There's a lot of bloviating from the chattering class about cozying up to Russia, but I've yet to hear a cogent alternative. And no, I don't think "endlessly funding Ukraine to a forever stalemate" qualifies.
Plus if Russia wins, its appetite will only grow, and another war is just a matter of time.
The plan so far has not worked.
>Tankers carrying Russian oil stuck idling off Chinese coast after new U.S. sanctions https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/01/13/russian-oil-tankers-stu...
>UK sanctions 30 shadow tankers in largest clampdown on Russian oil trade https://www.spglobal.com/commodity-insights/en/news-research...
I guess that may all go wrong if Trump drops all sanctions but at the moment it's making things difficult.
I also don't think it's wise or rational to presume that every aggressive action necessarily means that the aggressor is Hitler or bent on world domination. Or even that opposing them by sending resources to their enemy is the most effective way to stop it.
[1] as a percentage of the US$850,000,000,000 _annual_ Pentagon budget
Chamberlain tried to bargain peace for Britain at the sacrifice of the Czechs and other nations and in the end his country got bombed to shit anyway. You guys make it seem like Russia has no agency here
Up to now, Ukraine has never received the support it would need to win, just enough not to lose. Weapons deliveries been too little, too late, making the war longer and bloodier than it needs to be. In the meantime domestic production has increased to the point Ukraine covers 30% of its needs.
Russia has lost other wars, it can and should lose this one.
And what does "loss" even look like? Are you genuinely proposing they will simply pack up and head home from all captured territory?
You have to compare with how much will it cost if the war continues to grow in scale or intensity. Russia is dedicating more and more resources to its war machine. And I have no reason to think it will stop if Ukraine. In 2022 Putin already said he wanted NATO back to 1991, IOW he wants Eastern Europe defenseless.
Russia's economy is just the size of Spain or Italy: not negligible, but not formidable either. Europe should do more, much more, if only for its own sake.
> And what does "loss" even look like? Are you genuinely proposing they will simply pack up and head home from all captured territory?
Territorial issues are somewhat secondary. What matters is that the defeat is clear and Russia's leaders discouraged from attempting to go to war again. It happened to Russia against Japan in 1905, and to the USSR in Afghanistan. It can happen again.
This isn't the US's first go-round with nazis, obviously.
Back in WWII, just as now, there were capitulation proponents.
Then, just as now, they espoused the supremacy of bettering their own position over helping others.
Then, just as now, they advocated for leaving Europe to fall to invaders.
Then, just as now, they allied themselves with American fascists.
Then, just as now, they campaigned on the slogan, "America First" [0].
There's nothing new here, and personally, I'm glad hitler lost. That dude sucked.
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0: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/01/dr...
This can be done with very little US funding. And sharing intelligence with Ukraine literally costs us nothing.
Any ceasefire or peace without security guarantees will be used by Russia to rearm and try again in a few years time. It will be a continuation of the conflict that started in 2014. That, too, isn't hard to understand.
What's your plan for beating Russia? Ideally without starting WW3.
I am sure the Europeans would be willing to shoulder more of the cost but the US has been cutting Ukraine off from intelligence sources and now also support. There is no cost argument for that.
Also do you really think that these decisions will not cost the US in lost sales, reassurances for everything because of lost trust....
Right now China is pressuring Russia into lots of one sided deals and is taking over large parts of the economy but that holds no candle to taking over the Vladivostok region.
The Chinese leader also calls for closer coordination as he meets security chief Sergei Shoigu amid thawing ties between Russia and the US
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3300618/ch...
Americans shouldn't get high on their MSM narratives supply.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1895449822917951901
The real story here, contrary to the framing, is that Rubio admits that a reverse Kissinger - splitting Russia and China - is NOT achievable. He says that the US will "[never] be successful completely at peeling [the Russians] off of a relationship with the Chinese,” and that the best outcome the US could hope for is "to have a relationship" with Russia so they don't exclusively deal with China. That's actually realistic and indeed probably the best outcome the US can possibly hope for.
