Mearsheimer also said that Ukraine should have its own nuclear deterrent:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/1993-06-01/case-ukrainian-nuclear-deterrent

(This article can be found for free on LibGen in its entirety.)

Would Russia have actually approved of this?

As for the US blocking a truce, whether or not to continue the war is Ukraine's (and Russia's) decision. The US (and the rest of the West) can offer Ukraine advice, but ultimately, it's still Ukraine's decision to make. The West didn't force Ukraine to continue the fight. Since Ukraine did so, it's presumably because it felt that it would get a better deal by doing so.

Almost complete silence on Hersh' article in Europe by the way. Nothing in the main newspapers. You'd think the Graun would jump at the opportunity. — Benkei

Yeah what an absolute mystery!

1. Run 12 months of US war propaganda painting everything Russia does as the embodiment of evil and the US as the knight in shining armour coming to rescue of the brave but beleaguered Ukrainians.

2. Consider whether a story exculpating Russia and blaming a US/corporate alliance would go down well with your recently en-frenzied readership and corporate sponsors.

Yes. I can't for the life of me think why it isn't splashed all over the front pages.

Referring to the events of 2014 in Ukraine as a coup is rather misguided since it was a popular movement. "Revolution" seems much more fitting.

And Yes, the US did engage in military cooperation with Ukraine pre-2022 invasion because doing so was the only realistic way that the US/West could satisfy Ukraine's security concerns for the time being, specifically by increasing the costs of a Ukrainian invasion for Russia.

The US (and the rest of the West) can offer Ukraine advice — Xanatos

Seriously?

The US and EU have supplied Ukraine with over €100 billion in aid. The country is entirely dependant on foreign military, financial, intelligence and political support. They are over €200 billion below what they need just to survive.

And you're seriously suggesting that they're free to choose and all we offer is advice? Just how naive are you?

Referring to the events of 2014 in Ukraine as a coup is rather misguided — Xanatos

...

the most blatant coup in history — George Friedman, director of Stratfor, U.S. intelligence strategic advisory institute

He's wrong if one believes that what distinguishes revolutions from coups is massive popular participation.

Well, why exactly can't Ukraine tell them: "We think that this is the best deal that we are capable of getting at the moment?"

You do need to keep in mind that the West did not want this war in the first place; Russia did.

He's wrong if one believes that what distinguishes revolutions from coups is massive popular participation. — Xanatos

And if one doesn't?

why exactly can't Ukraine tell them: "We think that this is the best deal that we are capable of getting at the moment?" — Xanatos

Because without their billions of dollars in aid, reconstruction loans, military support, political support and propaganda, Ukraine will be bankrupt within a week. Ukraine has to do exactly what it's financial sponsors say or risk destitution.

You do need to keep in mind that the West did not want this war in the first place; Russia did. — Xanatos

Why? I don't believe that to be the case, so it would seem somewhat capricious to keep it in mind.

↪Isaac
He's wrong if one believes that what distinguishes revolutions from coups is massive popular participation. — Xanatos

Geroge Friedman's quotation is misleading, due to opportunistic editing (something Isaac himself and others like-minded participants are prone to do) as he himself explained:
On a visit to Russia, I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history, as the US government openly supported the uprising and had provided some funding for the demonstrating groups. In other words, it was no coup. The Russian news service Sputnik published what I said, cutting out a few odds and ends, and quoted me as saying that Ukraine “was the most blatant coup in history.” The neat part is that they didn’t make it up. I did say it. They just left out the words before and after the statement. Since I was of no importance in the United States, they had to promote me as someone significant, which on the whole was nice of them.
https://www.businessinsider.com/george-friedman-russia-is-winning-the-internet-2016-4?r=US&IR=T

@Xanatos

https://newcoldwar.org/stratfor-chiefs-most-blatant-coup-in-history-interview-from-dec-2014/

The full interview so you can make up your own mind without "well, that now looks inconvenient" bias.

I love these sorts of interviews and talks that were given before the full gravity of the situation in Ukraine became apparent. Less self-censorship, politicization and hindsight. Mostly just honest conversation.

I had never seen this interview. Thanks for sharing it.

Some interesting quotes:

At the beginning of [2014] there existed in Ukraine a slightly pro-Russian though very shaky government. That situation was fine for Moscow: after all, Russia did not want to completely control Ukraine or occupy it; it was enough that Ukraine not join NATO and the EU. Russian authorities cannot tolerate a situation in which western armed forces are located a hundred or so kilometers from Kursk or Voronezh.

