How should west respond to potential (likely) Russian invasion of Ukraine?

[barbos]

Maybe Russia should be invited to join NATO.

Love this idea! However, it could be a small problem for Russia to qualify. The eligibility requirements to join NATO:
1. functioning democratic political system based on a market economy;
2. fair treatment of minority populations;
3. a commitment to resolve conflicts peacefully;
4. They must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders.

I think that #1, 3, and 4 might be a challenge for Russia to adhere to!

Ukraine does not satisfy any of the requirements and yet they are on the path to be in NATO.

Please elaborate. The Ukrainian government is a semi-presidential representative democratic republic with a vibrant multi-party system. Their cabinet of Ministers have executive power. Yes, there is deep graft in their system and problems. But you could make the case that they are more democratic than the US. They are far more democratic than Mother Russia! You can't have a democracy with a dictator at the top! They have not stolen land from any of their bordering neighbors. Regarding treatment of minorities: I'm not going to engage. You believe that their government are Nazis and are actively throwing Russian speakers into camps and are having them hung. This is so preposterous that I won't engage it with you (unless you'd like to provide some evidence for these claims).

I can give you 1. In the sense that they are better than Russia.
But they do have opposition leader under arrest for being .... pro-russian. Journalists get murdered too.

No, it's not preposterous. It's public record, one of the adviser to the government publicly suggested hanging crimeans. And he has not lost his job over it. He is doing fine right now

You would condemn an entire country due to one adviser to the Ukranian government publicly suggested hanging Crimeans? Do you follow US politics?

Maybe Russia should be invited to join NATO.

Love this idea! However, it could be a small problem for Russia to qualify. The eligibility requirements to join NATO:
1. functioning democratic political system based on a market economy;
2. fair treatment of minority populations;
3. a commitment to resolve conflicts peacefully;
4. They must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders.

I think that #1, 3, and 4 might be a challenge for Russia to adhere to!

Ukraine does not satisfy any of the requirements and yet they are on the path to be in NATO.

Please elaborate. The Ukrainian government is a semi-presidential representative democratic republic with a vibrant multi-party system. Their cabinet of Ministers have executive power. Yes, there is deep graft in their system and problems. But you could make the case that they are more democratic than the US. They are far more democratic than Mother Russia! You can't have a democracy with a dictator at the top! They have not stolen land from any of their bordering neighbors. Regarding treatment of minorities: I'm not going to engage. You believe that their government are Nazis and are actively throwing Russian speakers into camps and are having them hung. This is so preposterous that I won't engage it with you (unless you'd like to provide some evidence for these claims).

I can give you 1. In the sense that they are better than Russia.
But they do have opposition leader under arrest for being .... pro-russian. Journalists get murdered too.

No, it's not preposterous. It's public record, one of the adviser to the government publicly suggested hanging crimeans. And he has not lost his job over it. He is doing fine right now

A certain high-ranking Russian official also once said that Georgian president Saakashvili should be hanged by his balls. He hasn't lost his job over it either.

You don't see the difference between hanging a president who started an illegal war by his balls and government officials suggesting hanging citizens of his own country who are skeptical of the way things are going in the country?

By the way, Saakashvili is in prison in his own Democratic country. So in a way he was hanged by his balls by his own people.

 

[Elixir]

That's not ignorance, that's deliberately distorted education.

There's a difference?

Not in outcome, but ignorance is possible even without the feeding of malevolent misinformation (propaganda).

 

[Elixir]

You don't see the difference between hanging a president who started an illegal war by his balls and government officials suggesting hanging citizens of his own country who are skeptical of they way things are going in the country?

Like Alexei Navalny?

 

[SLD]

Here is a reason why Putin is doing this. He knows Europe doesn’t have the balls to impose sufficient sanctions against him.

The EU’s unforgivable failure

The EU should respond to the Russian threat to Ukraine by making use of its main strength – economic influence. There is no other way for the union to persuade the great powers struggling over Europe’…

ecfr.eu

Europe does need to step up to the plate here. The sanctions must be extreme and severe.

 

[SLD]

So war is the solution?

Education is the solution, but you don't want to be educated, do you?

An education from you is exactly what I am requesting. Please explain to me why an invasion of Ukraine by Russia is justified. I’m not even disagreeing with you. I truly don’t know what your support for this is based upon. You just keep ranting that we are all ignorant and have swallowed propaganda. Ok. I will indeed admit ignorance. I do not know why war is the appropriate response here. Please explain.

