Sam Lowry said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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You keep saying we are behind this war.

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Of course we are.

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LOL no.

This Russian tank received a very warm welcome to Ukraine 🔥🔥🔥

pic.twitter.com/E1uBff2V9e

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 18, 2024

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

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Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

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Not only that..but Ukraine is not even part of the Western world. (At least not according to Samuel Huntington)

It's gonna be hard enough for NATO/The West to ever truly integrate Bulgaria and Romania. Much less Ukraine

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Well, if Sam Huntington says so we should abandon our positions and allies around the world...

Don't you think that the desire for those Nations to integrate play into that equation? Using your logic and that map, we would only trade with Europe.

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Huntington is a smart fellow. His "Clash of CIvilizations" is a seminal work which has greatly shaped my worldview.

To portray Orthodox Christianity is completely incompatible with Western Civilization is quite a reach, certainly no fatal barrier to military alliance. As your subsequent post notes, we have a strong and enduring military alliance with Japan and North Korea (and others) despite far greater cultural differences than that which exists between the western and orthodox worlds.

The divide between Orthodox and Catholic, in isolation, is no greater than the divide between Catholic and Protestant......

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I have no issues with Huntington's broader scholarly theories and find them interesting, I am not sure I agree with his findings as absolute. Seems too simplistic and absolute. These civilizations have bordered, aligned, and traded for a millennium. Religion has changed numerous times and to state that those 9 are the basis of all interactions seems simplistic to me. He seems to disregard all of history to fixate on barriers. Understanding differences and future goals is the key to forming lasting alliances. As the old saying goes, you can't fix it if you don't know it is broke. I do agree that the West installing Democracies and cultures is not the way today.

Ukraine has bordered Europe and dealt with Russia forever. They have traded with Europe, Russia and Asia forever. Russia west of the Urals has always tied itself to Europe and believed itself to be European. As late as 2008:

"Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia." Medvedev identified the United States, the European Union, and Russia as the "three branches of European civilization."

Doesn't sound like Russia, the most Orthodox Nation on Earth, believed it was a barrier. As far back as Peter the Great Russia identified as European. Now European Christianity is a barrier that can't be breeched and any move from a Nation that used to be in the Russian Orbit is off limits?

---

Huntington is offering a framework, a broad template to help understand the movements of the tectonic plates of world affairs. And it is indeed instructive in identifying many of forces at play, indeed most of the most important ones.. But like all grand theories, the further you get down into the weeds, the messier the applications get. Anomalies and exceptions pop up everywhere. The key is to understand the large and the small and keep them in perspective....not to overweight the smaller things, but rather to keep an eye on them to ensure you are not surprised on the rare occasion enough of them line up upend standard trends.

Russia's problem in the past was that it could not easily engage in European modernization it needed.
Russia's problem today is that it is rejecting European modernization it needs.

Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

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Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

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if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

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Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

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again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

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Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

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LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

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Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

Redbrickbear said:

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It was a very sound policy in its time for a small, poor, indebted nation to follow. We had nothing to gain and little to lose by engaging in the wars of others.

We are no longer any of those things and have much to lose from disengagement from world affairs

whiterock said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

Not only that..but Ukraine is not even part of the Western world. (At least not according to Samuel Huntington)

It's gonna be hard enough for NATO/The West to ever truly integrate Bulgaria and Romania. Much less Ukraine

---

Well, if Sam Huntington says so we should abandon our positions and allies around the world...

Don't you think that the desire for those Nations to integrate play into that equation? Using your logic and that map, we would only trade with Europe.

---

Huntington is a smart fellow. His "Clash of CIvilizations" is a seminal work which has greatly shaped my worldview.

To portray Orthodox Christianity is completely incompatible with Western Civilization is quite a reach, certainly no fatal barrier to military alliance. As your subsequent post notes, we have a strong and enduring military alliance with Japan and North Korea (and others) despite far greater cultural differences than that which exists between the western and orthodox worlds.

The divide between Orthodox and Catholic, in isolation, is no greater than the divide between Catholic and Protestant......