The United States, for its part, were interested in forming a pro-Western government in Ukraine. They saw that Russia is on the rise, and were eager not to let it consolidate its position in the post-Soviet space. The success of the pro-Western forces in Ukraine would allow the U.S. to contain Russia.

Here you have two countries: one wants a Ukraine that is neutral. The other wants Ukraine to form part of a line of containment against Russian expansion. One cannot say that one party is mistaken: both are acting based on their national interests. It’s just that these interests don’t jive.

Russia had begun to take certain steps that the United States considered unacceptable. Primarily in Syria. (Note: NOT Europe!) It was there that Russians demonstrated to the Americans that they are capable of influencing processes in the Middle East. And the US has enough problems in that part of the world already without the Russians.

Russians intervened in the process in the Middle East among other reasons because they had hoped to get leverage to influence US policy in other areas. But they miscalculated. The United States thought that it was Russia’s intent to harm them.

It is in this context that we should be evaluating the events in Ukraine. The Russians, apparently, simply have not calculated how seriously the US side might perceive their actions or the extent to which they can easily find countermeasures. It was in this situation that the United States took a look at Russia and thought about what it wants to see happen least of all: instability in Ukraine.

KOMMRERSANT: So you think Ukraine is a form of revenge for Syria?

GEORGE FRIEDMAN: No, not revenge. But Russian intervention in the process in Syria, while the United States was still addressing the problems in Iraq, and was in negotiations with Iran … In Washington, many people have the impression that Russian want to destabilize the already fragile US position in the Middle East – a region that is of key importance for America.

About this question there were two different points of views in Washington: that the Russian were just fooling around, or that they have found a weak point of the US and were trying to take advantage of it. I’m not saying that Russia’s intervention in the Syrian conflict was the cause of the Ukrainian crisis, that would be a stretch. But this intervention tipped the balance of opinion in Washington in the direction of the opinion that Russian is a problem. And in that case what does one do? Not confront them in the Middle East. Better to pull their attention away to a problem in some other region.

Now all of this is a bit oversimplified, obviously it is all more complicated than this in practice, but the cause and effect relationship is as I just described it. As a result, the bottom line is that it is in the strategic interests of the United States to prevent Russia from becoming a hegemon. And it is in the strategic interests of Russia not to allow the United States to come to its borders.

full interview — Isaac

Whose accuracy has been questioned by George Friedman himself. If you prefer to believe the Russian source over George Friedman's feedback, that's all on you.

I love these sorts of interviews and talks that were given before the full gravity of the situation in Ukraine became apparent. Less self-censorship, politicization and hindsight. Mostly just honest conversation. — Tzeentch

Yeah, and the level of 'history rewriting' afterwards is shocking. I cited earlier the BBC's chief political correspondent talking in the same vein about the Nuland tape, but now we've got to pretend no-one ever thought that way to maintain this narrative that alternative interpretations are all insane.

I find it truly frightening how easily people just go along with this.

Whose accuracy has been questioned by George Friedman himself. — neomac

No. In the article you cited, Friedman questioned Sputnik's selective quoting from the interview.

I cited the actual interview from here https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2636177

Friedman says nothing about the accuracy or otherwise of that transcript.

Kommersant reports G. Friedman claiming "Russia calls the events of the beginning of the year a US-organized coup d'état. And it really was the most overt coup d'état in history." And at the next question: "Do you mean the termination of the agreement of February 21 or the entire Maidan? Together. After all, the United States openly supported human rights groups in Ukraine, including with money. And the Russian special services missed these trends. They did not understand what was happening, and when they did, they failed to take measures to stabilize the situation, and later misjudged the mood in Eastern Ukraine."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman was commenting a Russian claim in Russian own terms. And at the next question G.Friedman explains the nature of the US support. In relation to that interview (not Sputnik, "On a visit to Russia, I told the business journal Kommersant that..." [1]), G. Friedman is saying that his claim was "...If the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history, as the US government openly supported the uprising and had provided some funding for the demonstrating groups. In other words, it was no coup."
To recapitulate, G. Friedman's belief is that there was no "US-organized coup d'état", and therefore he expressed his skepticism through irony.
So if the Kommersant transcript is accurate (G.Fridman's conditional form is indeed missing), either G. Friedman actually believed that the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" and later he retracted his own claims, or G.Friedman never thought the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" but he expressed his own belief though irony (G.Fridman's conditional is maybe supposed to clarify why he expressed himself in Russian own terms).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/george-friedman-russia-is-winning-the-internet-2016-4?r=US&IR=T

