I remain fascinated and perplexed by the conflict in Ukraine, including the most recent developments. The fascination includes the faltering Russian economy. It includes their reliance upon North Korean troops and Iranian weapons and Chinese economic support, and even cozying up to the Taliban. I am perplexed by what I consider to be an irrational domestic response by some to a thug run, mafia-state regime that is not only associating with every entity that is hostile to the US and is objectively failing under the weight of a conflict it initiated.
What happens in the near term and do settlement terms, that would be satisfactory to Ukraine, Putin and Europe, even exist?
Discuss.
Any compromise would involve someone giving up territory, which, in my view, would be unsatisfactory to both parties and would ultimately embolden Putin to strike again elsewhere in Eastern Europe.
If the U.S. flooded the European market with cheap natural gas, gasoline, and any other energy source we have at our disposal, would it not bankrupt Russia? IIRC their primary income is energy sales to the Europeans. I know it sounds simplistic.
At this point, the Russian’s energy customers are primarily Asian. Where the Russians are really struggling is with paying for their war of aggression. Letting them win would let them off the hook and create additional security issues with respect to other former Soviet states and put our commitment to Taiwan in question.
We’re exporting triple the amount of natural gas to the EU as Russia right now. So its anachronistic aggressive adventures in Ukraine have earned us new markets.
The sad part of the equation is that Russians pride themselves on suffering. Their economy is at the point of no return now: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/economy/russia-inflation-new-heights-intl-analysis/index.html but they will persist in supporting their jingoistic leaders. It’s what they’ve always done.
Not so sure about that. First, nothing says the brits, the french and the germans have to abandon Ukraine. Second, selling appeasement, abdication or Russian tanks rolling through Kyiv as uh-merka first won’t be easy. Giving the whole game away with nato, the eu and Zelensky in opposition won’t be easy. Especially given the friends putin has been accruing.
Am I apprehensive? Sure, but selling out Ukraine seems like it would require a really deft play and I don’t see those sorts of skills at play. Effective evil requires maturity and intelligence. I don’t see it.
In short, any settlement requires quite a number of partners OR you risk that they all decide to hold out four years while images of preventable death and destruction go out across the world while motives and interests are questioned.
In short, why spend a lot of political capital there when you can prioritize domestic issues, political retribution, and profiteering?
Who knows what will happen but having it both ways:
Bitching about foreign entanglements and responsibilities while not suffering the consequences of changing course seems like a good play to me.
Most likely scenario in my mind is that both sides end up spending less, so something between the current hostilities and a ceasefire or settlement, but the ball just gets kicked down the road.
Ultimately, they’ll whack the east off in exchange for the rest of ukraine being a nato protectorate (with a path towards full membership) and there will be the peace. I just don’t see it happening in the short term for the reason you noted.
Among other things, these folks bought Iraq v.2. You can sell them literally anything.
Not directly relevant to the discussion here, but I watched the documentary “Navalny” on HBO Max last week. Besides being a good documentary, it’s a chilling look inside an authoritarian regime and how dissent is squashed.
Click once.# Just kidding Derek.
I’ll give it a ahot.
I’m with you ADaB. I wouldn’t give Putin a grain of Ukraine soil. Start moving U.S. and NATO resources to the region. If he says nukes, I would start the defcon countdown. He would then know there would be no winners.
I am apprehensive Trump will give Putin most if not everything he wants. Ultimately the result will be catastrophic. The only question being how quickly that catastrophe unfolds. Not to worry. Trump will fix it with tariffs.
Tariffs on every nation and company that fails to fill this bag with cash!
Believe me! Trust me!! Everyone says so!!!
Great topic Derek! It hurts to think that the anguish, pain and suffering of the Ukrainian people and their European supporters could wind up as a line from Animal House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYQCb3qrBpo&ab_channel=BuryandAssociates
Putin to Trump: Do you have any nudes of your wife?
Trump to Putin: No.
Putin to Trump: Want to buy some?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-melania-trumps-nude-190000869.html
Way back in 2016 both political parties computers were hacked by the Russians. Hillary had her emails and the RNC had a registry of sex offenders. Which group would be easier to compromise? I think the release of the Melania nudes was a warning shot to Trump that Putin has even more damaging kompromat to reveal if the Donald doesn’t play ball. https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4993990-putin-is-sending-a-not-so-friendly-message-to-trump/ My guess is that the Donald will give Putin everything he wants and even more to keep his mushroom off of RT.
Matt Gaetz and now Linda McMahon, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-linda-mcmahon-education-secretary-wwe-lawsuit-1235173119/ are two of the highly principled “best people” nominated to positions of power. Something about putting the fox in charge of the hen house comes to mind. I guess southern wisdom doesn’t travel well.
Giving the devil her due, and proving that even a broken clock is right twice in the day, Marjorie Taylor Greene has come up with a solution I can endorse: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-matt-gaetz-ethics-report-b2650038.html Of course the threat could be viewed as a vehicle to blackmail other Republicans into silence and to gain their endorsement for her buddy Gaetz. I choose to take the high road here and believe she is truly trying to root out the corruption and hypocrisy in her party. Wasn’t she promised an ambassadorship to England or some such? Somebody needs to get cracking on that right away. Shout out to Rome, Ga, MTG is what you get when you try to make stupid from concentrate and leave out the water.