---

I have no issues with Huntington's broader scholarly theories and find them interesting, I am not sure I agree with his findings as absolute. Seems too simplistic and absolute. These civilizations have bordered, aligned, and traded for a millennium. Religion has changed numerous times and to state that those 9 are the basis of all interactions seems simplistic to me. He seems to disregard all of history to fixate on barriers. Understanding differences and future goals is the key to forming lasting alliances. As the old saying goes, you can't fix it if you don't know it is broke. I do agree that the West installing Democracies and cultures is not the way today.

Ukraine has bordered Europe and dealt with Russia forever. They have traded with Europe, Russia and Asia forever. Russia west of the Urals has always tied itself to Europe and believed itself to be European. As late as 2008:

"Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia." Medvedev identified the United States, the European Union, and Russia as the "three branches of European civilization."

Doesn't sound like Russia, the most Orthodox Nation on Earth, believed it was a barrier. As far back as Peter the Great Russia identified as European. Now European Christianity is a barrier that can't be breeched and any move from a Nation that used to be in the Russian Orbit is off limits?

---

Huntington is offering a framework, a broad template to help understand the movements of the tectonic plates of world affairs. And it is indeed instructive in identifying many of forces at play, indeed most of the most important ones.. But like all grand theories, the further you get down into the weeds, the messier the applications get. Anomalies and exceptions pop up everywhere. The key is to understand the large and the small and keep them in perspective....not to overweight the smaller things, but rather to keep an eye on them to ensure you are not surprised on the rare occasion enough of them line up upend standard trends.

Russia's problem in the past was that it could not easily engage in European modernization it needed.
Russia's problem today is that it is rejecting European modernization it needs.

---

I agree. Russia seems to be experimenting with embracing the Eastern aspects of its geography and aligning with China and India. Whether this pays off for them or creates a greater internal divide remains to be seen.

There is a school of thought that believes Russia will split, with the East moving to China and the West actually joining NATO. I know under the current dynamics that is impossible, but the paper I read (granted a little while ago) had Russia dividing into 3 States, East of Urals, Siberia and East. All more than capable of functioning as high level nations due to population, education and resource availability. Reads like a bad WW3 novel!

whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

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if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

Redbrickbear said:

---

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

KaiBear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

We have made deals like this since the beginning of our constitutional government. Why should we change because of what Matt Gaetz and his group think?

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

---

again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

Frank Galvin said:

---

KaiBear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

---

Ha, yeah…they'd save a lot of lives and get nothing but a more secure border in return. Hard to see any benefit from that.

Sam Lowry said:

---

Frank Galvin said:

---

KaiBear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

---

Ha, yeah…they'd save a lot of lives and get nothing but a more secure border in return. Hard to see any benefit to that.

---

Ha, wrong as usual.

Frank Galvin said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

But I though muh Russia was weak and Ukraine is manhandling them with ease. If true, how are they a threat?

Frank Galvin said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

---

Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

---

again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

Bingo, but the pro-RU vatniks will say otherwise.

Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

NATO is the real threat at this point. We've always tried to use Ukraine as a platform to destabilize Russia. Their position has changed since the Cold War, whereas we only seem to have doubled down.

Doc Holliday said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

But I though muh Russia was weak and Ukraine is manhandling them with ease. If true, how are they a threat?

---

To the interventionist side Russia is at the same time a massive threat to all of Europe (including the great military/economic powers of the UK, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, etc.....all backed up by the massive superpower of the USA)

And at the same time a weak State that can not even take over a little neighbor next door....one its troops could just drive straight into

p.s.

For comparison the USA went across the planet to invade a similar size nation (Iraq) and completely took the whole country in less than 1 month...26 days from crossing the border to our troops hosting the American flag in Baghdad.

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

Not only that..but Ukraine is not even part of the Western world. (At least not according to Samuel Huntington)

It's gonna be hard enough for NATO/The West to ever truly integrate Bulgaria and Romania. Much less Ukraine

---

Well, if Sam Huntington says so we should abandon our positions and allies around the world...

Don't you think that the desire for those Nations to integrate play into that equation? Using your logic and that map, we would only trade with Europe.

---

Huntington is a smart fellow. His "Clash of CIvilizations" is a seminal work which has greatly shaped my worldview.

To portray Orthodox Christianity is completely incompatible with Western Civilization is quite a reach, certainly no fatal barrier to military alliance. As your subsequent post notes, we have a strong and enduring military alliance with Japan and North Korea (and others) despite far greater cultural differences than that which exists between the western and orthodox worlds.

