Why are we rushing to defend Ukraine? [merged threads]

[Dashinka 23,251]

9 hours ago, millefleur said:

There's been a lot of changes since we last updated this thread. It seems nothing much is going to change unless the US funding goes through. Not that it would lead to huge change either, but I guess it being stalled has really soured the mood.

 

NATO boots on the ground seems fantastical. Apparently Europe is struggling to attract new recruits as well.

Even if the funding does go through I really doubt there will be any changes.  For some reason the political elite in DC think this is a replay of Charlie Wilson's War, but it is way different, and at some point given all the manpower losses in Ukraine, Zelenskyy will be requesting troops.  Not sure where they are going to come from, but one thing is for certain, ever since the DC establishment regained control of the WH through Old Corrupt Joe, the world has deteriorated quite drastically.

[millefleur 5,037]

Supposedly a new round of sanctions is about to drop. Not sure what else they can throw at it that they haven't already. 

 

 

[TBoneTX 43,061]

8 minutes ago, millefleur said:

Not sure what else they can throw at it that they haven't already. 

Good effort after bad?

[Pooky 3,348]

17 hours ago, millefleur said:

Supposedly a new round of sanctions is about to drop. Not sure what else they can throw at it that they haven't already. 

 

 

Kill the oil price cap and enforce sanctions on the movement of Russian oil. This administration is tacitly allowing Russia to fund its war by not doing so.

 

Again, it’s Ol’ Joe not wanting to see an oil price spike in an election year, and the Russians are gleefully exploiting that weakness.

[Dashinka 23,251]

Interesting article and analysis.

 

America has no Ukraine Plan B except more war

 

https://asiatimes.com/2024/03/america-has-no-ukraine-plan-b-except-more-war/ 

[Boiler 43,451]

That article is a bit of a joke the truth lies somewhere else, to suggest Ukraine would give up a big chunk of its territory pending the next time is silly.

 Never works.

 

There is no obvious Plan B.

[Dashinka 23,251]

3 hours ago, Boiler said:

That article is a bit of a joke the truth lies somewhere else, to suggest Ukraine would give up a big chunk of its territory pending the next time is silly.

 Never works.

 

There is no obvious Plan B.

Why not, everyone sat back an allowed Russia to take Crimea, and most of the East region in 2014.  Ukraine cannot sustain a stalemate of attrition.  Sure we can send weapons, but Ukraine needs soldiers to use them, and as the war drags on, people lose their desire to die for some leaders.

[TBoneTX 43,061]

To this day, no one has explained how Ukraine's strategic importance warrants such U.S. attention to it.

[Dashinka 23,251]

Saw this, and it brought back memories of all the Clinton wag-the-dog antics.  Sure it is RT, but it is hard to argue how Kosovo turned out after the nation building from the West.  It also begs the question as to if Yugoslavia was fine to break up and re-draw political boundaries along sectarian lines, why is Ukraine now different.

 

Ruins of Yugoslavia: How Russia learned that NATO poses a threat

 

Unsurprisingly, problems in the region did not end with the expulsion of the Serbs. To this day, Kosovo is a poor country with major corruption issues. The US took an active part in the reconstruction of Kosovo, but the region was mostly used by businessmen and officials for personal enrichment. Many of them have profited from murky schemes, including former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who owned a share of the only private mobile network operator in the region, and later tried to grab a piece of a state-owned company. Coincidentally, Albright’s daughter is the executive director of a corporation that distributes development grants to poor countries (including Kosovo). In Kosovo, there are 800,000 migrant workers per 1,800,000 inhabitants. Moreover, the republic has turned into a stronghold of the Albanian mafia. Even the Western press was forced to admit the failed state-building attempt in Kosovo.

 

A few years after the events of 1999, Montenegro peacefully broke away from Yugoslavia, and the latter ceased to exist. President Slobodan Milosevic was overthrown in 2000 as a result of unrest in Belgrade and was secretly extradited to the international criminal tribunal in the Hague. In 2006, before the trial’s conclusion, he died age 64 in the UN prison there and immediately suspicions were raised, which have persisted, over how he died.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/594825-ruins-of-yugoslavia-25/

[millefleur 5,037]

22 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

To this day, no one has explained how Ukraine's strategic importance warrants such U.S. attention to it.

