Ok, I'll concede on the Black Sea ports discussion. Further digging points to this being an area of almost-negligent oversight in common discussion. For example:
Lastly, because of Russia’s geographical limitations, the research de facto chooses two of its only naturally occurring warm-water ports. Novorossiysk in the Black Sea was excluded from the analysis because it is primarily an economic port housing only part of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF),
>>>I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials")
The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?
>>>But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?
They don't have the manpower, partly because in their arrogance they waited 6 months too late to mobilize.
>>>I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!)
Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.
>>>You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow?
Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.
>>>Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda.
With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.
>>>I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way.
Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries. The purpose of highlighting the WW2 experience is simply that it is still within living memory and colors perceptions of Russian decision-makers more than, say, the Battle of Borodino.
As an aside, I also argue we should consider WW2 as starting in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Eurocentrism of the major Allied Powers is the only reason we don't.
>>>what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century?
Extremely extremely low. Always has been, just look at our force posture. But I absolutely assess that we aim to neutralize Russia as a Great Power, through a mix of external and internal pressures. I'd also argue that we've deliberately destabilized the nuclear MAD balance of power in pursuit of this goal, and everything that has happened in Eastern Europe in the past 15 years is fallout from that.
>>>What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear?
1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)
2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)
3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)
I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.
>>>Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?
Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would. The Marine Corps suffers from similar issues, just in a different context. Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.
>>>do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?
I think there must have been an assessment of security concerns and economic trends that led to "if we don't knock Ukraine out of NATO's orbit permanently NOW, it will only become impossibly difficult to do so in the future". Combined with a REALLY poor intelligence assessment of the West's reaction AND overestimating their own ability to successfully execute a regime change against the largest country in Europe, which has had 8 years of combat to improve itself.
But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."
> The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?
Dude, I'm Ukrainian and Pravda isn't exactly considered a paragon of journalistic integrity here. In fact, they are exactly the ones who would publish articles based on twitter hot takes and "unnamed sources close to X".
> Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.
Sigh People with your political inclinations (usually Russia-sympathizers) always bring "Nuland tapes" like some kind of slam dunk. They were discussing who would they have preferred to work with in future Ukrainian government. What exactly is so scandalous here in your opinion? You don't believe Russian diplomats had been discussing their preference at the time? Or that there weren't any strong words exchanged in private conversations of Ukrainian government officials regarding US president elections in general and Donald Trump in particular in 2020, for example? Were US president elections "subsidized and facilitated" by Ukraine?
Also, the conversation about the subject always goes in following way in my experience:
- The revolution was fully orchestrated by the evil collective West!
- How?
- Okay, maybe not orchestrated but payed for!
- People who participated still waiting for they paycheck, where do they apply?
...
- Okay, okay, but US gave some humanitarian aid aNd hEr tApeZ!!1
I personally know a lot of people who participated directly (for free, no Nuland or "drugged oranges" involved, if you get the reference), donated money, food or medical supplies, so please spare me your lectures about western spies paying opposition and hiring nazis to overthrow the legitimate government...
> Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.
I don't get it. You state they are afraid of sudden decapitating tank blitz on Moscow... that will be preceded by 30 days of bombardment? How does that make sense? Won't Russia just retaliate with nukes? (again, which is explicitly allowed by their nuclear doctrine and fits well with their "escalate to de-escalate" playbook)
> With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.
With your background you should understand better than most how modern propaganda works. It is not a leaflet or poster with "Tovarisch, motherland calls you to kill evil nazi Ukrainians! Apply Now!" (though that still do exist and has its place in the toolkit) but bunch of dudes on payroll performing organized campaigns in social media to distort facts, set the framing and control the narrative. Your message history on HN fits that description perfectly BTW ;)
> Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries.
Except that they didn't have nukes during that invasions!
>1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)
Russia creating "Eurasian-spanning power bloc"? With what? Dude, they have been getting their asses kicked by bunch of poorly-trained Ukrainians with some outdated stuff (Stingers, Javelins, M777s), some nineties tech (HARM, etc.) and very few relatively modern but limited pieces of equipment (~30 launchers with GLMRS, no ATACMS). You assume US are threatened by _that_ and are plotting to prevent Russian glorious domination of Eurasia?!
> 2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)
Russians seem to be doing very well in sabotaging their natural resources business empire themselves at the moment, no need to tank-rush Moscow for that.
> 3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)
Fully eliminate nuclear threat... by provoking nuclear war with biggest adversary?
> I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.