The divide between Orthodox and Catholic, in isolation, is no greater than the divide between Catholic and Protestant......

---

I have no issues with Huntington's broader scholarly theories and find them interesting, I am not sure I agree with his findings as absolute. Seems too simplistic and absolute. These civilizations have bordered, aligned, and traded for a millennium. Religion has changed numerous times and to state that those 9 are the basis of all interactions seems simplistic to me. He seems to disregard all of history to fixate on barriers. Understanding differences and future goals is the key to forming lasting alliances. As the old saying goes, you can't fix it if you don't know it is broke. I do agree that the West installing Democracies and cultures is not the way today.

Ukraine has bordered Europe and dealt with Russia forever. They have traded with Europe, Russia and Asia forever. Russia west of the Urals has always tied itself to Europe and believed itself to be European. As late as 2008:

"Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia." Medvedev identified the United States, the European Union, and Russia as the "three branches of European civilization."

Doesn't sound like Russia, the most Orthodox Nation on Earth, believed it was a barrier. As far back as Peter the Great Russia identified as European. Now European Christianity is a barrier that can't be breeched and any move from a Nation that used to be in the Russian Orbit is off limits?

---

Huntington is offering a framework, a broad template to help understand the movements of the tectonic plates of world affairs. And it is indeed instructive in identifying many of forces at play, indeed most of the most important ones.. But like all grand theories, the further you get down into the weeds, the messier the applications get. Anomalies and exceptions pop up everywhere. The key is to understand the large and the small and keep them in perspective....not to overweight the smaller things, but rather to keep an eye on them to ensure you are not surprised on the rare occasion enough of them line up upend standard trends.

Russia's problem in the past was that it could not easily engage in European modernization it needed.
Russia's problem today is that it is rejecting European modernization it needs.

---

I agree. Russia seems to be experimenting with embracing the Eastern aspects of its geography and aligning with China and India. Whether this pays off for them or creates a greater internal divide remains to be seen.

There is a school of thought that believes Russia will split, with the East moving to China and the West actually joining NATO. I know under the current dynamics that is impossible, but the paper I read (granted a little while ago) had Russia dividing into 3 States, East of Urals, Siberia and East. All more than capable of functioning as high level nations due to population, education and resource availability. Reads like a bad WW3 novel!

---

I think there was a real danger of that when China had a large birth rate and a growing population (40 years ago)....does not seem much of a danger of that now.

Chinese are increasingly leaving the Northwest of China for the much more rich areas of the Pearl River Delta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta)

While the Northeast is depopulation and becoming a rust belt.
(https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/northeast-china-rust-belt)

The Chinese leadership seems fine with letting Russia continue to control Siberia and just sell them raw materials at a discounted cost.

But for Russia it must be quite the humiliation that its having to turn to old rivals (Iran/China) in a desperate attempt to find allies/friends/trading partners.

Also the USA can be sure of the friendship of places like Canada, Australia, UK...and many other Western nations.

Russia can never really be sure of the friendship of Iran and China.

Redbrickbear said:

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FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

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whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

Not only that..but Ukraine is not even part of the Western world. (At least not according to Samuel Huntington)

It's gonna be hard enough for NATO/The West to ever truly integrate Bulgaria and Romania. Much less Ukraine

---

Well, if Sam Huntington says so we should abandon our positions and allies around the world...

Don't you think that the desire for those Nations to integrate play into that equation? Using your logic and that map, we would only trade with Europe.

---

Huntington is a smart fellow. His "Clash of CIvilizations" is a seminal work which has greatly shaped my worldview.

To portray Orthodox Christianity is completely incompatible with Western Civilization is quite a reach, certainly no fatal barrier to military alliance. As your subsequent post notes, we have a strong and enduring military alliance with Japan and North Korea (and others) despite far greater cultural differences than that which exists between the western and orthodox worlds.

The divide between Orthodox and Catholic, in isolation, is no greater than the divide between Catholic and Protestant......

---

I have no issues with Huntington's broader scholarly theories and find them interesting, I am not sure I agree with his findings as absolute. Seems too simplistic and absolute. These civilizations have bordered, aligned, and traded for a millennium. Religion has changed numerous times and to state that those 9 are the basis of all interactions seems simplistic to me. He seems to disregard all of history to fixate on barriers. Understanding differences and future goals is the key to forming lasting alliances. As the old saying goes, you can't fix it if you don't know it is broke. I do agree that the West installing Democracies and cultures is not the way today.