In summation, the appeasement monkeys in the Republican party need to check in with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, RTX, Boeing and General Dynamics and get a sense of which side to support in Ukraine’s fight for sovereignty. I’m sure we’d all rather see the Donald’s mushroom over a mushroom cloud.
Sorry if I wandered off point, it’s been an eventful week. Slava Ukraini!
I’d be more concerned if the photos weren’t in the public domain already.
Now that there is no need for GRU’s assistance in another election, it will be interesting to see how the “bromance” plays out.
Not sure anyone out there really has a lever left to use. Which is more frightening frankly. Everything is going to be viewed through this prism:
what can you do for me?
Not sure what Putin has to give. Moreover, the more normal and stable things appear the easier it will be to steal which, besides impunity from criminal activity, is the goal.
He survived a coup attempt. What can be thrown at him that 45% won’t buy any explanation/excuse provided by Fox News? There’s no typical political gravity there. Its way beyond “teflon” so long as the rw media machine is there to spin it away and the vast majority of elected republicans remain neutered.
All good ideas are worth repeating. :~)
FCOL, Bud, you’re gonna give the guy a swollen head!
Our continued lack of understanding of the Russian mindset contributes to our mismanaged foreign policy. In short, they have never accepted that democracy (or a representative republic) even works. Strong leadership is what protects them. Suffering is a normal way of life. Uprisings are so brutally put down the Mafia would blush. Sanctions aren’t working because they can feed themselves and have enough stuff that others want surrogate nations are happily profiting by helping them with the work arounds.
Thanks to our own failures in the Middle East, we now have the former anti-war party supporting America’s role in defending freedom, and the war hawk party retreating to isolationism as if history doesn’t exist. Trump can’t/ won’t strong arm Putin, but Vlad will be happy to get a favorable deal to stop the draining of resources on his western front…for now. He’d love to regroup and engage in the Middle East again where we are most vulnerable protecting Israel. Trump can and will strong arm Zelensky. The euros will not step up to replace us…they simply can’t bear the cost. So some more territory of Ukraine is lost just like Obama allowed, Russia regroups and rebuilds, Ukraine will not get a promised Marshall Plan to rebuild because the West will all renege on the deal and Taiwan is next up.
The group in charge does not want to spend money fighting for democracy abroad but won this election vowing to use the US military to fight for democracy at home by attacking the cartels. The minority party wants the opposite. The middle ground of rational Americans are still left wondering why…the greatest most powerful and influential nation on earth…can’t figure out how to do both? So we’re going to keep voting both parties in power back and forth like a ping pong game hoping for some type of inevitable compromise that is never coming.
The russian revolution was not fought to replace a monarchy with tyranny. That’s just how it worked out in the end. Similar dynamics played out after the French Revolution when Napoleon took power. Not all revolutions end with an enduring Constitution.
As far as history, much the same could be said for Ukraine and the other former Soviet satellites that now have free and fair elections, joined NATO, etc….
It took ourselves over 5 and a half centuries to transition from the first glimmer of the rights of man in the Magna Carta until the Constitution was adopted. Lots of tyranny in between and lots of people here lived under tyranny while others had the document’s protection.
Its a journey. A slow one.
I don’t know that the euros can/will look the other way. Munich is still a memory and the continent suffered far more scars than ourselves. We just won it for them. If Russians are in Kyiv, someone will be shooting at them until more responsible hands grab the wheel.
Sadly, I don’t know that the center, left or right is populated by very many folks who have given a lot of thought to any of this. We’ve gotten lazy and entitled. Its been a very long time since anyone here has had to pay a price for stupidity and shortsightedness. Instead we sit here in a state of freedom and security that has lasted 80 years and we call the folks who built and sustain that state fools and/or deep state actors.
Please won’t someone save us from being the No. 1 military and economic power the world’s ever seen!!!
The fact that the French felt that the clergy was working hand in glove with the nobles to oppress the commoners led to the revolutionaries decision just to go ahead and cut off the whole hand. I found it interesting that in France they say, “In the U.S. you fear your government, in France they fear us.”
Our only hope is that the rest of the world is dumbing down as quickly as we are. “Brawndo’s got what plants crave.”
The salient point here is how much the Russian people have endured for eons and expect to continue suffering. Suffering is their super power, no pun intended. The general population equate land grabs as exemplifying their power and gives them a rationale to endure constant war time shortages in their economy.
The sad truth is that under 45 the people who do know the Russian zeitgeist weren’t listened to. In fact, they were pilloried for espousing views not consistent with the administration’s. Why would we ever listen to experts that lived in country when we could just pull a policy that affected millions of people out of our butts?
If we don’t stand up for Ukraine there’s scant little reason to stand up for Taiwan. 40% tariffs on Chinese goods might provide the PRC the impetus to snatch Taiwan and see if the western nations are willing to get involved in South Asia again. It’s hard to attack the number one customer for your goods, but, if the U.S. adopts policies that wreck your economy, why not?
Let’s wait until next week to do the Middle East.