It's perfectly consistent to be opposed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and also reject the myth that the US's military is the only thing that maintains world peace.
The world is not a 'peaceful place' with a bunch of wars now and again.
It's held together by force.
Peace is a balance of, and righteous management of power.
The US+NATO+Allies form the basis of that power. Unfortunately, without the US, that 'Team' would basically be dysfunctional and wouldn't really work.
The Panama Canal, Suez Canal, the Gulf, S. China Sea - all of it would be controlled by various regimes if it were not for US power basically keeping it all open for everyone.
Israel and Egypt the 'lynchpin' of peace in the ME is kept that way because of US power. All of he Middle East would be like Syria were it not for US/West.
Obviously Taiwan would be in China and Korea would be vanquished by N. Korea.
It's hard to know exactly how the cards would fall, but they would definitely fall one way or another.
Unfortunately, we don't have a solution for Ukraine, but thankfully, this will be mostly contained in Ukraine thanks to NATO.
The same sentences were written two weeks ago with respect to Ukraine. You can't make any assumptions about what Russia will or will not do. Taking over the Suwalki gap could easily happen. The frog is best boiled slowly, and with ample time to get used to the new temperature.
Is not the same thing.
I guess we're ignoring the 200k+ troops sent to Iraq w/o a declaration of war by Congress? I will agree with you on one point though...the President wasn't a maniac.
Excerpt:
"At 5:34 a.m. Baghdad time on 20 March 2003 (9:34 pm, 19 March EST) the surprise[130] military invasion of Iraq began.[131] There was no declaration of war.[132] The 2003 invasion of Iraq was led by US Army General Tommy Franks, under the code-name Operation Iraqi Freedom,[133] the UK code-name Operation Telic, and the Australian code-name Operation Falconer. Coalition forces also cooperated with Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the north. Approximately forty other governments, the "Coalition of the Willing," participated by providing troops, equipment, services, security, and special forces, with 248,000 soldiers from the United States, 45,000 British soldiers, 2,000 Australian soldiers and 194 Polish soldiers from Special Forces unit GROM sent to Kuwait for the invasion.[134] The invasion force was also supported by Iraqi Kurdish militia troops, estimated to number upwards of 70,000.[135]"
Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
Iraq "continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and "actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability" posed a "threat to the national security of the United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf region."
Iraq's "brutal repression of its civilian population."
Iraq's "capability and willingness to use weapons of mass destruction against other nations and its own people".
Iraq's hostility towards the United States as demonstrated by the 1993 assassination attempt on former President George H. W. Bush and firing on coalition aircraft enforcing the no-fly zones following the 1991 Gulf War.
Members of al-Qaeda, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq.
Iraq's "continu[ing] to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations," including anti-United States terrorist organizations.
Iraq paid bounty to families of suicide bombers.
The efforts by the Congress and the President to fight terrorists, and those who aided or harbored them.
The authorization by the Constitution and the Congress for the President to fight anti-United States terrorism.
The governments in Turkey, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia feared Saddam and wanted him removed from power.
Citing the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, the resolution reiterated that it should be the policy of the United States to remove the Saddam Hussein regime and promote a democratic replacement.
And I would put some emphasis on the state of the relation on: Iraq's noncompliance with the conditions of the 1991 ceasefire agreement, including interference with U.N. weapons inspectors.
I mean, there is a war; Russia has been bombing and rocketing Ukrainian military installations all over the country. But it's not a declared war.
"only thing" Not the only thing by any stretch... but definitely a major reason and a hugely stabilizing force.
The US, in a brief moment of national clarify, participated in exactly two just wars in the last century. The outcome of one of those wars was the establishment of liberal democracies across Western Europe, which is indeed a tremendous stabilizing force. But it's not clear to me that the US gets to claim outsized credit for the subsequent years of peacemaking under those nations.
And that is me being lazy to lookup whether there were other conflicts.
The US has been in lots of wars over the last century; what I said was that only two were just.
I beg your pardon? Eastern Europe is eternally grateful to the US that they won the cold war allowing them to break free from the Big Bear. Nations comprising 100+ million people from Estonia to Bulgaria are living their golden ages right now, because of US.
I was not born yet when Germany started WWII, but I was alive to see the US declare torture as a valid means of interrogation and bomb civilians with no repercusions. And my living relatives who suffered under a US-backed military coup may not be as quick to forgive either. Maybe your children will live in a peaceful world, but for many of us that's cold comfort.
As sad as it may be for Ukraine, they're going to have to do what they can to defend themselves with aid and supplies.
The one thought I have around this is Canada. Spitballing: There's a huge Ukrainian population there and the deputy PM has personal ties to the region. It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way. They'd also have to try to convince the other parties helping them maintain government. Even if that happens though, I suspect that won't make a difference to the outcome and the rest of NATO would look at it as a Canadian solo operation. I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less. Any politician who got boots on the ground (barring some unforeseen change in circumstance) would probably be skewered public opinion-wise and be essentially kissing re-election goodbye.
I hate to say it, but I agree. Germany sent Ukraine a few thousand hats to help them resist Russian aggression, for Christ's sake.
