Russia - Ukraine “peace negotiations”

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CFordUNC said:
almost every single other presidential administration in U.S. history, Republican or Democrat- would have chosen- is to give Ukraine the weapons it needs to purge the invading Russians from its land.
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I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
 
Calheel said:
I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
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Point taken, but I am almost certain Ronald Reagan would have done so and likely either or both Bush’s.
 
Calheel said:
I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
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Not Eastern Bloc but the Shah of Iran would differ greatly about who got armed and where and so would Turkey. Stick with the Eastern Bloc thing.
 
CFordUNC said:
Point taken, but I am almost certain Ronald Reagan would have done so and likely either or both Bush’s.
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Not a chance.

Now, if you mean a reincarnated Ronald Reagan inhabiting the White House today, then maybe.

But there is a long, long history of the US treating Russia/USSR far different than any other country. To arm Ukraine as heavily as we have to date, in the face of the threats of nuclear war from Putin, is a significant departure from historical US policy.

I mean, we are fine arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan with small arms weapons and giving them CIA training, but that is whole world apart from sending tanks and HIMARS to a country within a short plane trip of Moscow.
 
Calheel said:
Not a chance.

Now, if you mean a reincarnated Ronald Reagan inhabiting the White House today, then maybe.

But there is a long, long history of the US treating Russia/USSR far different than any other country. To arm Ukraine as heavily as we have to date, in the face of the threats of nuclear war from Putin, is a significant departure from historical US policy.

I mean, we are fine arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan with small arms weapons and giving them CIA training, but that is whole world apart from sending tanks and HIMARS to a country within a short plane trip of Moscow.
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Maybe. You're probably more knowledgeable on this subject than I am, but I'm not sure that Reagan or either Bush would consider Putin's nuclear war bluster is anything other than just that. From what I think understand about each of those three, they were more of hardliners on Russia than was Joe Biden, and Biden did not hesitate to arm Ukraine.
 
CFordUNC said:
Maybe. You're probably more knowledgeable on this subject than I am, but I'm not sure that Reagan or either Bush would consider Putin's nuclear war bluster is anything other than just that. From what I think understand about each of those three, they were more of hardliners on Russia than was Joe Biden, and Biden did not hesitate to arm Ukraine.
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He hesitated. Ukraine never got the weapons it needed because Biden was scared of escalation.
 
Calheel said:
I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
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World of difference in Russia in 2022-25 compared to the Soviet Union in 1956 or 1968.

World of difference between Ukraine in 2022 and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

It was called the Iron Curtain for good reasons.

For all real purposes, the Warsaw Pact “nations” were subsets of the Soviet Union in ‘56 and ‘68.

In 2022-25, Ukraine is an independent nation.
 
Zoo_View said:
World of difference in Russia in 2022-25 compared to the Soviet Union in 1956 or 1968.

World of difference between Ukraine in 2022 and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

It was called the Iron Curtain for good reasons.

For all real purposes, the Warsaw Pact “nations” were subsets of the Soviet Union in ‘56 and ‘68.

In 2022-25, Ukraine is an independent nation.
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Sure. But Russia still has nukes. We just don’t see them as the same threat we did during the Cold War.

But my point remains that no US President has felt comfortable arming former Soviet/Eastern Bloc countries with offensive weapons to target Russia.

I think Cford was envisioning a more muscular foreign policy against Russia than what has ever existed.
 
Calheel said:
I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
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We armed the mujahideen. Afghanistan was absolutely on the border of the Soviet Union.
 
CRHeel94 said:
Russia would have never invaded Ukraine under Reagan. He would have bared his fangs the moment the Russians showed signs of aggression.
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The Soviet Union OWNED Ukraine when Reagan was POTUS.

Let’s not pretend that Reagan was this colossus striding the global stage in the ‘80’s. The Soviet Union was cratering due to its economic system and decades of American and NATO opposition. Reagan continued decades of American policy.

If Reagan was such a badass, why was his reaction to the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon basically a shoulder shrug?
 
Calheel said:
Sure. But Russia still has nukes. We just don’t see them as the same threat we did during the Cold War.

But my point remains that no US President has felt comfortable arming former Soviet/Eastern Bloc countries with offensive weapons to target Russia.

I think Cford was envisioning a more muscular foreign policy against Russia than what has ever existed.
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Yeah,. Entirely possible that I was. Like I said, you and several other older posters on here are probably way more knowledgeable about it than I am because you guys grew up in it and lived it. So I definitely defer to your expertise more so than mine. It’s entirely possible that I’ve had a much more romanticized stronger version of American foreign policy with regard to Russia than has been the actual reality. Still, hard for me to square what I think I know about Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and George W. Bush- as well as the top people in their respective administrations- with the notion that they would not have come to Ukraine’s defense in the same way that we have done, or even more so. I definitely don’t mean to imply that those presidents would have committed United States troops or boots on the ground, or anything like that. Not at all. I just mean that I think that those three would have turned on the weaponry spigot full blast if they knew that they could essentially cripple Russia for mere peanuts without risking American blood.
 
Zoo_View said:
The Soviet Union OWNED Ukraine when Reagan was POTUS.

Let’s not pretend that Reagan was this colossus striding the global stage in the ‘80’s. The Soviet Union was cratering due to its economic system and decades of American and NATO opposition. Reagan continued decades of American policy.

If Reagan was such a badass, why was his reaction to the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon basically a shoulder shrug?
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Yeah, see this is where I definitely have to defer to people like you and several other older posters, because I wasn’t even alive then. All I know is what I’ve read and heard growing up about Ronald Reagan, but I have to keep in mind that I was hearing it from people and from sources that essentially deified Ronald Reagan.
 
Calheel said:
I think you are vastly overstating here. The US did not give weapons to Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. We were fine fomenting dissent, but we never took the step of sending US weapons to Eastern Bloc countries. The idea that any American president would arm a country on the border of Russia would have been a complete non-starter until this millennium.
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He may indeed be overstating, but those two examples are poor. Hungary's 56 revolution lasted 11 days. There was no time for the US to give weapons had we wanted. The Prague Spring was never an armed conflict at all; it was a diplomatic/intellectual affair for months until one night the Soviet troops came in and took over.

Not to mention the fact that neither country shared a border with a NATO country, though that's tangential at this point.

Those two episodes say nothing about American policy because they were over too quickly for Americans even to have gotten involved. No matter what American policy was, it would have ended the same.
 
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