U.S. to send 3k additional troops to Poland, officials say
reuters.com
reuters.com
Where is de-escalation and diplomacy?
The US foreign policy is like their police force.
We're talking about a person who has less than 48 ours ago threatened nuclear Armageddon on the entire world. [1] You do not give in to the insane demands of such a person just as you do not give in to the tantrums of a child.
Strictly speaking, he said that bad things you're talking about would happen "if Ukraine joins NATO and tries to retake Crimea by military means." Not, as you seem to imply, just for the fun of it.
The U.S. has also threatened, or considered first-strike nuclear attacks several times (albeit not publicly) numerous times, as recently as 1997. Usually against smaller countries (the usual suspects) but also against the Russians in the event of an attack on Berlin during the 1961 crisis:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/10/jfks-fir...
So say what you want about the petulant madman - but really he was just pulling a move from Kennedy's playbook, essentially.
It is an economic one more than anything.
Germany, France and every European country wants Nord Stream 2 because it would greatly help their energy problems. The US doesn't, which is why it is pushing NATO to Ukraine, provoking Russia and looking for excuses to stop it: https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-germanys-scholz-stress-u...
A third of Ukraine (Russian speakers) don't want any part in the government operated by American allies in Ukraine and would rather be a part of Russia. They definitely do not want NATO there. If Russia did absolutely nothing, it would mean years of proxy war in Ukraine... which is to say there would definitely not be Nord Stream 2... which is exactly what the US wants and exactly what Russia doesn't.
The US is clearly the aggressor here.
including France https://www.dw.com/en/france-presses-germany-to-ditch-nord-s...
It might also be worth pointing out that Ukraine is not in NATO.
The whole situation feels strange to me and I can't help but thinking that a lot more is happening than we are told or made to believe.
Edit: the US seem the most active and effectively are the ones warmongering and it's hard to imagine that they care so much about Ukraine. But looking at Russian pipelines and China's Belt and Road perhaps they actually aim at creating a clash and a new iron curtain to prevent growing links between Europe and Russia/China in order to keep control of Europe.
And "they're within Russia's borders", but there sure seem to be a large number of them really close to the border of Ukraine. That raises concerns. Like, it's really easy to go from "all these troops are within our borders" to "all these troops are halfway to Kiev" within 48 hours. It's a force posture from which the Russian troops could trivially launch an invasion, and it's unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. That's concerning, at a minimum.
Russian troops are occupying substantial parts of Ukraine, which is a key part of the context of Russia massing additional troops on the border of Ukraine, in other, Russia and Belarus (the latter of which is a cooperating partner of Russia, just as the NATO countries the US is deploying troops to are of the US, but definitely still not within Russia’s borders.)
> while the US are depicted as the 'good guys' for moving troops abroad
The US troops are all deployed with the permission of the host governments in NATO allies. Like Russia’s troops in Belarus (which are “abroad and next to Ukraine”, in much larger numbers than US troops are “abroad and next to Russia”), and unlike Russia’s troops in Ukraine, which are an actual (not potential imminent) invasion and occupation.
But nice try.
NATO is a big alliance.
Poland is in NATO.
The U.S. is the strongest military power by a large margin.
Russia is amassing troops next to a country they've already invaded (see Crimea).
I don't see the dissonance here.
Just feels really strange.
The US isn't starting a war.
> No matter if Putin is a psychopath, this is not the way to deal with it.
Yes, securing our allies against the madman is the way to deal with it, and contain any escalation of the ongoing (and it is ongoing, with Russia already having and invaded large portions of Ukraine) war b/w Russia and Ukraine.
The only ones trying to prevent this war with at least some diplomacy is Germany and France. What the US is doing is the same as before the Iraq war and it is the wrong thing.
The deployment of small numbers of troops (the total deployed by the US to Eastern Europe as a response to the crisis is less than 1/30 the Russian deployment on the borders of Ukraine) is not a show of force (it is a show of commitment that the US cannot avoid being engaged should Russia invade beyond Ukraine into NATO countries in the region, but nothing more; it's a tripwire force.)
> I see zero de-escalation from the US
You aren't looking very hard.
> The US press seems "Geil für Krieg" (horny for war),
I have no idea what you are basing this on, that's certainly not the US press I see in America.
> The only ones trying to prevent this war with at least some diplomacy is Germany and France.
Germany has been giving more direct aid to Ukraine than the US, the idea that they are de-escalating while the US defensive deployment to NATO allies outside of Ukraine is escalation is...tortured, at best.
> What the US is doing is the same as before the Iraq war
No, it's not. No one in the US has called for offensive war (as was done on Iraq) or even defensive war in case of Russian action against Ukraine.
The US has even openly stated that it will not even use it's military to evacuate US citizens in the event of an invasion by Russia, because to do so would be “world war”. It has threatened no action against Russia for merely continuing it's aggressive posture and it's current invasion and occupation of Ukraine, and only economic sanctions on the event of a total invasion of the rest of Ukraine.
It has put forward no UN resolution, nor has it hinted that if the Security Council (where it called a discussion meeting but did not attempt to push any concrete action) failed to move to a resolution due to veto it would activate Uniting for Peace to try bypass the UNSC and bring resolution through the UNGA.
The US is pursuing a policy of diplomacy with military forces only deployed in a manner to deter aggression beyond Ukraine, with no attempt to deploy capacity that would do anything to alter outcomes in Ukraine, much less take aggressive action against Russia. It couldn't be more different than Iraq in 2003.
Most people on Earth aren't so lucky as to have the Swiss Alps as a natural deterrent to foreign aggression.
By someone needs to be a bigger man, do you mean the people of Ukraine? In what way should they be bigger?