It’s a good question I have given a lot of thought to over the past few months.
The reason for America ending its involvement in Ukraine is obvious. As an American it’s harder for me to understand why we became involved. My current theory is that Joe Biden along with the security establishment were operating with a wanted poster for Krusc…
It’s a good question I have given a lot of thought to over the past few months.
The reason for America ending its involvement in Ukraine is obvious. As an American it’s harder for me to understand why we became involved. My current theory is that Joe Biden along with the security establishment were operating with a wanted poster for Kruschev on their walls that had remained their since the 1960’s and no one had the heart to tell them the world had moved on.
But why would the Europeans be so invested? They're facing a Russia that after 3 years of hard fighting was almost overthrown in a coup and has taken only 20% of a country with an extremely brave, but poorly equipped Army no one consider a serious military threat. Why would they continue speaking about current Russia as if they were facing Stalin in 1945?
The only reasonable answer I have come up with is Bismark. Until the late 1800’s the German principalities like Prussia were strong enough to ward off any single European invasion, but lived in fear they would be too weak to take on a combined France, Russia and potentially England. Bismarks solution was brilliant. Through a series of wars between the 1860’s and 1870’s called The Wars of Unification he convinced the independent principalities to combine in order to defeat their enemies. The result was the unification of Germany.
Europe faces the same problem. Since the end of the Cold War and especially the financial crisis of 2008 it has been very difficult to hold the union together. Perhaps the most unifying factor was NATO with America acting as the hegemon. With that gone, unification around an external threat is really the only way countries like France, Germany and England will continue pulling in the same direction rather than return to the 1,500 years of internal conflict that proceeded that.
If not Russia, it would probably be Turkey. They simply need to maintain an external threat of some type to hold the union together. That is especially true with Tariffs coming to challenge their heavily export based economies that run a real risk of tearing the union apart.
Thanks all for the interesting discussion. We share a common view of a war that in my opinion is absurd and could have been easily avoided if all the countries involved (not only the two nominal fighters) were run by actual statesmen, that is leaders whose guiding light was the well-being of their own citizens and those of the world at large. Instead, the level of leadership went steadily declining since the end of WW2. Especially in the US, after the USSC Citizen United decision, politics has just been the executive arm of big money.
In particular, I do not see the behavior of the Biden administration anything surprising, but just the usual combo of pleasing the military industrial complex (let’s recall that a large number of representatives in Congress, I forgot the exact figure, has a defense contractor facility in his territory, employing many of his constituents) and pursuing the usual neo-con foreign politics common to administrations of both colors. The name of Ms. Newland in particular reminds us that US meddling in Ukraine internal affairs in anti-Russia direction goes back at the very least to the coup that overthrew Yanukovich, a filo Russian politician who was the last president elected with the vote of all Ukrainians, before Putin, in reaction to the coup annexed Crimea. This electoral balance also provides an interesting key to understand why the west did nothing more than bark about Crimea. Mix into that all the alleged corruption and million of dollars that since the coup have been enriching many western pockets and one has the reason why the US wanted to fight. Probably an equivalent level of corruption moves some of the European leaders, but what surprises is the generalized pro-war sentiment in all the main countries of the block across political divisions. I doubt that any politician worth his salt cannot see that is not Putin expansionism behind the war. Any country with a strong military would react the same way if one of its neighbors started placing its rivals’ missiles at the border
«the West's stance towards Russia was driven by lots of NatSec blob cubicle dwellers keeping themselves employed, my belief is the causes are economic.»
It used to be this, as written by George Kennan in "At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995" "Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom" (1997): “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
Currently the enmity towards Russia has a much more direct reason: the real rival for leading the global economic system is China, and Russia (and relatedly Kazakhstan) is the biggest buffer state that China has. If Russia were color-revolutioned the new vassal government would "invite" the DOD and CIA to build a chain of biolabs and bases on the northern and western chinese borders where they could fund, train, arm many brigades of "freedom fighters" inside China. Just as Ukraine was the biggest buffer stated that Russia used to have. "Domino Theory" works even if slowly.
«make Russia a natural resource extraction zone with a pliant, if corrupt, government in place.»