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1892074921679069555
I see many people commenting that the US is trying to pull a reverse Kissinger, wooing Russia away from China, completely missing the obvious truth right before their eyes: if there's a split happening, it's a Euro-US split.
That's a common flaw in human nature, we're often incapable to conceive that the status quo we've lived with our entire lives has fundamentally changed. We look to patterns from the past, seek to refight the previous war; it's far easier and more comforting to believe you're still in the box even when the box has disappeared.
Russia isn't going to split again from China, there is not a single chance in hell, it learned that lesson the hard way... Putin, as a famously keen student of history, understands how much damage that did.
And why would he? What benefit would Russia possibly derive from this? The world has changed: as we've seen during the Ukraine war the West unleashed its entire economic arsenal against Russia, only to demonstrate its own impotence. Russia last year was Europe's fastest-growing economy even when completely cut off from Western markets. So if the West's maximum pressure amounts to so little, its maximum friendship isn't worth much more.
It's utterly delusional to think that the two torch bearers of the Global South would split just as the emergence of the long sought multipolar order is finally coming true, all in exchange for a return of Western trade which they now know is dispensable, and an end to sanctions which they now know don't hurt much.
Also, kind reminder that Kissinger didn't actually split Russia and China: he took advantage of an already existing split. Geopolitically speaking, it's incredibly hard to split powers - especially great powers, but it's much easier to leverage an existing split. And looking at the landscape, those that are already split - or rather splitting - aren't Russia and China, but very much the U.S. and Europe.
A Euro-US split was bound to happen sooner or later, as the cost of the alliance increasingly outweighed the benefits on both sides. Especially with the rise of the Global South, China in particular, which initiated a profound identity crisis: suddenly you had countries "not like us" being far more successful, taking over an unsurmountable lead in manufacturing, and increasingly science and technology.
At some point there are three choices in front of you: join them, beat them, or isolate yourself from them and slowly decay into irrelevance. The West has been trying the "beat them" approach for the better part of the past 10 years and we've seen the results: an increasingly desperate series of failed strategies that only accelerated Western decline while strengthening the very powers they meant to weaken.
It also tried the "isolate yourself" approach with the various plans of "friend-shoring", "de-risking", "small yard, high fence", etc. That wasn't much more successful and the West undoubtedly sees the writing on the wall: the more you isolate yourself from a more dynamic economy, the further behind you get.
This leaves us with "join them", and here Trump's calculation seems to be that if the U.S. does so first, it undoubtedly can negotiate much better terms for the U.S., much like China did with Kissinger back in the late 1970s when it joined what was at the time still the U.S.-led international order. With Europe, like the Soviet Union back then, left with no choice but to accept whatever crumbs remain.
The situation of course isn't exactly similar. We're outside the box, remember... For one the U.S. isn't remotely in the same conditions as those of China back then and, unlike the Soviet Union, Europe lacks both the military might to resist this new arrangement and the economic autonomy to chart its own course. Which means that in many ways, geopolitically speaking, the U.S. is in better conditions and with more leverage than China had (and therefore able to get itself a better deal), and the EU ends up in worse conditions than the Soviets.
Still, the fundamental reality remains that Trump, for all his faults, seems to have understood earlier than Europeans that the world has changed and he'd better be the first to adapt. This was clear from Rubio's very first major interview in his new role as Secretary of State when he declared that we're now in a multipolar world with "multi-great powers in different parts of the planet" (https://state.gov/secretary-marco-rubio-with-megyn-kelly-of-...).
As a European though, I can only despair at the incompetence and naivety of our leaders who didn't see this coming and didn't adapt first, despite all the opportunities and incentives to do so. They foolishly preferred to cling to their role as America's junior partner, even as that partnership was increasingly against their own interests, something which I've personally warned about for years.
Turns out, strangely, that the Europeans were in fact in many ways more hubristic and more trapped in the delusions of Western supremacy than the Americans. The price for this hubris will be very steep, because instead of proactively shaping their role in the emerging multipolar order, they will now have to accept whatever terms are decided for them.