Or they just pretending that they are "being threatened by big-scary NATO at their border" to legitimize their conquests?
> Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would.
Aren't analyst supposed to analyze military capabilities and scenarios objectively? I mean, how stupid can they be? It is not like their analysis is performed by Kadyrov and Prigozhin, right?
> Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.
Irrational attachment or people who produce and sell the necessary equipment lobbying for that? There are clear financial incentives for military-industrial complex to keep things "with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements" which I consider more relevant explanation than some "historical traumas".
> But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."
When US invaded Iraq or Afghanistan they didn't try to annex the lands. And even if you suggest it would be unfeasible to annex lands thousands kilometers away, they still could have easily annexed nearby Panama in 1990, for example. Here we see very clear divergence of stated goals ("We just want Ukraine to commit to not let spooky-scary NATO in", as if NATO is actually anxious to get in in the first place...) and actions (ethnic cleansings, forced deportations, annexations).
Do you think there was any realistic scenario where NATO could have accepted Ukraine with significant chunks of the country occupied by Russians since 2015 even without the invasion? And you think Russia didn't understand that Ukraine was not going to be accepted any time soon?
Well, your country being invaded by an incompetent horde of brutal assholes surely influences your ability to dispassionately assess the strategic situation, and the motivations of said assholes. I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers. But Ukrainians are dying due to fallout from a chain of events initiated 15+ years ago, by DC think tankers with an irrational willingness to antagonize a Great Power on the opposite side of the planet.
>>>>They were discussing who would they have preferred to work with in future Ukrainian government. What exactly is so scandalous here in your opinion?
I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials.
>>>With your background you should understand better than most how modern propaganda works.
These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations".
>>>> People who participated still waiting for they paycheck, where do they apply?
Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars have enough sense to keep their mouths closed about where it came from. $50,000 from an American who "works for an NGO" so the Maidan protesters can buy supplies -> $1,000 spent on supplies "with their own money" and $49,000 quietly pocketed.
>>>>You state they are afraid of sudden decapitating tank blitz on Moscow... that will be preceded by 30 days of bombardment? How does that make sense? Won't Russia just retaliate with nukes?
In order to retaliate with nukes, their nuclear deterrent and MAD has to be credible. Which brings us back to why they were so pissed off in 2007 about ABMs in Eastern Europe: putting an ABM umbrella on their doorstep means you can shoot down their nukes (boost-phase intercept profile), which means the conventional invasion of Russia can proceed with impunity.
>>>>Russia creating "Eurasian-spanning power bloc"? With what?
The Russians would be the western anchor of a military and economic partnership largely led by China. Putin and Xi have been orchestrating such for years.[1][2] The Russian military and Russian natural resource exports would be the main leverage against nations west of the Urals.
>>>>Dude, they have been getting their asses kicked by bunch of poorly-trained Ukrainians with some outdated stuff
Which has left a ton of military professionals flabbergasted. The Russians have demonstrated an embarrassing level of incompetence from the highest ranks to the lowest, and I don't think even people with a low opinion of the Russian military anticipated this poor of a performance. Well-respected combat veterans have held the Russians in pretty high regard since at least the Battle of Debaltseve. [3][4][5] But the Emperor has no clothes, so to speak. Their industry already wasn't able to sustain their grand military ambitions, but it certainly can't replace their losses, compensate for the brain drain, compensate for sanctions, etc....So the Russians are feeding themselves into a Ukrainian woodchipper, basically taking them out of the "Great Game" for at least the next 10 years, if not 20-40.
>>>>Russians seem to be doing very well in sabotaging their natural resources business empire
I think Putin expected the natural gas stranglehold on Germany to keep the Europeans on the sidelines. Not anticipating the severity of economic sanctions and the rapidity of Europe switching to alternative energy suppliers is just one of his MANY egregious miscalculations before undertaking his invasion.
>>>>Fully eliminate nuclear threat... by provoking nuclear war with biggest adversary?
1) I think the policy wonks wanted to salami-slice and encircle Russia until they could get good-enough ABMs in place. Putin has reacted kinetically before that could be completed. 2) Yes, whoever is sticking to the agenda of antagonizing Russia is an asshole, gambling the lives of the whole planet.
>>>>Aren't analyst supposed to analyze military capabilities and scenarios objectively? I mean, how stupid can they be?
I don't think most intel analysts are stupid, just human. On the contrary, the most consistent problem I see with them is the same Dunning-Kruger Effect seen on HN: they are intelligent, but think they are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than they actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in their knowledge base.
