Sophomoric error in reasoning.Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:What doesn't suck is the countries that successfully leave the Russian sphere of influence who improve drastically, including reducing corruption. Ukraine kept trying, but Russia kept pulling them back. They suck because of Russia's invisible hand.Redbrickbear said:ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:The most cited index, Transparency International, rates corruption on a scale of 0 to 100, with 0 being the least corrupt and 100 the most corrupt. Ukraine's all-time low score was 15 under Kuchma in 2000. It reached an all-time high of 36 last year.ATL Bear said:Putin has been scuttling the deal since Kuchma.Sam Lowry said:Much of that information is dubious at best, but it doesn't really matter. Your claim is belied by one simple fact -- Ukraine is vastly more corrupt since it cut ties with Russia and the new, pro-Western government took control.ATL Bear said:No, they weren't. They helped the Kuchma regime execute journalists digging into corruption and back room deals with Russia, thwarted EU deals using natural gas disputes including a debt trap in the middle of winter, tried to assassinate Viktor Yushenko, gave Yanukovych the goods on Yulia Tymoshenko so he could imprison his political opponent, and stole assets in Eastern Ukraine without redress. And that's not even the juiciest stuff they did to give Putin's siloviki control of industrial assets or the subversion that led to troops in Crimea, the Donbas and that war.Sam Lowry said:I brought up the Budapest Memorandum because Whiterock said that Russia had never promised to respect Ukraine's territory. You would have to ask him why he made such a bizarre claim. Russia promised to and did respect Ukraine's territory for over 20 years until Ukraine's government was overthrown.ATL Bear said:How can you bring up the Budapest Memorandum and ignore everything Russia did for a decade prior to EuroMaiden? They were NEVER going to let Ukraine align West. Their invasion was the culmination of almost 30 years of trying to hold Ukraine hostage to their influence.Sam Lowry said:Obviously Russia has promised to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine. That's what the Budapest Memorandum was all about.whiterock said:If one is convinced Ukraine could never under any circumstances defeat Russia (a centerpiece of the isolationist argument against support for Ukraine), how could one simultaneously make the case that Ukraine was a "gun pointed at Russia?"Sam Lowry said:Ukraine was already a gun pointed at Russia. Maybe the trigger hadn't been pulled, but we'd made our intentions clear.whiterock said:Strawman all day, every day, fortified with recto-cranial inversion.Sam Lowry said:And in Whiterock's world:whiterock said:Words, not armies, start wars.Bear8084 said:Sam Lowry said:
This is exactly the point -- we're not just trying to deny Russia control of Ukraine. We are trying to control it.
NATO's defeat will be bad for the US in many ways, but at least it will dispel this miasma of lies that the West has generated around Ukraine. For that we can all be grateful.
It's always Nato's fault when Russia acts badly.
A Ukrainian defeat is bad, but Ukrainian surrender to Russia without a fight is good.
Ukraine defending itself is destabilizing; Russia invading and destroying Ukraine block by block is good.
Europe is safer when Russian armies are stationed in Lviv rather than Rostov.
Europe is safer when Russian navies are stationed in Sebastopol rather than Novorossiysk.
NATO is in mortal jeopardy without a Ukrainian buffer zone.
Therefore NATO must eliminate the buffer zone by absorbing Ukraine.
Nato is not in mortal jeopardy over Russian control of Ukraine; Nato is in greater jeopardy than it would be with an independent Ukraine. No sensible power would stand by and let that happen without a response. The response Nato has taken has been overly cautious.
Nato did not invade Ukraine to absorb it.
Nato did not invite Ukraine to join before Russia invaded.
Ukraine had not even applied for membership before Russia invaded.
Ukraine does not have the votes to join Nato.
because Ukraine does not qualify for membership in Nato = territorial disputes.
Russia knows this. All it has to do is hold on to Donbas and Ukraine cannot join Nato (unless Ukraine gives up its claims to the region).
Russian invasion of Ukraine eliminated a buffer zone which was in no danger of being eliminated from the West.