Western powers will drop a strongly worded letter in the mail and implement economic sanctions that'll do diddly squat to the Russian authorities, besides maybe push them into a closer alliance with China.
Honestly, the least they could have done is massed NATO troops in Poland, the Baltics, etc. and kept strategic ambiguity about whether they planned to actually use them (instead of explicitly announcing, like dumbasses, they weren't going to get involved in any way that would bother Putin).
> It's entirely possible, especially given recent events, that Trudeau decides it's politically expedient to get involved directly in some meaningful way....I'd give this about a 0.001% chance of happening, maybe less.
Definitely less. IMHO, if they were going to have to get involved, they would have needed to have been moving troops and equipment for quite some time. I don't think they've done that.
Honestly, while I admire the courage, it might be the better solution to lay down weapons.
Does that even matter? Isn't the more significant fact that Russia has veto on the Security Council?
Wasn't that the intel estimate on how long it'd take Russia to take over? I saw Biden's statement that he was sending thoughts & prayers while he watched this and would talk it over with world leaders tomorrow. Since the last few rounds of sanctions did nothing after Crimea, I don't see this changing things.
By the time there is a real response, it's looking like this may be over. Given that their urgency was "I'll talk to world leaders about what to do tomorrow" rather than "let's enact the plan we already prepared during the weeks of warnings" I think we know which way things are headed.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Given that it's apparently not urgent enough to do anything but watch this on TV until morning, it doesn't look like a priority to me.
When people are convinced that there is only one way, then the propaganda worked.
It should not be a surprise that North Korea refuses to disarm.
That trick of ours won’t work again.
I don't see that in the list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
What I do see is a promise made by both the US and Russia to "[r]efrain from the threat or the use of force against [...] Ukraine." So Russia definitely broke the promise, and I don't see where the US broke it.
>Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
I don't know exactly what "Seek immediate Security Council action" means. What if the US seeks it and doesn't find it? Is that in compliance with the memorandum?
#2 Refrain from the threat or the use of force against Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.
Both violated in the Krimean annexion 2014. Since Russia could easily violate this treaty, they could easily invade Ukraine now. And they got no weapons from signatories, only a few from the Baltics.
Treaties with these signatories are not worth the paper, otherwise Ukraine would have kept the nukes, and would have somehow got the codes also eventually.
Going to end up looking like a fucking 9000 IQ play by Russia here, but hopefully the world proves me wrong.
"Biden only wants to intervene because of Hunters business dealings!"
When you say "world peace", do you mean European peace? California peace? Where is your world?
I spoke with a guy who fought that war. I asked him "do you think the war would have ended without American intervention?" and he responded "no, I don't think it would".
I wouldn't describe the country as a blooming economy, but it's peace here, for more than 20 years and counting.
And yes, in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Afghanistan again, Iraq, Syria, and others, one or more parties in the conflicts had nukes.
I don't care about the other parties in the conflict. Nukes stop you from getting invaded, not from invading. Afaik, none of these countries were nuclear when they got steamrolled.
To answer your question, yes. A country with nukes is dominating people as much as the British empire, Romans, and Mongols did? How is that even a serious question? With military forces spread through Korea, Japan, Germany, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Poland, Lithuania, Arizona, Alaska, Dominican Republic, Cuba, you name it. From sea to shining sea, then another sea and another sea.
We should be grateful Ukraine does not have nukes. 12 hours ago the world might've gotten 4000C hotter if they did.
Russia's unprovoked attack on Ukraine is much more equivalent to America's unprovoked attack on Iraq.
The current Russian claims about Ukraine, however, do appear groundless, based on the consensus of international media.
Source: Former mouthbreathing analyst
And you can help by asking your government to sanction China. And stop buying goods from China
I see no evidence for this statement in western Europe countries. EU negative interest rates are an indicator of failure not success.
If LBJ stuck to his promise, we could have avoid a ton of mess in Vietnam: "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."
We don't have a dog in this fight.
Edit: Apparently arguing for the US to not get involved in yet another foreign war warrants my comment being flagged.
Many have argued that it was US intervention in WWI that created the economic and political situations that allowed such a bad outcome to take place in WWII.
The US getting involved in WWI arguably extended that conflict, the action that made WWII possible, and had many drastic unintended consequences for humanity.
The very short version is this.
* During WWI, there were lots of peace overtures being pushed in Europe because a lot of people were sick of fighting. Because a lot of powerful people were hoping to drag the United States into that relative stalemate, these peace offerings were not taken as seriously as they otherwise would have been.
* Because the US's entrance tilted the scales at the end of WWI so dramatically, Allies were able to enact a little revenge in the Treaty of Versailles and impose punitive and humiliating economic and political measures. Rather than a normal, face-saving peace-treaty, Germany was punished harshly and this tilting of the scales is what led to conditions for the Nazis to take power.
* If Russia's economic and political attention wasn't directed externally at the time, it's likely the Russian Revolution would have failed and the world would have been spared a great deal of grief from Communism.
Obviously this is all alternative history speculation, but there's a strong case to be made that absolute US neutrality in WWI would have ended WWI sooner, not created the economic/social conditions that led to Nazis taking power in Germany, and Communists would have never taken root.