either G. Friedman actually believed that the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" and later he retracted his own claims, or G.Friedman never thought the Maidan Revolution was "the most overt coup d'état in history" but he expressed his own belief though irony (G.Fridman's conditional is maybe supposed to clarify why he expressed himself in Russian own terms). — neomac

Exactly.

It shouldn't need to be repeated this often, but it appears I've got to say it again...

We're not the ones claiming your narrative is unreasonable. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy with the notion that Friedman didn't mean what he said. It's a perfectly rational theory with good evidence.

You (collectively) are the ones trying to claim our alternative theories are unreasonable.

To prove that claim, it's not sufficient to show your theory is possible. No one disagreed it was possible. You have to show that the alternative is impossible. Not merely that one of the possibilities is that Friedman didn't mean what he said, but rather that it is the only possibility.

Interview with Seymour Hersh in the Jacobin.

https://jacobin.com/2023/02/seymour-hersh-interview-nord-stream-pipeline/

I’ve written many stories based on unnamed sources. If I named somebody, they’d be fired, or, worse, jailed. The law is so strict. I’ve never had anybody exposed, and of course when I write I say, as I did in this article, it’s a source, period. And over the years, the stories I’ve written have always been accepted. I have used for this story the same caliber of skilled fact-checkers as had worked with me at the New Yorker magazine. Of course, there are many ways to verify obscure information told to me. — Hersh

He predicts 2 unexploded bombs. Presumably that's easy to check? So we should know one way or the other if the Germans are in control of the investigation, which I think they're not. It's Denmark and Sweden right? The Germans are politically independent enough not to be influenced by the USA.

Or we get Jacques Coustea to check, :smile:

So should know one way or the other if the Germans are in control of the investigation, which I think they're not. It's Denmark and Sweden right? The Germans are politically independent enough not to be influenced by the USA. — Benkei

It's a joint German, Swedish, Danish investigation with no evidence yet of it being Russia https://www.wsj.com/articles/nord-stream-blasts-were-likely-result-of-sabotage-german-probe-finds-11666016047

Reports, according to Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto conclude “We know that this amount of explosives has to be a state-level actor,"

According to FirstPost "Russia will ask the UN Security Council for an investigation into Nord Stream gas pipelines explosions"

So, what we have so far is a state-level actor, with no evidence that it's Russia, and with Russia being one of the countries pushing hardest for a UNSC investigation.

As to...

The Germans are politically independent enough not to be influenced by the USA — Benkei

I don't really see how. If anyone wants to keep open the theory that Russia did it, then they also have to explain the lack of evidence (despite investigations "working under the assumption that Russia was behind the blasts"). So it must be possible for state-level actors to sufficiently cover their tracks to fool three independent nation's investigations (especially with Russia pushing for a UN investigation). If that's possible, then the independence of Germany is irrelevant.

But all this speculation is irrelevant because it's a matter for experts with far more access to resources than we have. The interesting point is the way otherwise progressive voices are falling over themselves to exculpate the US from any wrongdoing. As if the US needed any help cementing its global hegemony.

Jeffrey Sachs's take on Naftali Bennett's revelations about the peace negotiations that took place in March/April 2022 start at 15:30.

In short, Sachs states Bennett's version of events pretty much exactly coincide with the information he had received from the various parties involved in the negotiations.


The US is becoming the elephant in the room, isn't it?

Relevant mostly to @neomac's style of nonsense, but many other US fanboys here. In a recent essay, Andrew Bacevich asks "How is it that this particular conflict puts civilization itself at risk?"

Why should rescuing Ukraine take priority over rescuing Haiti or Sudan? Why should fears of genocide in Ukraine matter more than the ongoing genocide targeting the Rohingya in Myanmar? Why should supplying Ukraine with modern arms qualify as a national priority, while equipping El Paso, Texas, to deal with a flood of undocumented migrants figures as an afterthought? Why do Ukrainians killed by Russia generate headlines, while deaths attributable to Mexican drug cartels — 100,000 Americans from drug overdoses annually – are treated as mere statistics?

