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Salamandre
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posted March 07, 2025 02:40 PM |
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Russia has deep ties, both geographically and culturally with China, its unlikely that they cut them for USA, which changes president and probably ideology too every 4 years. Trump is just a lump of wood passing by on a river, Xi Jinping is a rock.
That's the advantage of long term monarchies, you get same leader for decades thus have time to build something with others of your own.
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purerogue3
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posted March 07, 2025 03:36 PM |
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I see Russia-China as 50/50 -can't live without, can't live with.
The only commonality of RUssia/US is race.. which doesn't even work in reality
So it can only be a temporary aberation based on one personality
But Donald has created a problem with Canada - what could they do if they start cozying up to Russia/Euro/China inviting navies/nuclear weapons?
Trump's created alot of problems, just to fix the excesses of the democrats.
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Pol
Known Hero
.^.
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posted March 08, 2025 09:16 PM |
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Not sure about democrats but he's going for fiscal victory. A lot indicate that real Trump's goal is to secure position of dollar as worldwide currency, reducing all the debts.
Everything else could be a sauce only.
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted March 09, 2025 07:29 PM |
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Salamandre said:
Russia has deep ties, both geographically and culturally with China, its unlikely that they cut them for USA, which changes president and probably ideology too every 4 years. Trump is just a lump of wood passing by on a river, Xi Jinping is a rock.
That's the advantage of long term monarchies, you get same leader for decades thus have time to build something with others of your own.
Not necessarily, there have been democracies with long-term solid foreign politics, U.K. (a monarchy but a symbolical one) is a good example of that. Voters mostly dont care about long-term macro state politics anyway, which are mostly held by bureaucrats behind the curtain, not politicians on the window shelves.
That being said, the U.S. is the most unreliable global force ever as an ally. Basically, they had screwed over every ally they promised to watch their backs. Ukraine is just the last one. Maybe it’s the geography and the pre-WW2 isolationist tradition. But they have no imperial vision of stability, the minute things go south, U.S. starts talking about how things over the Atlantic are not their concern and leaves groups they had emboldened to fight into destruction.
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Salamandre
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posted March 09, 2025 08:00 PM |
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Yes, but Ukraine isn't an ally, not even close to it. Israel is an ally. I don't think they consider EU as an ally neither, but I guess they will act accordingly to NATO articles if one of the nations within get attacked.
Trump is a pragmatic. In the sense that he sees there is no possible issue to the conflict where Russia loses, so he saves the last dishes, why keep sending tons of money when there is no return in any form. And I think he is sincere when he affirms that this conflict would have never start if he was in office.
But what baffles me, with all the recent turnaround, is the incredible incompetence of European leaders to pull a viable long-term strategy. The plan was to isolate Russia, and in the end we get Russia closer to US, then to China, while EU not only ends isolated and lost its best and probably unique military support, but also fell into economical recession, a big part of it being the masterwork of the US, I mean the blow up of the NorthStream2. On top of the cake, also lost most of its influence in Africa while Russians filled the gaps.
But who knows, things may still change again. EU is now opposed to peace and Zelensky always hangs into the direction some money come from.
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted March 09, 2025 08:18 PM |
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Edited by artu at 20:20, 09 Mar 2025.
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Ukraine was an ally in the sense that it was a potential NATO member and U.S. backed up politicians that wanted to be part of the Western club and hindered ones wantin to get closer to Russia. Ukraine chose a side.
Of course, there are some who theorizes that from the beginning, the U.S. agenda was to provoke Russia to attack, in order to prevent Germany and Russia flirting and getting closer. Germany being the industrial powerhouse and Russia being so rich in resources, that kind of potential cooperation can be seen as a threat by the U.S.. Remember how Merkel was opposed to Ukraine’s membership but U.S. didnt back down anyway. That kind of a bigger Europe could have indeed been something other than a U.S. ally but as of now, Europe’s foreign politics is heavily affected by NATO led by USA, so of course, they are practically allies even if they dont see eye to eye on everything. Trump is unpredictable though.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Blizzard
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posted March 10, 2025 02:48 AM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 02:55, 10 Mar 2025.
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That is a stupid theory. Germany is ideologically far, far away from Russia. There is no chance right now or 10 years ago of them ever being close allies.
Germany's foreign policy model is to "conquer" Europe with diplomacy. It the most anally retentive major power when it comes to following international rule of law. It wants to turn Europe into a USA 2.0, built on a much newer legal system that is less of a dinosaur. Russia is the most immediate threat to that.
US defense contractors would love Ukraine in NATO because that means more weapon sales, but the actual war has been crappy for business. Moving Russian supply chains towards China = bad. Russian-Chinese cooperation = bad. New trade deals with Pyongyang = very bad. There's a reason Trump wants the war to be over. Several reasons.
