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Other foot?
You mean if Ukraine invaded Russia?...... No, I guess we would not assist Russia.
My own preference would be for NATO to limit itself to European countries, but someone should remind you that Japan and Australia are not part of NATO, and they support the alliance, while Hungary IS a part of NATO and does not support the alliance. So this isn't really a NATO thing.
Russia will destroy itself and, as Medvedev says, cease to function. Much later, The US will pull out of NATO. Then Canada will leave. Then NATO will simply die, having no real function and with fighting among its members becoming heated.
You think that is the cause of the conflict? Russia went over to Ukraine and the U.S. are just innocent bystanders and trying to do the right thing?. That simplistic?
Who is "We"? unless you are part of running the U.S. government, you are not "them". I'm just a common citizen calling out the people in power making our dumb foreign policies.
Like the U.S. never invaded a sovereign country or paid for others to do, unheard of.
4 Russian demands and why this mess started:
1) Russia wants a guarantee Ukraine can never join NATO 2) Russia wants NATO arms out of Eastern Europe 3) Russia wants a ban on NATO missiles within striking distance 4)Russia wants autonomy for eastern Ukraine
The same demands We would make if We were on the same foot. Ukraine will do what the U.S. tells them, the Ukraine government have been bought off with lots of U.S. dollars and influence. If the U.S. was serious about Ukraine's people and world peace they would get a treaty done with the demands that all sides wins not keep sending poor Joe to another round with Mike Tyson.
Last edited by SanJuanStar; 02-23-2023 at 01:54 PM..
It is going to be a real political tightrope walk if China crosses the line and supplies Russia with weaponry,
the West will have to sanction China severely ...not just a slap on the wrist...full on move away from China.
Then it will be almost like a war on two fronts. People will have to reaiize this is potentially the fight of our
lives...democracy vs. authoritarianism....both China and Russia have been stealthily chipping away
at western democracies for years now, with some success...you can see the fruits of their labor right here
on C-D...amazing to see it ....black is white...wrong is right...Russia/Putin is the good guy...crazy stuff.
We have to watch China like a hawk...and apply as much political pressure on them as possible.
It's hard for me to understand such thinking. If a group of thugs invade their home and rape their wives and daughters, and Tucker Carlson says the thugs are the good guys, they would probably believe him and blame their families for being the victims.
Putin invaded a neighbor and his troops killed, raped, kidnapped, tortured women and children. Russia destroys civilian infrastructures in Ukraine daily, but no...Zenlenskyy is the bad guy.
And if that doesn't work, there is always the whataboutism. The USA invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. That makes it OK for Putin to invade Ukraine.
Maybe you should understand real history, not Putin's propaganda. Russia occupied East Europe for 45 years. They wanted to make sure they weren't occupied again by Russia. And American troops have been significantly reduced in Europe since 1989. European armies have been reduced.
By Russia occupying East Europe you mean the The Soviet Union which FDR and the U.S. gave them at Yalta in 1945 while the U.S. took the other half? Let's get history straight here and put proper perspective in time. The U.S. gave them East Europe at the price of blood but the U.S. later didn't want them to have it again? That is a strange foreign policy. You can have it if you are our friend and can't have it if you are not.
The Cold War ended and Russia is a shelf of the Soviet Union but the U.S. needed to expand the military alliance from 15 country during a war to 30 countries during peace time? is that your logic to keep peace and assure the other side you are not expanding? You have a weird way understanding of history and keeping peace.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bu2
NATO has been significantly reducing military. Those are the facts.
So NATO went from 15 countries at the height of the Cold War to 30 countries today and you call that reduction? LOL ok.
When has the U.S. made any reductions in the military. Do you have any clue how much the U.S. spends on the military compared to the next 10 countries? Thanks for the laugh.
Putin is upset because the Ukrainians pushed out the guy he was paying off to run Ukraine. It was when Russia had significant influence that the "gangster state" was created. It was a copy of Russia.
I think I have mentioned previously this inconvenient little detail: that guy was elected in what international observers deemed free and fair elections. So as you might know, in a democracy, the proper way to "push out" would be to wait for the next elections. Or if abuse of office has occurred and there are procedures to deal with that, that could be done also. Now, I vaguely recall that a slightly different method was used.
P.S. After the fall of Berlin wall, etc. former members of the Eastern block got their very own oligarchs during the transition.
It's hard for me to understand such thinking. If a group of thugs invade their home and rape their wives and daughters, and Tucker Carlson says the thugs are the good guys, they would probably believe him and blame their families for being the victims.
