NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote: 
Yep.  Putin definitely has a plan and is playing the long game.  This is just the natural progression of his game plan.  He telegraphed this with all the arms buildup at the border beginning in the fall until the invasion began.  This is the advantage that these rulers have.  They do not have term limits or any meaningful opposition so they can think way beyond 8 years for example.  Same with Xi.  But the Chinese have been at it for eons, slow and patient.  The leaders of most other nations are looked at as the summer help who will soon be gone and someone new with a new plan will come in and be basically ineffective in whatever their goals are because they have to fight the tide of the previous admin.  Not much different than how our bureaucracy looks at our Congress and POTUS.  They are just temporary, and there we have another long game where the bureaucracy's long plan is what is really being implemented.

Putin may not be a genius, but he is pretty damned smart.  He took Crimea with hardly a whimper of opposition and with Biden's Afghanistan debacle in full view of everyone, Putin being the opportunist figured he would have the jump again and the Ukrainians might fold without a fight or there would be a war of attrition in which he would be the most likely victor.  And probably will be.  If he can't get Ukraine then no one will want it when he is done destroying it.  Either way, he wins that.  All that he really needs to do is take Ukraine's coastline and his primary objective is accomplished.  Anything more would just be frosting on the cake.

Now with the lack of any meaningful action and obvious dysfunction in our admin revealed by the balloon, Xi just needs a reason to take Taiwan, any reason and seize it.  Try a blockade first and if it fails, float a balloon over it and blowup an EMP bomb and shut the entire country down.  We cannot fight as it is on one front, certainly not two at once.

Oh well.  Unless Putin is stopped internally, I believe all the above will play out in the not too distant future.

 black321 wrote:

I think the entire Western response to Glasnost has been one of confusion, mixed messages, cultural misunderstanding and ultimately failure.   At its best, most Western governments would have liked to see Russia transition into a member of the EU like Poland, or at least a good rules-based neighbour that you could do a lot of business with. 

In hindsight, this appears to have been cultural arrogance on the West's part.  I don't think the US wants to weaken Russia per se.. Like other western nations, the US would like to see a rules-based order where we all get along and make a pile of money doing business with each other. 

Sure, you could make the argument, the US wanted to make Russia weak and dependent .. but that doesn't tally with the tolerance to the business expansion of Rosneft, Gazprom etc.  I actually think the US was remarkably tolerant of these business developments, which makes me think the establishment actually wasn't primarily interested in turning Russia into a failed state which US corporations could invade and take over.  In fact, many a western official turned a blind eye to Russian transgressions. If anything, they got a free pass for far too long.

The lawlessness and the long, bad, BAD history of our adversary enemy is fair game when it comes to proving intent. However such evidence can never be used w.r.t. our noble aspirations.

Ukraine is a pawn in a dangerous game between a pot and a kettle.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

arguably, the US foreign interventionism is a lot messier than Russia's.
but come on man, you really going to argue the US prime objective was/is not to weaken russia?

p.s., perhaps my larger point is to understand the full picture. whenever things go south, I like to understand what if any role I may have played...to better manage the future. Ignoring these points leaves us vulnerable to more pain down the road.

 black321 wrote:

Chechenya I and II, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine..  It's a long list.  Russia got a lot of slack from the west.  I very much doubt it was this alleged provocation that triggered the war. Rather the lack of credible deterrence.

And I am still not sure what aggressive and adversarial approach you are referring to.. supporting the Maiden uprising .. with what exactly?

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

Perhaps your point, and others, is that Russia would invade (and was already on the offense) whether or not the West was entangled with Ukraine. Perhaps true.
But we were,  and took an aggressive and adversarial approach (provocation).  If that had not occurred, perhaps negotiations would have succeeded.
All these points are moot, because Russia did invade...and they should not have...regardless of whatever poor foreign politics the US and West may have previously carried out.

 R_P wrote:
In reading this I'm struck by the timeline. The war was no longer preventable, it had been going on for 8 years by February of 2022.

The invasion, however, certainly could have been prevented. Gosh, if only there were another country—perhaps one with a lot of tanks and soldiers and airplanes nearby—that could have stopped the invasion.