By contrast, Haiti appears to be of zero importance to the US, so my guess is natural resources/geographic position.

 

I always assumed it was about Crimea specifically and naval dominance in the Black Sea. Also the natural resources embedded under that sea, along with Ukraine's other resources which are not too shabby either. Although now much of the chernozem ("black soil") has been mined and is littered with decaying military equipment and dead soldiers, so this one might be rendered useless for a good long while.  

[Dashinka 23,251]

Seems most appropriate here.  Yes, it does seem to have been a mistake for Clinton and others that followed to expand NATO.

 

At 75, Has NATO Outlived Its Use?

 

 

One group of objectors was led by the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1997, the estimable Susan Eisenhower published an open letter in an effort to persuade Clinton to reconsider his chosen course. Calling NATO expansion a “policy error of historic proportions,” the letter’s 50 signatories, including longtime hawks Paul Nitze and Richard Pipes, the prominent Democratic Senators Bill Bradley and Sam Nunn, and intellectuals like David Calleo and Owen Harries, warned that, 

 

In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.

 

Today, NATO’s defenders will no doubt ask: Surely after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO is needed more than ever to keep Europe safe from the Russian bear? 

Not really. 

 

First, as the distinguished political scientist John Mearsheimer and others have tirelessly pointed out, there is scant evidence that Putin wants all of Ukraine, much less more real estate in Eastern Europe. Do we really suppose Russia wants to take on the burden of supporting three-quarters of a million Polish pensioners? Or waste more blood and treasure in what most certainly would be fierce guerrilla resistance in Galicia? The fact is that Russia lacks both the means and the will to establish political, economic, and territorial hegemony on the continent. Arguments to the contrary are, to be polite about it, based on a misunderstanding of Russian national security aims. The French political philosopher Emmanuel Todd (less polite) believes that the idea that Russia has Europe in its sights is the stuff of “fantasy and propaganda.”

 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/at-75-has-nato-outlived-its-use/

[Dashinka 23,251]

Interesting take.

 

If Europe Pushes Putin, America Should Tap Out

 

Even the United Kingdom, with Europe’s best military, is not ready for war with Russia. London is shrinking its army as it trims plans to increase military outlays. Sky News’ Deborah Haynes observed that “the armed forces would run out of ammunition ‘in a few days’ if called upon to fight”; “the UK lacks the ability to defend its skies against the level of missile and drone strikes that Ukraine is enduring”; and “it would take five to 10 years for the army to be able to field a war-fighting division of some 25,000 to 30,000 troops backed by tanks, artillery and helicopters.”

 

Only slightly less reckless than entering the war are proposals to bring Ukraine into NATO—which most members have continued to reject despite the 2008 Bucharest declaration endorsing the inclusion of Kiev and Tbilisi. Indeed no one in NATO wanted to defend either country, so members lied for the next 14 years about their willingness to invite the two governments to join. Alas, having previously been misled about NATO expansion, Moscow took the prospect seriously, which ultimately animated Vladimir Putin’s invasion decision. Even then the alliance wasn’t prepared for nuclear war over Ukraine and stayed out. Nor are most members prepared for such a conflict today, despite the increasing attempt by Eastern Europeans to drag America into the war. 

 

That makes it even more important for the allies to step back from the abyss. Washington long ago recognized that Ukraine matters little for America’s defense. Kiev spent most of US history as part of the Russian empire in one form or another. Washington never considered going to war over who ruled Kiev. It should not do so now.

 

The Biden administration should make very clear that if European meddling in Ukraine leads to war, America’s allies are on their own, NATO notwithstanding. There is no alliance obligation to rescue those joining someone else’s fight. Washington also should forthrightly reject Kiev’s NATO aspirations. No one has a right to join. Alliances are supposed to increase security. Accepting a country at war with Russia would yield conflict not peace.

 

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/if-europe-pushes-putin-america-should-tap-out/