Well, they appealed for military aid to the Obama administration, but were given a paltry $130 million in ‘non-lethal’ support instead. And the Democrats just used the filibuster to stop a Republican bill to sanction Russia, I guess to prevent Biden from having to veto it for whatever reason.
Biden’s actions make him look far more like a Putin stooge than Trump ever did. He waived sanctions to allow the Nord 2 pipeline from Russia to Europe, while today refusing to support a pipeline from Israel to Europe which would limit Putin’s ability to shut off European power for political reasons. Totally baffling. Then he came out and basically said America would look the other way at a ‘limited’ excursion into Ukraine.
No, I don’t think he’s a Russian Stooge. He’s just Joe Biden - a person who has been wrong on almost every foreign affairs issue in my lifetime. He was against the first gulf war, for the second one, against the raid that killed Bin Laden, for the toppling of Ghadaffi and the mess in Syria, and presided over the disastrous pullout in Afghanistan. So he doesn’t have to be a stooge to do things this dumb.
Maybe, but it’s not America or Democrats’ job to safeguard Ukraine, it’s the Ukrainians’ own job. With or without American assistance, they should have been going pell-mell all out to beef up their own national defenses. Their defense budget should have been tripled or something like that. They should have been manufacturing thousands of their own Stinger-equivalents, Javelin-equivalents, etc.
Is a statement that broadly encompasses ways that other nations can and do influence wars.
And what materiel the US (and other nations) sells to Ukraine – particularly at this point – is just another great example of US capitalism, rife with perverse incentives.
Think tanks, lobbyists, trade associations, corporate execs, institutional investors, Boards of Directors, etc., whisper in the ears of US policy-makers who have direct influence on US foreign policy, which – as we agree – can and does often impact a brinkmanship game like the one in the OP.
So whether or not they’re Putin’s tanks at the Ukraine border, many other factors come into play, and usually high up among those factors is … who stands to profit.
There’s a limit to what Ukraine can do without aid. Its GDP is only $408 billion, and it has a poverty rate around 30-40%. Compare that to Canada, with a GDP of 1.4 trillion with 6 million fewer citizens. Plus, the government is divided and corrupt, in part due to Russian manipulation.
If you don’t think Canada could beat Russia in a shooting war (and we currently couldn’t), then I don’t see Ukraine managing it with 1/3 the GDP and all kinds of structural problems including the Russians causing trouble in Donbas and occupying the Crimea.
It seems like only a couple years ago that Congress voted to give Ukraine $400 million in military aid… and a certain president illegally withheld the aid for months because Ukraine would not do him a favor and announce it was investigating his political opponent.
What I don’t understand is how Putin thinks he’ll be able to hold whatever territory he takes. The Ukrainian resistance is going to be exceptionally fierce. Based on what I’ve read, every Ukrainian who can hold a gun is prepared to pick one up.
As was mentioned before, it all depends on what Putin’s goals are. He doesn’t have enough massed on Ukraine’s borders to actually take all of Ukraine, not by a long shot. Depending on how things play out and what he intends to do, it might be enough to grab and hold land to allow them to reach Crimea by something other than a bridge. But I don’t know if that’s his aim, either.
I wonder if he’s looking for some sort of Vichy France style solution where invades and the government quickly falls and is replaced by a stooge government. He has a number of stooges in that government now. A simultaneous invasion and an internal coup could be attempted.
More likely is a ‘limited incursion’ where he goes into some place that already has a fairly pro-Russian population (or at least one that won’t resist much), then stops, claims that’s all he wants, then consolidates his gains before picking off the next region in a year or two…
I agree that if he tries for a full-on invasion and the Ukrainians fight hard, he’ll have a tough time and the other western powers will have a hard time staying out of thr conflict if it drags on.
Yeah, lum_s_husband’s statement must be amongst the most ludicrous things I’ve read on the Dope.
Russia has put 100,000 troops on the border and there are reports of a further 75,000 being prepared.
Because…why? Russia thinks they are about to get invaded? Ukraine is about to invade its much bigger, nuclear-armed neighbour?
It must be like how Russia was forced to invade Crimea because of western provocation.
Most Russians are religious these days. The head of the church is in Moscow and, presumably, loyal to Putin but he is more or less equal within the Eastern Orthodox Church to several other guys, and slightly below Bartholomew I of Constantinople in the greater landscape of that vein of Christianity.
Biden should consider reaching out to them and holding a pro-peace conference.
Except they won’t. China won’t stand for that.
My theory, based on not very much tbh, is that if there’s going to be actual combat they’re going to try taking the East, including the territory that’s already partially in Russian hands (Luhansk, Donetsk). If they refrain from an all-out occupation they’ll probably get away with it as well. I don’t think the EU will want to get too involved. From a geopolitical view it’s understandable for Putin to want a buffer between Russia and NATO territory. Were he to attack the Baltic states he would be in big trouble given they’re already NATO members, but this just might work. Were he to go as far as trying to capture Kiev and/or Odessa OTOH, that just might trigger EU/NATO into action.