Quote (ferdia @ Feb 3 2023 12:15pm)

^Prox1m1ty i call it diplomacy.

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ Feb 3 2023 12:16pm)

So did Neville chamberlain.

Quote (ferdia @ Feb 3 2023 12:16pm)

If you want to call it appeasement then you can also say that Russia also appeased the west by not throwing its toys sooner, and only throwing its toys when we arrived on their doorstep.

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ Feb 3 2023 01:18pm)

Not I want to call it appeasement. What you suggested IS appeasement.

And its not the same at all. Which country did NATO forcibly annex between Western Europe and Russia?

Quote (babun1024 @ Feb 3 2023 12:21pm)

Which countries did Nato destroy and sent into middle ages? Iraq and Syria. Western version of annexing is to install a puppet regime of their own.

Quote (ferdia @ Feb 3 2023 01:06pm)

try, try, to be more moderate when arguing with someone that is of a different viewpoint. please. note that i am asking you not him. be the bigger man lol.

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ Feb 3 2023 01:13pm)

Terrible revisionist argument. We all saw the demands Russia made, 2 months after tanks were massing on the border.
An invasion you said yourself was in planning for years, and then say Russia has any intention of negotiating. Pathetic.
You can't resist attacking someone in every post. A sure sign of a weak position.

Quote (ferdia @ 3 Feb 2023 09:53)

this is being widely reported. reports vary on the volume of troops. this is the calm before the storm.

Quote (Goomshill @ Feb 2 2023 07:44pm)

What's so moronic about the NATO hawk approach is that even in their wishlist scenarios and 'unlimited support', they're not investing the kind of resources needed to actually defeat Russia. Biden had the opportunity to declare that we would defend Ukraine, and dithered and explicitly said we wouldn't. Right now we're looking at two real possible outcomes, either Russia wins with a conventional war- which is looking increasingly likely- or we give enough heavy weaponry that they do indeed use nuclear weapons and contradict all the denials by hawks that that could totally never happen. Because as long as Russia treats this as existential, that's the replacement to the "they retreat and lose a conventional war" outcome.
We've seen in how many proxy conflicts now that foreign fighters supplied with US weapons but not supported by boots on the ground, really cannot hold themselves against any kind of organized opposition in the long term. Not even a superpower like Russia, we lost Afghanistan to the Taliban. The 'best' case scenario in the hawk approach is that we make the war costly for Russia, in blood and treasure. And then what? It doesn't serve our geopolitical aims, its driving a wedge into our international relations and supply chains and jump starting a new cold war except China is the true superpower and they're aligned with Russia.


This is the same simple logical argument that deconstructed Iraq, deconstructed Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and so many other interventions: "What's the endgame?"
If our choices are between nuclear war and losing the Ukraine proxy war, we're in a lose:lose scenario. Make it cost as much as we want, if Russia holds only the separatist east DPR / LPR / Crimea, they've already 'won' from a strategic perspective. If NATO holds onto the bombed out shell of the western-aligned west Ukraine, now a militaristic Nazi dictatorship with no infrastructure and lots of refugees, what have we won?

We had the opportunity to take a hard line with Russia and use overt threats and military buildup to hold Ukraine, we didn't. But at least our historical failed proxy wars didn't threaten us with the end of civilization.