Russia would have managed to achieve that all by themselves, as during the Yeltsin era; oligarchs in many countries love to be protected from "socialism" by the USA government.
It’s a good question I have given a lot of thought to over the past few months.
The reason for America ending its involvement in Ukraine is obvious. As an American it’s harder for me to understand why we became involved. My current theory is that Joe Biden along with the security establishment were operating with a wanted poster for Kruschev on their walls that had remained their since the 1960’s and no one had the heart to tell them the world had moved on.
But why would the Europeans be so invested? They're facing a Russia that after 3 years of hard fighting was almost overthrown in a coup and has taken only 20% of a country with an extremely brave, but poorly equipped Army no one consider a serious military threat. Why would they continue speaking about current Russia as if they were facing Stalin in 1945?
The only reasonable answer I have come up with is Bismark. Until the late 1800’s the German principalities like Prussia were strong enough to ward off any single European invasion, but lived in fear they would be too weak to take on a combined France, Russia and potentially England. Bismarks solution was brilliant. Through a series of wars between the 1860’s and 1870’s called The Wars of Unification he convinced the independent principalities to combine in order to defeat their enemies. The result was the unification of Germany.
Europe faces the same problem. Since the end of the Cold War and especially the financial crisis of 2008 it has been very difficult to hold the union together. Perhaps the most unifying factor was NATO with America acting as the hegemon. With that gone, unification around an external threat is really the only way countries like France, Germany and England will continue pulling in the same direction rather than return to the 1,500 years of internal conflict that proceeded that.
If not Russia, it would probably be Turkey. They simply need to maintain an external threat of some type to hold the union together. That is especially true with Tariffs coming to challenge their heavily export based economies that run a real risk of tearing the union apart.
Thanks all for the interesting discussion. We share a common view of a war that in my opinion is absurd and could have been easily avoided if all the countries involved (not only the two nominal fighters) were run by actual statesmen, that is leaders whose guiding light was the well-being of their own citizens and those of the world at large. Instead, the level of leadership went steadily declining since the end of WW2. Especially in the US, after the USSC Citizen United decision, politics has just been the executive arm of big money.
In particular, I do not see the behavior of the Biden administration anything surprising, but just the usual combo of pleasing the military industrial complex (let’s recall that a large number of representatives in Congress, I forgot the exact figure, has a defense contractor facility in his territory, employing many of his constituents) and pursuing the usual neo-con foreign politics common to administrations of both colors. The name of Ms. Newland in particular reminds us that US meddling in Ukraine internal affairs in anti-Russia direction goes back at the very least to the coup that overthrew Yanukovich, a filo Russian politician who was the last president elected with the vote of all Ukrainians, before Putin, in reaction to the coup annexed Crimea. This electoral balance also provides an interesting key to understand why the west did nothing more than bark about Crimea. Mix into that all the alleged corruption and million of dollars that since the coup have been enriching many western pockets and one has the reason why the US wanted to fight. Probably an equivalent level of corruption moves some of the European leaders, but what surprises is the generalized pro-war sentiment in all the main countries of the block across political divisions. I doubt that any politician worth his salt cannot see that is not Putin expansionism behind the war. Any country with a strong military would react the same way if one of its neighbors started placing its rivals’ missiles at the border
«the West's stance towards Russia was driven by lots of NatSec blob cubicle dwellers keeping themselves employed, my belief is the causes are economic.»
It used to be this, as written by George Kennan in "At a Century's Ending: Reflections 1982-1995" "Part II: Cold War in Full Bloom" (1997): “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”
Currently the enmity towards Russia has a much more direct reason: the real rival for leading the global economic system is China, and Russia (and relatedly Kazakhstan) is the biggest buffer state that China has. If Russia were color-revolutioned the new vassal government would "invite" the DOD and CIA to build a chain of biolabs and bases on the northern and western chinese borders where they could fund, train, arm many brigades of "freedom fighters" inside China. Just as Ukraine was the biggest buffer stated that Russia used to have. "Domino Theory" works even if slowly.
«make Russia a natural resource extraction zone with a pliant, if corrupt, government in place.»
Russia would have managed to achieve that all by themselves, as during the Yeltsin era; oligarchs in many countries love to be protected from "socialism" by the USA government.