The Donbas and Crimea are not "Russia."

And I still call it Constantinople not Istanbul
The DPR and LPR joined Russia willingly, and Ukraine forfeited any legitimate claim to them when its democracy was overthrown and the insurrectionists unable to muster the military needed to subjugate the separatists by force.
We're going on 9 years now, at some point its irredentism on the part of NATO

There's none, actually real russia is only the Moscow + Saint Petersburg areas.

Ukraine isn’t getting nuked, relax children

you're arguing yourself. what ifs dont matter, but also what we did didnt benefit us when a very realistic what if may have hurt us far more. its small minded to not think about what ifs and only what is. this is a classic case of shooting a dying soldier, then saying well it didnt matter that there was a 2 foot long scrap of shrapnel sticking out of his chest and that we're 2 miles from the field hospital in a swamp that means we cant carry him or he'll die when it moves, it only matters that Private Johnson shot him in the head for a clean and efficient instant death.

you're also using hindsight judgement with regards Russian invasion itself and dialing all the way back to nearly a decade ago in CIA action. it's true that the revolution is the first domino that led to this war, it wasn't however clear at the time that the revolution would lead to war. it wasn't even clear when Russia was mounting troops all along the border that war was imminent. It wasn't clear they'd march all the way west even after they entered the nation. the eventuality of a nationwide conflict hasn't been clear at any point, no one expected the invasion except a small minority. hell we had russian shills making "they wont invade" threads here in pard pre-invasion. its easy to be mad at my daughter if she breaks a glass table, but if it broke because she was carrying me my boots which knocked into the vacuum which fell over onto a broom which knocked over a shelf which broke the table i can't exactly think she'd track that in real time.

in any case at the end of the day it's unlikely that Russia will recoup enough resources, even from the more valuable half of the nation in a potential split, than they've spent and will spend on a rebuild. the cost to them is spending way too much to send way too ineffectual of a message about NATO creep. forcing them off of European markets for fuel sales to take a slightly discounted ticket price from China/India and a larger discounted price for overflow to the developing nations, while also tanking investment on their side for pipelines. our cost is high, that shouldn't be understated, and on a micro scale it's a clear loss. on a macro scale it could lead to the disolving or modernizing or Russia to prevent a russian/chinese alliance once the world gets to the stage of globe wide governance in 100-200 years. both china and russia need to be bled and/or split to even have a shadow of a chance for democracy to permeate the globe for the future of the human race.

as to the "nazi" stuff, while i dont like making common cause with shitbags i do seem to recall an alliance with Communist we were shortly thereafter dire enemies of to take out the actual Nazis. and these "nazis" aren't building deathcamps for millions, yet.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jan 27 2023 09:49am

Seems like we're conflating two lenses here. From a moral lens, that 'what if' can't serve as preemptive moral justification for overthrowing a democracy. If the concern is that an organic pro-western movement could have grown and led to Russia aggressively suppressing it, then we'd have our own set of possible interventions to oppose Russian influence, not necessarily force. I can't really imagine any moral lens where a pretext of defending democracy grants us the right to overthrow a democracy, just on the concern that someone else might do it first.
In the divergent pragmatic lens, I've laid out how none of this serves our interests anyway. The only cynical calculation any washington pundits have been able to point to is that Russia's loss is supposed to be our gain, and the mask has slipped a few times and Kerry even said it directly. But that falls apart the second we ask the question "Why?". I mean, China exists. There's a whole bunch of ways this is costing us, geopolitically, financially, in supply lines, etc etc, and we have no actual benefit from killing Russians. So its not even hindsight judgment, its just saying we could anticipate prior to the war nothing was to our benefit, and nothing presently is to our benefit, it doesn't make sense at any level. As to Russia's own benefit? Its neither here nor there, I'm sure there would be logical arguments for or against Russia's intervention when it comes to their own interests, but their actual goals don't matter to us. Its not like either Russia or the US particularly wanted Ukraine to begin with, the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, the least worth dying over.

Maybe its family history but I still have a lot more hangups over Nazis than Commies, even if I should hate them equally. At least during WW2 we openly recognized our rivalry with the USSR and unwillingness to support each other, only allied by a common enemy. Here we're shipping heavy weaponry to neonazis

There are large groups of neonazis in just about all of the worlds countries. Ukraine is smart enough to put them all in one military group and use them as cannon fodder.

Shit. I wish the US would do that. Maybe then we could get rid of them all eventually.

If you dont think that the weakening of Russia is for the good of America and the human race, at least Russia in it's current form, then the gap is too large to have a conversation. and whatabout china is silly. as i said they need to be checked too.

It doesn't take a bleeding heart liberal to point out that we don't implicitly benefit every time some poor schmuck gets his head blown off.
Its not a zero sum game. China is our greatest geopolitical competitor, not Russia. China competes with us for interests around the world, Russia's sphere of influence extends to only a handful of places we don't really care about. Even if we discounted all the costs of proxy war with Russia and their energy and food sector clout, weakening them doesn't help us gain influence in Africa or Asia or swing the middle powers like India to our side.

See I'm pointing out how the moral and pragmatic lenses aren't the same process but come to the same conclusion. If what we cared about was singing kumbaya and holding hands, then war and overthrowing democracies and blowing heads off schmucks is wrong. If what we cared about was cynical self-interest in a geopolitical chessmatch, then we'd have every reason to build a relationship with Russia to oppose China. Like making common cause with Communists to oppose Nazis, if we were such amoral strategists, why would we fight a lose::lose war with Russia while our biggest competitor laughs in the distance?

Who is the most likely ally to China should the world get harsh on them, they're enemy #1, and eventually we'll have to draw a line. on that day who is the most powerful nation they'd turn to if the west is closed?

(same question)

who has the 2nd most nuclear weapons on earth and who is the 3rd strongest military behind the USA and China?


a geopolitical chessmatch is hard if u cant look 2 moves deep.