Where’s the line for a NATO country to get involved here? Arming the shit out of them is all well and good. But using banned munitions on residential structures seems to be them poking the bear a little.
The effectiveness of international law is directly correlated to the capability of enforcing it. NATO is not going to send troops in unless they want missiles launched at European cities. In any event, I’m glad Europe is finally waking the fuck up, though. For all his bullshit, some of Trump’s criticism of NATO was valid. Germany is only now going to start contributing 2% of their GDP, but more than half of NATO members still don’t. The Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations is a savage. He spoke during an assembly and directly told Putin to kill himself.
I saw that video. These people don’t fuck around and make me feel like a soft little pussy who gets annoyed when doordash makes one stop before getting to my house. Today, Russians fired upon and killed innocents who were part of a convoy escaping Ukraine. I think an Israeli citizen was shot and killed. They are also threatening to attack the resupply groups who are sending weapons and other goods to the Ukrainians. If they hit a NATO weapons shipment, what then?
This isn't just any nuclear power, it's fucking Russia. They've made being belligerent, unpredictable and amoral part of their standard foreign policy for almost a century now. The idea that this escalates to include NATO, the EU, or whoever is essentially agreeing to overlook the most likely outcome of that escalation: nukes moving. If that happens, all bets are off, and we are plunged into a "worse than the worst nightmare of mutually assured destruction circa 1986". Russia must be given a way to de-escalate and save face, while being deterred from ever doing this shit again. Escalating to the next level just draws us one step closer to the nuclear option. I think the foreign powers are doing about all they are going to do: send arms, relief, and support, zealously defend their borders, and make the Russian economy grind to a halt combined with a hope the Ukrainians can outlast. The longer this drags on, the worse it gets for everyone involved. There's a tipping point where Russian stability hinges on getting this the fuck over, and no one really knows what that is. Most smart people I know in the State Department are scared titsless of a destabilized Russia. Part of me thinks that even Putin is surprised by the reaction. He was expecting another Georgia, Chechnya or Syria: a quick strike, everyone rolls over, and a bunch of foreign powers shake their fists and say "oh, you wascally wussians!". Now that hasn't happened....instead of looking at "conquerors in Kiev" inside of a week, he's reeling. I would not want to have to look at re-supplying an invasion force that maybe didn't expect to face this kind of resistance across 6,000 mile long supply chains, when the economy is in free fall. Sure, they might have enough gas and grub for a month or two, but....how paranoid would you get if this clicks into a third week? A fourth? When all the buddies you made rich now are worth...little to nothing? Putin might be fine, he can seize whatever assets of the Russian state and proclaim them his....but he can't do that for everyone, can he? When shortages, riots and protests are bound to get worse, as Russia is effectively blockaded from trade around the globe? Not to mention the fact that there hasn't been a single weak spot in the international response. It's wild to think that the Russian state could be dramatically destabilized by this, and it won't take that long. I'd say 3-4 weeks, and if Ukraine isn't conquered and cowed (ie, no significant resistance that the rest of the world can arm, train and fund), Putin will have to pull out. The most likely result has to be negotiating "the return" of some territory to Russia, in exchange for some reparations for the war crimes, sanctions, etc. The hardest part is how the average Russian is going to be hurt by this. We know those elections weren't fair, we know "overthrow Russia" sounds about as simple as "deadlift the 600-lb woman's corpse onto the flatbed without getting any goo on your shoes", and we know the average Russian doesn't support this war. The question is putting the right amount of pressure on the populace at large and El Presidente and his gang of oligarchs, to end this quickly.
Ukraine applied to be included in the EU today. I wonder how that will play into the mix. Right now I think the economic impact will be the only thing that stops this. Already you have very senior oligarchs speaking out against the invasion, and with the markets doing what they're doing, and the WORLD aligning on the theme of "fuck Russia", they will suffer hugely. Rumour has it they're being kicked out of the International Hockey League, for fuck sake. Shit is getting serious.
The 2% figure was agreed to in 2014 and pushed for by Obama. Trump's contribution mostly consisted of completely misunderstanding the purpose of the 2% figure, and then directly undermining that purpose as a result. The whole point, if you read the original documents produced from the 2014 meeting, was to increase the deterrent value of Article V (so it was more than just "big brother US will beat you up if you're mean to Europe") and grant assurances to Eastern members of NATO like Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania that there would be a strong nearby defense. Trump thought it was money owed to the United States, so in typical Trump fashion he viewed the lack of money being spent as a way the United States was being "ripped off", and tried to leverage Article V to get the money flowing. Saying that the US might not hold to Article V is literally the opposite of the purpose of the 2% spending figure. In the end all he did was undermine NATO and get some countries in Europe to reaffirm a timetable they had already agreed to under Obama.
