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Comment by inverted_flag | Hacker News Reader

These aren’t peace talks then, they’re talks on how to divide up the spoils.

I don't know why people are pretending to be surprised. When the Soviet Union or Uncle Sams props your army up to fight the other you were in for a bad time. There are like books written about events like these.

I think if you're fighting off a straight up invasion you take the help you can get. That's it.

This isn't your typical proxy war situation where US and Russia just pick sides in an internal conflict. This was something else.

$9 trillion in minerals

You were told this was something else, and it resonated better because the people involved were culturally close to Europeans. But in reality was the messaging all that different from "Operation Iraqi Freedom"? Both were fights for automotive power sources dressed up as a liberation movement.

I don't know what any of that means. What is "both fights" what are "automotive power sources"?

He’s straining to draw a false equivalence between the Iraq war and the Ukraine war.

"both fights" are presumably the Ukrainian war and Iraqi Freedom. Automotive power sources is oil.

What that all that means pretty much boils down to parroting Russian talking points.

How does it feel when Trump flips the script and outright says: we'll put a "people's leader" in charge of Greenland and then he'll sell it out to us. This is all that your color revolutions were all along, always.

Uh yes? Zelenskyy was a democratically elected leader and Saddam was a tyrant.

Both were propped up militarily by the US and ditched when convenient.

You may want to look up something about how Saddam came to power in the early 60s. He had not only the same CIA covert ops backing but even the same kind of TV promotion. That whole army fatigues getup should be familiar by now.

I don't see how the political establishment was strong enough to do anything but being played, so contemplating whether accepting help or on the contrary playing along with the "special operation" thing seems like counterfactual history to me, even though such discussions usually are quite interesting.

> you take the help you can get

Was it really help if the outcome ends up being worse than without any help? I'm taking about loss of life, property, and land.

Loss of freedom?

Yes that too

I think many have a hard time dealing with lose-lose situations emotionally and ethically.

I'm unclear; what is the point you're trying to make here if not "welp who cares"?

> "welp who cares"

Yes, that is my point, that in the end, the profiteers and instigators don't care.

> These aren’t peace talks then, they’re talks on how to divide up the spoils.

That's what peace talks are all about. Do you think Japan and Germany had a say in what they had to give up at the end of WW2?

Both Japan and Germany attacked other countries to expand their empire.

Like Russia in this conflict.

Lots of defensive countries have lost wars too.

This seems less like a country losing a war and more like the US and Russia partnering in an attempt to impose an unfavourable deal on Kyiv.

Which makes the above justification of a Ukraine absence from divvying up the spoils after a defeat rather circular.

>This seems less like a country losing a war and more like the US and Russia partnering in an attempt to impose an unfavorable deal on Kyiv.

I dont understand the difference here. Losing a war usually comes with unfavorable terms.

Ukraine is absent from table because durable military power is the table stakes, and they were always a proxy. If the US has decided it is done using Ukraine to bloody Russia's nose and scare Europe into line, then it's basically over.

From the US real politik perspective, it was always a win-win situation going in. The US will walk away with 2 new NATO allies, increased NATO spending, and severed trade with Russia.

> Both Japan and Germany attacked other countries to expand their empire.

That's completely irrelevant to the outcome

This is more like the US agreeing to end the Lend-Lease program if Hitler promised to stop his conquest of Europe, allowing him to keep his conquered territory while demanding concessions from the rest of Europe.

they floated treaties and peace offerings... and most of those were like "we get to keep all of Asia that we hold, we just stop shooting, and will throw $$2 billion your way"

the Allies all met together and decided on the course of action on several occasions, like at Yalta

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