Exactly.The point was that it becomes difficult to do so if you see the fight as part of some cosmic battle between Good and Evil. Note the capital letters. The fight here, for the Ukrainians, is to redress a particular evil, the invasion, not an absolute Evil. Zelensky is not going to fight all the way to Moscow. — Olivier5
Good you asked. It tells a lot for example a) how committed Putin is to the war, b) are there any intensions against others and simply c) what one participant is saying to his people.Yep. And what does anyone do with that information? — Isaac
Good you asked. It tells a lot for example a) how committed Putin is to the war, b) are there any intensions against others and simply c) what one participant is saying to his people.
What Putin says is important. Some days before the invasion, I could tell from the speech Putin gave (and some others noted it too) that this was a man going to war. The whole idea of the staging of the troops to the border would be a way to get the US to talk and to solve the Ukraine problem went out of the window.
And you might have noticed yourself how this new Cold War has gone colder by Biden saying that Putin is a war criminal. Well, you don't talk to war criminals. — ssu
Yep. And what does anyone do with that information? — Isaac
Of course NATO isn't an innocent bystander. Not even Sweden or Finland are bystanders as both countries are arming Ukraine.It is not over yet, which is too bad, but we can take stock of strategies then.
Does NATO have a strategy here or are they innocent bystanders? What is 'correct strategy' for them? — FreeEmotion
You think that understanding that Putin is going to attack even two days before is inconsequential? The Ukrainian government could have mobilized the reserves 48 hours prior to the attack. Not only afterwards the attack had happened. A thing that actually was a small mistake from the Zelensky government.I asked what anyone would do. It's irrelevant people just 'knowing' things unless you have some real world strategy that's going to be taken in a different direction because of that knowledge. Otherwise it's inconsequential. — Isaac
He can trust even less what the Russian negotiator promises.What is the Ukrainian negotiator going to do differently because Putin used religious language in his speech? — Isaac
So your argument fails then. You've failed to distinguish the harm (to peace talks) of Russian faith-based, fight-against-genocide, propaganda, and Ukrainian, faith-based, repel-the-evil-tyrant rhetoric.
They both invoke religion, they both essentialise, they both talk about universals — Isaac
You think that understanding that Putin is going to attack even two days before is inconsequential? — ssu
And you should understand just how reaching any strategic objectives is compromised by the disastrous decision to make a large scale, or basically an all out invasion of Ukraine. It simply doesn't help the situation of Russia. It wasn't "the only correct move".You describe results without relating that to the Russian strategic objectives. — Benkei
What's he going to do about that? — Isaac
If you know that the other side is going to attack, then by all means, why not go with mobilization. You won't lose anything. If you think that it really matters that the Kremlin says "Because of the Ukrainian mobilization, we have no other choice than to attack" and attacks in two days, well, nobody out of the blue attacks another in two days with 190 000 troops. But those 48 hours before the missiles start flying does matter.Maybe mobilise the reserves, maybe that'd be too provocative... — Isaac
And you should understand just how reaching any strategic objectives is compromised by the disastrous decision to make a large scale, or basically an all out invasion of Ukraine. It simply doesn't help the situation of Russia. It wasn't "the only correct move".
Will it help to tackle NATO enlargement? Sweden and Finland will now very likely join NATO. What do you get with that land corridor between Crimea? There's already a bridge connecting Crimea. But all this, being the new economic North Korea is really worth it?
No. It's like Hitler declaring war at the US after Pearl Harbour. What was the point to do that? How did it benefit Germany? If even 6 months or a year would have passed before the US would have joined the European theatre, how important would have been for Nazi Germany? (Just an example, let's not go to that). — ssu
And you should understand just how reaching any strategic objectives is compromised by the disastrous decision to make a large scale, or basically an all out invasion of Ukraine. It simply doesn't help the situation of Russia. It wasn't "the only correct move". — ssu
Since the mid-1990s, when the issue of NATO enlargement first came up, Russian officials, Russian intellectuals, and leading Western experts, including George Kennan, the architect of containment — and myself in a small way — have all been saying that if this were extended one day to Ukraine and Georgia it would lead at best to deep confrontation and at worst to war. The [Boris] Yeltsin administration warned of this — this is not just a [Vladimir] Putin thing. And over the past almost three months, before the war, the Russian government was making it clear that there was a threat of war if the West did not compromise on what Russia regarded as its vital interest. — Anatol Lieven
Expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era. Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking — George Kennan
Can you imagine if even a fraction of this - totally symbolic, completely useless - self-satisfied wank was applied even for a moment to American crimes or infinitely greater magnitute? — StreetlightX
So warmongering for you too then. — Isaac
And this shows just your understanding of the matters. If the UK would be committed to a ground war, that would be WW3. But hey, you weren't affected by Iraq, nor Afghanistan. So it doesn't matter at all.Me personally, in England. Probably doesn't matter at all. Even if we committed to a ground war. I wasn't affected by Iraq, nor Afghanistan. Oil prices might go up in the short term, but they'll stabilise. This is kind of the point with these petty tribalisms, we've got no skin in the game, we can pick sides but we're in the crowd, not on the pitch.
The people who'll be affected are obviously the population of Ukraine. They'll be bombed, shot at, and evacuated, have been in the separatists regions for years already. That'll happen whether we leave Ukraine to its own defence or support it militarily. — Isaac
One private discussion between two Jews is not to be equated to a public speech at a rally. — Olivier5
Putin is fighting the infectious disease of Democracy, making this war inevitable as long as self rule is what the Ukrainians want. The only way for Ukraine to have avoided this war was to abandon democracy and submit to Putin. What backed Putin into a corner is that his country sucks and no one wants to be a part of it. — Hanover
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