Ukraine has bordered Europe and dealt with Russia forever. They have traded with Europe, Russia and Asia forever. Russia west of the Urals has always tied itself to Europe and believed itself to be European. As late as 2008:

"Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia." Medvedev identified the United States, the European Union, and Russia as the "three branches of European civilization."

Doesn't sound like Russia, the most Orthodox Nation on Earth, believed it was a barrier. As far back as Peter the Great Russia identified as European. Now European Christianity is a barrier that can't be breeched and any move from a Nation that used to be in the Russian Orbit is off limits?

---

Huntington is offering a framework, a broad template to help understand the movements of the tectonic plates of world affairs. And it is indeed instructive in identifying many of forces at play, indeed most of the most important ones.. But like all grand theories, the further you get down into the weeds, the messier the applications get. Anomalies and exceptions pop up everywhere. The key is to understand the large and the small and keep them in perspective....not to overweight the smaller things, but rather to keep an eye on them to ensure you are not surprised on the rare occasion enough of them line up upend standard trends.

Russia's problem in the past was that it could not easily engage in European modernization it needed.
Russia's problem today is that it is rejecting European modernization it needs.

---

I agree. Russia seems to be experimenting with embracing the Eastern aspects of its geography and aligning with China and India. Whether this pays off for them or creates a greater internal divide remains to be seen.

There is a school of thought that believes Russia will split, with the East moving to China and the West actually joining NATO. I know under the current dynamics that is impossible, but the paper I read (granted a little while ago) had Russia dividing into 3 States, East of Urals, Siberia and East. All more than capable of functioning as high level nations due to population, education and resource availability. Reads like a bad WW3 novel!

---

I think there was a real danger of that when China had a large birth rate and a growing population (40 years ago)....does not seem much of a danger of that now.

Chinese are increasingly leaving the Northwest of China for the much more rich areas of the Pearl River Delta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta)

While the Northeast is depopulation and becoming a rust belt.
(https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/northeast-china-rust-belt)

The Chinese leadership seems fine with letting Russia continue to control Siberia and just sell them raw materials at a discounted cost.

But for Russia it must be quite the humiliation that its having to turn to old rivals (Iran/China) in a desperate attempt to find allies/friends/trading partners.

Also the USA can be sure of the friendship of places like Canada, Australia, UK...and many other Western nations.

Russia can never really be sure of the friendship of Iran and China.

---

Siberia is the problem area for Russia.



'Siberia will be free': Russian regions vote in unauthorised independence referendums (msn.com)

FLBear5630 said:

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Redbrickbear said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

whiterock said:

---

FLBear5630 said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

whiterock said:

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

Not only that..but Ukraine is not even part of the Western world. (At least not according to Samuel Huntington)

It's gonna be hard enough for NATO/The West to ever truly integrate Bulgaria and Romania. Much less Ukraine

---

Well, if Sam Huntington says so we should abandon our positions and allies around the world...

Don't you think that the desire for those Nations to integrate play into that equation? Using your logic and that map, we would only trade with Europe.

---

Huntington is a smart fellow. His "Clash of CIvilizations" is a seminal work which has greatly shaped my worldview.

To portray Orthodox Christianity is completely incompatible with Western Civilization is quite a reach, certainly no fatal barrier to military alliance. As your subsequent post notes, we have a strong and enduring military alliance with Japan and North Korea (and others) despite far greater cultural differences than that which exists between the western and orthodox worlds.

The divide between Orthodox and Catholic, in isolation, is no greater than the divide between Catholic and Protestant......

---

I have no issues with Huntington's broader scholarly theories and find them interesting, I am not sure I agree with his findings as absolute. Seems too simplistic and absolute. These civilizations have bordered, aligned, and traded for a millennium. Religion has changed numerous times and to state that those 9 are the basis of all interactions seems simplistic to me. He seems to disregard all of history to fixate on barriers. Understanding differences and future goals is the key to forming lasting alliances. As the old saying goes, you can't fix it if you don't know it is broke. I do agree that the West installing Democracies and cultures is not the way today.