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artu
Promising
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted March 10, 2025 02:16 PM |
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Well, ideology is hardly the primary incentive when it comes to reelpolitik, U.S. and Saudi Arabia are close allies for instance. Besides, if thing didnt escalate and Russia had been part of the European union, like it hoped in the 1990’s, the political climate would have been very different. If you have the cultural potential, and Russia does, ideological authoritarianism melts away quite easily.
Of course, it’s just a hypothesis, not a documented fact, but at least it explains why U.S. was so eager and foolishly stubborn to taunt Russia.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Blizzard
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posted March 10, 2025 02:37 PM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 14:51, 10 Mar 2025.
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This is an issue that cuts across party lines. Some Republicans and some Democrats believe Russian politics are irredeemably imperialistic. So, the only real solution is to expand NATO aggressively and contain Russia as much as possible. So, Russia can never truly be a part of "Europe" with its economic cooperation, respect for international law, etc.
My opinion is that it is sort of half true. Lots of younger Russians would have loved to be more European. Putin is an imperialist and what was happening with Ukraine before the war started was a big taunt for Russia. There were serious talks going on about Ukraine joining NATO but nothing legally was really happening with it, which is about the worst thing you could possibly do. They either needed to keep Ukraine out of NATO or they needed to get them into NATO and do it as quickly as possible. Instead the idea was toyed around for years and I think this made Russia decisive with taking some of the territory that they see as Russian.
Now that Russia has its new territories in Ukraine and now that they have a pretty strong hold on that territory, it doesn't seem imo that Russia will be integrated into Europe, at least not anytime in the next several decades, because the annexed Ukrainian territory is going to be a massive sticky point even when the war ends and after Putin dies or retires. I think if Russia was ever going to be brought into the fold of "Europe" as a pal, it needed to happen in the 2000s or early 2010s, but there was a lot of mutual suspicion about that on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Salamandre
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posted March 10, 2025 02:46 PM |
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When it comes to a conflict where nuclear powers are into, the worst and longest way of coming to a peaceful solution is not listening at all to one of the belligerents and instead put words in his mouth.
Russia never said it wants to annex Russian lands, its version was about ethnic Russians being poorly treated in those regions, and it complained about it several times at the UN, documents in hand. Nobody listened and it was dismissed. You may agree or not, but totally ignoring what they say then push on your own narrative that you know better what they have in mind will blown away like we see, because no communication and wrong diagnostic.
Back in march 2022, when Russia and Ukraine sat down in Istanbul for peace negotiations, there was no territory demand from Russia, at all.
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Blizzard
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posted March 10, 2025 07:18 PM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 19:41, 10 Mar 2025.
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But it did. It isn't putting words in peoples' mouths. Putin has actually talked about how he would like to see the Sea of Azov being an interior sea of Russia, sovereignly controlled by Russia. And now it is. Mission accomplished. He has imperial ambitions.
You can't just go off of what is said at official meetings or when people are being diplomatic. Countries are generally going to be well-behaved and careful about what they do or don't say in those sort of settings. Nobody goes off of that, and nobody should, unless you're going to approach international politics like a little kid. You also have to go based on what world leaders talk about outside of those occasions. You also have to recognize the fact that these people are not necessarily "dictators" in the sense that they are imposing their will against the majority of the population. Like, most of the population of Russia also has at least some imperial ambitions. They currently occupy territory that belongs to Japan and Georgia in addition to Ukraine, and most of them are fine with that. Expansionism is a pretty popular view to have in a lot of places and it is more popular now than it was 10 years ago. I mean, Trump wants to annex the planet of Mars lol.
And if this war is going to end, you need to be transparent about this stuff from the start and stop making BS up about how Russia (both Putin's administration and Russia collectively) only cares about how Russians/Russophones in Ukraine are being treated. Now, I'm not saying they don't care about that, but that is not the only reason. Give me a break. Russia will never agree to a ceasefire if that means giving its annexed territory back to Ukraine. That's not just because Putin is president. That is just Russia, period. Too many servicemembers died annexing that territory. If you visit Russia right now, there are pictures and memorials of dead servicemembers all over the place.
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted March 10, 2025 08:40 PM |
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It’s not black and white. Countries like Russia, countries with a not so distant imperial past, of course have the tendency to want to have influence over their lost peripherical territory. They have a historical, cultural and sometimes political gravity. Eastern Ukraine is Russianesque in many ways. So, of course they’ll have a potential motivation, both social and political, to have significance in matters regarding that periphery. Imagine USA losing power because of China and so on, then Texas going independent in 30 years, wont you have people and politicians that want to “bring the glory back?” Wont Texas still be culturally something very different than Brazil or Canada?
Yet, that tendency can be channelled into many models. Russia joining the EU as a significant member was an altenrative way to channel it’s gravity. Because in the end, Russia is not Vietnam or Afghanistan, it wont shrink into this insignificant backwater country only because it lost the Cold War, one way or another, they will have significance, they are a regional power. But a EU-Russia merge is not something within the interests of the U.S., this was especially seen as a disaster for your Neo-Con politicians in the early 2000’s who were mostly molded in Cold War Era. Anyway, it didn’t happen and as you hit the mark, it is extremely unlikely to happen for quite sometime now, after all this.
