The US has not gun at the moment. They have their own share of problems with China and any conflict in Europe is not in their interest. Not saying that Russia has all the card or anything like that too.
> US has not gun at the moment. They have their own share of problems with China and any conflict in Europe is not in their interest
We don’t want conflict in Europe. But we’re capable of sustaining it.
We won’t go to war over Ukraine, but we’ll economically cripple Russia, at great pain to ourselves and our allies, and line its borders with strike weapons if that happens. Because if Russia can break the agreements it signed as recently as 1994 it’s not unfeasible that it goes for Finland or even the Baltics next.
Putin isn’t bluffing. But he’s more likely to die in power if Russia doesn’t attempt a war.
Yep, there's no shortage of European politicians to sabotage their countries' national interests to do the US/NATO bidding. After all that's how they're funded and annointed. If their local embassy doesn't give the get-go they don't have much of a chance...
And, apparently, there are fellow European citizens who still buy this charade. At least if they're from Poland or something similar easterny, it's their age old beefs with Russia/USSR that are a factor (though it's funny to see them believe Germany has their best interests at heart). But who can say why western european countries want to be the US lapdogs...
If you think the American people want another nation building exercise far away from us (while Germany busily buys Russia gas through Nord Stream 2 and dems block sanctions on it) think again.
A few quick points.
The US has a lot to lose here. This area is in russia's back yard, not ours. If we fight on the ground (without speaking the local language - Russian) we are back into our afghan / syria stuff.
Russia has nuclear weapons. If you say you can blow russia away think again. And again, the US has a LOT to loose, I suspect the russian populace would be able to deal with casualities etc better than the US.
When we say we are going to cut them off financially, realize that a huge amount of energy flows from Russia to Europe. And especially if they go after Ukraine then, they would have enormous control over EU energy markets. Again, not saying EU couldn't handle it, but do they have the stomach for this?
Germany BTW has shut DOWN a lot of their zero carbon nuclear power (to be "green") so they are now more dependent then ever on natural gas.
Does President Biden have the popularity and support of his caucus to start a war? Bernie Sanders is on board with this?
The US did this huffing already with Crimea.
They did this with Afghanistan where we were assured repeatedly that NO evacuation was underway while we literally watched an evacuation.
The confusing thing to me in all this is, where is Europe? France always want to be a bigger player internationally - this is a chance for the EU to demonstrate some soft or hard power if they wanted.
If there was something going on with mexico in our backyard, I can't even imagine us not getting involved (or cuba - we'd def push back on Russia putting stuff there).
The US and western Europe. While everyone blames the US, there are a lot of countries in Europe that prefer the US to Russia and are doing their own thing. They have a lot of lose if Russia takes over Ukraine.
Explain to me why this is not a European led effort? The US is thousands of miles away from this Russian border dispute.
France is always banging on about how Europe should be more respected / have a stronger defense story.
Russia has a much much BIGGER trade relationship with Europe. Where is the EU? They literally are not even in the meetings, it's kind of comical.
So the countries that are a) close, b) have economic relationships that matter etc are silent and the US administration is strutting around saying they are going to put a gun to Russia's head or whatever.
The parallel would be if Russia was going to put a missile system in Cuba, and the US just sat around, and Turkey or some country thousands of miles away started negotiating over it with Russia. Hell no - the US would be front and center in that negotiation
And BTW - this happened - the Cuban missile crisis. And the US WAS front and center there.
Russia seems to have gotten clean away with Crimea. Are there similar underlying divisions in Ukraine? Ie, a russian speaking portion and a more western half? That is exactly the type of thing they are good at exploiting, and the on the ground support for the US in part of the country may not be robust. That's a bad mix for foreign policy intervention.
I'm really hoping Biden has is head screwed on straight for this one.
I doubt Europe was out of the loop, but nothing more is clear.
They could be a bystander only informed of things (which brings up your questions).
They could be letting/making the US lead for their own reasons. The following come to mind: they don't want to be seen as in charge - the US is drawing any negative attention. They can't agree on leaders and the US is better than "the other country". They want to make the US look good for reasons.
Russia could be giving all credit to the US for various reasons.
I have no idea what the truth is. It might be one of the above, it might not (my guess).
Especially considering the support US is giving its domestic hackers. Russia knows this isn’t an arms race they want to be part of. Look at our recent spin-up for maritime privateering to counter China, you know we could ramp up attacks on Russian industry and commerce with cyber too.
I didn't downvote them, however I'm guessing the downvotes are because their statement is either false or close to it.
The US is the world's largest economy, loaded with ~$165 trillion in household assets, having persistent supply chain problems, running at 50 year highs on inflation, and it's still wildly exposed to cyber attacks despite decades of warning shots across its bow. It's exposed to almost a comically idiotic degree.
Russia can cause a lot of disruption and havoc with the US economy if it wants to. The US has three potent recourses at that point: try to unplug Russia as it pertains to the global Internet (not very effective other than to further isolation); drive chaos and civil war on its borders and attempt to flood terrorism into Russia (eg from Kazakhstan etc.), which is a dangerous proxy kinetic action toward Russia (they can swing back); pull Russia from SWIFT (they're slightly prepared for that, however it would still hurt a lot regardless) and try to more seriously isolate them globally economically (it'll drive Russia further into China's arms, which may be a mistake at this juncture; it might be better if Russia is able to independently fend off China's inevitable attempts to turn Russia into its subservient over time).
None of those are great options, although dramatically increasing global economic isolation is probably the best option.
Russia is a weak nation economically and structurally. As an entity, Russia shouldn't exist and can only be held together through a never-ending reign of authoritarian / totalitarian iron fist dictator types; it requires a constant application of severe force upon the population (eg stripping them of all media, protest and speech rights) to hold it all together, otherwise Russia would explode into numerous separate countries very rapidly. Why does that matter? It matters because we're going to keep getting an endless line of Putins, it's the only type that can operate Russia as it's presently constructed. Putin knows exactly what it takes to hold Russia together, it's the naive West that has been surprised by what he has done / what he became (golly gee, the people of Russia want freeeeedom too, they're just like us, dur dur dur - aka the early 1990s naive worldview; Russia can only be one of two things: some slight variation of what it is presently, which requires a Putin, or it has to explode into pieces).
When you're a weak nation with some potent systems you can attack a very rich superpower with, it's a huge problem for the rich superpower. It's the classic line about how if you owe someone ~$1,000, you have a problem; and if you owe someone $1 billion, they have a problem (ignoring for a moment whether it's very accurate, you get the point). If you're facing off with North Korea, trading cities in a nuclear exchange with them is a massive losing contest for the US, trading NYC for Pyongyang is not an even exchange; trading Los Angeles for Hamhung is not an even exchange; North Korea has an epic scale advantage in such a terrible exchange. Russia has a similar advantage in how it can persistently stab the US with economically damaging cyber attacks; the US will struggle greatly to find an even exchange in hitting back, because Russia is economically feeble and it's difficult to upset the Putin cart with targeted social chaos attacks (like trying to disrupt various infrastructure or supply chains for Russia to cause political problems for Putin; they'll just oppress or murder the domestic population as needed to maintain control).
Jep, i really had no interest to Answer that long text with thousands of errors, just to say that the NATO has no right to be aggressive towards Russia, NATO is/was meant to be a Defense force, and not an Aggressor (Nato rockets in Turkey but russian ones in Cuba)...that's a problem for Russia and Europe...meanwhile the US can lough about the stupid Union for playing so very well against his neighbor(Russia) and for the empire(US).
Russia infrastructure is old and the country is very corrupt. Wouldn't be surprised there was a "proof of concept" to show they mean business.