Ukraine has bordered Europe and dealt with Russia forever. They have traded with Europe, Russia and Asia forever. Russia west of the Urals has always tied itself to Europe and believed itself to be European. As late as 2008:

"Europe's problems won't be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia." Medvedev identified the United States, the European Union, and Russia as the "three branches of European civilization."

Doesn't sound like Russia, the most Orthodox Nation on Earth, believed it was a barrier. As far back as Peter the Great Russia identified as European. Now European Christianity is a barrier that can't be breeched and any move from a Nation that used to be in the Russian Orbit is off limits?

---

Huntington is offering a framework, a broad template to help understand the movements of the tectonic plates of world affairs. And it is indeed instructive in identifying many of forces at play, indeed most of the most important ones.. But like all grand theories, the further you get down into the weeds, the messier the applications get. Anomalies and exceptions pop up everywhere. The key is to understand the large and the small and keep them in perspective....not to overweight the smaller things, but rather to keep an eye on them to ensure you are not surprised on the rare occasion enough of them line up upend standard trends.

Russia's problem in the past was that it could not easily engage in European modernization it needed.
Russia's problem today is that it is rejecting European modernization it needs.

---

I agree. Russia seems to be experimenting with embracing the Eastern aspects of its geography and aligning with China and India. Whether this pays off for them or creates a greater internal divide remains to be seen.

There is a school of thought that believes Russia will split, with the East moving to China and the West actually joining NATO. I know under the current dynamics that is impossible, but the paper I read (granted a little while ago) had Russia dividing into 3 States, East of Urals, Siberia and East. All more than capable of functioning as high level nations due to population, education and resource availability. Reads like a bad WW3 novel!

---

I think there was a real danger of that when China had a large birth rate and a growing population (40 years ago)....does not seem much of a danger of that now.

Chinese are increasingly leaving the Northwest of China for the much more rich areas of the Pearl River Delta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_River_Delta)

While the Northeast is depopulation and becoming a rust belt.
(https://www.axios.com/2019/09/12/northeast-china-rust-belt)

The Chinese leadership seems fine with letting Russia continue to control Siberia and just sell them raw materials at a discounted cost.

But for Russia it must be quite the humiliation that its having to turn to old rivals (Iran/China) in a desperate attempt to find allies/friends/trading partners.

Also the USA can be sure of the friendship of places like Canada, Australia, UK...and many other Western nations.

Russia can never really be sure of the friendship of Iran and China.

---

Siberia is the problem area for Russia.



'Siberia will be free': Russian regions vote in unauthorised independence referendums (msn.com)

---

Another reason why Russia has never been and will never be a Western style country...it will always have a powerful central government ruled by a Czar/Supreme Soviet/Strong President in order to keep the vast land together.

China has a similar issue...and a similar autocratic system of government

[the 'strong state' model adopted in the country also generates a number of benefits for Russian citizens that have largely been overlooked in the West. He writes that abandoning this model in favour of a western political system would be at odds with the prevailing conditions within the country ]

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2014/10/21/why-russias-strong-state-political-system-still-remains-a-better-option-for-the-country-than-western-style-democracy/

Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

---

This logical reasoning has been tried on here several times....they simply don't care.

"muh NATO is peaceful!...russia bad!" is all you are going to get.

And really the same Neo-Cons & Liberal interventionists in Congress know this as well but just don't care.

At this point I am starting to suspect that DC does not see a down side to conflicts like this....they either lead to regime change in Moscow (something they think is going to work out long term) or it will lead to a proxy war where they can make a lot of money while risking only the lives of Ukrainians.

I don't think they see this kind of conflict as bad or their own actions to help spark it off as foolish.

And I think they would use the same play book in Belarus or Kazakhstan if they could.

KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

---

Of course not. Because Russia has proven time and again it is the enemy of freedom. Our history is nowhere near clean, but generally we are against people living under the boot of dictators. Complete and total false equivalency.

Sam Lowry said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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KaiBear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

---

Ha, yeah…they'd save a lot of lives and get nothing but a more secure border in return. Hard to see any benefit from that.

---

Guess you don't consider the freedom and wishes of 40 million people a benefit.

Frank Galvin said:

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KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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Quote:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

---

Of course not. Because Russia has proven time and again it is the enemy of freedom. Our history is nowhere near clean, but generally we are against people living under the boot of dictators. Complete and total false equivalency.

