Right. And for the last half century the US was going to banana republics and middle eastern deserts to spread democracy and liberate the oppressed.

It's like you have no understanding of history and why things happen.

Crimea was not a Russian escalation initially it was a power move by us which prompted them to respond. We wanted to get a pro-west government in there to essentially separate Ukraine from Russia's sphere into ours. Crimea has the biggest south sea Russian navy bases so if we get our crooks in there we can pull the strings and eventually kick the Russians out and limit their capability in the Mediterranean. Putin being 4 chess moves ahead as always pre-empted that with the annexation.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 22 2020 07:29am

We never tried to bring them into our unions as equals or spill our blood on their behalf have we? We will do so for the Slavs as we have in Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere, when they face aggression from East.




That wasn't Putin doing 4d chess, it is Stalin. Give credit where it is due. He conquered territories and then moved so many Russians to those places they actually became Russian.

And Self-determination is a right. We get you are all PUT DOWN THE POLES IN WARSAW but these places have the right to self-determination.

This post was edited by Skinned on Oct 22 2020 07:32am

We succeeded in bringing in Ukraine, they got Crimea. seems like a bit of a tie tbh, although i'd take land over corrupt politicians.

as to this, any part u disagree with?



This post was edited by thesnipa on Oct 22 2020 07:35am

I've been following Ukrainian politics pretty closely since the Orange Revolution. It is very interesting. A lot of bandwagoners lately lol. When Yulia Tymoshenko took power I was like H E L L O.

Ukraine was not facing any aggression from the east. They just elected a pro-Russian president and we saw an opportunity with a big portion of the population wanting to become part of the EU. So the CIA came in greased the right hands and 'helped' a pro western revolution start.

We don't respect Russia's sphere then expect them to roll over.

Take the homer glasses off and try to be a little more objective.

Here's some resources to read.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2014/04/16/why-cia-director-brennan-visited-kiev-in-ukraine-the-covert-war-has-begun/#404780c910cb

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/30/russia-ukraine-war-kiev-conflict

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 22 2020 07:39am

Didn't know the Warsaw Pact was still a thing. I understand what you are saying, and along with you and Karl Marx, I agree that history is the story of social conflict.

The biggest problem with Euromaidan is that it was never in Ukraine's interests
They kick out the Russian-aligned oligarchy and install a western-aligned oligarchy, the people still get their wealth looted by kleptocrats, there's no change in quality of life
But they get to be closer to NATO! NATO expansionism! That's totally in Ukraine's favor, right?
Except, the US and EU was never willing to act to protect Ukraine. Its not our backyard, we won't stand up for them like we would for Germany or France
So when Russia responded to NATO expansion by annexing Crimea, Obama didn't lift a finger. Then Merkel agreed with Russia to build a pipeline literally around Ukraine just to deprive them of their geopolitical leverage.

The jingoist US propaganda line is that we're the saviors of Ukraine coming to rid the country of its kleptocrats and corrupt bureaucracy. But in reality, the corrupt westerners were looting Ukraine- all the way up to the top, the Vice President himself, let alone all the power structure of the corporations under him- Zlochelvsky is just one oligarch, after all.
Russia has a vested interest in Ukraine and a willingness to act to protect those interests. Its not a good relationship for the non-ethnic-russian ukrainians, but if the west was always going to abandon them anyway, what did they gain?

In terms of US interests: The Obama/Biden interventionalism in Ukraine was a fucking catastrophic failure, an unmitigated disaster. We let Russia take Crimea unchecked, we gained basically nothing in our relationship even with a vassal state as its more liability than benefit, and then Obama topped it off by responding to Crimea by stepping up support for anti-Assad rebels in Syria which backfired horrifically and killed hundreds of thousands of people, spawned ISIS and destabilized the EU under a refugee crisis that continues to erode the west from within.


There are bleeding heart liberal idealists and unreasonable libertarian purists alike who would insist the US should never be engaging in CIA-backed coups of foreign countries to pursue our corrupt interests. I don't think that's even necessarily the case. I don't categorically rule out cynical interventionalism, I just think it actually has to be in our interests in the long run. If toppling mideast dictators in the Arab Spring was a good idea, then we should have done it. If killing Saddam and Gadaffi was a good idea, I'm all for it. But they weren't. They were fucking moronic. And that was the legacy of the Bush, Rove, Obama, Clinton, Biden foreign policy. It was profound incompetence.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 22 2020 08:26am

I haven't gotten into the weeds on this story, but isn't there a worthwhile distinction between Burisma and Burisma's founder? Investigating the founder is not entirely the same thing as investigating the company.

Also, Hunter Biden was part of the legal team, so it's his job to defend the company. What really matters is what Joe Biden did as it relates to Ukraine and Burisma.

This post was edited by IceMage on Oct 22 2020 09:41am

why would a conflict in Crimea or enforcing the red line in Syria be a good thing for the USA?

how does re-engaging with Russia help us at all?