Jump to content

Ukraine War


BehoId, The Underminer!

Recommended Posts

2 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

Someone smarter on the geopolitical and diplomatic front answer me this:

Why is fair game when we provide arms/money/tanks to Ukraine, but then when China (a known enemy to US and friend to Russia) signals they will do something similiar, we take it personal?

I feel like this is escalating into an Allies and Central Powers type escalation soon which would be very bad:

 

Russia's express goal in this war is genocide. Providing aid to prevent genocide is good, providing aid to assist in carrying out genocide is bad.

Republicans sure do love themselves some moral relativism.  

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't usually post op-eds, but this short essay does a good job of conveying the Ukrainian perspective along with other ethnicities trapped in the Russian empire.

The Problem With Russia Is Russia
Feb. 20, 2023

By Oksana Zabuzhko

Ms. Zabuzhko is a Ukrainian novelist, poet and essayist.

KRAKOW, Poland — One year ago this Tuesday, Vladimir Putin recognized the independence of the Russian-backed separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk — effectively the starting pistol for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which began three days later. For us Ukrainians, the world would never be the same. Yet it was another act of recognition in 2022, one largely neglected, that made my heart beat faster. On Oct. 18, Ukraine’s Parliament declared the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria “temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation.”

I should explain. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Chechnya was one of the two autonomous republics of the newly independent Russian Federation that claimed independence. (The other one was Tatarstan.) But world leaders were by then quite fed up with the discovery that all those union republics that they had for decades regarded simply as administrative units of Russia — Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan and others, still harder to pronounce — appeared to be real things. The West’s shock at this new geography meant that independent Ichkeria had not the slimmest chance of recognition.

The dismemberment of the Soviet empire was duly halted at the borders of the Russian Federation — at the cost of two devastating Chechen wars, for which the Kremlin was given a free hand both domestically and internationally. As a result, Chechnya-Ichkeria became a testing ground for the military strategy now applied against Ukraine: state terrorist warfare.

What if, I keep asking myself, Russia’s new totalitarianism had not been so lightheartedly overlooked by the rest of the world in the 1990s? Back then, to spare humanity the rise of a new Hitler, it would have been enough to let Russia go on peacefully shrinking under proper international control. Alas, the West agreed to blame Communism alone for all the atrocities of the Soviet regime. Russian imperialism was never identified as a problem.

Could this have been — as my war-honed anticolonial acuity prompts me to believe — a case of latent imperialistic solidarity? Was it guilty pleasure that for decades made the elites of the former Western empires smile indulgently, rather than shudder, when faced with the brazen colonial supremacy with which Moscow was treating its non-Russian subjects? I fail to see any other reasonable explanation for why so many in the West clung to the irrational belief that democratic transformation in Russia was just around the corner.

Yet Russia will not become a democracy until it falls apart. That’s because Russia is not really a nation-state but the same premodern multiethnic empire living on geographic expansion and resource looting as 300 years ago — and is thus doomed to reproduce, again and again, under whatever ideological cover, the same prison-ward-like political structure that alone keeps it together.

One intellectual holdover from the imperialistic 19th century is the idea that preserving the Russian empire would be less catastrophic, in terms of humanitarian consequences, than recognizing the right to life of dozens of peoples whose lot under Moscow’s rule was never anything other than dogged survival, under the threat of extinction. This prejudice helped the empire to survive twice in the 20th century, in 1921 and in 1991. It is high time to rethink it.

I remember only too well how the specter of extinction was stalking Ukraine through the 1970s and early 1980s, until the Chernobyl disaster finally broke our social paralysis and pushed Ukrainians to take our security into our own hands. In those police years, those who dared to speak Ukrainian in public could be at any moment humiliated with the Russian colonialist phrase “Govorite po-chelovecheski!” (“Speak human!”) If you heard it once and were unable to respond — any discontent about the superiority of everything Russian was labeled Ukrainian nationalism, the worst political crime of the time — you could never forget the experience.

Looked at closely, this war on Moscow’s part is a monstrously enlarged version of the Ukrainian purges of the 1970s (Operation Block, as it was known in the K.G.B. files): same language, same techniques. The only difference is the scale. Those purges were selective and unostentatious, whereas nowadays each of the thousands of Russian rockets that have so far hit our cities howls the same message — “Speak human!” — at the highest possible pitch. Ukrainians respond with the glorious phrase from the defenders of Snake Island. We will survive the Russian Federation, just as we survived the Soviet Union.

But not every nation once in Moscow’s grip proved so lucky. That is why our Parliament, 30 years later, recognized Ichkeria. We have been there: We know what it is like to be sentenced to disappear as a nation, with the rest of the world taking no heed.

