That's great. China is blessed to have like-minded individuals in power in the west as it reaps cheap energy for the next 30 years.

100% agree but thats not a consequence of the US' actions.

Finished read and it reflects my view and what I have read and learned as well.



I think I spoken about this before in this thread too. It was a stupid idea to drive Russia to the Chinese and it is also really dumb to drop the TPP.
Russia would rather sell gas to Japan than China " sakhalin " and I think most people don't know and do not understand China and Russia's previous conflict.
Now Russia is opening up Vladivostok for the Chinese to use which used to belong to the Qing Empire ....

But now Russia just open up everything to the Chinese. John Mearsheimer is right, both China and USA wins in this conflict , but China might end up wining more. These opinions are echoed by Graham Allison, Kissinger , Kevin Rudd etc etc ( All prominent China/ USA watchers of our day and age ) also Lee Kuan Yew .

This post was edited by Hamsterbaby on May 16 2023 08:17am

Yes it is. Actions have consequences. You can't encroach on Russia and when they act out in the only manner they have left (militarily) which we then use as reason to exclude them from everything west and somehow think we had nothing to do with their about face to China.

If we turn back to history for the past 30 or so years in the US.
Regan , Bush Junior and Senior , Clinton , Obama , Trump and Biden.
Perhaps some of us will have rather fond memories of a black man being the first black American president ( Half Black ).

No one is perfect even for the most powerful man on planet earth. He famously said and made a mistake by saying the United States no longer or do not need a " George Kennan ".
If there was a " George Kennan " in the US government , perhaps things wouldn't turn out as it is, what we are facing now.

I disagree that the encroach on Russia justification for the invasion of Ukraine; This is another example of Putin creating frozen conflicts.

Besides there is more synergy between Russia and China with or without US policy. Russia is a net exporter of natural resource, China is a net importer. They are geographically able to benefit from closer relations.
Their desire for a multipolar world and their similarly authoritarian systems.

This notion of bringing Russia into NATO or closer ties with Europe and US shows a complete lack of understanding the Russia position imo.

The regime in Russia wants friction and disagreement with the US. It wants to be relative on a global stage, when besides nuclear weapons, it really isin't. As you pointed out China and the US are the only global superpowers, or in China's case having global potential, currently.

People in the US rarely think of Russia and its influence, only when they have to and in reaction to Putin's latest conflict, or meddling in other countries elections. The Russian regime PERMANENTLY thinks about the US and frames them as an adversary. It is existential to the Russian regime to continually use that adversarial notion as leverage domestically.

There is something to be said for Crimea and its long ties to Russian psyche and culture, and Russians themselves. But the situation there is of Russia's own creation. Nothing to do with the US.
The soviets restructured so that Crimea was within Ukraine's jurisdiction. They also allowed Sevastopol naval base to become entangled in a situation where they needed Kiev's compliance to remain there.

Russia's own actions led to this war being existential and inevitable for them, in their own view.

This post was edited by Prox1m1ty on May 16 2023 08:34am

Yes Putin wanted to create a frozen conflict to expand Russian wealth and lives for reasons... absolutely had nothing to do with western coup and subsequent training of Ukraine with NATO techniques, weapons, for a future expectation to join NATO.

Russia wanted to join NATO way before there was any conflict or disagreements in 2000. The US said no. No one exactly knows why but my guess is 1. the US military industrial conflict absolutely needs that arch enemy to justify a spending machine that churns trillions, which without that boogey man that would be threatened, and/or 2. Russia unlike European vassals would most likely push back against orders emanating solely from the US. Their idea would be more of a rule by committee rather than take orders as a vassals that the current NATO model largely resembles.

Europe and Russia both benefited from the relationship, instead now both are suffering, and with the real winners being the China in both short-long term and US somewhat in the short term as we can sell overpriced energy and overpriced weapons to Europe to fill the Russian gap.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 16 2023 08:43am

Patriot got spitted on ?

This post was edited by HeLiCaL on May 16 2023 08:51am

If your first point was true, will Russia now also invade Finland? Or Sweden? Or retrospectively invade Poland, Lithuania or Latvia?
If as you say, the primary reason to invade was NATO expansion.

Your second point is speculative and in my opinion not accurate.

If as you say NATO entirely justifies Russias war of aggression, then what level of responsibility does Russia have for this war? All? Some? None?

None of those countries ever represented the importance to Russia as Ukraine does. I've talked about it previously why that is in this thread, so to draw any comparison between any of them is nonsensical. Those were never red lines.

NATO actions are causal and in some way justify the Russian reaction but by no means that's to be equated with Russia being innocent. Reality is grey, both share faults for what is currently happening, the argument really is to what extent each side is responsible for. Russia is imperialistic and wants to dominate it's smaller neighbors, but when we purposefully expand fully knowing this is a red line for them, fully knowing this is something they've been crying about for 20 years, you can't somehow act surprised that they've lashed out.

Ultimately it doesn't matter how you want to frame it, reality is Russia is turning to the east because of what transpired, which is net positive for China and is an extremely impactful policy failure for US if we want to mitigate China's rise.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on May 16 2023 08:59am