General Politics Discussion (IX) [ARCHIVED] • Page 1235

not convinced at all that the sanctions will have the intended effect of inspiring regime change in russia or withdrawing the invasion. ukraine invasion aside putin has so much dirt on him his life/freedom very possibly depends on him staying in office. even if he did get ousted what are the chances someone better replaces him? the pros of collapsing russias economy seem based on some huge what ifs meanwhile will cause an additional amount of untold human suffering for years to come regardless.

honestly not really on anyone here to answer "what would you do" questions either for situations like this that developed from decades worth of shitty foreign policy decisions of multiple actors.

 

Expected

 

well yes it’s hurting the Russian economy, with the goal of getting them to give up the war. I said that a few pages back—we don’t have to dance around that. We know what sanctions are and what they do to people but we also don’t have to pretend they aren’t being enacted to try to end the invasion of Ukraine. Otherwise they would have just done all of these sanctions before the war.

All of these governments and their people stand to benefit financially from doing business with Russia and her people (which is why originally a bunch of EU governments were trying to carve out exceptions), so it’s not like they’re all gaining more profit from these actions either.

I understand the reflex to assume whatever the US/NATO is doing is purely for imperialist purposes, because that’s mainly been what it has done for everyone here’s entire lives. But this is pretty cut and dry—Ukraine was a sovereign nation that was relatively peaceful that was simply trying to do what it felt was best for itself, and it got invaded and now thousands of its people are being killed and displaced because of that. We’re usually the bad guys in that scenario! But this time we’re not the root cause of the war! And I’m sure we can all agree we wish the rest of the world took measures to stop us from doing dumb shit in Central America or the Middle East the last 40 years. For once it’s not us doing the invading, and we don’t have to defend the invading country in ways we’d never do for this country. And like it or not, the large large large majority of people around the world aren’t going to accept simply standing by and doing nothing to help, or to let Russia do it without any consequence at all. Especially after Putin made it pretty clear he’d love to have the whole eastern bloc back if he could. This isn’t to say either side is 100% “right” or “good” in what they’re doing, but we also don’t have to act like these sanctions are just evil America up to their old imperialist tricks again. It’s a pretty legitimate reaction to a situation where we, for once, aren’t the main aggressor. And yes I have read about NATO expansion and etc but, if China were threatening to bring Mexico into a military alliance tomorrow (which absolutely was not happening with Ukraine at the time), the US invading Mexico today in response would be pretty fucking terrible! And we would have earned whatever the world’s reaction to that would be

 

Na. Its just that people are broken from 20 years of war and don't know when the killing stops.

 

True…but then why at this base in particular?

 

lol its not.

“The Only Thing I Knew How to Do Was Kill People”: Inside the Rash of Unexplained Deaths at Fort Hood

 

When I was there, murder was commonplace. Guys would go to the bar, go home with a trans person, and murdering them. I swear it happened like five times.

 

I do remember hearing about the fort hood stuff too now that you mention it. Just seems like the ft Bragg stuff keeps coming up in the news every couple months

 

I will just say in response to this that, whatever your thoughts on sanctions (I personally don't see them doing much deescalating, and several people I read prior to this have said that they thought Russia would not be deterred by sanctions, at least not at first), I don't actually see anyone here defending Russia. I think everyone is pretty much in agreement that what they are doing is abhorrent. But, what people are saying is that many foreign policy experts across the political spectrum have seen this coming for the better part of the last three decades, because this is simply the way nations that view themselves as "great powers" act. I would love a world without powerful nations, imperialism, militarization, and all that, but we know that that simply isn't the case in the present. So, the best we can do is try to understand why something happens and whether it could have been avoided. And especially what my own country could have done to stop it, as I (probably wrongly) feel that I'm more responsible or have more control over my own country than over whatever Putin does in Russia. I have no idea if taking the off-ramp of ending our threats to Russia's sphere of influence in the region would have prevented this, but there are plenty of people much smarter than me who think that it would have. And, if it didn't, we're still in the same place anyway (and you obviously don't have to hold to your end of the bargain if Putin breaks his).

I don't blame Ukraine in the least for this (neo-Nazis being integrated into the military and all). Of course they want to join NATO! If they were part of NATO, this probably wouldn't be happening to them right now! (Not to say that it would never happen, of course, but Russia is both too weak and not so weak as to be desperate enough to automatically start WWIII by directly challenging NATO; despite all the talk of how the Baltic states are next, there is absolutely no indication that Putin has any motivation to go after them). Putin is doing this at this moment because he knows fully well that this might be the last chance he has to put a friendly regime in Ukraine. Despite being morally wrong, it shouldn't be particularly perplexing as to why he wants to do this. I can't believe that the US doesn't realize this and I think it's correct to place at least some (we can debate how much) of the blame on the US for leading Ukraine down a path that is currently getting them crushed

 

yeah military bases are obviously colonies of people trained to murder regardless, but I do think the literal drive-by shootings of pregnant women are kind of exceptional....but I think the most plausible explanation is just there's a huge drug network on the base

 

Guys will do anything they can to get away with using. I remember there was a colonel who used a rubber dick in a piss test to no get caught. Bases were flooded with spice when I was getting started. Big coke and steroid problems too. Not to mention all of the guys hooked on painkillers. And they don't incentivize people getting help. It's all bad

 

This reminds me of Trump having, like, the navajo world war 2 vets at the White House and then talking about his landslide election win or whatever

 

Not saying I know the answer to the question, just saying that's where we are at

 

You keep making it black and white. Putting aside any cynicism that these sanctions are solely about ending this war, the response isn’t sanctions or nothing or even the wide ranging sanctions or nothing. I am just arguing that from everything I can gather I don’t believe the sanctions that have been put in place are the right response from the US given the human suffering they are causing and given the fact that it doesn’t seem likely they will do much of anything at all to end this conflict. The US can do other things that I would be open to like aid maybe even military aid, more targeting sanctions, accepting refugees, and for the love of god diplomacy—talk to Putin. I just think a particular measure—sanctions that starve innocent people—deserves more scrutiny than “we have to do something”

 

Not making it black and white, just kind of sort of rejecting the idea that something better could be done to hasten the end of the war if we're, at the same time, declaring that these sanctions won't work (I don't think that's necessarily true either, I think it's very possible these sanctions do end up working). I don't see "targeted sanctions" making any difference at all considering we're assuming even harsher sanctions won't make a difference, and that targeted sanctions are already the types of things we do to Russian leadership and other countries/leaders with very little to show for it. Not sure why they'd suddenly help to turn the tide in a war after they haven't really done much to alter other behaviors.

Definitely agree with all those other steps though. Aid, military aid, refugee acceptance, and diplomacy should all be part of the solution as well. But I don't think Russia/Putin has any reason to engage in diplomacy if they're not feeling any pain from their actions. And yes, we have to admit that inflicting pain on Putin/Russia means the Russian people also feel that pain. I don't think anyone should pretend otherwise. But the hope is that will build enough pressure to end the suffering the Ukranian people are currently experiencing.

 

Hmmm

 

Seems fuckin bad!

 

A Covid News Network (CNN) twitter account is the most wtf is going on out there thing I've come across this morning.