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See Afghanistan. We’re evacuating all Americans and leaving our embassy in the Ukraine as I type. It will be an unmitigated disaster for Ukraine and eventually for Europe.
What’s next, Taiwan? China will be making moves there or in the South China Sea after the Games.
Our allies and enemies may not have liked Trump, or even Bush, but they didn’t pull the kind of crap they have with Biden and Obama. “Leadership from behind!”
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Biden is an unmitigated foreign policy disaster. But we knew this was coming.
From 2021: CBS’s “Face The Nation” host Margaret Brennan asked Gates if he stood by a statement from his memoir that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Gates stood by that statement.
By drafting Obama’s B-team, he’s set the world back on fire. We’re about to make another deal with Iran… after they now have enough nuclear material for a bomb (not material useful for generating electricity). The early concessions to Russia (and knee-capping our own energy independence) is what lead to the current Ukraine situation. Also, deep state / Col. Vindman? How are you enjoying the fruits of impeachment? Giving China a free pass for COVID / Hong Kong has emboldened them across the globe. Our first meeting with the Chinese was a disaster because Anthony Blinken steps in it every chance he gets. Jake Sullivan? How is he qualified (other than being part of the origin and sale of Russian collusion)? The Palestinians are now getting terrorism bounty money again, ISIS is back in Syria (and has doubled its ranks in Afghanistan… so much for the Taliban being our allies against ISIS-K), and the Houthi rebels are shelling the UAE. Even North Korea is testing missiles again. Our relationship with Central and South America is terrible.
So what do you expect will happen in Ukraine? The eastern half of the country will be Russian, possibly enough to create a land corridor to the Crimea (remember the Crimea?). We’ll see what Putin’s end game really is, and whether he sees himself as the next Stalin. After all, it was Stalin who emptied out half of Ukraine during the Holodomor so Russians could settle there, setting up the situation now.
Oh, and the idiots running Germany, who got rid of their nuclear plants, creating an energy crisis, realize they will be energy dependent on Russia. If we lose Germany as an ally (their economic ties to the US are fading as our manufacturing economy fades), what’s the point of NATO?
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My 3 Cents. (Inflation)
Assuming he makes a move, Putin will get whatever he sets out to get. Somehow the US taxpayer will find themselves paying for Ukrainian relief $$$. We will put more troops in Europe to keep the peace $$$. Germany gets what they want….Russian energy and continued US protection $$$. China wants dollar to continue to emplode because they own our debt and a lot of our companies$$$. China may make a move on Taiwan. US equity and bond markets in major turmoil.
We may get to DEFCON 3 (e.g. Sep 11) and it would be a good excuse to lock down the country and scare the crap out of everyone through the end of the year. I doubt we get anywhere near the cocked pistol phase. Just theater. Biden gets a blip up in the polls. Germany and Russia big winners$$$. The soulless creatures in Washington get what they want. Bigger military $$$$. It’s always about Big Green$$$.
Possible winners and losers final scores.
Putin 1 – Biden zero
Putin 1 – Ukraine zero
Germany 1 – US zero
China 1 – US and Big Green zero
NATO 1 – US taxpayer zero
US Military industrial complex 1 – US taxpayer zero
Mendacious RINOs and DINOs 1 – Inert Insipid Mealymouthed Republicans zero
Wild card, good time to throw a new Covid variant into the mix just to make everyone a lot crazier. Score a Plus 1 for Fauci.
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[quote quote=5765]How is this possible? We have a huge talent pool of very bright people in this country. And, yet, we have two WEAK, low IQ idiots in the White House at a critical time in our history. And when I say idiots I mean exactly that. They have NO clue.[/quote]
Good point. There is an amazing array of idiots across the leadership landscape in the western world. The problem is that people have been slow to acknowledge the nightmare that now surrounds them. Except for truckers.
I look at these Ivy League types in Washington and on TV telling us how to think. I don’t see much genius. What I do see are liars. No conscience. No courage. No moral compass. The military is now infected. I wouldn’t hire one to mow my lawn.
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How do you think “idiots” obtain strategic objectives? Predicting a scorecard?
This seems like a long term game with long term initiatives by our competitors while we play domestic politics. So what does a “win” for Russia look like? I saw this conclusion in an article and it made sense to me:
”The one thing I’m fairly sure of, however, is that if Putin concludes some large military exercises inside of his own borders this week and then just sends his troops back to their permanent home bases, Joe Biden and our intelligence agencies are going to come off looking like a bunch of paranoid idiots.”
What does this do to our “leadership” after Afghanistan? And Putin now has video/audio from a one hour exchange with Biden. That’s got to be a hoot. More useful than the supposed Trump piss sessions or the Ukraine phone call that drove impeachment? Our fool actually took himself seriously. Can you believe that?
Just as Reagan waited 35 years to exploit the inevitable consequences of USSR economic weakness, Putin has time to chip away at the foundation. He doesn’t need final victory. Instead an incremental step. Feed the DC idiots. Watch Joe crow about the power of his diplomacy…until the release of the tape.
Here's a toast with one last pour, may it last forever and a minute more;
Good fortune seems to you have sung, to live and love way past long -
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I was mostly just curious about expectations rather than a long thread full of political diatribes blaming the Democrats. Thank you Neodymium60 for a thoughtful answer.
As for the rest of this thread, I agree the situation has been mishandled by Democrats, but the roots of this arguably go back to the Bush administration and NATO expansion efforts over the objections of Russia and NATO allies. The Trump administration also heavily armed Ukraine with anti tank and other lethal weapons. It was a point of pride on this board that Trump had been arming Ukraine more than Obama ever did.
