Russia - Ukraine “peace negotiations”

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superrific said:
You left out the part where he warned the world what was coming, preemptively rebutted Russia's propaganda, and put together a global coalition to defend Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia to deplete their fighting ability, frozen assets of oligarchs that might be used to compensate Ukraine when this is over, etc.

It was the single most effective response to sovereign aggression in my lifetime. Even Barack wouldn't have done as well. And that Russia has nukes makes it all the more intrepid, bold and principled.
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A-freaking-men, brother. A-freaking-men.

My complaint with Biden prior to his ascension to the Presidency is that he seemed to get all the 50-50 decisions wrong when he was in the Senate. But I was wrong. When it came to the onset of the Ukraine war, he nailed the response. He absolutely stuck the landing, and he doesn't get enough credit for it.
 
Callatoroy said:
I would love to know the details about what went into the decision to bring cameras into the room. My guess is it was trump's but that was a really bad move on his part.
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JFC. Do you think Zelensky invited a full press corp assembly to the Oval Office? It was a bad move on Trump’s part only if he was acting in a good faith, honest broker capacity. Not even you are dumb enough to believe that. Maybe I’m wrong on that point, in which case I’ll ask do you play poker?
 
rodoheel said:
This seems to be operating under the premise that Putin will agree with Ukraine joining the EU and getting security guarantees from Europe and the US as long as they don't join NATO. I don't think Putin would agree to that at all. The whole point for Putin is to be able to control and dominate a weak Ukraine. He can't do that if they're part of the EU and have a security guarantee from the US and Europe. That basically creates, in the aggregate, the reasons why Putin doesn't want Ukraine in NATO; he doesn't want them under either the economic influence of the West or protected militarily by the West,
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Fair point. If we were engaged in a proper pre-negotiation phase - and we clearly aren't - I would argue that we have leverage to press for EU optionality based on:

- the economic impacts of the war on Russia might be existential to the regime over the next 24 months.
- getting the Donbass allows him to declare victory internally.
- international recognition of the Crimean annexation is important to him.

In the current Trumpy environment, the concessions we've made prior to entering negotiations means that none of this matters.
 
superrific said:
You left out the part where he warned the world what was coming, preemptively rebutted Russia's propaganda, and put together a global coalition to defend Ukraine. Sanctions on Russia to deplete their fighting ability, frozen assets of oligarchs that might be used to compensate Ukraine when this is over, etc.

It was the single most effective response to sovereign aggression in my lifetime. Even Barack wouldn't have done as well. And that Russia has nukes makes it all the more intrepid, bold and principled.
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I’ve given Biden credit for his response to the invasion in the weeks following Russia’s commencement of hostilities. No one wanted Russia to take over Ukraine and put Western Europe in danger. But it’s fairly easy to build a European coalition when Russia starts a land war in Eastern Europe ( first in 80 years) and nothing stands in the way of Russia invading their country except the Ukrainian army. Pretty easy to motivate Western Europe to act in their own self defense. For this reason I would rank higher GHW Bush’s coalition in the first Gulf War.
 
Ramrouser said:
I’ve given Biden credit for his response to the invasion in the weeks following Russia’s commencement of hostilities. No one wanted Russia to take over Ukraine and put Western Europe in danger. But it’s fairly easy to build a European coalition when Russia starts a land war in Eastern Europe ( first in 80 years) and nothing stands in the way of Russia invading their country except the Ukrainian army. Pretty easy to motivate Western Europe to act in their own self defense. For this reason I would rank higher GHW Bush’s coalition in the first Gulf War.
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Do you think Trump would have built that coalition? I think the answer is obviously no. Between this bullshit and his attempted shakedown of Ukraine in 2019, I doubt he would have tried. But had he tried, he would have failed miserably because Trump is congenitally incapable of building coalitions.

It's much fucking easier to build a coalition to boot Iraq out of Kuwait than to fight against a huge nuclear-armed country. But there's no degree of difficulty score, here. The point is that the main reason that Russia didn't walk all over Ukraine was the Biden administration.
 
Biden's and GWHB's actions were exceptional foreign policy responses. Over the past 35 years, only the efforts of Nunn and Lugar to denuclearize the former SSRs meet that high bar.

Today, um, fell short.
 
Ramrouser said:
I’ve given Biden credit for his response to the invasion in the weeks following Russia’s commencement of hostilities. No one wanted Russia to take over Ukraine and put Western Europe in danger. But it’s fairly easy to build a European coalition when Russia starts a land war in Eastern Europe ( first in 80 years) and nothing stands in the way of Russia invading their country except the Ukrainian army. Pretty easy to motivate Western Europe to act in their own self defense. For this reason I would rank higher GHW Bush’s coalition in the first Gulf War.
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Bush was up against a moderate fighting army with no nuclear weapons ....................
 
Ramrouser said:
I’ve given Biden credit for his response to the invasion in the weeks following Russia’s commencement of hostilities. No one wanted Russia to take over Ukraine and put Western Europe in danger. But it’s fairly easy to build a European coalition when Russia starts a land war in Eastern Europe ( first in 80 years) and nothing stands in the way of Russia invading their country except the Ukrainian army. Pretty easy to motivate Western Europe to act in their own self defense. For this reason I would rank higher GHW Bush’s coalition in the first Gulf War.
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God help your clients.
 
Negotiations are generally held in private away from the press for exactly the reason against events as happened today.
Trump’s handlers nefariously brought the press (including Russian state media) into the negotiations so as to influence the Ukrainian public into accepting the Russian terms.
 
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To everyone involved, could you please throttle back on the direct personal attacks and name-calling and jumping to FU/GFY etc as a knee-jerk response?

I am asking on behalf of other posters — we let a lot of that stuff go because we all seem to be adults here and adults get mad and seem to need to vent etc, fine. But could you guys calm down with the name-calling using genitalia slang and slurs (which is coming from all directions)?

Posters with an interest in the topics here are understandably (for the most part) agitated, but for the good of discussion I am asking you guys just to throttle back on some of the offensive direct personal attacks. The board software doesn’t edit the language but it would be great if you guys could self-edit the offensive personal attacks directed at other posters.

Thanks.
 
Callatoroy said:
No, no, no Dr. Bob. I expect way more from you. You have a doctorate for God's sake. Now if you did the photoshop then props to you and I recognize talent.
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I'm sorry to disappoint, but Trump is slashing our NIH budget soon, so I have no time for a good Photoshop job of my own.
 
NATO is over. Euros will need to ramp up. Poland, Germany, Baltics should be alarmed. They will need to beef up their defenses. We're going to have a nasty trade war with all sorts of collateral damage.

If I'm in Taiwan...I'd be very uneasy sleeping at night.
Heck, I'm even wondering Canada should get nukes as a deterrent.
 
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