Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News The long and winding road to Dumbass

War between the US and Russia would very quickly result in the death of every American and every Russian, as well as 99.999% of the human race. Nobody is that stupid. So this is all bluff, on both sides.

Actually, war between the UK and Russia would have the same result.
War between France and Russia would have the same result.
War between Israel and Russia would have the same result.
War between India and Russia would have the same result.
War between Pakistan and Russia would have the same result.

Nuclear war between any two countries would have the same result.

Yes. Most people are aware of nuclear winter.
Some people are also aware of wars starting without intention. Raising the chances for a miscalculation in a created adversary, Russia, that has possession of hypersonic missiles as well as short and medium range conventional and nuclear warheads arrayed in a tense geographic area with limited assessment and response times, may prove to be conditions leading to an accidental conflict brought on by a misread of the room.

We’re not talking bombing brown people in the third world anymore.

So Russia just broke off more of the Crimea without firing a shot. Not a bad outcome really. Who wants to live with fascism aided by our right wing government?
Still, it will be interesting to watch the daily 10 minutes of hate propaganda from the neoliberals in power. All the bogus ‘Russia’s going to invade on Friday between the hours of 10-2pm’ was replaced with ‘our steely gaze and iron resolve, backed up by threats of sanctions, stayed the Ivan’s hand’ now looks like so much more idiocy and incompetence by our right wing political classes. My guess will be promotions all around as the usual result. There’s little downside to effing up in the PMC political party these days.

We did sell a ton of weapons to neo-nazis so there’s that. Nordstream is kaput for now, so there’s another (sorry bout yer luck Europe!). Not a total loss for some, but the fascist seem to have suffered a set back.

Does anybody recognize the Euromaidan, aka the Revolution of Dignity, as factor in all of this?
Ukrainians did this...not kontrakniki, not a counter-Wagner group, not astroturf organizations, not "crisis actors"...ordinary Ukrainians.

Ukraine REJECTED the continuing influence of Mother Russia, and they succeeded in removing Viktor Yanukovich, and their action was ratified by the Ukrainian Rada. (legislative branch)

Putin's response, as of yesterday?
He called Ukraine "a puppet of the United States".
So remind me again, who is the aggressor in all of this?
Because right now I seem to hear echoes of some rhetoric from 1990, when another despot declared Kuwait a puppet of the US and
voiced his declaration of Kuwait as the "19th province of Iraq".

The member states of NATO are:

Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States.



Putin first took power in 1999. He's had since 1999 to make decisions on his view of Ukraine's sovereignty, thus I find it interesting that he waited until AFTER the Ukrainian people made their feelings known in 2013, some fourteen years later, to make the decision to invade some NINE years after Euromaidan. Soviet tanks rolled into Prague only seven months after the Prague Spring commenced.
I get the sense that Putin still thinks Donald Trump is going to help him out, maybe with another putsch attempt here in Yankee Land.

My money is on war.

Not nuclear war, but war.

The kind where soldiers travel across the world to kill other soldiers and global economies come tumbling down.

Real global politics has been taking place while the USA is engaged in partisan squabbling.

Real military spending has been taking place while the US spends all its money on corporate contractors and appears incapable of fighting a war.

My guess is that Putin is about to show America what a real fascist looks like.

Our wars have only been about a jobs program or for oil for the last seventy some odd years.
Anyone who thinks our adventures in theaters of war were about anything else is only fooling themselves, because as you already know, they weren't even actual wars.
No formal declaration of war by Congress means it's something other than a war.
And that's because formal declarations of war make things messy for "certain industries" that depend upon a steady revenue stream free of commensurate responsibilities.
Formal declarations of war also make lawmakers much more responsible for when victory turns to stalemate or defeat.

War is good business and we've proved that adage for more than a generation.
Putin is not engaging in endless war for business, this is costing him directly...there's no profit motive, there is only the gamble and the risk. His profit comes from the permanent taking of territory. Our own industries are the ones indirectly profiting from his warmaking more than he is unless his gamble pays off.
Russian drones shot down over Ukraine were full of Western parts. (WaPo)
His oligarch friends don't get their big payday unless he does.
He HAS to have a solid and clear plan for decisive and absolute victory. We do not...as proven by the fact that we stretched out TWO wars for twenty years with NO actual end game.
We just finally went home when we wore out our welcome in the host countries.
But when we DID finally go home, a lot of people had bursting pockets from all the money they made.
The last polka that Russia played was in Afghanistan and when they went home in defeat it ultimately cost them their country.

For a pretty good contextual view you could do worse than Mearsheimer:

[video:youtube][/video]

I’m case the YouTube link is still broken-

Putin fascist? Gunna disagree with that though NPR, MSNBC and the rest of the usual suspects have been framing him this way since 2016. Last I looked, we’ve killed well over a million people since the 90’s, including the literal shortening of the average Russian lifespan.

No, liberal hegemony had quite the butchers bill and, due to its contradictions,
much the same as neoliberal economics, seems to rely on more and more authoritarian execution. Bringing ‘mockracy’ to people at gunpoint was always murderous and doomed to failure. I expect backing fascist, as we did in the maidan revolution (so much different in its composition than the earlier Orange Revolution) will be a loser.

S’funny how we always back the fascist abroad but believe ourselves somehow not, well, fascist…

And we might be very close to losing our country right now.

But not to worry...the oligarchs will have pockets bursting with money while the peasants starve.

In Russia, in Europe, and even here at home. Perhaps we can become a part of the hellscape that we've turned other countries into to make our oligarchs ever richer.

So Doctorow’s ‘military technical’ turns out to have been accurate. It’s often useful to read from those that have a track record.

I kind of wonder if Putin will survive this. He may be the richest man in Russia, but he's not the only person with a lot of money or power there. If Russia's financial isolation gets too painful for some, somebody might just decide they prefer Russia not being at war. I think he's miscalculated how much this will cost, versus what he will gain.

I suspect the Trumptards cheering Putin on will never live it down when the horror of war goes on the internet.