You are assuming and very fixated on it that I advocate an invasion.
What is the reason for this fixation?

Anyway.
Countries invade other countries all the time. US invaded Iraq - illegaly. Yugoslavia- illegally. Syria - illegaly. Afghanistan was legal, I can give you that.
Why can't Russia invade Ukraine?
There are way better reasons/justifications for Russia to invade Ukraine than US had for invading Iraq. I would prefer education but you clearly don't want to be educated. So consider invasion as a last option.

I posted a video earlier with prof. Mearsheimer. You should really watch it. In fact watch his other videos they are great regardless whether or not you agree with him.

I’ve read Mearshimer’s book and enjoyed it thoroughly. Missed the video. Too lazy to go through 15 pages of posts to find it. I agree there are lots of good reasons to go to war. I’m no pacifist. I’m a combat veteran in fact.

But it is good to know you are not advocating Putin’s invasion. I am much relieved. But what then are you saying to the OP question posed: How should the West respond to a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

it seems to me that there are several options:

1) Accede to Putin’s demands and remove all NATO elements from Eastern Europe, and cease all FMS to Ukraine and others.
2) Do nothing at all, and tell Putin it’s none of our business, have at it.
3) Issue a strongly worded condemnation.
4) Minor economic sanctions
5) Major economic sanctions (cutoff nordstream, and all trade, and freeze all assets.)
6) Arm Ukraine
7) Send advisors
8) Send NATO forces into Ukraine to fight alongside them.
9) Launch a full scale attack on Russia through the Baltic states (that’ll show ‘em!)

Feel free to add others. Obviously some of these are not mutually exclusive.

But let us know what you prefer.

 

[barbos]

Too lazy to go through 15 pages of posts to find it.

Google is banned in US?
let me help you:

Mearshimer Ukraine - Google Search

How should the West respond to a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Admit they were wrong, disband NATO, let Russia be and ask for forgiveness, then proceed to denazification of Ukraine and other US Eastern Europe friends.
In Germany you can go to prison for denying holocaust, some of these authors of ukrainian school books should go to prison too. I am sick and tired of that crap.
Then full deneoconization of US with sending cold war era neocon cunts to the long overdue retirement. Yes, I am looking at such Russia "experts" as Victoria Nuland, Fiona Hill and others. And one more thing, ass rape Tom Friedman. Fucking piece of shit and war monger.

And do that before invasion.
also:


She is particularly right about much more important problems (Climate Change) than removing Putin from office.

 

[Elixir]

Yeah, just hand Europe and North America over to Russia, because it was always theirs.


Or maybe we should simply realize that Russia is a rogue dictatorship, break it up into little bitty pieces and hand them out to NATO members.
If they keep pretending they can go around issuing ultimatums to the world, it may come to that.

Barbos provides all we need to know;
In Russia, you don’t get education, education gets you.
#SAD

 

[Copernicus]

Barbos has tried to promote political scientist, John Mearsheimer, as a supporter of Russian policy wrt Ukraine, although he is not. What barbos failed to understand was the basis for Mearsheimer's criticism of US policy--what political scientists call the  Security dilemma. That is, a government that tries to strengthen its security through military buildup inevitably weakens its security by provoking rival states to strengthen theirs. In this case, Russia has built itself up in order to weaken NATO, which was created in 1949 to deter the Soviet threat to Western Europe. NATO had become increasingly weaker after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but Putin has managed to singlehandedly reverse that trend. NATO countries in Eastern Europe are now being strengthened militarily. For example, France is sending troops to Romania, and the former approach of NATO troop rotations to those countries may now evolve into permanent NATO bases. Sweden and Finland are again debating the question of whether to join NATO. Putin's aggressive posture has had the opposite effect of actually decreasing Russia's security by reviving NATO's original purpose for existence.

See this Reuters report:

Analysis: Russian troop build-up sparks unintended NATO renewal​

 

[barbos]

Elixir, you are walking illustration to Mearshimer lecture.

 

[Elixir]

Elixir, you are walking illustration to Mearshimer lecture.

That's as informative as telling you that you're an Abbott & Costello skit.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Is Euromaiden Press Reliable?

Barbos demands notwithstanding, is this Russia backing off a bit:

Commenting on the negotiation process with the US, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia was ready to consider two options.

1. The first one is discarding the “formula of the Bucharest summit” which had put Ukraine and Georgia on a membership track.
2. The second is the US commitment to “never vote for Ukraine and other countries to join NATO.”

