Ukraine

[Tom Hunter]

in the spirit of pointing out the obvious, if someone with power really wanted to stop the war in Ukraine they would have Germany attack from the west and split the country in half with the Russians. Putin might even take that deal. It worked quickly in 1939 and brought two years of peace to what Timothy Snyder accurately calls the Blood Lands.

Sandtown, if you think this is a bad idea please explain why.

If you really want peace suggest a deal that Putin would take. I don't see one that is acceptable to me. But the one I suggested above would likely end the war.

[L.W. Baxter]

"Do you favor the United States pursuing diplomatic negotiations even if it means Ukraine making some compromises?"

Yes. On behalf of Ukraine, the USA forwards this offer to the Russian Federation: Here's a dollar, GFY

i'm in for a dime.

go the ukraine!

[Nicholas Carey]

Excellent essay from The Atlantic Monthly.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...nkrupt/671576/

If that's paywalled for you, try Apple News at

https://apple.news/ALxXBZ8UxQ9usrJ40PA9Ksg

How the Anti-war Camp Went Intellectually Bankrupt

Critics of U.S. foreign policy from both ends of the ideological spectrum have found common cause in supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

By James Kirchick

September 29, 2022

In 1942, answering a pacifist opponent of British involvement in the Second World War, George Orwell replied that “pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.” There have of course been many times in human history when opposition to war has been morally justified, intellectually coherent, and, in the end, vindicated. But the war to defeat fascism during the middle part of the past century was simply not one of them. “This is elementary common sense,” Orwell wrote at the time. “If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other.”

Eight decades later, as a fascistic Russian regime wages war against Ukraine, a motley collection of voices from across the political spectrum has called upon the United States and its allies to adopt neutrality as their position. Ranging from anti-imperialists on the left to isolationists on the right and more respectable “realists” in between, these critics are not pacifists in the strict sense of the term. Few if any oppose the use of force as a matter of principle. But nor are they neutral. It is not sufficient, they say, for the West to cut off its supply of defensive weaponry to Ukraine. It must also atone for “provoking” Russia to attack its smaller, peaceful, democratic neighbor, and work at finding a resolution that satisfies what Moscow calls its “legitimate security interests.” In this, today’s anti-war caucus is objectively pro-fascist.

To appreciate the bizarrely kaleidoscopic nature of this caucus, consider the career of a catchphrase. “Is Washington Fighting Russia Down to the Last Ukrainian?” asked the headline of a column self-published in March by Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman and presidential candidate. It was a strange question for Paul to be posing just three weeks into President Vladimir Putin’s unjustifiable and unforgivable invasion, especially considering the extraordinary lengths to which the Biden administration had gone to avoid “fighting Russia.”

Even stranger than Paul’s assertion that the U.S. was goading Ukrainians into sacrificing themselves on the altar of its Russophobic bloodlust, though, has been the proliferation of his specious talking point across the ideological spectrum.

Ten days after Paul accused his country of treating Ukrainians as cannon fodder, the retired American diplomat Chas Freeman repeated the quip. “We will fight to the last Ukrainian for Ukrainian independence,” Freeman declared sarcastically—even as he excused Russia’s “special military operation” as an understandable reaction to being “stiff-armed” by the West on the “28-year-old demands that NATO stop enlarging in the direction of Russia.” Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a senior fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute, made these remarks in an interview with The GrayZone, a self-described “independent news website dedicated to original investigative journalism and analysis on politics and empire.”

Although The GrayZone would characterize itself as an “anti-imperialist” news source, the opaquely financed publication is highly selective in the empires it chooses to scrutinize; it is difficult to find criticism of Russia or China—or any other American adversary—on its site. A more accurate descriptor of its ideological outlook is“campist,” denoting a segment of the sectarian far left that sees the world as divided into two camps: the imperialist West and the anti-imperialist rest.

