Encircling Ukraine with thousands of troops, Russia has set up a standoff that’s led many to predict imminent military action.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1403604
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1403604
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Well, then the demand would be something else.
Has no one bothered to read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”? Because this where that playbook originated in the modern era. First the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland, each one with a pretext Hitler cooked up that got the world to use word “crisis” as if the victims had some equal argument/beef in the first place.
Ukraine wants to be part of NATO. Giving that up means later giving up actual territory.
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For reference, this would be like Florida and Texas deciding that they were independent countries, then us allowing them back in but on the condition that they be allowed to do everything their own way…
Oh, nevermind…
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Josh, you first say “Russia is pushing Kyiv to implement its interpretation of” Minsk II, and later you say Garmash, the Ukrainian negotiator, “is pushing for a Ukrainian reading of the agreement’s terms.”
Can you explain about the different readings/interpretations, what their source is, and give a bit more detail on what difference it would make to go with one reading versus the other?
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Kremlin operator: "Mr. President Putin, Senator Josh Hawley is on line one."
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Excerpt:
Putin is preparing to invade Ukraine again—or pretending he will invade Ukraine again—for the same reason. He wants to destabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine. He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors—in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary—to doubt whether democracy will ever be viable, in the longer term, in their countries too. Farther abroad, he wants to put so much strain on Western and democratic institutions, especially the European Union and NATO, that they break up. He wants to keep dictators in power wherever he can, in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran. He wants to undermine America, to shrink American influence, to remove the power of the democracy rhetoric that so many people in his part of the world still associate with America. He wants America itself to fail.
These are big goals, and they might not be achievable. But Putin’s beloved Soviet Union also had big, unachievable goals. Lenin, Stalin, and their successors wanted to create an international revolution, to subjugate the entire world to the Soviet dictatorship of the proletariat. Ultimately, they failed—but they did a lot of damage while trying. Putin will also fail, but he too can do a lot of damage while trying. And not only in Ukraine.
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It’s an inherent conflict within the agreement. Ukraine’s read is that implementing it means they take over control of the territories first, then work on constitutional changes that would decentralize things (think like making them akin to States vs Fed).
Russia’s read is the inverse, they’d like Ukraine to rip up its constitution first, then they’d let go of control (obvs if they felt like it).
Major poison pill being dropped in there, if Ukraine goes with russia’s read, they simply destroy themselves and end up with the government toppled and won’t have gotten an inch of land back.
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“Those who forget the passed are condemned to relive it”, the first time I read this when in 1970 I first picked up William Shire’s book.
That said, I do not agree that the situation in the Ukraine is a parallel.
However, I do agree that implementing Minsk-II would lead to the disputed areas of the Ukraine eventually breaking away from the Ukraine and becoming part of Russia. Which brings up the Hitler possible parallel, would Putin then want more?
I do not think so but could be wrong. The first reason is Russian’s are not Germans. That is what really struck home in “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” was Shire’s statement that far from being the product of the Treaty of Versailles, “Hitler was a natural continuation of German History”.
Rather, the reason Putin has not already invaded the Ukraine is he fears Russian’s taking battlefield losses which destroyed the USSR as its citizens did not like dying in Afghanistan.
The problem is as Ukraine was in history, and especially in modern history, never a truly independent nation and therefore its proper borders can be disputed. The current borders are from it being a state in the Russian Empire/USSR. Which brings up the fact that the Ukraine is not the only former Soviet Republic to have this issue with Russia.
So the real question is, now that Ukraine will for the first time since Catherine the Great be free of Russian domination and really for the first time in history be an independent nation, what should be its borders.
While I have always agreed that Putin should have retaken the Crimea if the Ukraine was going to be truly independent from Russia, actions of your historical predecessors, be they nations, empires or people, have consequences. Russia created the borders of the Ukraine state. When the Russian Empire/USSR collapsed, Ukraine with those borders began its move toward independence.
If not the only way, the most often way to change borders agreed to by a national leaders predecessors is war. Putin may not like it, but he cannot undue what Russia as a nation in whatever form it previously had, did to create the current borders of the Ukraine.
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I’m no peacenik, but I shudder to think of even “conventional” fighting with Ukraine as its battleground. Today we have weapons that rarely miss their targets. I’m visualizing refugees fleeing advancing Putin forces a la WW2 images.
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OT, but no…just no, Josh…
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jec.nr0.htm
The guy even dives into the comparisons immediately as if everything revolves around the Trump timeline and should be compared to Trump’s “best economy in the history of the world,” almost leading the Faux News right wing propaganda machine in how to formulate their spin on the jobs numbers in a way that casts Biden as a failure. His mistakes “just so happen” to be in Trump’s favor all throughout 2020 and suddenly run counter to Biden’s interests in 2021? No. Just no. If nothing else, it fucking stinks. William Beach HAS GOT TO GO.
" So this whole time that you’ve been listening to Republicans talk about how bad the labor market is under Joe Biden, they were doing so based on numbers that weren’t just incorrect — they were the most incorrect they’ve ever been .
So who is William Beach? Well, he’s a Trump appointee who used to work for the right-wing Heritage Foundation, the Koch brothers, and even worked for GOP Senators on the Budget Committee."
On purpose or not, that kind of incompetence should have consequences. But OH, LOOK…
" Frustratingly, we should have known it was coming. The Post also pointed out that, under Beach, jobs reports during the Trump administration were also wildly inaccurate — but in the other direction:
Revisions in the already calamitous months of March and April 2020 found the economy had lost 922,000 more jobs than initially reported."
This shit is NOT an accident. NO. JUST NO.
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I’m sorry – regardless of the merits of the possible resolutions of this matter – listening to the Russians complain about threats of violence is just plain comical.
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Giving up more actual territory.
FIFY
Ukraine wants to join NATO but the alliance is not going to let Ukraine in. All the current members have to approve an application to join. However there are some European nations who against Ukraine entering the alliance.
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Excerpt:
For Putin, fissures in the NATO alliance are critical in order to reach his objective of preventing Ukraine from joining the alliance. Of all the persuasion tools that the former lieutenant colonel of the KGB employs, however, the most effective may be “elite capture” — offering attractive board positions in Russian companies to former European leaders, including former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who last Friday took aim at Ukraine on his podcast for provoking Russia and voicing his hope that “the saber-rattling from Ukraine will stop.”
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It is a trap. Either way, Russia has the pretext to invade. But the best option of the two bad options is to keep the Minsk Agreement on ice. Russia has already annexed Crimea. International outrage might keep them at arm’s length if they try to swallow another country.
And none of this leads to a reborn USSR. It’s just Putin’s mid-life crisis playing out on the public stage.
All of this goes away if Putin did something unthinkable, but brave: join NATO. I’m serious. What does he have to lose? And what does the world have to gain by putting aside these childish conflicts from last century?
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I found this interesting that Brazil would embrace deeper Russian ties now:
Under Trump, Bolsonaro seemed to drift further from both China and Russia. Maybe it was all talk while the opposite was happening.
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Urban warfare with an insurgent population when you’re not trying to just flatten every building with a cruise missile is still pretty nasty. House-to-house searches, snipers on rooftops. Tanks don’t solve every problem.
That kind of urban warfare is what Putin won’t be able to sustain for very long as an occupying force, and it’s probably what’s holding him back.
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Of course he can undo it. Same way Gorbachev undid the USSR. It is always much easier, and more profitable, to wage peace than war. But Putin is mired in last century’s thinking.
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But don’t a lot of Ukrainians also identify as Russians?