Of the various possible answers to such questions, three stand out and merit reflection.

The first is that “civilization,” as the term is commonly employed in American political discourse, doesn’t encompass places like Haiti or Sudan. Civilization derives from Europe and remains centered in Europe. Civilization implies Western culture and values. ...

What makes Russian aggression so heinous, therefore, is that it victimizes Europeans, whose lives are deemed to possess greater value than the lives of those who reside in implicitly less important regions of the world. That there is a racialist dimension to such a valuation goes without saying, however much U.S. officials may deny that fact. Bluntly, the lives of white Ukrainians matter more than the lives of the non-whites who populate Africa, Asia, or Latin America.

The second answer is that casting the Ukraine War as a struggle to defend civilization creates a perfect opportunity for the United States to reclaim its place at the forefront of that very civilization. ...

One final factor may contribute to this eagerness to see civilization itself under deadly siege in Ukraine. Demonizing Russia provides a convenient excuse for postponing or avoiding altogether a critical reckoning with the present American version of that civilization. Classifying Russia as a de facto enemy of the civilized world has effectively diminished the urgency of examining our own culture and values.

There is a misunderstanding. — neomac

The only misunderstanding here is that you seem to believe babbling on about cognitive dissonance is going to help your case any. — Tzeentch

Indeed, your cognitive dissonance helps better understand your views about the relation between the geopolitical dimension and the moral dimension, the way you process responsibility attribution, and certain intellectual weaknesses like conceptual ambiguities in your geopolitical analysis (e.g. moralising amoral geopolitical agents), confirmation bias (e.g. overlooking the pros of the Pax Americana while highlighting the cons) and a posteriori rationalizations (e.g. the “inevitable” consequences of the American hubris like Putin waging war against Ukraine).

The problem is the one I have described earlier: the U.S. was in the process of turning Ukraine into a U.S. ally on a bilateral basis, completely circumventing NATO.

The Germans and the French had no power to stop that. — Tzeentch

Sure, but I considered that possibility in the context of what happened after the war. Russian military operation offered a more convenient pretext to whatever solution (inside or outside NATO) the US prefers. However if the whole point of the American initiative was to unite the West against Russia (or decoupling Europe from Russia), bilateral solutions prior to the war may have not been as useful to that effect (see the Budapest Memorandum), not to mention that they would have looked more risky since the limits of Russian military capacity (or performance) weren’t as evident as they are now.

Yet even in the current conditions Western Europeans are still reluctant to discuss about NATO membership for Ukraine. — neomac

With the current condition being large-scale war between Russia and what is basically a NATO proxy, their opinions are even more irrelevant than they were in times of peace. The European powers are a bunch of suckers, piggybacking on the U.S. defense budget and apparently believing that will not completely wipe out their bargaining power. They're essentially U.S. vassals given the illusion of relevance. — Tzeentch

Your conviction seems based more on your moral outrage than on compelling evidences or logic.
Turkey threatened to veto Sweden joining NATO. So French and Germany could do the same for Ukraine (they were already opposing it).
To me, the point is not that they are irrelevant to let Ukraine join NATO (they may even look for a compensation from the US at this point) but that the evolution of the war is increasingly compromising their hopes to recover the business partnership with Russia as soon as possible at the end of the war, or to pursue their security system more autonomously from the US.

I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Putin was in condition to keep supporting the separatist fight in Donbas and the annexation of Crimea with the revenue from Nord Stream 2 to destabilise Ukraine ... — neomac

With the amount of bilateral support it was receiving from the U.S., I would pretty much exclude that possibility. — Tzeentch

Not sure to understand what you are talking about here. In the counterfactual scenario I suggested, first, Russia would have been on the defensive (which is less costly than the offensive).
Second, the constraint on the type of military equipment sent to Ukraine would more likely have been still preserved (see the debate over non-lethal weapons).
Third, if Russia didn’t start a war, then it could have kept messing with the Ukrainian democracy through pro-Russian parties.
Fourth, Ukraine is receiving now even greater support (not only from the US) but Russia was able to occupy even greater territory (imagine if Russia focused on Donbas and land bridge from the start!) and it’s set to continue an attrition war “as long as it takes“, so I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict.