Freeman, who served as Richard Nixon’s interpreter during his 1972 visit to China, seemed to feel at home in The GrayZone. In that Manichaean domain—one that lacks, naturally, any shades of gray—no anti-Western tyrant is too brutal for fawning adulation, and America is always to blame. A Republican foreign-policy hand in conversation with a fringe leftist website might seem like an odd pairing, but Freeman has a fondness for dictators.

In 2009, when Freeman was appointed to serve on the National Intelligence Council during the first year of the Obama administration, a series of leaked emails revealed a window into his worldview. Observing the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Freeman praised the Chinese Communist Party for its bloody crackdown on peaceful student demonstrators; his only criticism of its dispersal of this “mob scene” was that it had been “overly cautious” in displaying “ill-conceived restraint.” It is quite something to read a retired American diplomat criticizing the Chinese regime for being too soft during the Tiananmen massacre, but such views are not as aberrational as they sound. Within the school of foreign-policy “realism,” notions of morality are seen as quaint distractions from the real business of great-power politics.

In April, it was Noam Chomsky’s turn to recite the Pauline mantra in a podcast with the editor of Current Affairs, a leftist magazine. Going out of his way to praise Freeman as “one of the most astute and respected figures in current U.S. diplomatic circles,” the world’s most famous radical intellectual endorsed the crusty veteran of realist GOP administrations for characterizing American policy in Eastern Europe as “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

From Chomsky’s mouth to Putin’s ears.

“A great deal is being said about the United States’ intention to fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’—they say it there and they say it here,” the Russian president mused the following week, prefacing his mention of the gibe with his own version of that Trumpian rhetorical flourish, “A lot of people are saying.” That same month, an American Conservative article by Doug Bandow of the libertarian Cato Institute was headlined “Washington Will Fight Russia to the Last Ukrainian,” denying Ukrainians any agency in their own struggle by answering the question Paul had rhetorically asked.

Soon after, the dean of realist international-relations theorists, the University of Chicago scholar* John Mearsheimer, used the line as though he’d just thought of it. By then, the argument that America was “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian” had ping-ponged between both ends of the ideological spectrum an astonishing number of times. The point for the anti-imperialist left and the isolationist right, as well as the realist fellow travelers hitched to each side, was that blame for the conflict lies mainly with the U.S., which is using Ukraine as a proxy for its nefarious interventionism in Moscow’s backyard.

That the fringe left would blame America—which it views as the source of all capitalist exploitation, military aggression, and imperialist evil in the world—for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is predictable. It blames America for everything. When, two days after the Russian invasion began on February 24, the Democratic Socialists of America called upon “the US to withdraw from NATO and to end the imperialist expansionism that set the stage for this conflict,” mainstream Democrats condemned the statement. More significant has been the position taken by mainstream realists, who similarly fault the West for somehow “provoking” Russia into waging war on its neighbor. These politically disparate forces share more than a talking point. They also have a worldview in common.

Consider America’s leading realist think tank, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. This “transpartisan” group enjoyed great fanfare upon its founding, in 2019, with seed funding from the libertarian Charles Koch and the left-wing George Soros. After two decades of “forever wars,” here at last was an ideologically diverse assortment of reasonable, sober-minded experts committed to pursuing a “foreign policy of restraint.” But counseling inaction as a rapacious, revisionist dictatorship wages total war on its smaller, democratic neighbor had a whiff of appeasement for at least one of Quincy’s fellows, leading to a split within the organization.

“The institute is ignoring the dangers and the horrors of Russia’s invasion and occupation,” Joe Cirincione, a nuclear non-proliferation expert and one of the group’s leading left-of-center scholars, said upon his resignation this summer, adding that Quincy “focuses almost exclusively on criticism of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine. They excuse Russia’s military threats and actions because they believe that they have been provoked by U.S. policies.”

The moral myopia Cirincione identifies is an essential trait of the new online magazine Compact, where self-styled anti-woke Marxists and Catholic theocrats unite in their loathing of classical liberal values at home and their opposition to defending those values abroad. In an article titled “Fueling Zelensky’s War Hurts America,” the left-wing writer Batya Ungar-Sargon took issue with the U.S. supplying defensive weaponry to Kyiv, arguing that resources devoted to supporting Ukrainians would be better spent helping economically disadvantaged Americans.