Another thing that changed is, we are gradually returning to an arena of international politics with decenteralized power. U.S. calling all the shots as the victor of Cold War, the only super power standing is coming to an end as an Era. I dont think that this is a bad thing, because that kind of rivalless power corrupts the beholder quite fast. And it did. Things like Trump getting elected is your people’s reaction to that corrupt “establishment” mostly.
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Ghost
Undefeatable Hero
Therefore I am
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posted March 11, 2025 10:10 AM |
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Edited by Ghost at 10:11, 11 Mar 2025.
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Is someone trying to say USA willn't lose because USA doesn't help Ukraine.. If the US continued to give aid to Ukraine, and lost the war, and Russia is the new super power..
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JollyJoker
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posted March 11, 2025 10:43 AM |
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It's not about countries. Countries are not "acting entities". It's PEOPLE. It's not Russia or Germany or Japan or the USA that are expansionistic or imperialistic - it's people. The people who are "calling the shots" for those countries.
Which can result in radical shifts, as you all know. Gorbachew was a massive shift from, say, Breshnev (although Andropov probably already was). Trump 2.0 is a pretty radical shift from Biden. Brandt was a radical shift from Adenauer and Erhardt. And so on.
Putin is in office since 1999, either as President or Prime minister, which means he is in his 26th year of reign. It's HIS Russia, and he's formed it for a quarter of a century. For comparison, Xi Jinping is President of China since 2012, so he's half as long in office. You may compare him with with the Turkish Pres Erdogan who became Prime Minister in 2003, got used to power and eventually changed the system so he's Pres now since 2017.
It's people, guys. Not countries.
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Blizzard
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posted March 11, 2025 02:45 PM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 14:49, 11 Mar 2025.
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Eh. Trump won the popular vote, both in the primaries (within the Republican party) and in the general election. Even if somebody might say that Trump is a lesser evil to Biden/Harris, it's not as if he had to be the Republican candidate. Somebody else could have been it, but Trump won it easily.
Putin uses suppressive tactics for elections, it is true, but many/most Russians are okay with that, or okay enough with it. Most Russians love or at least tolerate Putin.
Elections in Ukraine have been postponed, so I don't know about Zelensky, but at one point he was a popular elected official. Ukraine I guess is the best example of the three of a person/small group of people imposing themselves on everybody else.
USA and Russia have got a good bit of expansionism ingrained in their DNA from their history. That's part of the reason why they are major powers.
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JollyJoker
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posted March 11, 2025 03:16 PM |
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Elections? Lol. Do you really think people vote what they actually get? Or get what they actually believed to vote for? Do you really think THAT is what people want?
You can't be serious.
And I have to say that you are pretty casually presuming to know what many/most Russians are okay with. Or people in general.
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purerogue3
Known Hero
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posted March 11, 2025 03:52 PM |
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Galaad
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Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted March 11, 2025 04:30 PM |
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purerogue3 said:
JJ is a communist
This type of comment doesn't contribute to the discussion. Stay on topic and avoid personal jests. We're here to discuss the subject, not to speculate about members' ideologies. Keep the discussion focused.
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Blizzard
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posted March 11, 2025 05:06 PM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 17:19, 11 Mar 2025.
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JollyJoker said:
Elections? Lol. Do you really think people vote what they actually get? Or get what they actually believed to vote for? Do you really think THAT is what people want?
You can't be serious.
And I have to say that you are pretty casually presuming to know what many/most Russians are okay with. Or people in general.
It is more like taking people's words at face value (assuming they are in a safe space) than it is about presuming to know.
So, if you stick a mic in front of somebody's face, there is a good chance a lot of what they say is going to go through a filter, because they feel unsafe. In more casual settings or in more anonymous polls, there is going to be a lot more honesty.
So, again, with expansionism, it is actually a fairly mainstream thing that is either openly supported or condoned by a lot of people, and this is particularly true with Russia and USA. Expansionism is the bread and butter of these two federations, and the idea of expansion never truly died even if it did become taboo to say it outloud.
I'm not saying Russians are terrible people because their militaristic history has also quite literally saved the world, but the expanionist mindset in Russia is a real thing. It isn't just Putin controlling the country like a puppetmaster.
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Blizzard
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posted March 11, 2025 05:41 PM |
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Edited by Blizzard at 17:48, 11 Mar 2025.
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purerogue3 said:
JJ is a communist
Nah, JJ is a national socialist. Get it right.
Valeriy is a communist.
I am freedom incarnate  All of you should be on your knees worshipping me right now.
Galaad is a male prostitute and a drunk.
Artu is a terrorist.
Sal is literally Count Dracula. He even admitted that he doesn't sleep. I mean wtf.
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