re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

quote:

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Biden is the worst president in my lifetime, but the war started in 2014 not because of Biden and NATO, but because Russia wouldn’t stand aside and let Ukraine and Crimea slide West.

They judged correctly that Obama and the other Western leaders were too weak to move to stop them.

The escalation of the war was becss as use Biden was seen as Obama 2.0.

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I've mentioned this before but I keep seeing geopolitical people talk about a couple of things:

1) The US is and has been withdrawing internationally since about 2008... if not 1990. Our foreign policy and military policy was all designed to combat the Soviet Union. When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, we didn't know exactly what we were supposed to be doing...

NATO was designed to protect Western Europe from attack by the Soviets... what exactly was the purpose when the Soviets were gone? Former Warsaw Pact countries say to protect Europe from Russia... which seems to be the moment we're in, but is that overkill?

Can NATO fight terrorism? That's not peer country warfare, that's like fighting a street gang that runs around the globe... and you end up killing tens of thousands of civilians with conventional military operations trying to get them.

So between general reassessment and things we learned from the War on Terror, we just started rethinking things. And decided that Globalism, our mechanism to hold the Democratic-Capitalist world together and on its feet (as shields for US, basically) wasn't worth what we pay for it.

If fracking lets us produce more oil than anyplace else, and we can do that as we find ways to shift at least somethings to renewables in a way that's practical, cost-effective and makes sense... and if we can shift our economy back to domestic production and stop importing so much (and COVID really gave this a kick in the arse) we don't need to be the world's Coast Guard (and do you think we would've just let Iran grab a couple of tankers and cargo ships the way it's done lately before 2019? We don't even treat that as a newsworthy event...

2) We would've let Russia just take Ukraine... we didn't really care, partially because we don't see Russia surviving another full decade before it falls apart, so we thought it would be Afghanistan - with internal resistance making the occupation costly - all over again, which helped topple the Soviet Union, so it would be speeding up Russia's demise.

But the impossible happened... Russia couldn't take Ukraine... because the Russian military is a mess... and then we saw what was in store... bombing campaigns, incidents like Bucha... and that if they did manage to eventually take the entire country, then Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or Poland or Romania eventually gets messed with by either emboldened or just plain stupid and wreckless Russian antics, and the NATO gloves come off and we destroy their armed forces within 2 days and the nukes fly or tactical nukes are set off, since as we've seen the Russian reaction to defeat is always bombing whoever beat them.

And I'm in agreement with the people who actually think Putin was waiting for Trump to cripple NATO, like he kept saying he was going to do... and when he lost and couldn't, Putin just decided to try it anyway. You don't have to believe Trump is a Russian asset to look at him simply saying he would pull out of NATO or "let Russia do whatever they want" to people who don't pay what he thinks they should to conclude that in Russia that was seen as a "frick YEAH!!! WHOOOO!!!!!"