[Continued at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...nkrupt/671576/ and https://apple.news/ALxXBZ8UxQ9usrJ40PA9Ksg]

[L.W. Baxter]

yep. pick a side.

[ERGR]

With the losses we currently see, it's Russia fighting Ukraine to the last Russian.
/Erik

[johnw]

In 1942, answering a pacifist opponent of British involvement in the Second World War, George Orwell replied that “pacifism is objectively pro-fascist.”

Orwell fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, and had seen democracies refuse to supply weapons to the elected government of Spain while Germany and Italy provided weapons and pilots to the Fascist insurgents. Orwell was what later came to be called a 'premature anti-fascist,' a distinction he shared with the Brigada Abraham Lincoln which also fought on the Republican side. I've often thought of this in connection to the conflict in Ukraine.

Orwell served with an Anarchist unit, which gave him an unusual view of the Communist participation in the war. He didn't like them very much, either.

[sandtown]

I'm a bit skeptical of the notion that the US should be driving the negotiations, since the US is not at war. l.

The US is driving the negotiations, just as they were in 2014.

And actually, since long before that . ..

[heimlaga]

i can't help but notice that neither acb nor heimlaga make any mention whatsoever of the united states of america! how dare they ignore our central and essential part in causing--and resolving--every conflict!

that ukraine appears to be winning is a great and unexpected luxury for "the west". what would this conversation look like if russia had swept into kiev and occupied most or all of ukraine? the choices afforded would be much harder, and more awful. particularly so for ukrainians, of course, but also for all those in proximity to russia.

the reality is, had they not defended themselves so boldly and capably, ukraine was a goner. nato was not going to repel the invasion of ukraine.

and of the major global players, the least affected would have been...the u.s.. though republicans might well have made alliance with russia, and rejection of nato, a plank in their platform.

We all took part in causing this conflict. USA and Finland and all the Western World. By integrating an autocracy into our economy allowing it to grow in strenght until it's leader decided to start conquering new lands. We should instead have supported democratic forces in Russia. In hindsight.

At the moment Ukraine is defending Finland and Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania as well. Had Putin won his planned victory in Ukraine we would now be struggling to house many more millions of refugees than we already do all while preparing an attempt o fight off the imminent invasion in Finland.

What USA can do is to help Ukraine fight for us all while putting pressure on Russia and undermining the Russian auticracy by all means available. Any other way of dealing with this mess would only be an intermediate step until the invasion of the next European country and the next.

[skuthorp]

American democracy and foreign policy is faulty to the point of failure at times…………………. but it's way way better than anything present day Russia or China, or for that matter any other right or left dictatorship cn offer….

[Oyvind Snibsoer]

This is bad.
According to media reports, Russian media have been all over themselvses on blaming the pipeline explosions on Norway, Great Britain and the US. Nevermind the rationale they are claiming for the purported western actions, it's not important.
What is becoming chillingly apparent is that this is most a false flag operation fabricated to create a rationale for attacking North Sea pipelines. It should of course be clear, by now, that the Russians don't give a rat's a** what the rest of the world thinks, this is all about fooling the domestic audience.

The Russians have had years or even decades to prepare. One should not be entirely surprised to find that the charges are already in place, buried in the gravel that covers much of the pipelines. Any attack on the pipelines would trigger NATO's Article 5, but Putin seems ready do that, consequences be damned.

On the brighter side, as long as they limit themselves to blowing up pipelines, they're not terribly hard to repair.

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...repair+methods

[epoxyboy]

You now admit that Biden did not say anything like that his 'stated goal' included shutting down NS1,

** Qué? I never said Biden included NS1. That makes it somewhat difficult to now admit that I didn't say what I never said in the first place.
But if you can find a post where I did, quote it. **




but insinuate that this doesn't matter because maybe he's in the business of blowing up pipelines.

