and then we should have been focusing on building alliances with countries like India and China, who Russia actually cares about, to put diplomatic pressure on it to 1) agree to a ceasefire 2) engage productively in talks in that context — Baden

That was never in the cards wrt China. Putin cleared the invasion with them before he started. They gave him the thumbs up.

If you accept the premise of Chinese influence being a factor in the war being started then it makes sense to accept they could be influential in finding a way to end it.

I also think it's misleading to claim they gave him the thumbs up. Unless you have sources to back that up, they might just as well have tried to talk him out of it but failed.

Anyhow, I think we should all ask ourselves the simple question, 'Will delivering an additional $20 billion of weapons into that region end well?' If you can honestly say you believe 'yes', then fine. I doubt many here can say that though. And 'maybe' isn't good enough, considering the dramatic tail risks of such escalation.

I also think it's misleading to claim they gave him the thumbs up. Unless you have sources to back that up, they might just as well have tried to talk him out of it but failed. — Baden

They were spewing American intelligence about it early in the war. Do you care enough for me to look it up? If you looked it up yourself would you believe it?

And 'maybe' isn't good enough, considering the dramatic tail risks of such escalation — Baden

I thought you were all about it ending with negotiations. I realized a couple of weeks ago that this could actually lead to WW3. You're catching up!

Anyhow, I think we should all ask ourselves the simple question, 'Will delivering an additional $20 billion of weapons into that region end well?' — Baden

I must say, it's a big number, a massive crank up as compared to what's already been sent (which is already a lot). According to the BBC, as of 21 April, "more than $3bn in military aid has been sent [by the US] to Ukraine since Russia invaded on 24 February."

What weapons has the US given Ukraine - and how much do they help?
By Bernd Debusmann Jr
BBC News
18 March 2022
Updated 21 April 2022
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60774098

Maybe Biden is asking for $20 Bl in order to get 10?

How exactly do you escalate from throwing all the troops you can muster (as evidenced from the fact that no fresh units are rotating into the theater) for a multi-pronged full invasion of a country?

It is certainly unclear if Russia would have been successful in taking Kyiv regardless of what other countries did. Maybe the lack of external support would have resulted in a collapse in Ukrainian morale? It doesn't seem super likely though. The Russian advance had already started stalling before any new was making it to the Ukrainians. Their problem was that they had a ridiculous number of lines of attack, vehicles that hadn't seen proper maintainance and so were breaking down all over the place, and an completely insufficient force for the mission.

Ukrainian willingness to fight also seemed quite high, with citizens taking up the surplus rifles offered to them, making piles of Molotov cocktails in the street, and people offering bribes to get into the gaurd units.

So it seems likely what you'd see is just a further Russian advance, and then sort of urban fighting you saw in Mariupol on a larger scale in Kharkiv and Kyiv.

Russians began hitting residential neighborhoods in an attempt to hit morale in the first week of the war. It's not like "the gloves came off," they were never on.

It's $20 billion in security assistance, not $20 billion in weapons. $5 billion of it is just a spending authorization. The funding doesn't necissarily cover new weapons, it's for all the normal costs of running a military.

Could it make things better? Certainly, it could change the calculus for pursing further operations against Ukraine.

It already has done a world of good. As noted above, the most likely outcome of witholding all aid would have been a Mariupol/Grozny style meat grinder in two vastly larger cities. NATO hasn't given Ukraine wonder weapons. They just started giving them artillery, a large scale resistance wasn't contingent on NATO telling Ukrainians to resist; without aid they still would have had the ability to carry out a significant resistance. The key difference would be more urban combat, which would lead to more destroyed infrastructure and more civilian deaths.

As to weapons, it really depends on what type of weapons are supplied. Cruise missiles capable of blowing up Putin's Victory Day parade, not such a good idea. Guided shells that are exponentially less likely to accidentally hit civilians? Not a bad one.