Lithuania just legalized the use of the term "Russian Warship, go fuck yourself" in the media. Check out the penis submarine they use in the backdrop of the video. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestin...huania_just_legalized_to_use_phrase_in_media/
Other than more saber-rattling, probably not much. Ascension for a candidate country takes 5-10 years. They need domestic reforms, political reforms, and a detailed plan to convert the monetary system. Unless the EU shelves those requirements for Ukraine, it’s going to take a while.
I think Biden/Johnson/Macron/etc are threading the needle pretty well so far. No one wants to this to blow up into a full on NATO vs USSR humanity-ending war, but we also can't allow any nuclear-armed state to engage in wars of conquest however they like. So far I think we've seen a pretty good balance point of keeping our boots on our own soil, but providing lethal defenses to Ukraine and encircling Russia with serious economic sanctions. It's basically the boa-constrictor strategy, and now we just lightly squeeze and wait.
I don’t know what your point is other than some technicality. I didn’t claim he was a brilliant geopolitical strategist, but the US shouldering the majority of NATO is completely accurate. Members agreed to contribute 2% of GDP. Before last week, Germany hadn’t planned to do so until at least 2024. Most countries in NATO still won’t by 2030. If the EU wanted to provide a nearby defense to Eastern Europe, they could have formed that military union that also never materialized. They was sleeping on their own security, but at least now they’re figuring it out.
My point is that all of that was understood and acted on by Obama. And it was done for a specific purpose, a purpose that Trump clearly didn't understand. Trump's actions undermined that purpose, and put both the United States and Europe in a worse position than they were in before.
I don’t think it was actually understood by Obama well at all, let alone by Trump. 2% of GDP was an absolute basic requirement. A lot of analysts agreed that even that agreement from 2014 would be generally ineffective because it doesn’t adequately address command structure, pooling of resources or generally what do with the ~2 million troops across Europe. NATO was more/less born out of the Bretton Woods Conference. Europe and other non-Soviet allies would join the US against the commies, and in exchange they open access to American markets and the US would shoulder the security burden. That made sense during the Cold War, it didn’t make sense 10, 20 or 30 years after it. These underlying issues should have been addressed a decade ago, now they’re being addressed frantically because there’s a monster lurking at the border. I want to see healthcare, environmental policy and other domestic issues meaningfully addressed, but they won’t be if we continue largely funding Europe’s security blanket.
I understand that impulse, but is anyone actually a proposing a decrease in US defense spending in response to increased spending from Europe? Trump certainly wasn't, and Biden isn't either. I can think of maybe a handful of Congressmen who might, but nothing resembling even a caucus in either party.
Literally not a single person in government is or has, at least not that I'm aware of in any serious way. Given that Europe may be on the brink of another world war, it's definitely not happening anytime soon, either.
That has to be a negotiating tactic, right? "Ukraine will withdraw it's EU application, in exchange for Russia removing dick/boot from ass", right? No way is the EU going to be like, "hey sure and we'll take care of that pesky little invasion you've got going on, too." There has to be some benefit, like hedging against a plummeting currency, but...hell, I have to imagine Ukraine had some euros in reserve, right? The Trump argument, shared by a LOT of DOD and State Dept folks is that when small countries are confronted with a threat like Russia/China relying on the US to fund your defense is bullshit. One of the few conservative arguments against the European version of socialism that I agree with is that it's subsidized by the US' military presence, freeing up funding for social programs. The problem is there's not a politically viable escape from this situation: until a week ago, no EU politician would gain serious traction by increasing military spending, and any US politician talking about decreasing our defense budget would get laughed out of the room. Most of the Staties I know just wish we did a better job of capitalizing on it, or getting some return for this investment.
Also, while I'm not thrilled at the response, I'm pretty frustrated with the "leadership" that let this happen. Russia was building up troops for months, and whatever disincentives we had threatened apparently didn't matter.
It's certainly frustrating, but I'm not sure how better to respond to what seems to be Putin's clear irrationality. The West has been saying for months "we dug a ditch, you should stop now" and then Putin just drove his economy straight into that ditch instead.
Because he doesn't give a shit about the economy? If you give him 5-10 years, he will have more than made his money back, and with a gas pipe straight into Europe and access to the Ukrainian ports, he can have his own economic throttle. I don't think Putin is irrational at all. I think he played his hand very well, up unto the point where the response was more than he anticipated. His strategy over the past 3-5 years has worked devastatingly well, and he took advantage of Covid elegantly. I think the Trump years let "soft on Russia" creep into national policy, and we're dealing with that now. This could have been stifled in it's infancy, and we all pay hell because it wasn't. Count me in the crowd that thinks accountability starts way before the bombing does.