**I never said Biden was in the business of blowing up pipelines. You seem to have a serious comprehension problem where hypothetical points are being made. How about you stop implying that I'm presenting those as fact, when very clearly I'm not.**




But you don't mean to imply that there's anything sinister about blowing up pipelines that supply much-needed gas to your allies so that you can sell them the gas instead.

**This whole "sinister" thing is your baby. I've made no judgements one way or the other. Again, please stop implying that your fabrications are mine.





I don't find what you've said persuasive. You seem to be offended by that.

**Not at all, I don't care whether you're persuaded or not . I am thoroughly pi$$ed off with your incesssant misrepresentation of pretty much everything we've attempted to discuss though.





You say we are operating in an information vacuum, but you claim to know information that shows the US had 'means, motive, and stated goal.'

** When I say information vacuum, I'm referring to information about who blew up Nord Stream, and how.
Conflating that with means, motive, and stated goal (about which we do have some information) is just stupid.


Means:
The US has a very comprehensive navy, with well trained underwater demolition experts, boats, subs, any number of explody things, and the ability to covertly deliver most of this stuff pretty much anywhere in the world. I think I can safely claim that the US has the means to blow a hole in a subsea pipeline in the Baltic, if it chooses to do so.
If you think differently, that the US does not have the means, I'd love to hear about it!


Motive:
This doesn't have to meet some undefined JohnW litmus test. It just has to exit. If you want a low bar for motives, look at the dreck Putin put forward for invading Ukraine.
The possible ( ie. something vaguely plausible) motive I put forward as justification for a hypothetical (ie possible, not factual) pipe sabotage job (that Biden wouldn't tell everyone about if it was real) was an economic one.
It is immaterial whether you are persuaded or not, the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake are very real, and therefore this exists as a possible motivation.
There are several other possible motivations, but "follow the money" serves the purpose here.


Stated goal:
Biden said NS2 would not go ahead. Subsequently there have been sanctions that halted it in the first instance, and subsequent sabotage that has rendered it unusable.
Both those things are consistent with Bidens statement, and earlier sanctions do not preclude the later use of sabotage.
If, hypothetically speaking, Biden was behind the sabotage, he wouldn't be telling us. By logical extension, if hypothetically speaking, he was also behind the sabotage of NS1, he wouldn't be telling us about that either.
I presented this as a hypothetical case, but you persist in trying to treat it as a factual one. It's getting tedious.**




And every time I question whether you have such information, you claim I'm the one pretending to know more than you do.

**Every time? I asked tongue-in-cheek once, if you had a direct line into US covert ops.
I think your confusion stems from the from failing to separate the known or hypothetically possible (above), from the completely unkown (below), and failing to comprehend that known and hypothetical things are being discussed **





In fact, I'm saying we know less than you claim we know.

** Funny, I'm sure I used the words "information vaccum" (and clarified the exact context in which I used that term) , and have repeated ad nauseum that we have NO INFORMATION - that was the entire basis of my disagreeing with George's post, before you came along.
Please explain how we can know less than I'm claiming we know, when I've said right from the get-go that we know nothing.**






I think your confusion stems from responding to what George said rather than what I've said.

**Ummm, I'm not the one who's confused here, fella.
George's post was short, clear, and concise, one sentence. I disagreed with it, and put forward a reason why - ie. the complete lack of data that would allow any determination regarding US involvment to be reliably made, one way or the other.

At no point have I confused this with anything you've said, and neither have I attributed anything in George's very short post to you.
Again, if you think there is a post that even suggests otherwise, let's have it.**

I'm done on this topic.

Pete

[WszystekPoTrochu]

“Wars are all too easy to start, even by accident, but they are very hard to stop,” said Michael McPhearson, Executive Director of Veterans For Peace.* “It is time for cooler heads to prevail, and for honest diplomacy leading to a just and nonviolent outcome for the Ukrainian people.”