And the same story is repeating itself. The disproportionately large conscription among Russia’s ethnic minorities in 2022, a form of ethnic purge of potentially mutinous regions, was not half as widely discussed as the plight of Moscow office workers fleeing abroad. The women’s protests against mobilization in Dagestan and Yakutia, too, were tellingly headlined in the world media as protests in Russia.

With a sigh, I recall that’s how Chernobyl was discussed in 1986, as a nuclear catastrophe in Russia. Thanks, but no. Never again, please; the age of imperialism is over. If there could be any positive result found in the 12 months of this horrific war — in tens of thousands of people murdered, raped and mutilated, in millions of lives ruined, in the best black soil on earth littered with mines, in innumerable treasures of cultural heritage turned to debris — it would be that we Ukrainians have all together, in a united effort of resistance, proved that non-Russian lives matter.

It is good news, for that was not the case before, certainly not in the past century. It gives all those who speak human, with no quotation marks, hope for the future.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, 'stache said:

I honestly do not understand what you're asking. It seems to me that you answered your own question. The reason we are okay with supporting Ukraine and are not okay with China supporting Russia is that Russia is the aggressor (bad) and Ukraine is the victim (good) (oversimplified of course). It's almost like asking why was the US against Germany occupying France but okay with the Allies occupying Germany. It's because Germany was the aggressor (bad) and France was the victim (good). If you're asking whether we should go back to isolationist tendencies as we were prior to WWI, that is a different question. What am I missing?

The question I am asking is not for you or me or daysoffsadguy or any one on this website's personal opinion or moral/ethic reasoning. I'm not even asking what America thinks, because we are all American and I think we are all in agreement and get it.

I'm asking from an international, geopolitical standpoint. How does a country like India, for example, who toes the line and does business with Russia, USA and a lesser extent China, see one country giving X, Y and Z in a war conflict and then say, "but you can't give X, Y, and Z to the other side!".

I'm sorry this question hit a nerve, I just saw the headline and it got me wondering. I am pro-Ukraine and don't care about the money or aid we are sending.

Edited by HamsterHookah
  • Fuck You 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

You're missing the sort of realpolitk think that intentionally blinds itself to any moral judgments or questions. Ignoring any moral implications, of course China is within its legal rights and power to provide aid to Russia. It is a pointlessly stupid question to ask, so you're right in overlooking in it. 

Half of your post was interesting, before you decided to hand-wave.

Switching gears, but I'm wondering to myself today:

If China, in it's legal rights and power as you said, were to aid Russia, what do you think America does? What do you think the end game will be?

  • Fuck You 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

The question I am asking is not for you or me or daysoffsadguy or any one on this website's personal opinion or moral/ethic reasoning. I'm not even asking what America thinks, because we are all American and I think we are all in agreement and get it.

I'm asking from an international, geopolitical standpoint. How does a country like India, for example, who toes the line and does business with Russia, USA and a lesser extent China, see one country giving X, Y and Z in a war conflict and then say, "but you can't give X, Y, and Z to the other side!".

I'm sorry this question hit a nerve, I just saw the headline and it got me wondering. I am pro-Ukraine and don't care about the money or aid we are sending.

As a sovereign nation, China is free to choose its allies and aid them however they want to.  That's not the question, though.

The question is whether "the West" or the civilized world, or however you want to name it or conceive it, will look favorably upon China for allying itself with Russia and aiding them in this particular conflict.  And we tend to be the standard bearer for the West.

I heard Kurt Volcker on NPR and he said what we should usually think and that is "China will do what China believes is in its interest."  He said the downsides for China are too great and the upside very limited for them to overtly aid Russia in this.  He said, I believe accurately, that China views Russia as a declining power and not one to which to hitch one's wagon.  Further, Russia is a competitor with China for "global domination," even if they are declining.  So China has no real interest in currying favor with Russia.  The only upside for China is a stick in the eye of Western powers, which it would enjoy, but is not enough of an incentive to risk near-global approbation and potential economic sanctions and disengagement.

  • Hook 'Em 7
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Half of your post was interesting, before you decided to hand-wave.

Switching gears, but I'm wondering to myself today:

If China, in it's legal rights and power as you said, were to aid Russia, what do you think America does? What do you think the end game will be?

Who is saying that China doesn't have that right? I'm seeing value judgments, that China's choice to exercise that right in favor of Russia, a country that has illegally invaded another, is wrong, and that aiding Ukraine, the country that was illegally invaded, is right. 

  • Hook 'Em 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Half of your post was interesting, before you decided to hand-wave.

Hand-wave what? You're asking a question by divorcing it from all context. Our negative judgment on China supporting Russia is a moral judgment. Asking us how we could still have that judgment if we ignore on the moral aspect of it is completely non-sensical. The answer is we couldn't. But you may as well ask if we could walk if we didn't have legs. 