Ryabkov’s statement shows that Russia has narrowed down its much broader initial demands put forward a month ago.

It's quite a change from the original demands:

In late December 2021, the Kremlin submitted to the US two draft agreements with the US and NATO, more resembling ultimatums than treaties in tone and style, according to Moscow Times.

Back then, Russia’s demands were:

• The United States should prevent NATO’s further eastward expansion, denying accession to the former Soviet states;
• The US should establish no military bases in ex-Soviet non-NATO states and shut down military cooperation with them;
• NATO should exclude its further enlargement, including the accession of Ukraine and “other states”;
• the Alliance should refuse any military activity on the Ukrainian territory, as well as in “other states of Eastern Europe, Transcaucasia, and Central Asia”;
• No NATO forces or weapons should be deployed in countries that joined the alliance after May 1997, i.e. the Baltic states and the former Warsaw-Pact countries;
• NATO should bar deployment of intermediate-range missiles in areas where they could reach the other side’s territory.

Or perhaps it's half a story.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Perhaps rational thought is beginning to kick in. Ukraine is not a threat to Russia. The threat to Russia is from inside Russia, from its movement away from democratic rule. And if you look back through history a movement away from democratic rule has been the greatest threat to any nation and has caused many to collapse. China should also take heed.

With barbos we're witnessing his emotional decision-making process, which is the same process that may take Russia into Ukraine. Long term that is not a good move for Russia.

 

[Elixir]

Alex Vindman is “almost certain” that there will be a major European war … it’s up to Uncle Vlad.
But I don’t know of anyone who should know more about it than Vindman.

 

[SLD]

Too lazy to go through 15 pages of posts to find it.

Google is banned in US?
let me help you:

Mearshimer Ukraine - Google Search

How should the West respond to a Russian invasion of Ukraine?

Admit they were wrong, disband NATO, let Russia be and ask for forgiveness, then proceed to denazification of Ukraine and other US Eastern Europe friends.
In Germany you can go to prison for denying holocaust, some of these authors of ukrainian school books should go to prison too. I am sick and tired of that crap.
Then full deneoconization of US with sending cold war era neocon cunts to the long overdue retirement. Yes, I am looking at such Russia "experts" as Victoria Nuland, Fiona Hill and others. And one more thing, ass rape Tom Friedman. Fucking piece of shit and war monger.

And do that before invasion.
also:


She is particularly right about much more important problems (Climate Change) than removing Putin from office.

Thanks for your response. I would only point out that even Putin hasn’t demanded that NATO be dismantled.

I do agree that US policy has been insensitive to Russia‘s legitimate security concerns. I lot of it during Shrub’s administration. Before 9/11 he continued to view Russia as a threat and revived missile defense. He felt it important to have a foreign threat. Obama too meddled in the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution which overthrew a democratically elected President.

But I don’t find any of that valid reasons to simply allow Russia to invade a sovereign nation. I think Ukraine is indeed a fucked up country, very corrupt, but not as corrupt as Russia. I would agree to a solution of breaking off Crimea. Ukraine doesn’t need Crimea and really doesn’t want it. Too Russophile an area for them to control. In exchange Russia should forgive Ukraine’s debt - IIRC ~$30 billion.

 

[Copernicus]

Perhaps rational thought is beginning to kick in. Ukraine is not a threat to Russia. The threat to Russia is from inside Russia, from its movement away from democratic rule. And if you look back through history a movement away from democratic rule has been the greatest threat to any nation and has caused many to collapse. China should also take heed.

With barbos we're witnessing his emotional decision-making process, which is the same process that may take Russia into Ukraine. Long term that is not a good move for Russia.

The threat is not to Russia, but to Putin's grip on power. He has already experienced significant opposition to his rule within Russia itself, and the revolts in Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan show him how easily he could face a similar situation. It is too late for him to stop what happened in Ukraine, but he must see it like a dagger pointing at his heart. Ukraine is too similar to Russia itself.

The Pew Research Center has looked at surveys of how many people in former Soviet territories feel that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. Older people generally feel that it was to varying degrees, with Estonians being least likely to feel it should have remained together. However, what the statistics show is that younger people increasingly see the dissolution in a more positive light. Only about 50% of Russians 18-34 felt that the dissolution was bad, but 80% of those above (including Putin) thought that it was. I don't know how barbos feels about it, but he is probably over 35. Contrast that with Ukraine, where only 20% of the young demographic felt the dissolution was bad in 2017, and only 40% thought it was bad. IOW, there is a huge disparity between Russia and Ukraine on this subject, and the younger people are, the less likely they are to feel nostalgia for the old Soviet Union. This is really bad new for Putin, who is trying to revive the Soviet Union's former status and glory.