Of course, this has all been seen as a major threat to Russia by Putin. I’m not going to absolve Biden or the Democrats — much less Putin for that matter. As with all things, the history is more complicated. But from this board you’d think Republicans had nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine or any other foreign policy problems.
NO MALARKEY
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[quote quote=5770]I was mostly just curious about expectations rather than a long thread full of political diatribes blaming the Democrats.[/quote]
Your usual narrative in an effort to position yourself as the big picture guy, the smartest guy in the room. You don’t have to convince us.
There is a fundamental discontinuity in our economic policy and military/defense policy that is now complicated by climate change policy. The discontinuity isn’t partisan. It’s a fundamental incoherence over the last thirty years, made worse by our broken politics. Our attention span is what, 12 months now? Hell, it didn’t take eight months till the narratives focused on the midterms? Biden can’t be positioned to “win” no matter what he does. So we end up with a wag the dog foreign policy competing with a your “weak” narrative competing for the news cycle. Both are entirely inappropriate.
So why would Putin look for the knockout when we’re totally ineffective. Xi is right. Our political institutions are not up to the challenge. Musk is right. Fiscal irresponsibility, the holy grail of both parties is unilateral surrender.
And oil is now $94/ bbl?
Here's a toast with one last pour, may it last forever and a minute more;
Good fortune seems to you have sung, to live and love way past long -
I actually came here looking for some insight, thinking a few of you might give some thoughtful responses without turning it into political axe grinding. My initial question was very nonpolitical and I thought it therefore might garner some dispassionate responses to a very serious issue. Naïve of me, I suppose.
In the meantime, I did come across a well thought-out prediction (the kind I was inquiring about in my initial post above) on another site. In case anyone’s interested, I’ll paste it here:
All available evidence is, they’re on the verge of a pincer movement: push south on Kyiv out of Belarus, push north on Dnipro out of Crimea, meet in the middle around Cherkasy. Then, fortify the fuck out of the line of the Dnieper, and double-dare NATO to counter-attack while they surround and capture the remaining eastern half of Ukraine. Then, you let China “broker” a “peace” of a divided Ukraine, where a western rump state centered on Lviv is free to join Europe and the eastern half is absorbed by Russia.
Tactically, it has a lot going for it. It’s limited in scope, well within their capabilities, doesn’t leave exposed flanks or potentially over-extend, and operates within natural frontiers. It’s basically recreating a cauldron battle.
Strategically, it has a lot going for it too. NATO will help defend western Ukraine, but they can’t risk going east because it puts them on Russia’s doorstep. If you’re Russia, and you figure it’s when not if Ukraine joins NATO and the EU, and once they do it’s too risky to attack, now is the perfect time. You secure your frontier, you gain a major breadbasket and series of ports, and you get to look strong to your public.
But on a grand strategic level, it seems a bit insane. Even leaving aside the possible risk of nuclear war, it doesn’t make much sense. Russia’s economy is only about the size of Texas’s, and the whole of Ukraine’s economy is only about the size of a small state like Nebraska, or a mid-size city like Washington, DC. They’ll become an instant pariah, and be sanctioned to the eyeballs, in return for…half of DC? With a population that mostly hates them, and will never accept it? And to stay economically viable, they’ll have to essentially become a Chinese vassal? It seems a bit of a steep price to me.
I can only assume this is mostly about internal Russian politics. Ukraine is no threat to invade, and a NATO member Ukraine is no more dangerous than a NATO member Estonia. This appears to be betting that the long term economic hit won’t surpass the short term gains, ie what happened in Georgia and Crimea.
[Putin] needs a small winnable conventional war. A fast grab entirely behind a major river frontier, against a small country alone, 300 miles from Moscow fits that. Grabbing all of Ukraine does not. In fact, even if things went well and he got all of Ukraine anyway, he’d surely give part of it back, or set it all up under a puppet.
NO MALARKEY
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This is a manufactured crisis. Neither Putin nor the Ukraine wanted war. Europe’s newfound dependence on Russia for energy has given Putin leverage. Europe is exposed and they did it to themselves. Shuttering nuclear plants and setting aside coal. Don’t blame Putin. Blame the western press. Blame NATO countries who are so worried they don’t even care to defend themselves.
Ukraine may be falling into the category of “what if there was a war and no one showed up?”
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I, for one, will take BTD’s word that the thread is in the spirit of this board. I will disagree that the roots go only back to the Bush administration. The roots go back to the Russian foundational legend (the Kievan Rus), and the post-Mongol division of the area between the Polish-Lithuanians and what became the Russians. The Russians have always wanted warm water ports (hence Kaliningrad), and the Crimea was the first step to re-establishing the Russian navy’s ability to project power in the Mediterranean year round.
Nevermind that Russia will be one of the primary beneficiaries of global warming, because it will open up their northern lands to a potential “Arctic Silk Road.”
Many of the currently existing environmental disasters are in Russia (nuclear accident sites, Lake Baikal, etc.). So to h— with the environment, Russia is going to Russian.
I DO foresee a Chamberlain-like result with no war, but concessions wrung out of nothing. Putin doesn’t really want a shooting war, and the Ukrainians are crazy enough to bog them down. That being said, one of the craziest things to come out of this was Biden’s apparent offer to let the Russians inspect NATO bases in Romania and Poland for cruise missiles. His instincts re: foreign policy and military matters are so bad.
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