48 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

The question I am asking is not for you or me or daysoffsadguy or any one on this website's personal opinion or moral/ethic reasoning. I'm not even asking what America thinks, because we are all American and I think we are all in agreement and get it.

I'm asking from an international, geopolitical standpoint. How does a country like India, for example, who toes the line and does business with Russia, USA and a lesser extent China, see one country giving X, Y and Z in a war conflict and then say, "but you can't give X, Y, and Z to the other side!".

I'm sorry this question hit a nerve, I just saw the headline and it got me wondering. I am pro-Ukraine and don't care about the money or aid we are sending.

See, the problem is your question isn't "what does India think." To answer that legitimately interesting and relevant question, we'd probably have to go ask India (or at least look at Indian sources or experts on Indian foreign policy). Instead, your question is "how would a hypothetical country respond if that country had no moral or political judgments on Russia or Ukraine?" And to that I answer, who gives a fuck?

Quote

 

Switching gears, but I'm wondering to myself today:

If China, in it's legal rights and power as you said, were to aid Russia, what do you think America does? What do you think the end game will be?

 

China probably isn't going to provide direct military aid and risk economic sanctions that it has a lot of evidence the West is willing to utilize. But it may provide military adjacent aid. Our response will likely be proportionate to the type of aid, and look a lot like an escalation in our on going economic tit-for-tat with China. Think tariffs and sanctions on individual entities. 

If China were to provide direct military aid (e.g., tanks, planes, etc.) in significant quantities, we probably do further sanctions and, assuming it can pass the house, look to do more things like the Inflation Reduction Act that directly invests in and challenges some of China's dominance in certain economic areas.  See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/the-us-plan-to-become-the-worlds-cleantech-superpower/).

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Hand-wave what? You're asking a question by divorcing it from all context. Our negative judgment on China supporting Russia is a moral judgment. Asking us how we could still have that judgment if we ignore on the moral aspect of it is completely non-sensical. The answer is we couldn't. But you may as well ask if we could walk if we didn't have legs. 

See, the problem is your question isn't "what does India think." To answer that legitimately interesting and relevant question, we'd probably have to go ask India (or at least look at Indian sources or experts on Indian foreign policy). Instead, your question is "how would a hypothetical country respond if that country had no moral or political judgments on Russia or Ukraine?" And to that I answer, who gives a fuck?

China probably isn't going to provide direct military aid and risk economic sanctions that it has a lot of evidence the West is willing to utilize. But it may provide military adjacent aid. Our response will likely be proportionate to the type of aid, and look a lot like an escalation in our on going economic tit-for-tat with China. Think tariffs and sanctions on individual entities. 

If China were to provide direct military aid (e.g., tanks, planes, etc.) in significant quantities, we probably do further sanctions and, assuming it can pass the house, look to do more things like the Inflation Reduction Act that directly invests in and challenges some of China's dominance in certain economic areas.  See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/02/the-us-plan-to-become-the-worlds-cleantech-superpower/).

Thanks for your last response. This answer gets to the heart of my question with a little fify:

Quote

To answer that legitimately interesting and relevant question, we'd probably have to go ask India (or at least look at Indian sources or experts on Indian foreign policy). Instead, your question is "how would a hypothetical country respond if that country had no moral or political judgments on Russia or Ukraine?" And to that I answer, who gives a fuck? I don't know.

I think the confusion was that I don't care why we American's think it's cool and righteous and just, I already get that, I was trying to zoom out and that seems to be a struggle for folks. Fair enough. Thanks for the responses and I think we can tie it off now and I'll keep reading and lurking.

  • Fuck You 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, HamsterHookah said:

Thanks for your last response. This answer gets to the heart of my question with a little fify:

I think the confusion was that I don't care why we American's think it's cool and righteous and just, I already get that, I was trying to zoom out and that seems to be a struggle for folks. Fair enough. Thanks for the responses and I think we can tie it off now and I'll keep reading and lurking.

Right, and I'm just saying if you want to know how India or some other specific country views it, let's discuss that. Let's not discuss an irrelevant hypothetical country that doesn't have any judgments or motives and doesn't reflect how actual countries respond to things. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

If China were to provide direct military aid (e.g., tanks, planes, etc.) in significant quantities, we probably do further sanctions and, assuming it can pass the house, look to do more things like the Inflation Reduction Act that directly invests in and challenges some of China's dominance in certain economic areas. 

And some of the stuff we've done in the past year or two has the Chinese already spooked, such as the CHIPS Act or whatever.  They cannot risk the US doing more and more to move production of various things out of China, particularly stuff that pays well.  We've seen the Russians their talking heads wanting more from the Chinese in terms of actual systems (such as tanks) and the Chinese turning that down.  