---

Suspect you would be shocked at the number of countries who consider the United States to be the ' enemy of freedom'

So because Russia is the 'enemy of freedom' if they did in Mexico what we have done in Ukraine it wouldn't be ok.

However it's totally fine for the US to meddle in Ukraine's elections , train troops on Ukrainian soil and constantly pressure Ukraine to join NATO with the alliances tacit approve to place nuclear weapons.

Yep, a totally false equivalency. Who could possible doubt it ?

Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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KaiBear said:

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Redbrickbear said:

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Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

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Ha, yeah…they'd save a lot of lives and get nothing but a more secure border in return. Hard to see any benefit from that.

---

Guess you don't consider the freedom and wishes of 40 million people a benefit.

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How much benefit is involved to the tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians; killed fighting the U.S. proxy war ?

ATL Bear said:

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KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

---

What if I told you Russia did and does interfere in Mexican elections...

---

Well if they are..they are doing a crap job.

The Mexican economy is increasingly integrated into the USA economy and most of it poor peasant population has been exported across the border.

As far as the cartels go… I don't think they need to get their guns from Putin. They are running a business making in excess of $6 billion a year.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-09-21/how-many-people-work-for-the-mexican-drug-cartels#:~:text=Estimates%20of%20annual%20profits%20start,fuel%20theft%20and%20migrant%20smuggling.


And while Mexico might not be in our military alliance yet….most of the rest of the nations in Latin America are

KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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KaiBear said:

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Frank Galvin said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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whiterock said:

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Sam Lowry said:

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Quote:

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again, you are just defining away Russia as a non-threat, instead of looking at current realities, history, geo-politics, etc.....

And Russian actions in Ukraine was the galvanizing force. Nato is supporting Ukraine, too, as well as starting to rebuild their armies....because they see exactly what you ignore = Russian expansionism is a current threat…

And yes, Russian expansionism against Nato is every bit as great a threat as what is happening on the Southern border. .

---

Is Russia so weak that it can be defeated by Ukraine or is it so strong it could start and win a direct confrontation with NATO? It can’t be both at once. https://t.co/8JXGZSVVIT

— James Kirkpatrick (@VDAREJamesK) December 30, 2023

---

if you had no strawman, you'd have no argument at all.

Russia does not have to invade a Nato nation to destablize it. Slovakia already has a pro-Russian PM (head of a small party leading a coalition govt.

---

Oh gotta democracy is destabilizing huh?


You really do sound like you work for some DC neo-con
/liberal interventionist outfit.

Democracy is bad in other countries when it comes to conclusions DC does not like

If the Slovaks want to be a good terms with Russia it's not actually "destabilizing" anymore than if a party gets elected that follows an opposite policy


Your arguments basically boils down to "Russia exists so it's a threat"

---

again, you revert to genetic fallacy rather than deal with facts and geo-political realities.

And those facts are = Nato exists. Voluntarily. Not one nation was forced to join. Not one nation has even been forced to make their pledged annual contribution. But all member nations, including the USA, have agreed to common defense, to include nuclear exchange, should the alliance be attacked. So rising threats to the Nato alliance are relevant. (a point you studiously avoid).

It is true that invasion of Nato by Russia appears neither likely nor imminent at this time, given the limits of Russian abilities on their best day, degraded over time by years of war. But Russia has miscalculated in Ukraine. Badly. How can we blithely assume they would not do so at some point in the future re Nato? (we can't.)

And invasion is not the only threat. I've laid it out many, many times for you. The pendulum swings in democracy. Political coalitions rise and fall. Right now, pro-EU forces are ascendant all across Europe. At some point, forces more favorable to Russia will win an election. The template is partially formed in Slovakia, although barely so (but it does show I'm not contriving unrealities). The proximity of Russian armies to those dynamics is a VERY material factor (yet another one you ignore). Nothing would strengthen pro-Russian dynamics in a European democracy more than a Russian army just across the border. Such would cause pro-EU forces to equivocate, to hedge bets. And it would cause pro-Russia forces to be more confident, aggressive. The scales of influence over time would time more toward Russia...... Just basic geopolitics 101. Gunboat diplomacy has a wiki page, ya know.....