>>>>Irrational attachment or people who produce and sell the necessary equipment lobbying for that?
Both. But in the F-35's case definitely the blame lies mostly with the Marine Corps. Our demand for VTOL capability compromised the kinematics of the entire platform.[6]
>>>>When US invaded Iraq or Afghanistan they didn't try to annex the lands.
The US approach to imperial domination doesn't rely on "painting the map" directly. We dominate people's central banks and financial systems instead.[7][8] It's all about maintaining the Petrodollar/global reserve currency system, which allows us to essentially tax the entire planet and give every country monopoly money in return. Monopoly money which we also spend on our gigantic military, which enforces the acceptance of said monopoly money.
I'd say these are business as usual for brutal sociopathic Soviet-trained leadership, and also the only way that Russia has any hope of controlling the vast territory it's trying to bite off from Ukraine: get rid of all of the locals. Then there is no one to support an insurgency, no one to vote the "wrong" way during referendums, etc...
>>>>Do you think there was any realistic scenario where NATO could have accepted Ukraine with significant chunks of the country occupied by Russians since 2015 even without the invasion? And you think Russia didn't understand that Ukraine was not going to be accepted any time soon?
That would be the case if NATO adhered to the letter of its own laws/documents/policies. But I think the Russians don't consider that possibility as something they want to bet their future on. It would mean putting the future safety of the Russian State entirely in the benevolent hands of NATO decision-makers. I think after the 2007 ABM dispute, any perception of NATO benevolence in Putin's mind was shattered. Maybe we'll carve out a special exception for Ukraine. Maybe we'll re-write NATO's Articles to remove the "no existing territorial disputes" clause. Or maybe the US would just bully/bribe every other member into voting "Yes" to Ukraine. These sound unbelievable to most Westerners, but they are probably all realistic risks in the brain of a KGB field agent. So after Ukraine's constitutional amendment in 2019 [9], Putin probably decided to seize the initiative. If he spent a few months figuring out exactly how to respond, that would put him Summer-Fall of 2019....planning to execute an early 2020 full annexation. Then COVID hit, and Putin waited until the global pandemic was stabilized before setting in motion staging his troops for invasion (Fall 2021 with a planned January invasion)...then he had to delay AGAIN after Big Daddy Xi told him "Don't fuck up my Olympics with your war." So world events may have delayed a Spring 2020 invasion until Spring 2022, which means we're actually witnessing the fastest possible turn-around time for a Russian offensive, assuming Ukraine's amendment was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also means Putin may have planned an invasion while notoriously-anti-interventionist Trump was in office, but ended up getting puppet-on-warmonger-strings Biden in the White House by the time everything was ready. shrug Entirely supposition on my part.
> Well, your country being invaded by an incompetent horde of brutal assholes surely influences your ability to dispassionately assess the strategic situation, and the motivations of said assholes.
Dude, I'm not the hyper-patriotic type of Ukrainian :)
> I can understand it's hard to hear that the people slaughtering your countrymen aren't 100% at fault...more like 95% at fault, with the other 5% being sustained multi-decade provocation from....the country that is giving you every weapon imaginable to repulse the murderers.
You seam to have _very_ poor imagination then (ATACMS long overdue? DPICM? Abrams? Finally start teaching Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s? Some Patriots maybe?). Also, now you seem to be putting words into my mouth since I've never said that it is "100%" their fault.
> I would argue it wasn't a conversation of "wouldn't it be nice if" but them making decisions about who would be the leadership of Ukraine, which isn't something that should be decided by US State Department officials.
Can you provide exact quotes where they are making such decisions?
> These days we call it "information operations" and "psychological operations".
Your point being?
> Don't be naive. The bottom-rank locals in any revolution don't get a paper trail directly back to the US government. Most people who are getting suitcases of US dollars have enough sense to keep their mouths closed about where it came from. $50,000 from an American who "works for an NGO" so the Maidan protesters can buy supplies -> $1,000 spent on supplies "with their own money" and $49,000 quietly pocketed.
I'm not being naive and I stand by my words. I remember back in 2004 there were indeed significant amount of people on Maidan Nezalezhnostii who were being paid daily to stand there with orange stripes. In 2014 main driving force of the revolution were middle-class people donating stuff or risking their lives directly by participating. All other forces were at best secondary and at worst inconsequential. Opposition politicians where routinely booed by the revolutionaries due to their meek positions and indecisiveness.