As already mentioned, China does what's in their best interest, and they aren't going to cross what they see as a red line that could hurt them economically.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

Someone smarter on the geopolitical and diplomatic front answer me this:

Why is fair game when we provide arms/money/tanks to Ukraine, but then when China (a known enemy to US and friend to Russia) signals they will do something similiar, we take it personal?

I feel like this is escalating into an Allies and Central Powers type escalation soon which would be very bad:

 

Did you eat paint chips as a child?

 

if Ukraine had invaded a sovereign land do you think the US would be offering them any type of support, or do you think we would be part of the coalition applying sanctions?

  • Hook 'Em 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

Thanks for your last response. This answer gets to the heart of my question with a little fify:

I think the confusion was that I don't care why we American's think it's cool and righteous and just, I already get that, I was trying to zoom out and that seems to be a struggle for folks. Fair enough. Thanks for the responses and I think we can tie it off now and I'll keep reading and lurking.

I’m starting to think you’re trolling. On what basis would you separate out the “why”? That’s the fundamental building block behind any decision. If you need a more black and white explanation, how about the fact that Russias invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law, ergo, the international community overwhelmingly disagrees with a nation that supports that crime?

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Feel like this is Exhibit #789052 of Republican politicians being wayyyy too online.  I realize that the base all wants to fuck Putin, but, uh, #TeamRussia doesn't seem like a winning national message.

Many Republicans I know, including the MAGA types, are not fans of Putin/Russia, especially those older types that served during the Cold War, and it's a very odd thing how out of touch Gaetz, MTG, etc. are with them, especially when this is even helping the US defense industry (and creating new jobs).

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Feel like this is Exhibit #789052 of Republican politicians being wayyyy too online.  I realize that the base all wants to fuck Putin, but, uh, #TeamRussia doesn't seem like a winning national message.

gp7xia5u1uinxvywo6caag.png

And yet they'll keep voting for them, because Putin may be a war criminal, but did you hear about all the kids being groomed and forced into sex changes? Ukrainians might be genocided without assistance, but the other side might raise taxes on Elon Musk and that's socialism!

  • Like 1
  • Rage+1 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

Many Republicans I know, including the MAGA types, are not fans of Putin/Russia, especially those older types that served during the Cold War, and it's a very odd thing how out of touch Gaetz, MTG, etc. are with them, especially when this is even helping the US defense industry (and creating new jobs).

Yet, somehow, those dipshits will continue to get reelected again, and again, and again...

  • Rage+1 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Many Republicans I know, including the MAGA types, are not fans of Putin/Russia, especially those older types that served during the Cold War, and it's a very odd thing how out of touch Gaetz, MTG, etc. are with them, especially when this is even helping the US defense industry (and creating new jobs).

Gaetz's district includes Eglin AFB, and he was re-elected with almost 68% of the vote in November. How that happens? I don't have a fucking clue. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If anybody wants to see how social media is manipulated in near real-time - the Russians and their buddies started getting WWIII trending on twitter, and coincidentally, Trump had a prepared speech about WWIII that is being spread (it maybe an old one, but people are pushing it as a new one).  Also, a bunch of the religious nuts started pushing WWIII/Armageddon bullshit through their accounts at the same time.

Having done my share of advertising campaigns over the years, and having watched how bots manipulate social media,  it's not hard for this kind of stuff to be coordinated to kick off and make it look "spontaneous", knowing that people like Trump and Russian and MAGA sympathizers will take advantage of it.  You literally feed some info/posts/keywords to a few people with a rough starting time (all at once or throughout the day to keep it going), they line up their bazillion bot accounts, and when the time comes, it kicks off.

Obviously Biden's visit to Kyiv rattled a lot of Russian cages, so I'm surprised it took them a while to recover, but looks like they started it up sometime within half a day or so of his visit.

Edited by atomheartbevo
  • Rage+1 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Russia: We aren't stopping with Ukraine

Republicans: Stop listening to what they say, they really won't go any farther than they already have!

And, of course, the only reason they haven't rattled their swords at NATO-candidate countries at least is that they''re getting their asses kicked in Ukraine.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's a real divide forming in the GOP over Ukraine. They can't seem to decide whether we are helping Ukraine too much (the Q group) and those who think we aren't doing enough (McCaul, McConnell, etc.).

It's fascinating seeing the isolationists and the hawks go at it. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, The Dog said:

There's a real divide forming in the GOP over Ukraine. They can't seem to decide whether we are helping Ukraine too much (the Q group) and those who think we aren't doing enough (McCaul, McConnell, etc.).

It's fascinating seeing the isolationists and the hawks go at it. 

I wonder if it's an age thing as well.  Very fascinating to see so many Republicans siding with the fucking Russians.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



×
×
  • Create New...