How does Russian victory in Ukraine benefit the USA?
How does Russian victory in Ukraine lead to more rather than less stability?
(i could go on for a while with pertinent questions like that. and the answer for all of them is "it doesn't.")

You have no geopolitical policy at all except to do nothing, particularly where Russia is concerned. yours is the worldview that disengages to let forces find their own equilibrium, sleeps like a baby for a decade or so, then wakes up one morning to news videos of an general in an Eastern Europe Nato member announcing (while flanked by known, plain-clothed Russian military advisors) that he is now the head of state, after weeks of tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful efforts by various parties to put together a shaky ruling coalition. ("shaky coalitions" are a problem - if do you not think domestic politics in Israel affected the timing of the Hamas decision to launch an attack, you are not thinking clearly). you look down at your desk and see frantic traffic from Foggy Bottom saying that other Nato states area all reporting that their liaison officers in that country have been restricted to house arrest, pending investigations of corruption. And now, your fear is.....will those Russian armies in Ukraine (or Belarus) be invited across the border to help stabilize the new government? And at that moment we will not be able to drive a sixteen-penny nail up your ass with a sledgehammer.

Dude, that is exactly how the next world war is GOING to start. Only questions are when, and WHERE. At this moment in time, we have a lot more influence right now over "where" than we do "when." That question is being argued as we speak on the Black Sea coast east of the Dnieper River. Our policy should be to keep those Russian armies in Russia, and if they step across borders, support anyone who will oppose them. IT is a very limited and cheap policy, even if lightweights refuse to understand it.

---

Speaking of straw men. Acknowledging a Russian sphere of influence is not "disengagement." It was an integral part of our policy until the unprecedented overreach of the last couple of decades.

---

There is a consistent theme in your arguments: "Often wrong, never in doubt."

"Sphere of influence" is a thing. But it's not "sphere of influence" when you invade it to subsume it into your state. In such a case, your "sphere of influence" doesn't just go away. It moves further out. It moves into the "sphere of influence" of others. (note your argument is premised on that concept....) And when you try to move your sphere of influence into that of others.......conflict occurs. The conflict in Ukraine is an effort to keep the Russian sphere of influence from becoming the eastern tier of Nato states.

In Political Geography, "spheres of influence" are called "shatter zones." The term itself belies the reality that spheres of influence always overlap. Where they overlap, they conflict. The goal is to keep that conflict political, economic...to seek influence rather than control, as control inherently invites military action. And if military action occurs, the goal is to keep it between proxies. That conflict over time ebbs & flows. If a major power miscalculates, it can expect to see its position in the shatter zone deteriorate, sometimes temporarily, sometimes not.

Nato would have been quite happy to have let Ukraine continue to be Ukraine, a corrupt buffer state between Nato and Russia. But Russia wasn't happy with that. So Russia invaded. And here we are. The appropriate response for Nato is not to say "oh, well. Russia deserves Ukraine. Let 'em have it. Russian armies moving 600mi closer to our capitals will have no impact on our security whatsoever..." because that is a quaintly Pollyanna take on geo-politics.

The fatal flaw in your analysis is stasis = it presumes that Russia is entitled to the sphere of influence it had in 1990. It further assumes a number of things downstream from that - that the events of 1991 are irrelevant, that Nato has a duty to stand back and let Russia reconstitute its former glory, that the states within the shatter zone have no agency in the course of affairs.

Only a Russian nationalist could reasonably expect such to be so. It's just not the way things work....have ever worked or will ever work. The Russian sphere of influence in 1990 was a historic maximum. It was also unsustainable. Patently, as history has demonstrated = Russia had a cataclysmic collapse in 1991. The state itself dissolved and got smaller. That by definition changed the location of the shatterzone. In central Asia, Turkey and Iran and China moved in to contest Russian influence, which is partly or wholly gone, depending on the state in question. Similarly, it's position in eastern Europe also collapsed. The shatterzone moved eastward several hundred miles, to Belarus and Ukraine. Russia was not content with a 600mi buffer between itself and Nato. So it invaded. That was an incredibly foolish thing to do. They are going to pay dearly for it. As they should. If they want their former glory back, they are going to have to earn it.

