I never got to see any aspect of the Cold War firsthand, but I have read of numerous geopolitical battles done through proxy means. It reads like something right out of a historical fiction novel. And it seems to have worked, against the Soviet Union.
So now that it’s obvious Russia and the West will not be friends for a long time, perhaps ever, is there a reason we can’t employ the old tricks ourselves?
If not, how could we strike back at Russia today without activating a nuclear warhead back at us? Russia seems to be much weaker nowadays, but that also means less targets to attack.
Can we get away with politically intruding on Belarus or Kazakhstan? Or would this likely warrant a much stronger response than in Ukraine?
I don’t think Iraq and Afghanistan have strategic value against the Russians, correct me if I’m wrong. But the example countries I mentioned surely do.
Now that I think about it as I write this, I guess any time we’re able to put Western-friendly governments into power, we gain and the opposition loses. Not every target has to be a knight or bishop.
America already ‘won’ in the Ukraine, then. We put a western-friendly government in charge of most of the country. (Papering over the inconvenient fact that the government is infiltrated by outright fascists, far-right-wing types, and Nazi sympathizers). Russia’s and its allies (the DNR & LNR) are fighting to take the the extreme east of the country in a different direction, but if you’re asking who was the big geopolitical winner in the Ukraine, its the great power that gets 80% of the Ukrainian population (i.e. America), not the side that’s stuck with 20%.
The current Russian aggression is largely the result of Western interference in trying to subvert the Ukranian government and to set up a pro-western government. Imagine if Russia was trying to overthrow the government of Mexico to try to set up a pro-Russia government there. The old hard-liners are using it Western interference as a justification to re-arm and to be more aggressive in their foreign policy.
As a response to this, you think that the west should further interfere in former Soviet satellite states?
We poke the bear, the bear roars, and then we say “oh watch out, the bear is roaring, let’s poke it some more!”?
What purpose does all this serve? Do you just have a war boner?
The course of events is going really poorly for Russia, which now finds that Europe wants to shun it, and is failing to do so only because of large energy supplies from Russia. At the price of Crimea, which is entirely theoretical to us, and impossible to militarily hold without largely risking a nuclear war, our European allies are driven, once again, to look to us, while Russia’s economy, based on Europe, first collapses, and then shifts to China and then India, both inherently hostile to Russia due to geography. Russia would have been better off ignoring the Crimea and cozying up to the US and Europe, which are in no position or mood to get belligerent with Russia. China is, frankly, feeling its oats, and when it is bored with harassing its tiny neighbors, it will turn its attention to the vast swaths of Russia that are sparsely populated and filled with energy resources.
You know this, how? My friends and family who were involved in Euromaidan and ensuing events from the very beginning have a very different narrative of events and players than you and SenorBeef. They would find your accusations of “Western interference” rather bitterly funny, as they have been rebuffed by the US when they requested help beyond wishy-washy, half-assed kind-of-sort-of lip service from our POTUS. The ravings about Nazis and fascists has been standard-issue Russian propoganda for decades now. It actually makes me feel a bit nostalgic to see that there are still those in the West willing to carry their water.
China maybe, but why would India be ‘inherently hostile to Russia’? They don’t share a border or have major conflicts, and they were relatively friendly during the Cold War.
The US, on the other hand, is going to be inevitably hostile to Russia in the near future because of ideological differences, and Europe additionally has cultural and geopolitical conflicts.
Russia of course did support its ideological allies in Central America and the Caribbean from about 1959-1989, and the US response was to stage a failed invasion of Cuba, mine the harbors of Nicaragua and impose trade sanctions, support a bloodthirsty Nicaraguan terrorist movement and some equally bloodthirsty counterinsurgencies in Guatemala and El Salvador, and in general to freak out a lot more than Russia has hitherto been doing.
Or at least, that’s what the Kremlin propaganda office says.
I believe you said this in another thread, but then why are Americans overwhelmingly supportive of air strikes on ISIL? I just looked at my calendar, and 2020 is still a ways away.
Dropping bombs on Syrian/Iraqi militias is a bit different than fighting Russia.
The reason the US public supports the airstrikes is because we believe that’s all it will amount to. We drop some bombs, our air force guys get some practice, and maybe ISIS folds or maybe we have to keep mowing the grass for a long time. Either way, it’s just bombing terrorists, what could possibly go wrong?
If Americans decide that they support a war, then it means that they are not so war weary that they will not support a war until 2020. Instead, Americans seem to be deciding on the merits of what’s at stake in the war, as opposed to saying, “War – feh! No more of that for six more years!”
It’s like someone saying, “I’m so full I couldn’t eat another bite… Oh, dessert is offered? Count me in!” The latter sentiment obviously negates the former.