It seems you are intelligent person, but think you are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than you actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in your knowledge base ;)
> In order to retaliate with nukes, their nuclear deterrent and MAD has to be credible. Which brings us back to why they were so pissed off in 2007 about ABMs in Eastern Europe: putting an ABM umbrella on their doorstep means you can shoot down their nukes (boost-phase intercept profile), which means the conventional invasion of Russia can proceed with impunity.
That is strategic nukes. What about tactical nukes delivered by cruise missiles? Won't Russia just tactical nuke the shit out of theoretical NATO army that is in the process of assuming attack formation near their border?
> I don't think most intel analysts are stupid, just human. On the contrary, the most consistent problem I see with them is the same Dunning-Kruger Effect seen on HN: they are intelligent, but think they are smarter/more knowledgeable about certain specific domains than they actually are, and come to egregiously bad conclusions due to underestimating the gaps in their knowledge base.
You provided both a detailed description and a great example of described phenomenon in the same message ;)
> The US approach to imperial domination doesn't rely on "painting the map" directly. We dominate people's central banks and financial systems instead.[7][8] It's all about maintaining the Petrodollar/global reserve currency system, which allows us to essentially tax the entire planet and give every country monopoly money in return. Monopoly money which we also spend on our gigantic military, which enforces the acceptance of said monopoly money.
I know cool-realpolitik-kids like to explain everything in the world with "petrodollar", but I don't see how it is really relevant for invasion in Afghanistan, for example. Also, petrodollar system in not straight up win as such people seem to assume when describing it in edgy and simplified way e.g. "we just give everybody fake-monopoly money and force them to accept it with our military!!1". You can read a simple and balanced analysis that also discusses flaws of petrodollar system in [0].
> I'd say these are business as usual for brutal sociopathic Soviet-trained leadership, and also the only way that Russia has any hope of controlling the vast territory it's trying to bite off from Ukraine: get rid of all of the locals. Then there is no one to support an insurgency, no one to vote the "wrong" way during referendums, etc...
But why do they need all the referendums/annexations business if they invaded just to not let spooky-scary NATO in? BTW Russians themselves don't claim that they invaded only (or even mainly) because of NATO, so I don't know why you chose it as (another) hill to die on.
> That would be the case if NATO adhered to the letter of its own laws/documents/policies. But I think the Russians don't consider that possibility as something they want to bet their future on. It would mean putting the future safety of the Russian State entirely in the benevolent hands of NATO decision-makers. I think after the 2007 ABM dispute, any perception of NATO benevolence in Putin's mind was shattered. Maybe we'll carve out a special exception for Ukraine. Maybe we'll re-write NATO's Articles to remove the "no existing territorial disputes" clause. Or maybe the US would just bully/bribe every other member into voting "Yes" to Ukraine. These sound unbelievable to most Westerners, but they are probably all realistic risks in the brain of a KGB field agent. So after Ukraine's constitutional amendment in 2019 [9], Putin probably decided to seize the initiative. If he spent a few months figuring out exactly how to respond, that would put him Summer-Fall of 2019....planning to execute an early 2020 full annexation. Then COVID hit, and Putin waited until the global pandemic was stabilized before setting in motion staging his troops for invasion (Fall 2021 with a planned January invasion)...then he had to delay AGAIN after Big Daddy Xi told him "Don't fuck up my Olympics with your war." So world events may have delayed a Spring 2020 invasion until Spring 2022, which means we're actually witnessing the fastest possible turn-around time for a Russian offensive, assuming Ukraine's amendment was the straw that broke the camel's back. It also means Putin may have planned an invasion while notoriously-anti-interventionist Trump was in office, but ended up getting puppet-on-warmonger-strings Biden in the White House by the time everything was ready. shrug Entirely supposition on my part.
So what stopped spooky-scary NATO from accepting Ukraine after it first applied in 2008? And how much more time did sneaky US need to finally "bribe" all the other members to accept Ukraine as-is after the previous war? It is another favorite Russian propaganda talking point ("NATO was plotting to accept Ukraine!!1") when in reality it seemed to be completely not interested.
Nuland: Good. I don't think Klitsch should go into the government.
Pyatt: Yeah. I guess... in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff.
Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He's the... what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside.
Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that's right. OK. Good.Pyatt: ... so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn't like it.
So they came to an agreement that Klitschko should be outside the government, Yatseniuk should be in the government, and then got into the details of how to manage Klitschko (and later in the conversation, bring in other diplomats to help) in order to ensure they achieve what they wanted. It may not be apparent to a non-native speaker, but this isn't a conversation where they are just speaking hypothetically.
