Trump's Pivot Toward Putin's Russia Upends Generations of U.S. Policy
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Negotiating something between Russia and Ukraine is arguably reasonable.
However, what the US is now proposing happens to exactly match the Kremlin's wish list. That is not negotiation by any known definition of the term.
I would argue that the US aligning with Putin is much more impactful on the future of geopolitics than even Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
If anyone could make this make sense, while keeping in the spirit of this website, I would appreciate it.
a spurious correlation
Only Ukraine can sue for peace, and they've stated quite openly that they will not give Russia the land they occupy. Trump's admin can negotiate whatever they want behind closed doors, but Ukrainian leadership has no obligation to listen. Trump doesn't have the leverage he would like with NATO starting to well up the bases of European support.
What I don't understand is why people like Musk and Sachs, two very influential Trump admin members, have been perfectly aligned with Putin. For years, they have repeated Kremlin talking points word for word. It's uncanny.
Trump himself was accused of being a Moscow stooge for years, and yet came out very strong against Russian aggression during the first weeks of his administration. Suddenly, it's all exactly what Putin wants. What happened? Was it all theater?
Ukraine not invited to US-Russia peace talks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43072691
with an apparent implicit starting point that Ukraine has already lost the war and it's now A-Okay for Russia and the US to divide up the spoils ...
NB: downvoters .. shooting the messenger? It's not my belief that Ukraine has no agency here, just an attitude common to backseat wargamers.
It entirely ignores not only the wishes of the country in question, but the entire continent and economic bloc between the USA and Russia.
This is some kind of weird magical thinking where somehow the USA remains influential, as it withdraws from positions of global influence.
What happens if the EU and Ukraine don't agree with the US position on Russia? Will the USA threaten and sanction the EU? What other option is the USA leaving itself?
Yep.
I can't account for it.
I'm 60+ and spent much of my life travelling through three quarters of the globe for geophysical exploration in search of minerals and energy, often in contentious areas (South China Sea, Mali, Congo, India | Pakistan intersticial zone, former USSR, etc.). There's a lot of bold plays for territory and resources made, a lot of fierce resistance.
The blind belief that the US and Russia get to dissect this and everybody else (EU countries, former bloc countries, Ukraine) will just go along with whatever the "major powers" decide isn't something well grounded in history.
Trump's goto move is over the top in your face bluster followed by taking ownership of whatever falls out as the plan all along. (eg: Taking credit for Canada delivering what was already promised before any tariffs were threatened).
That's suprisingly effective and swept his base along with him . . . but it doesn't work forever.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/swamp-chronicles/a-theory-of-...
Also, it’s an interesting theory and would make a lot of sense, but it’s presented with literally not one shred of actual evidence. I find it hard to believe something like this is going on and our intelligence services haven’t picked up on any of it.
add in a huge quantity of narcissism + a pathological need to bang Eastern European women (aka the classic Soviet/Russian honeypot), and you've got him locked down easily.
his ego, plus his complete inability to get accepted by NYC high society make him easy to manipulate after you've satisfied his immediate needs for debt-payment money and Slovenian pin-up models.
top-shelf asset handling by Russian intelligence, btw. Farage and Trump -- those asset account managers are damn good. deep web rumors have suggested Melania herself was his handler, and if so she's probably the most accomplished case officer in history.
I think Katya Banks, wife of Brexit's main funder, is though:
>Cadwalladr said the file claimed Katya Banks had entered Britain on a passport sequentially numbered to the passport of Katia Zatuliveter, a woman MI5 had claimed was a Russian spy and who had had an affair with the Portsmouth MP, Mike Hancock. Katya Banks was also alleged to have had a relationship with Hancock.
Googling suggest the Russians have been on to Trump since 1977 while he only met Melania in 1998. (1977 source https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia...)
Meaning, I don’t believe that it would. What else could they be accused of? They control their own media channels, just declare "fake news" and move on.
This is the much more frightening possibility to me. Not just because that appears to POTUS's belief system, but apparently also that of many powerful rich Americans.
Trump did sexual stuff with Russian hookers. They have the vid. Would be embarrassing. Apparently it was quite standard for the KGB to gather such data and Trump was in Moscow in his playboy days and would quite likely have done things.
or Trump broke money laundering laws in his extensive dealings with the Russians.
Both seem kind of possible to me, especially the first. I note that around the first Trump Putin calls the Russians put various naked pictures of Melania on their TV channels which may have been a reminder of possible hooker photos?
like CSAM, snuff, donkey sort of bad. cuz otherwise the dude has no shame and doesn't give a fuck.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associat... https://apnews.com/article/russian-interference-presidential...
It's one thing to understand something on an intellectual level and another to accept it emotionally. For someone in the upper class or the upper middle class, it's too comfortable to assume that things will go on as usual and bad things only happen in the news and not in the real world.
Trump and Putin are ideologically aligned, like many other strongman leaders in the world. But because their shared ideology is a variant of nationalism, it can just as easily make them allies as enemies. Everything depends on the situation, as there are no fundamental reasons to favor one over another.
Likewise we see that another rebel government in the US was aided by Russia in order to weaken Europe, Ukraine, and its allies.
NATO has more or less been disbanded without armed confrontation allowing for easier Russian expansionism and a return to "spheres of influence" diplomacy.
Even expansion into Europe probably won't be very armed. It will largely be done by offering aid to a country's elites and oligarch aspirants, getting them to turn against their citizens for 30 silver.
I don't really think it's much more complicated than that.
We are experiencing a decapitation strike as a military action against America for our hand in helping Ukraine defend itself: https://snyder.substack.com/p/decapitation-strike
Our military is failing to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic. https://www.army.mil/values/oath.html
Many thanks for the archive link. He has very large amounts of content on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZVrh821RA
I think that series touches on his book "The road to Unfreedom," and he also did a full reading/discussion of his book "On Tyranny."
He also posted a lecture series on the history of Ukraine. I think he did a video called "How could the holocaust have happen," which was unfortunately informative.
He'll be happy to sell out the American people to Russia as well.