Russia caused this crisis, not Nato......
You're right about one thing, though. No sensible power would have stood by and let it happen.
Nato refusal to promise not to admit Ukraine is not "a gun pointed at Russia." Ukraine joining the EU was not a gun pointed at Russia. Generally speaking, it's sound policy to publicly take options off the table in foreign relations. Make everyone account for every potentiality. But in this specific case, Ukraine, Russian seizure of Crimea checkmated Nato membership for Ukraine, as it was a fairly obvious case of territorial dispute ergo a bar to Ukrainian membership. Ukraine would never have had the votes to enter. Probably still doesn't. Russia knows that full well.
Notably, Russia has never promised not to "admit" Ukraine back into Russian alliance or polity, nor to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in any way. Quite the opposite on the latter.
No sensible power will stand by and allow its primary adversary to advance armies 500mi into the buffer zone without taking some kind of action.
The answer to your question is in your last paragraph. No sensible power will stand by and allow its primary adversary (in this case the United States) to advance armies 500 miles into the buffer zone without taking some kind of action. It was the United States that was determined to undo Ukraine's policy of neutrality. We hand-picked their government officials and indoctrinated them with anti-Russian propaganda. We reserved the right to place nuclear-capable missiles there. We built and trained an army to serve our purposes there, including regime change in Russia. The push for NATO membership was certainly a sign of our intentions, but the threat was growing steadily with or without that formality.
Ukraine was never going to be allowed to "align" West in the way that you understand alignment. That is to say, they were never going to be allowed to join NATO or form any de facto military alliance with the West. This should come as no surprise since all parties agreed to it when Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union. In terms of economic alignment, Putin and Yanukovych supported Ukraine's developing ties with both Russia and the West. The EU took an either/or position and refused to negotiate any further.
The hardline the EU took was on corruption because everyone knew what was going on, and is why the Russians couldn't let it go. Putin doesn't have a Billion dollar compound on the Black Sea just a couple hundred miles from Crimea because he got a raise in his government salary.
Yanukovych didn't delay the EU deal because Putin has a mansion on the Black Sea. He delayed it because it was a terrible deal, which not only Ukrainians but many sympathetic observers in the West found distasteful, and the EU was refusing to negotiate.
And you couldn't be more wrong about Ukraine's corruption. You need to check into the Yanukovych papers. I mean his former mansion is literally a museum and monument to his opulence and corruption.
If the EU took a hard line on corruption, they'd never give Ukraine the time of day.
BTW, Russia has consistently scored lower than Ukraine the past decade. They're in the 20's lately. And again lower is bad, higher is good.
And no one has ever said Russia was anything more than a very corrupt country ruled by an oligarchy in Moscow (with a lost of rusting out ex-Soviet cities that make Detroit look like Miami)
Still does no good to compared Ukraine to Russia
It's like comparing one crappy corrupt African nation riddled with aids to another slightly less corrupt slightly less aids infected African nation
They all suck
Maybe
Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and others still seem plenty corrupt long after leaving the Russian orbit
Either way…its not woth expensive and bloody proxy wars to try and reform poor Eastern European counties that offer little to the citizens of the United States
Cash is great leverage for control. The best. All you have to do is write the check and you get more desirable behavior. So in that sense, a corrupt society is a more malleable one.
Rule book for agent motivation was that the ones driven by avarice were far more reliable than the ones driven by principle. The ones driven by greed were predictable. You might not be able to fully control them, but you always knew what motivated them most and could keep them headed in the right direction. They didn't care whether or not they agreed with you. As long as you handed them their monthly stipend, they would mostly do as they were told, deviances from agenda more a function of ability or competence. The ones driven by principle are the ones who would change their minds on a whim, decide that USA was a bigger threat than USSR, disappear or go rogue, etc... They never wanted to think they were serving your agenda; they always thought YOU were serving their agenda....helping the USA would help them change their country. The moment they calculated some one else would help their country more....you had a problem on your hands.
So what if Zelensky has a penthouse in Zurich. Does he do what we want him to? Clearly, yes......