I’m not sure to understand why you keep talking about “coup d'etat” supported by the US. — neomac
We've got U.S. officials admitting to sending Ukraine billions of USD of support prior to 2014, and to being deeply involved in constructing the post-coup government in Ukraine.
Clearly the U.S. was involved, supported the coup and, as I said earlier, I am still entertaining the hypothesis that the U.S. largely orchestrated it. We know the U.S. is capable of such things, and its fingerprints are all over it. — Tzeentch

First, let’s clarify the terminology here: to me “coup d'etat” typically means a violent/illegal overthrow of a regime by institutional figures like politicians and military (e.g. Trump backed US capitol riot can be accused of being an attempted coup d’etat). “Revolutions” are typically violent/llegal overthrow of a regime but stemming from ordinary masses.
Second, Maidan Revolution was a popular revolution. And as far as I know no Ukrainian politicians/military plotted to forcefully remove Yanukhovic. Indeed, Yanukovych signed a transition deal with Ukraine opposition brokered by Russia and the European Union (https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-deal-with-ukraine-opposition/).
Third, the revelations about Victoria Nuland are not enough to support the claim that the US participated in a coup. The US supported the popular revolution and pro-European political candidates, but they may just have lobbied and supported campaign/propaganda to amplify or direct consensus over certain politicians (even the American domestic politics works that way). It would be different if you could provide compelling evidence that the US (intentionally) financed the armed revolutionaries (as the Americans did in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion).
But even in this case, talking about “coup” and “orchestration” doesn’t seem to me more than an attempt to mount a preconceived polemic dismissive of the pro-Western Ukrainian movements, as if the Ukrainians didn’t have enough domestic reasons to be deeply dissatisfied with Yanukhovic and Russian interference and revolt (compare it with the recent revolts in Iran).

A war of this magntitude requires planning and preparation, obviously. Besides, they did not have the power of hindsight and did seek to exhaust the alternatives. Even late into 2021 the Russians were still trying to pursue a diplomatic solution. — Tzeentch

Nothing so “inevitable” then.

Seems like a rather weak article to me, that presupposes the Russian invasion was a complete failure. While that seems to be part of the western narrative, I see little evidence to suggest it is true.
The Russians invaded Ukraine while outnumbered, with a force that was way too small to occupy all of it. This leads me to believe that the territories they occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion.
Mearsheimer makes that point in detail. — Tzeentch

Russia pursued regime change, denazification of Ukraine. This doesn’t require the occupation of all Ukraine, it requires to take control over Kiev and install a pro-Russian puppet regime (as the US did in Afghanistan). So far Russia tried but failed this objective. Along with the objective of demilitarization (or neutrality). Ukraine is getting more pro-Western and its chances of joining the West have arguably increased thanks to the war started by Putin.
The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated (due to the Russian intelligence failure).
Concerning Mearsheimer’s video, it’s too long. It would be easier if you specified at what point of that video Mearsheimer is offering arguments in support of your belief that "the territories they [the Russians] occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion".

It shouldn't need to be repeated this often, but it appears I've got to say it again...

We're not the ones claiming your narrative is unreasonable. Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly happy with the notion that Friedman didn't mean what he said. It's a perfectly rational theory with good evidence.
You (collectively) are the ones trying to claim our alternative theories are unreasonable.
To prove that claim, it's not sufficient to show your theory is possible. No one disagreed it was possible. You have to show that the alternative is impossible. Not merely that one of the possibilities is that Friedman didn't mean what he said, but rather that it is the only possibility. — Isaac

We have been through this already. Your way of understanding the burden of proof in a debate is hardly intelligible to me. There is something off even in the way you phrase it. You make it sound like if the debate is about possibilities.
Debates that make sense to me should be principled and computationally affordable ways to assess people's arguments and evidences. “Principled” means that there are enough shared (implicit or explicit) criteria to assess if arguments are more or less reasonable, more or less consistent, more or less supported by evidence, more or less pertinent, if quotations are more or less accurate, more or less misleading, more or less pertinent, more or less strong in terms of probatory force, etc. Talking about quotations, one criterium could be: if X is known to have made seemingly incompatible claims over the same subject, then mentioning only one of the two just because it is good enough to support my views should be an invalid move. Example: Putin is reported saying (A) “The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” but also (B) “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, whoever wants it back has no brain”, so knowing this it would be rationally questionable for me to argue “Putin probably wants to somehow restore the Soviet Union because once he said (A)’” knowing that Putin also claimed (B).
The same holds for G. Friedman’s quotation.

