(January 24, 2022 at 1:23 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: The US is considering adding several thousand more troops to Eastern Europe.

Which won’t do anything.

Putin knows:

1.  Direct western military action against Russia is impossible because: a) Russian can still nuke the US as completely as the US can nuke Russia, b) no second tier country on Russia’s borders would really want to be remembered in Russia as the spring board from which an attack on Russia was launched.  

2.  Russia probably has no plans to attack any other country in Eastern Europe in the near future so presence of american Troops there would not inconvenience Russia in that way.

3.  If presence of american troops is used as a strategic threat, such as hosting offensive air power or ballistic missile defence to nullify Russia strategic nuclear power, remember China.   America would not want to drive Russia towards China forever.

All in all, the hand of the west is really very weak.

Ukraine has nukes too, right?

(January 24, 2022 at 1:32 pm)Mister Agenda Wrote: Ukraine has nukes too, right?

No, they bargained that away in return for US security guaranty.

They gave them to russia.

I guess I wasn't paying attention in the nineties, it's very rare for a nation to entirely give up its nuclear weapons. Wikepedia tells me the agreement was to destroy their nuclear weapons.

(January 24, 2022 at 12:34 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: I think a full on invasion is unlikely because Putin doesn’t have enough troops on the border to either invade or occupy.   But I think his strategy is to use the presence of the military to create a sense of unbearable, unresolvable tension in Kiev, make the anti-Russian, pro-nato government seem powerless to resolve the issue, and enable more Russian friendly to claim they have better capacity to resolve the tension.

Actually the government of current President Volodymyr Zelensky is by temperament and inclination very much pro-Russia. Zelensky's whole platform was to find a way to come to an accommodation with Russia, even at a disadvantage to Ukraine itself.

Putain threw that golden opportunity out to take Ukraine out of the Western orbit because he was idiot enough to push for full vassalisation and humiliation.

Seriously?   

For russia, Ukraine joining nato is national death for russia.

Any Ukraine that does not permanently foreswear NATO is fundamentally unacceptable to Russia. This is a ground truth of Russo Ukrainian relationship.    A professed attitude of accommodation between ukraine and russia that does not take that fact into account is no accommodation at all from Russian perspective.  

And no, putin is not an idiot.   he bootstrapped russia from a completely marginalized, crumbling power in 2000 with bush fire in every direction to the center of world politics with shored up strategic depth on every direction but Ukraine within 20 years.  he is easily the most canny geopolitical strategist in power today, by a large margin.

I think It would not be too over the top to say he is near the caliber of Camilo Cavour or Otto Von Bismarck.

(January 24, 2022 at 2:15 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: For russia, Ukraine joining nato is national death for russia.

How? Seriously, how?

The idea that Ukraine joining NATO is death to Russia is seriously pro-Putain bullshit and is generally peddled only by his supporters on the far-right.

(January 24, 2022 at 2:45 pm)Nomad Wrote:

(January 24, 2022 at 2:15 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: For russia, Ukraine joining nato is national death for russia.

How?  Seriously, how?

The idea that Ukraine joining NATO is death to Russia is seriously pro-Putain bullshit and is generally peddled only by his supporters on the far-right.

No, Ukraine joining the NATO means NATO can put offensive medium range weapons 500 km from Moscow that can reach Moscow in 4-5 minutes,  Russian nuclear arsenal becomes totally worthless because Russian can not defend against, can not even react to, a decapitating first strike.   Russia stops being a significant power able to pursue its own agenda.   

That is the ground reality that matters to Russia, not bullshit.

If you think that is bullshit, then maybe you should ask why Kennedy risked nuclear war to prevent the Soviet Union from basing offensive weapons not 500km, but 1500km from Washington DC in 1963.

Basically, the west decided to promote the color revolution in Ukraine by installing a anti-Russian government in Kiev when the US was still drunk on the postwar triumphalism and believed its own overwhelming irresistible power to change any part of the world to the way it liked.     The failure in Afghanistan and then iraq has not yet become apparent.  

The US thought it could fuck Russia in the ass and Russia could not do anything about it.

In reality, by putting nato’s credibility on the line by suggesting Ukraine could join nato, what the US had done was to nail its own dick to a chopping block called Ukraine.

Russia decided to swing the axe now.

So you could say the ultimate responsibility for this rests with the Bush administration.    However, to be fair, no American administration since the end of the Cold War would likely to have be more strategic and thought farther ahead in this respect than the bush administration.  So while bush administration precipitated this disaster, the root cause is America’s accustomed self-centered shallow thinking underlying its ideological world view