Quote (bogie160 @ 6 Feb 2023 06:38)
We aren't talking about Putin, Stalin, or Hitler's decision making, though. The drawbacks of autocratic rule go without saying. We're discussing whether or not we ought to give credit to Western foreign policy experts, and I think the answer here is no. They're collectively responsible for some of the worst foreign policy blunders in the last twenty years, and they've been routinely outmaneuvered by enemies (e.g. the Taliban) that have a fraction of the economic, military, and political might. And even if the policy experts could be trusted, politicians aren't taking advice in a vacuum. They're responding to both domestic pressure and the pressure of their allies. Germans and Germany were hesitant about the wisdom of delivering tanks, and yet Germany went ahead under intense pressure by their NATO allies.
Should NATO support Ukraine? Of course, I don't think allowing Russia unfettered control over everything that was once Imperial Russia is a great idea. But at the same time, there's a need to prevent escalation and find an offramp to the present war. The collapse and "decolonization" of the Russian Federation would have far reaching implications that haven't been fleshed out. The risks of nuclear war have been serially discounted by Western media sources, with some version of "Putin would never do that", and then in the same breath compare him to Hitler, Stalin, and other dictators who certainly would have used nuclear weapons in the face of an existential crisis.
On the topic of existential crises, the answer that I've seen ad nauseam is some version of "Russia shouldn't have invaded in the first place". Sure, granted, but they have. And asking the Russian regime to accept annihilation because of that is moving into the realm of fantasy. They're going to play this out because their survival depends on it. There's no off-ramp right now, but the limited focus should be to prevent a Ukrainian collapse in the core territories and force Russia to negotiate an end to the fighting. It will involve loss of Ukrainian territory, but in that Ukraine will be free of the vast majority of their ethnic and cultural Russian population, and will be integrated in NATO, which will provide a more unified Ukraine with the military and economic support that it needs. Kissinger is correct, there's no total victory to be had here, and because NATO is bankrolling the conflict, it has every right to set conditions with the Ukrainian political establishment.
You are
- mixing military resistance on the field with asymetric economics.
- melting ukraine with syria or iraq.
- talking about twenty years while what is happening is a first in 80.
Then you have the arrogance to
- "explain" that escalation should being avoided without explicitely formulating how...
- time travel to blame the west for the war ?
- to argue on ethnic russians "liberation" ?
- defend the russian regime from its anihilation ??
This is a joke. And the worse: you involve the classic BUTT THERES NO WHINNERS IN THE WAR
... Which is basically another way to spread legs in front of Putin (same than nuclear scarecrow)
Dont even try.