Certainly not resource deals, where China sets cut throat prices.
Talk is cheap and China holds historical grudges, like those lost territories, forever. Having strong dominance over the northern pacific areas would also be far more stable and lucrative than any geopolitical advantages that might be very fleeting.
As for Europe and the US, time will tell. The US is going to pay a high price for the lost credibility. Would you really make yourself dependent by buying US weapons and leave yourself open to such thuggish blackmail tactics we have seen the last weeks? Also the US is a consumer based society that tries to change to a more balanced system. Absolutely understandable but very hard and risky.
We are moving to a multipolar world order and its going to be a time of blood and iron. Russia was just the one making the first move and with the US no longer interested in a rule based world order the mice are coming out to play. I sincerely hope I am wrong.
I don't think that anyone can seriously predict how things will fall out.
Our experts completely misjudged China and its ability to innovate. Now they're ahead everywhere.
Ukraine's $500 billion rare earths scam: they don't exist, and we should know better
Please go through these videos and let me know. I need to know whether I am better informed or you are
@Rare earths. That has been obvious from the start. There are always massive potential resources everywhere. Trillions in Afghanistan, Ukraine....and if you don't have an ambiguous enough surveying report you can always postulate a pipeline is going to be build there, like with Syria. It seemed to me that was always some kind of intentional face saving exercise to please Trumps electorate, but I might be overestimating him. That extortionist act of him is doing so much damage, it is not rational.
You want the war to end so that Poland, Japan, Taiwan and Australia no longer trust that the US will help them and develop their own nuclear weapons!
Taiwan makes some of the most complex devices humans have ever constructed! They can figure out the almost 100 year old technology to make a gun bomb nuke.
And you, too, have failed to present one. Is funding a never-ending stalemate indefinitely the only option?
Fantastic.
I've literally never thought that the US wouldn't help us before Trump came to shit on everything.
Now I imagine we'd have to buy Trump off with "raw earth" or something in exchange for not being abandoned to China, and our head of state would quite possibly be berated publicly for wanting some kind of security guarantee for his people's future.
It's sad, I still feel like the US and UK people are closest to our values, but Trump only works for himself and his billionaire crony parasites.
He will end up with the loyalty he has earned.
Everyone around Trump hates him, and the US is heading in the same direction.
Still waiting on the alternative plan.
Given Putin's stated wishes, this will only stop if Russia is unable to make such moves (for whatever reason) or states at risk of invasion are defended such that it's strategically stupid for Russia to even try.
You (and Donald Trump) seem to be using "Ukraine and Russia stop shooting at each other right now", while Ukraine operates more under "Russia stops shooting at us for the foreseeable future, 20 years at least." Russia has previously broken a number of ceasefires and written agreements (including the infamous Budapest memorandum) and so Ukraine is not super trusting to agreements not backed by anything.
I've had a lot of responses to my comment, yet I've seen no alternative ideas presented that will result in a different outcome. What is your plan for getting Russia to lose this war?
and while we're here, since the US is ostensibly going isolationist, maybe they should stop telling the Ukrainians they need to submit to subjugation.
Ukraine has an amazing job, but they wouldn't have been able to do even that without convincing others that it was in their best interest to fund the war. That's been clear from the beginning.
For Ukraine to continue existing, the russians have to be driven out. Otherwise the genocide will continue. The genocide caused by russians, caused by russians invading Ukraine, caused by russians stealing Ukraine's children.
In america's right wing trump followers, there is utter, sociopathic, monstrous indifference to Ukraine's suffering.
So I'll ask you, personally: If the neighbouring state or country decided to invade and take over an area of your state, and you were told "you've been resisting too long, give in already and give up your fight", would you lay down and welcome the invaders you've been fighting? If you knew that the invaders were stealing children, and murdering whole towns?
It's exactly what the Ukrainians are asking for - not troops, just weapons.
What's your plan that results in Russia giving up the territory they've claimed and heading home?