Another lost opportunity I guess. Mean old west.

I'll add them to my list.

 kurtster wrote:
Re Crimea:

this is from the Financial Times



On several occasions over our lunch, Venediktov describes his interactions with Putin. In his telling, Putin sometimes calls him by the familiar diminutive of his first name — not just Alexei, but “Lyosha”. In one tale, just after the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, Venediktov is called in for a meeting and sits with Putin for two hours, drinking white wine and discussing the war. “Then says, ‘Listen, you were a history teacher. What will they write about me in the school textbooks?’” Venediktov recalls. The editor stumbles out an answer about events during Putin’s first two terms in office. Putin is not pleased. “‘That’s all?’” Six years later, in 2014, Venediktov finds himself in the Kremlin for a meeting with Putin together with other editors. Putin greets each one, and upon reaching Venediktov, says: “‘What about now?’” The journalist was stumped. “I didn’t know what he meant, I didn’t make the link,” he recalls. “‘The textbooks’,” Putin says. He had just annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine.

 R_P wrote:

Sure. Lukashenko was a duly elected leader of a free nation. Got it.

(and for the record, I am not a Russophobe. I just hate the system they have chosen. There is a difference.)

 black321 wrote:
Actually I would. Deterrence is a passive strategy. You just need to maintain a force that credibly makes any transgression by your neighbour a losing bet. Europe has been living pretty peacefully with deterrence since 1945. The hot wars (Bosnia, Ukraine, Chechenya) occurred where deterrence broke down.

But the real issue would be why would a neighbour need to forge a defence alliance with Russia or China? What has gone wrong with your international relations for it to come to that?  There are lots of other ways of exercising influence than mere force of arms.

 black321 wrote: 
Well the current admin is most certainly passive with the Mexican drug cartels alliance with China.  I would argue that these cartels are so well established that they now hold the real power in Mexico.  These cartels are also totally in control of our southern border.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:
No, Mr. Russophobe, there obviously is no dictatorship of the proletariat.

 kurtster wrote:
A very good point. The Minsk agreements were meant to guarantee Ukraine's security. They paid a high price for it and got invaded  anyway. Crimea was never a provocation by the west. It was invaded and annexed by Russia, because empire.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

I (personally) won't argue a sovereign nation has those rights. 
but, would you argue the US would be passive if Mexico forged an alliance with Russia , or China?

 black321 wrote:

no, I'm not being combative. I genuinely want to know why you think the west provoked him. Those eastern European countries that joined NATO initiated the move to join NATO themselves and NATO always had a policy of being open to new members. They were not coerced into jointing NATO. And NATO is a collective DEFENCE mechanism (and actually much weaker than you might think - there is no obligation for members to go to another's aid for instance). 

So I don't get the logic of the west provoking him, unless you want to deny the new entrants their sovereign right to decide on their own defence arrangements, which would be, how should I put it, kind of arrogant if we deigned them to be unworthy of membership.

 black321 wrote: 
So just wondering how Crimea fits into this ?  Wasn't that the initial provocation ?

And what about reneging on the denuclearization deal where Ukraine would be left alone if it gave up its nukes ? 

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

U.S. and Western leaders ignored his warnings about Nato, etc...and provoked him. That doesn't excuse war, especially for plebeians like us, but again, there's is another rule book.
I'm not assuming these leaders (and their playbook) "act rationally."
I'm also not arguing against support for Ukraine, at this point. 

 black321 wrote:

How exactly did you provoke him? 

 R_P wrote:
Still trying to protect the dictatorship of the proletariat there R?  
Wir sind das Volk.

 NoEnzLefttoSplit wrote:

No disrespect, and I know we've been on this merry go round before, but aren't you ignoring the fact that our so called leaders have a different geopolitical rule book?
Putin had been clear (right or wrong), the Russia we thought we were playing with in the 90s no longer existed, and he wanted to keep things separate (again). 
We ignored his warnings about Nato, etc...and provoked him. That doesn't excuse war, especially for plebeians like us, but again, there's is another rule book.