If Putin nukes Ukraine, then Russia will get eyes-on (of the world), and send whoever NATO's way. It would further legitimize blasting Russia's military concentrations just the same. Might embolden Kim Jong-un too, who knows.
At no point (until then), would Moscow have been particularly threatened, unlike Ukraine, hence Putin would have brought Russia into greater danger (perhaps also from China), whether of particular concern to him or not.
The Ukrainians apparently aren't bending over, so now what? Get them to talk instead of bomb.
This is how you threaten more or less everyone, using "world war 3" as a deterrence so you can do whatever:

The risks now are considerable. I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it. — Sergey Lavrov (reported Apr 26, 2022)

if anyone sets out to intervene in the current events from the outside and creates unacceptable threats for us that are strategic in nature, they should know that our response... will be lightning-fast. We have all the tools for this, that no one else can boast of having. We won't boast about it: we'll use them, if needed. And I want everyone to know that. We have already taken all the decisions on this. — Vladimir Putin (reported Apr 27, 2022)

What's next?

• List of foreign aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War (Wikipedia)
• Ukraine Support Tracker (Kiel Institute)

Right, because if Ukrainians end up having to defend themselves with old Kalashnikovs and improvised explosives, less of them will die. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The US has never given a shit about people dying, not once, ever, unless it is in their strategic interests. And everywhere they have intervened, they have spawned monsters, which, incidentally, have gone on to kill tens of thousands of Americans down the line, to speak nothing, sickeningly, of non-Americans

Israel has bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine in nothing but the last 7 days. Ethiopia is in the throes of a civil war that has killed, and will continue to kill, tens of thousands. The only reason anyone at all gives a shit about Ukranine, apart from the good old fashioned racism of seeing poor dead white people, is because the US gives a shit. Nah, the US should fuck right off, right the hell off, forever.

I was not sure about this before, but it is clearer than ever that Ukraine is nothing but an opportunity for the US, and that it will allow any escalation and any number of deaths so as to keep it's global dominance. If WWIII breaks out, and this kind of fucking escalation is how that kind of fucking thing happens, it will be entirely - en-fucking-tirely - on US hands. Say it with me now: US money, fuck off back home.

Basically this isn't just a thing that will go away with throwing money at it — ssu

Funny what you are so passionate about when it comes to money and what it can't solve. No doubt you will continue to offer nice, uselessly picture laden posts about all the latest weapon systems sent to Ukranie while offering your continued amatuer opinion about how they will effect things. But ending homelessness? Oh, no, too big a task! Bloodsucking warmonger.

Yeah, yeah, the West controls everything, people elsewhere lack all agency.

But by your logic, isn't it Iran's fault that Palestine is getting bombed? After all, if they didn't have any weapons to defend themselves with, Israel wouldn't be bombing them.

Likewise, it's sort of Russia's fault that Israel bombs Syria, right? If they hadn't sold Assad weapons, he'd be gone, and so no reason for the bombs! (Although in reality, Israel has overwhelmingly be bombing Iranian targets in Syria, so that might not hold up).

Yeah, yeah, the West controls everything, people elsewhere lack all agency. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What exactly has this got to do with anything? I'm saying the US should fuck off. Nothing more, nothing less. This isn't about recrimination any longer, although at one point, it most certainly was.

I'm saying the US should fuck off. Nothing more, nothing less — StreetlightX

:lol:

I know. Hard to imagine the world's most murderous empire being slightly less murderous.

There's always some nation waiting its turn to be most murderous.

:kiss:

One of the great learning experiences of this war is just how fickle people's claim to being 'anti-war' is. I think people like to think of themselves as anti-war. But as soon as a war breaks out, those same "anti-war" people will suddendly start braying for blood like their life depended on it. I think of people like Muhammad Ali who were nearly thrown in jail for opposing war, and all the admiration that people exhibit towards him for that today, and it's clear to me that the majority of those same people would cheer on his being thrown in jail if the Vietnam war took place today.

Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts. Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout and waving the flags the flags they’ve been programmed to wave and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who’d previously proclaimed themselves “anti-war” are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.

Being truly anti-war isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like people picture in their imaginations. It looks like getting smashed with a deluge of information designed to manipulate and confuse and working through it while getting screamed at by those who’ve fallen for the brainwashing. It’s not cute. It’s not fun. It’s not the feel-good flower power time that people intuit it is when they look at the part of themselves that seeks peace. It’s standing up against the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed while being offered every reason not to.