See Older people more likely than younger people to say dissolution of the Soviet Union was a bad thing

Barbos says he has put me on ignore, so he may not see this survey. My guess is that he would say that the Pew report was wildly inaccurate.

 

[barbos]

But I don’t find any of that valid reasons to simply allow Russia to invade a sovereign nation.

To clean up the mess West created.

 

[barbos]

In exchange Russia should forgive Ukraine’s debt - IIRC ~$30 billion.

No. no more debt forgiving of any kind. It's 250+30=$280bil.
If anything it's Ukraine should ask for forgiveness for crap it put through Crimea and other mostly russian regions. Cutting off water, banning language, etc.
By the way, Crimea has always been depressed region and Junta must thank Russia for taking them off their back.

 

[SLD]

But I don’t find any of that valid reasons to simply allow Russia to invade a sovereign nation.

To clean up the mess West created.

You know, I listened to it, and indeed loved it. Mearshimer makes some of the same points I made above. We have indeed pushed Russia into a corner. But nowhere in there did I find any justification for Russia to invade to “clean up the mess we created.” Ukraine isn’t anywhere close to becoming part of NATO. It’s not even been seriously discussed since 2014. It died right then. As he points out, even John McCain recognized that Ukraine is not in our vital interest to defend with an Article V guarantee. Ukraine knows this. Europe knows this. That’s exactly why Russia doesn’t need to worry about it. Putin’s demands on those issues are a non starter. He’s really screwing up, as Mearshimer points out and as I pointed out in an article earlier about the extreme cost of an invasion. This will not be a repeat of the incursion into Georgia in 2008. He cannot control Ukraine. He can just make their lives miserable. But they can make his life miserable too. And we will help. It’s an extremely risky move. Very likely to fail. It might even end up putting Ukraine into NATO which is exactly what he feared would happen.

Where I disagree somewhat with Mearshimer is that I think he’s not looking beyond Putin. Putin will not always be around. As others point out , he has an incredible internal security problem (so does China). He sees what’s happening in Kazakhstan and Belarus. It can and likely will happen to him. That may be the real reason for these shenanigans. It’s a distraction from troubles at home. An excuse to crack down further. A uniting cry to battle enemies. It might work in the short run. But it may also reveal to be a desperate last gamble.

I think a much longer run strategy is not merely having Ukraine in NATO, but Russia too. And Belarus. And all three joining the EU. But only after both have demonstrated that they are stable democratic nations and have managed to control corruption to a much more manageable level. Then the West would be an indomitable force against a belligerent China.

 

[barbos]

That’s exactly why Russia doesn’t need to worry about it.

It's not good enough.

Ukraine isn’t anywhere close to becoming part of NATO.

It's not good enough.

As he points out, even John McCain recognized that Ukraine is not in our vital interest to defend with an Article V guarantee. Ukraine knows this

You think they know that?
You think georgian knew that when they attacked Russia?

This will not be a repeat of the incursion into Georgia in 2008. He cannot control Ukraine. He can just make their lives miserable

You do realize that Georgia started that war? And they started it because they thought NATO would back them up. Same story with Ukraine, they are behaving like that because they think they have NATO to help. These imbeciles really think that.

Where I disagree somewhat with Mearshimer is that I think he’s not looking beyond Putin. Putin will not always be around. As others point out , he has an incredible internal security problem (so does China). He sees what’s happening in Kazakhstan and Belarus. It can and likely will happen to him. That may be the real reason for these shenanigans. It’s a distraction from troubles at home.

that video is from 2015. Putin was young and had 30 years of ruling over Russia ahead of him

 

[barbos]

Russia is not going to invade unless Ukraine provokes it.
Putin does what Mearshimer predicted - wrecking Ukraine without actually invading it.
Once NordStream 2 is operational and current contracts for transit over Ukraine expire, Ukraine would dive into deeper troubles than it is now. And troops near border could stay as long as it is necessary. It's not that expensive. Eventually they can build permanent facilities with heated toilets and flatscreen TVs

The whole thing is going well, The West is at least formally listening to what Russia is saying, that's progress.