with all of this hysteria. Like that tweet isn't just a clip of some rear end in a top hat saying something stupid, it's a producer at CNN sharing it with the world as coverage they're presumably proud of.
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Feb 21, 2022 04:29
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eke out posted:i think one or two things related to Ukraine (re: whether or not it is allowed to be an independent nation) may have happened prior to it joining the Soviet Union in 1922, also Yeah I'm surprised he's not blaming it on Germany instead of Lenin.
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Feb 21, 2022 19:59
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Sir Bobert Fishbone posted:Probably not too much of a ClancyChat stretch to say that Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova all in pretty real danger of not existing relatively soon. Belarus has already subordinated itself, and Putin doesn't really gain much more from outright annexing it, while creating more problems for himself. I don't think Lukashenko has anything to worry about.
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Feb 21, 2022 20:05
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So I don't think it really matters in the grand scheme of things, but Zelensky gifting Putin this nuclear weapons talking point by talking about revisiting the Budapest Memorandum was really loving stupid. I totally understand the frustration at feeling like Russia's the only one who can get away with violating it, but expressing interest in nuclear weapons when you're about to be invaded isn't helpful!
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Feb 21, 2022 20:16
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Panzeh posted:It's somewhat relieving to be vindicated that the ultimatum was not, in fact, really an offer to negotiate and that war was the intention though it is not really that relieving to know that a war is actually happening. No serious attempt was made to negotiate, but I think it's pretty sad that the first thing on your mind was posting grievances.
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Feb 21, 2022 22:00
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cinci zoo sniper posted:This is a good question. I'll try to track them down, iirc we had 2 toxes - a pair of posters arguing for or against invasion, and someone else wanting to buy avatars. I haven't toxxed, but Russian troops in the already existing borders of the separatist republics counting as a new invasion seems extremely petty to me, and not what people meant when they said invasion. Of course if there's a push to expand the separatist republics into the rest of their provinces, that's different.
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Feb 21, 2022 22:07
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