...Because selling the war to the public is a built-in component of all war strategy, the war will always look necessary from the mainstream perspective, and it won’t look like those other wars which we now know in retrospect were mistakes. It’s always designed to look appealing. There’s never not going to be atrocity propaganda. There’s never not going to be reasons fed to you selling this military intervention as special and completely necessary. That will be the case every single time, because that’s how modern wars are packaged and presented.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/27/everyones-anti-war-until-the-war-propaganda-starts/

This is how the grift works: the US can't just hand people's tax money directly to it's weapons manufacturers as a gift (this would look bad), so the money has to be cycled via Europe, only to end up, after a brief detour, in the hands of said arms manufacturers anyway. End result is that the taxpayer gets the privilege of funding yachts for enablers of mass murder. The US state exists to enrich its friends, nothing more.

More than a dozen European allies will get nearly $400 million in new U.S. grants to buy American military hardware to backfill weapons they’ve donated to Ukraine from their own stockpiles, the State Department announced Monday.

Of more than $700 million in newly announced aid for Ukraine, $391 million in Foreign Military Financing is for 15 allies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, while another $322 million is for Ukraine forces to “transition to more advanced weapons and air defense systems,” State Department Ned Price said in a statement.

Such financing is different from previous U.S. military assistance for Ukraine. It is not a donation of drawn-down U.S. Defense Department stockpiles, but rather cash countries can use to purchase supplies from the U.S.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/04/25/us-pledges-391-million-for-euro-allies-to-buy-american-to-backfill-weapons-donations-to-ukraine/

One of the great learning experiences of this war is just how fickle people's claim to being 'anti-war' is. — StreetlightX

I wonder how anti-war one can be while also spewing so much constant anger and hatred.

But as soon as a war breaks out, those same "anti-war" people will suddendly start braying for blood like their life depended on it. — StreetlightX

It sorta seems like a lot of people secretly want there to be at least one big war in their life that they can watch on TV. Peace is boring, meh who cares, they want death, blood, fire, genocides, bombs, rapes, pillaging, destruction, jihads, executions, coups, butchered babies...the more dramatic the better. Lotta people back Ukraine not out of sympathy but because they want a team to cheer for in a gladiator pit. rah rah rah, whatever gives them the best opportunity to release all this repressed frustration...

At least us philosophers are above that vile pit of filth.

nah, I doubt it

It sorta seems like a lot of people secretly want there to be at least one big war in their life that they can watch on TV. — _db

Yep. It's pretty clear that Westerners are getting-off on getting to spectate what is to them a real life Star Wars episode. - Darth Putin vs. The Western Alliance. Ukrainians are nothing but intellectual sci-fi sex toys to them, used to rub one out on their fantasies of playing "resistance-fighter".

I never add things on.

Twas a joke.

what is to them a real life Star Wars episode — StreetlightX

Yes, we love this; we crave it. Please send more.

Ukrainians are nothing but intellectual sex toys to them. — StreetlightX

Did you add this on?

All of this was a parody of y'all, which I think wasn't apparent.

Oh man, how I hate the morning TV in which we are told by army functionaries in uniform about the intricacies of the war and crying woman are shown in quantities they have never been shown before. How it is told that people in the whole western world are solidary with the Ukranians, that we should be so happy to live in freedom, Putin is called the new Hitler, and the army asks for more money, and we are told about the vile propaganda used while the propaganda of freedom is just as hard downplayed on us. And how cute and how nicely naive is the woman presenting it. Yes, I know, the TV has an on/off button.

It sorta seems like a lot of people secretly want there to be at least one big war in their life that they can watch on TV. Peace is boring, [...] — _db

:D

Well, there are people trying to make a difference in the face of power extremism money madness ...

I also think it's misleading to claim they gave him the thumbs up. — Baden

My impression was that Putin somehow managed to sell "safety and freedom for Russians in Donetsk and Luhansk" to Jinping, something like that, but I may easily be wrong. Do you think there's a "nervous" or "uneasy" relationship here?

It already has done a world of good. As noted above, the most likely outcome of witholding all aid would have been a Mariupol/Grozny style meat grinder in two vastly larger cities. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Classic. "It's already definitely done loads of good because it's prevented the thing I just completely made up would have happened if we hadn't done it"