Relevant mostly to neomac's style of nonsense, but many other US fanboys here — Isaac

Moralistic rants (like the one you posted) aren’t rationally compelling to me as long as they fail to address the real issue: the relation between morality and power (as I myself tried to address in my infamous “wall of text”, https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/775801).
The problem is not if we can share or emotionally relate to the claim “X morally ought to do Y” but how we can ENSURE that “X does Y”. The former is not necessarily a big deal. The latter is where things can get really messy beyond anybody’s intentions and expectations, or capacity of offering a realistically better alternative.

Not surprising.

And for Hersh to be commenting something that nobody else comments isn't the first time, actually.

I remember Hersh was one of the only one's commenting when Israel destroyed Syria's nuclear program with a strike (just like they did with Saddam Hussein's nuclear program) when it happened in 2007. Only years later you can find documentaries about it and a wikipedia reference about the strike.

I'm pretty confident that if it was the US, we'll know about it after some years.

Yet if it was the US, this seems to be an overreaction as there wasn't any energy crisis and no rolling blackouts in Germany or Europe. A warm winter and the anticipation of an crisis half year before the winter worked. Hence Germany didn't to cave back for Russian gas as the supply of energy didn't collapse in Europe.

Debates that make sense to me should be principled and computationally affordable ways to assess people's arguments and evidences — neomac

Yeah. The idea that political arguments can be weighed by some kind of objective metric is something most if us left behind in college. It's retained only by adolescents who think an A-level in maths gives them some superheroic insight into truth.

“One-sided” in what sense? Take the example of the Orange Revolution. This was an example of competition between West and Russia prior to 2008, because Putin publicly campaigned for Yanukovych in Ukraine and Russia, while Western pro-democracy organisations were supporting Yushchenko. In other words in Ukraine there were 2 foreign powers taking sides wrt domestic political competitors. 2 foreign powers are 2 sides, not one. — neomac

You cannot debate people who reject that a) Russia has had long standing objectives and an agenda towards Ukraine and b) Ukrainians themselves are actors in their own country and in their own politics. Everything is just the US, nothing else matters. If you argue something else, you must be a US fanboy.

Stop referring to Mearsheimer when he says something about Russia being a potential threat to Ukraine in the 1990's. Mearsheimer can be only quoted or referred when he argues now that this war happened because of the US. :wink:

The idea that political arguments can be weighed by some kind of objective metric is something most if us left behind in college. — "Isaac

All we can ever do on a site like this is enquire about people's reasons for holding the views they hold. The entire enterprise if pointless otherwise. If you're going to answer "because of some reasons", then we might as well give up here. I'm asking about what those reasons are, I assumed you had some. — "Isaac

I gave you my reasons. And if you don’t feel like counter-arguing them in ways that make sense to me, I don’t care.

If you argue something else, you must be a US fanboy — ssu

From "US cheerleader" to "US fanboy" sounds big improvement though. :wink:

Not sure to understand what you are talking about here. — neomac

With the amount of financial and military support that was flowing into Ukraine before the war, there was no chance of Russia destabilizing Ukraine.

Ukraine was rapidly shedding all Russian influence. In terms of soft power the Russians were already on the defensive. That's why they had to resort to hard power and that's the reason they invaded.

The idea that Russia could have gotten what it wanted without military means is nonsensical given the gravity of the military invasion that took place, which they themselves must have been fully aware of.

In other words, I pretty much exclude the possibility that Russia could have gotten its way in Ukraine without resorting to military means.

I don’t see how the pre-war “amount of bilateral support” to Ukraine could have rendered the Russian resistance unsustainable in a counterfactual scenario that is way less challenging than the current conflict. — neomac

Because Russia changed the rules of the game when it invaded. In war, soft power goes (mostly) off the table, and in terms of hard power Russia (for now) has the advantage.