"Delusions of grandeur"
"Champaign taste on a beer budget"
"Biting off more than one can chew"
"Appetite exceeding arsehole"
Just a few of the ways to describe Russian nationalism.
At some point, they have to reminded that they have a lot of growing up to do.
Same is true for your foreign policy analysis, btw....

---

Your analysis begins with a patent falsehood and goes downhill from there. If we'd been content with Ukraine as a buffer state, we never would have tried to bring them into NATO.

Of course moving the line 600 miles to the west is dangerous. This is too obvious to mention. Yet with all your efforts, you cannot begin to fathom that moving it 600 miles to the east might be just as dangerous.

---

LOL the projection. Your first statement is a patent falsehood. At the time Putin invaded, there was neither an offer nor an application for Nato membership, or Nato partner status.

Seriously, dude. Get help.

---

LOL...you know perfectly well that doesn't disprove my point. Bringing Ukraine into NATO has been our stated objective since the George W. Bush administration. You've endorsed it several times yourself. It's laughably dishonest to suggest otherwise.

---

Geez, you can't get anything right. I have not endorsed it at all. I have expressed serious reservations about it, for the same exact reasons I want to keep Russia away from the current eastern flank of Nato - political instability in a NATO country bordering Russia is the scenario most likely to cause a war between Nato and Russia.

"Stated objective" is also a patent misrepresentation. Engaging in dialogue about the possibly of admitting a nation to NATO is not in any way an inevitable plan for membership. Entertaining vigorous debate in a free society on the wisdom of admitting (or not) a nation to NATO is not an irrevocable plan. Rather, you are imputing an irrational conclusion on this question because your argument requires such as its premise.

Your take on this also implies that you view free speech as a threat, just like Vlad.

---

You're obscuring the point with semantics. You said we were happy to let Ukraine continue as it was, a buffer state between NATO and Russia. That's just a plain lie, and we both know it.

Speech is only a threat when you use it to, you know, threaten. We knew bringing Ukraine into NATO was a threat to Russia. We just didn't think they could do anything about it. As is usually the case with our post-Cold War policy, we were wrong.

---

Why is NATO membership for Ukraine a threat to Russia? Are we going to attack Russia?

I understand the historic reasons Russia wants as much buffer as possible between it and Germany/France and their allies. But Russia's post WWII conduct makes clear that the real threat to the world is Russia, not NATO.

---

( sigh )

One last time.

Pretend Russia intervened in Mexican elections and had manipulated the results from which the government was now super friendly with Russia instead of the U.S.

And Mexico then permitted Russian Army bases to be built within its borders.

Then Russia began pressuring Mexico to join into a formal military alliance with the option of placing nuclear weapons targeted at the US on Mexican soil.

Really think the US would be ok with it ?

---

Of course not. Because Russia has proven time and again it is the enemy of freedom. Our history is nowhere near clean, but generally we are against people living under the boot of dictators. Complete and total false equivalency.

---

Suspect you would be shocked at the number of countries who consider the United States to be the ' enemy of freedom'

So because Russia is the 'enemy of freedom' if they did in Mexico what we have done in Ukraine it wouldn't be ok.

However it's totally fine for the US to meddle in Ukraine's elections , train troops on Ukrainian soil and constantly pressure Ukraine to join NATO with the alliances tacit approve to place nuclear weapons.

Yep, a totally false equivalency. Who could possible doubt it ?

---

To make it an apples to apples we would then have to invade Mexico, twice.

Frank Galvin said:

---

Sam Lowry said:

---

Frank Galvin said:

---

KaiBear said:

---

Redbrickbear said:

---

Chuck Schumer confirms that Democrats refuse to secure the border unless we agree to a $60 billion shakedown for Ukraine:

"There were a couple of people in the room that said let's do border first. We said we have to do both together."

These people disgust me. pic.twitter.com/RsRyt6m5ml

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 18, 2024

---

Disgusting

But Dem partisans can't / won't comprehend the consequences of the actions of their 'team'.

---

They understand exactly what would happen if they reached a border agreement without agreement on Ukraine.

---

Ha, yeah…they'd save a lot of lives and get nothing but a more secure border in return. Hard to see any benefit from that.

---

Guess you don't consider the freedom and wishes of 40 million people a benefit.

---

A good number of that 40 million does not even consider itself ethnic Ukrainian….and many in Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk have been fighting for almost a decade to be free of Kyiv