I'm not sure how well you're familiar with the second world war, but the lesson to learn there is that having a cool head won't stop a war, only start it with the cooler head even less prepared and the hotter head even stronger and more aggressive.
Diplomacy didn't return Crimea to Ukraine, didn't bring Transnistria back to Moldova, didn't settle issues in Nagorno-Karabakh, didn't even settle the Kuril Islands. Good will is not enough if the second side hasn't got any.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Stefan Korshak:

https://medium.com/@Stefan.Korshak/s...l-813f98a97e0a

[sandtown]

We all took part in causing this conflict. USA and Finland and all the Western World. By integrating an autocracy into our economy allowing it to grow in strenght until it's leader decided to start conquering new lands. We should instead have supported democratic forces in Russia. In hindsight. .

Hindsight ?? Many of us were pushing for that back in the 1990's.

And all the advanced mind reading skills on display here are so reminiscent of Saddam-analysis back in 2002/3.

[L.W. Baxter]

Hindsight ?? Many of us were pushing for that back in the 1990's.

And all the advanced mind reading skills on display here are so reminiscent of Saddam-analysis back in 2002/3.

should we still be in afghanistan, supporting democratic forces?

[ERGR]

We've seen it coming, and now Lyman is encircled trapping several thousand Russians. A link in case you read Swedish:
https://cornucopia.se/2022/09/uppdat...stans-ledning/
As usual these days, about 500 Russian soldiers are killed each day, and a corresponding number of military equipment destroyed. Russia continues to fight Ukraine to the last Russian.

[Decourcy]

Hindsight ?? Many of us were pushing for that back in the 1990's.

And all the advanced mind reading skills on display here are so reminiscent of Saddam-analysis back in 2002/3.

This situation is nothing like that

[L.W. Baxter]

This situation is nothing like that

and the situation in the 90's is nothing like what sandtown is imagining, either.

the russian body politic is more like afghanistan than the u.s.. they were not ready. and they are still not ready.

when will they be ready?

hell, there is significant indication that even here in the u.s. we are losing our readiness to self-govern.

[Gerarddm]

#5210: In WWII, the Germans encircled and captured 650,000 Soviet soldiers in their largest re-enactment of Cannae. They lost anyway.

It's a different time with different motivations on the Russian side, but as I have said before, they have a high pain tolerance.

Putin's utter BS about annexing the four areas will simply rachet up the Ukrainian resistance.

This ends with Putin deposed or dead. Period.

[Osborne Russell]

This ends with Putin deposed or dead. Period.

And the knee-jerk left substantially discredited.

[Edward Pearson]

Watched his speech, the cameras watching the crowd...my impression was he's 'lost the room'. They looked troubled, tired of the propaganda, like they were there to 'look at the madman'. I don't think he's got long.

[L.W. Baxter]

And the knee-jerk left substantially discredited.

how bout the tiki torch right, osborne.

B4A2A28E-8808-4CA0-B1B7-BE3FCA59E38B.jpg

[L.W. Baxter]

I haven't been following this thread closely, are people here arguing that the USA should stop supporting Ukraine, to avoid hypocrisy? Using as evidence this, that, and other things in USA history?

some are arguing that it is within the power of the u.s. to mediate peace between russia and ukraine. that it is the desire of "the u.s." that the war continues, and for that reason, the war continues. etc..

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I think that they were referring to, that as you typed it, you were stating that Grant wrote his memoirs in the 1830s. It was just aside humor at your writing.

That is correct. Humour doesn’t seem to be Davies’ strong suit.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Watched his speech, the cameras watching the crowd...my impression was he's 'lost the room'. They looked troubled, tired of the propaganda, like they were there to 'look at the madman'. I don't think he's got long.

That’s a very interesting observation.

[epoxyboy]

Watched his speech, the cameras watching the crowd...my impression was he's 'lost the room'. They looked troubled, tired of the propaganda, like they were there to 'look at the madman'. I don't think he's got long.

From the BBC
Looking out over Vasilievsky Descent, the lower part of Red Square, there is indeed a huge number of people attending - a mass of Russian flags and people huddled in winter coats.

But the atmosphere does not appear to be one of joy or celebration. I'd describe it as limp - even miserable. People mostly aren’t chanting, clapping or singing. Many looked unhappy to be there.