First, let’s clarify the terminology here: to me “coup d'etat” typically means a violent/illegal overthrow of a regime by institutional figures like politicians and military (e.g. Trump backed US capitol riot can be accused of being an attempted coup d’etat). “Revolutions” are typically violent/llegal overthrow of a regime but stemming from ordinary masses.
Second, Maidan Revolution was a popular revolution. And as far as I know no Ukrainian politicians/military plotted to forcefully remove Yanukhovic. Indeed, Yanukovych signed a transition deal with Ukraine opposition brokered by Russia and the European Union (https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-deal-with-ukraine-opposition/).
Third, the revelations about Victoria Nuland are not enough to support the claim that the US participated in a coup. The US supported the popular revolution and pro-European political candidates, but they may just have lobbied and supported campaign/propaganda to amplify or direct consensus over certain politicians (even the American domestic politics works that way). It would be different if you could provide compelling evidence that the US (intentionally) financed the armed revolutionaries (as the Americans did in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion).
But even in this case, talking about “coup” and “orchestration” doesn’t seem to me more than an attempt to mount a preconceived polemic dismissive of the pro-Western Ukrainian movements, as if the Ukrainians didn’t have enough domestic reasons to be deeply dissatisfied with Yanukhovic and Russian interference and revolt (compare it with the recent revolts in Iran). — neomac

Spare me the apologetics.

Nothing so “inevitable” then. — neomac

Given the fact that the US was never planning to take Russian security concerns into consideration and basically invited war at every turn, certainly inevitable.

The small number of troops at the beginning of the war was likely because Russians didn’t expect the kind of fierce resistance the Ukrainians demonstrated... — neomac

Unlikely, since the Russians were fully aware of the size of the Ukrainian force, and the fact that it was equipped and trained by the US.

It's equally unlikely that with such a small force they sought to both occupy and hold Kiev ánd install a puppet regime ánd occupy and hold the southern regions.

The theories you're suggesting are basically military impossibilities, though popular among laymen and the ever-churning propaganda machines.

It would be easier if you specified at what point of that video Mearsheimer is offering arguments in support of your belief that "the territories they [the Russians] occupied in east and southern Ukraine probably roughly coincide with the initial aims of the invasion". — neomac

23:05 - 27:20 discusses the implications of the size of the Russian invasion force.

1:30:40 - 1:32:00 Mearsheimer makes the point that he believes Russian territorial ambitions escalated as the war progressed.

Mearsheimer throughout the lecture actually argues that Russia might not have had any major territorial ambitions at the start of the war.

And recent revelations about the peace negotiations that took place weeks into the conflict might actually support that view. The Russians were willing to make major concessions when they negotiated for Ukrainian neutrality, and it might only be after the negotiations failed that the Russian strategy changed to annexing parts of Ukraine.

Article in Sheerpost on the media blackout...

The entirety of the corporate media’s attention given to the story consisted of:

A 166-word mini report in Bloomberg;
One five-minute segment on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” (Fox News);
One 600-word round up in The New York Post;
A shrill Business Insider attack article, whose headline labels Hersh a “discredited journalist” that has given a “gift to Putin”.

The 20 outlets studied are, in alphabetical order:

ABC News; Bloomberg News; Business Insider; BuzzFeed; CBS News; CNBC; CNN; Forbes; Fox News; The Huffington Post; MSNBC; NBC News; The New York Post; The New York Times; NPR; People Magazine; Politico; USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.

Reuters, for example, has published 14 separate reports on the topic since Thursday. Every large media outlet in America (and many medium-sized and even small ones) subscribes to Reuters, republishing content from their newswires.

One of the main tasks of a newsroom editor is to follow the newswire and follow up on Reuters’ content. This means that editors around the country have been bombarded with this story every day since it broke, and virtually every single one of them has passed on it – 14 consecutive times.

I particularly like Snope's

Fact-checking website Snopes also sprung into action, calling Hersh’s claim a “conspiracy” that rested on a single “omnipotent anonymous source.”

Notice that they had absolutely nothing to say when random people were saying Russia blew their own pipeline.

Let's have a little reminder of the claims Snopes didn't bother examining...



...Anything Snopes? No? Every news 'journalist' in the country reports "without the evidence" that Russia did it and not a whisper. Someone with evidence (albeit anonymous) claims that the US did it and it's all hands on deck to make sure the claim is ripped to shreds.

As opposed to, say, investigated.

The most incredible thing about the backlash against Hersh’s article on the U.S. blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines is the fact that it’s clear no establishment media outlet has any intention of carrying out the basic journalism needed to confirm or refute what he’s reported, — Jonathan Cook