Putin invaded a neighbor and his troops killed, raped, kidnapped, tortured women and children. Russia destroys civilian infrastructures in Ukraine daily, but no...Zenlenskyy is the bad guy.
You just gave definition of every war in history. Do you consider the U.S. government thugs, rapists, killers, torturers? We had a endless wars and regime changes policy for years. It's nice to wake up from the deep coma. So now that Russia and Ukraine have a conflict that our government pushed, you care now because you are being told to care for war and what happens in this war only?
"As tensions rise between Russia and Ukraine on the Black Sea, the US is upgrading several Ukrainian naval bases to give American and NATO warships the ability to dock just miles from Russia-controlled Crimea.
The upgrades come after last November’s incident where Russian warships fired on and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels in the Kerch Strait between Russia and Ukraine. Russia is still holding the crews."
Right.
But this is the article from 2019, and the tensions were rising precisely because as the second article from 2017 indicates, Americans were already there with that new maritime center ( among other things, such as training of Ukrainian troops by NATO.)
And that's why Ukrainians decided to go for that provocation in the Kerch straight already in 2019, when their presidential elections were getting near.
( Some are saying that Poroshenko ( then president) went for this escalation in order to keep his presidency in place, but I don't know how much truth is to it.)
So I am aware how much some people would love to ascribe "aggression" notion to Russia, but nope, the aggression in this whole conflict came from the US/NATO.
Putin was trying to avoid this war for eight years, which was serious miscalculation on his part.
Putin was trying to avoid this war for eight years, which was serious miscalculation on his part.
Let me fix this for you: after Putin invaded Crimea and supported the rebels in Eastern Ukraine he didn't want to start a conflict under President Trump. The minute Biden took office and especially after his failure in Afghanistan, Putin smelled weakness and moved forward with his grand plan of a new soviet empire.
Let me fix this for you: after Putin invaded Crimea and supported the rebels in Eastern Ukraine he didn't want to start a conflict under President Trump. The minute Biden took office and especially after his failure in Afghanistan, Putin smelled weakness and moved forward with his grand plan of a new soviet empire.
The people of Crimea who the majority are Russians and overwhelmingly voted to NOT be under Ukraine and be under Russia, Russia came to protect them. You know what We did in Texas and California and other borders states. The moment the people voted in Texas and Calfornia to leave Mexico, the U.S. wasted NO time in sending the military to defend "democracy"
Supporting rebels that want to be independent? Didn't We call the Taliban "Freedom fighters"? Doesn't the U.S. pays and support rebels around the world? The catch is they have to be our friends and if you are not then you are terrorists or enemy combatants. Those are the rules made by the people in charge.
Just like Transnistria would never have started? Or Ossetia? Or Akbazia? Or the original invasion of the Donbas and Crimea?
At some point you have to look at Putin's actions and see the pattern.
Unless you are a paid Russian bot or a Russian who will accept anything their Mother country does, no matter how vile.
His "pattern" is no different from American "pattern."
Putin is aware where the inter-ethnic conflicts are brewing, and he takes advantage of it.
I know the least about Transdnistria, but from what people are saying- there was a slaughter of Russians there by Moldavian nationalists back in the 90ies, while Moscow was looking away - with torture, murders etc.
I don't know where Ukrainians fit into it all, because there are like third of them still living side by side with Russians in that Transdnistria region. The notable difference of course is apparently there are no Nationalists from Western Ukraine among them. So they all still live side by side - Ukrainians, Russians, Moldavians in that Transdnistria, as they used to during Soviet times ( they still use Soviet symbols over there too, apparently.)
But don't get me started on Abkhasia/Georgia conflict.
That I know a thing or two personally about. Just let's put it this way - the Abkhasians were playing soccer with the severed heads of Georgians - that's pretty descriptive of the level of hatred there, and this has little to do with *Russians* but rather with personal old Stalin's policies, who, as you know was Georgian himself.
In Ossetia the ethnic conflict between the locals and Georgians was not as bad, and they didn't mind to be under Georgians for many years, as long as Georgia itself was ruled from Moscow.
Once Moscow stepped back and Georgian government decided to tighten the screws over its ethnic minorities, the severe backlash came.
Putin simply used this factor, as much as Washington tried to use inter-ethnic conflict in Ukraine to its own advantage.
It's all about geopolitics, not more and not less.
You think that is the cause of the conflict? Russia went over to Ukraine and the U.S. are just innocent bystanders and trying to do the right thing?. ........
Uh, yeah. I thought I made that perfectly clear. Read my posts again if you have some doubt.
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