Pete

[johnw]

I'm done on this topic.

Pete

So, you spew a bunch of stuff at me, then announce the conversation over? That's lame. You can't explain why, in what you term an 'information vacuum,' you know of motives and stated goals that don't appear in the public record.

I think it's just as well you stop trying to justify this contradiction.

[johnw]

Originally Posted by HRDavies


You could try Smedley Butler next but I know you won't, too set in your self-righteous indignation. Yeah, "remarkable". Reality is often "remarkable" to people who live in their own self-satisfied sanctimonious bubbles.

[ERGR]

Ukraine has applied for NATO membership now, as a direct consequence of Russia annexing more parts of Ukraine. A common defence towards Russia is the best course for states bordering Russia.
/Erik

[SKIP KILPATRICK]

Release the Leopards!

The Leopard 2's that is!

[heimlaga]

some are arguing that it is within the power of the u.s. to mediate peace between russia and ukraine. that it is the desire of "the u.s." that the war continues, and for that reason, the war continues. etc..

So they say. However for USA to stop the war permanently would involve sending troops to Ukraine and missiles to Moscow. Within days we would have a full blown Tienhaara (two steps worse than Armageddon) all along the western border of Russia.
Those who argue that USA can and should stop the war immediately have probably no idea of what a full blown world war means in practice.

Forcing Ukraine to cede territories to Russia or accept Russian sovereignity would not end the war. It would only give us a couple of years of respite while Russia is busy with ethnical clensings and various sorts of oppression and Russification and mass murder in Ukraine. Then the war would continue. Either in Finland or in Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or all four countries at once. Against a much stronger and better equipped Russia.
Those who argue that USA can and should force Ukraine to cede territory or power to Russia would probably give up the next country too and then the next. I wish they would tell us outright how far they are willing to let Russia go? Sweden? Germany? England? Ireland? Iceland? Greenland? Newfoundland? Massachusetts?

[Lew Barrett]

Lyman surrounded. Bakhmut still hanging in.

[Lew Barrett]

Ukraine submits application to NATO. I can’t see how this would get approved by 30 nations while the war rages on. What a Gordian Knot.

From the day he was elected Zelensky has has the odds stacked against him and faced incredible obstacles that would have driven most to tears years ago. Recalling his dealings with Trump when he came to my attention. I was impressed by how well he walked the tightrope between Trump’s pressure program and the longer view that he ultimately took. It must have been unbearably frustrating to have Trump delay and pressure the Zelensky government while dealing with corruption at home, with the Hunter Biden specter making the rounds all the while knowing what was coming and balancing Ukraine’s complications. I can’t imagine the pressure and the frustrations.

[skuthorp]

The phoney war is almost at its end…..

[sandtown]

Those who argue that USA can and should stop the war immediately have probably no idea of what a full blown world war means in practice.

Forcing Ukraine to cede territories to Russia or accept Russian sovereignity would not end the war. It would only give us a couple of years of respite while Russia is busy with ethnical clensings and various sorts of oppression and Russification and mass murder in Ukraine. Then the war would continue. Either in Finland or in Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania or all four countries at once. Against a much stronger and better equipped Russia.
Those who argue that USA can and should force Ukraine to cede territory or power to Russia would probably give up the next country too and then the next. I wish they would tell us outright how far they are willing to let Russia go? Sweden? Germany? England? Ireland? Iceland? Greenland? Newfoundland? Massachusetts?

Three quick points: 1. stop with the straw men, and putting words on our keyboards. NOBODY wrote the US should or can stop the war immediately.

2. Your prognostication sounds just like the Neo-cons in 2002/3. You prolly drank that Kool-aid back then too.

3. You seem unaware that the US/UK in all likelihood blocked a UKR/Russia peace deal back in April. per Jeff Sachs

Y'all people are rewriting history . .

The war would likely have been ended in March 2022, when the governments of Ukraine and Russia exchanged a draft peace agreement based on Ukrainian neutrality. Behind the scenes, the US and UK pushed Zelensky to reject any agreement with Putin and to fight on.