>>>Won't Russia just tactical nuke the shit out of theoretical NATO army that is in the process of assuming attack formation near their border?
Satellite ISR has a decent read on when/where nukes are being handled for the tactical varieties, and especially for the launch platforms. I would expect them to be priority targets during the air campaign. I would also expect the planning process to have Positive ID of x% of tacnuke platforms as a critical piece of the Go/No-Go Criteria...in other words, the invasion wouldn't be launched until the likely number of tacnuke "leakers" could be reduced below a certain threshold such that it wouldn't derail the armored thrust.
>>>I don't see how it is really relevant for invasion in Afghanistan
The initial invasion was an outlier in response to a Black Swan event, so no that's not directly relevant to the Petrodollar. Staying as long as we did? Arguably enabled us to threaten Iran from multiple directions, and also put US forces straddling the lines of communication between Iran and China (via the Wakhan Corridor). Those aspects supported Petrodollar maintenance.
>>>You can read a simple and balanced analysis that also discusses flaws of petrodollar system in [0].
I think I bookmarked this ages ago and forgot to come back and read it more thoroughly. Overall I agree that the dollar is due for a reckoning, and when it comes I expect a collapse of both the Western "international order" and the US economy. Hence why I think our global strategy reflects protection of the Petro even in cases where our values suggest we should have different priorities (example: not executing regime change in Saudi Arabia). But my point still stands: we can replace a nation's government, integrate their central bank, and despite not formally annexing their territory still benefit from their country economically, because we need to keep as many banks as possible generating demand for our toilet-paper-money, which they need to buy energy to run their economy at all.
>>>But why do they need all the referendums/annexations business if they invaded just to not let spooky-scary NATO in?
Ya gotta keep up appearances, for the benefit of the masses. And it creates a paper trail to trot out in international forums such as the UN later. "See, we totally did everything the democratic way. It's all above-board. Will of the people. We've got the paperwork." "Your referendums are BS because you killed half the people living there first." "You don't have the documentation to prove that."
>>>BTW Russians themselves don't claim that they invaded only (or even mainly) because of NATO, so I don't know why you chose it as (another) hill to die on.
Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.
Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making. Kiev declared that it could attain nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc launched an active military build-up on the territories adjacent to us.
Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat to us was steadily being created right on our borders. There was every indication that a clash with neo-Nazis and Banderites backed by the United States and their minions was unavoidable.
Let me repeat, we saw the military infrastructure being built up, hundreds of foreign advisors starting work, and regular supplies of cutting-edge weaponry being delivered from NATO countries. The threat grew every day.
>>>So what stopped spooky-scary NATO from accepting Ukraine after it first applied in 2008?
But I SUSPECT the French were still opposed until this latest invasion. I don't have a clear picture on what Macron or his government thinks right now, other than being pissed off at the Biden Administration for fucking over France for the Australian nuclear submarine contract.
> So they came to an agreement that Klitschko should be outside the government, Yatseniuk should be in the government, and then got into the details of how to manage Klitschko (and later in the conversation, bring in other diplomats to help) in order to ensure they achieve what they wanted. It may not be apparent to a non-native speaker, but this isn't a conversation where they are just speaking hypothetically.
Oh please don't give me that crap. Your interpretation was not shared by mainstream press at the time as well [0]. Their English mastery is also apparently not good enough to understand the nuance!
Even if we assume your interpretation to be correct, I still don't understand how it would "prove" that the revolution was "Subsidized and facilitated" by the US.
> Satellite ISR has a decent read on when/where nukes are being handled for the tactical varieties, and especially for the launch platforms. I would expect them to be priority targets during the air campaign. I would also expect the planning process to have Positive ID of x% of tacnuke platforms as a critical piece of the Go/No-Go Criteria...in other words, the invasion wouldn't be launched until the likely number of tacnuke "leakers" could be reduced below a certain threshold such that it wouldn't derail the armored thrust.
So remind me again how is that mythical highway to Moscow is so important in case of all-out planned invasion that will be proceeded by at least 30 days of high intensity bombardment and highly likely escalate to nuclear exchange of some intensity? Won't Russians mine the shit out of it, blowup all bridges and evacuate everything and everyone of importance from Moscow to far east during that 30 days?
> I think I bookmarked this ages ago and forgot to come back and read it more thoroughly. Overall I agree that the dollar is due for a reckoning, and when it comes I expect a collapse of both the Western "international order" and the US economy. Hence why I think our global strategy reflects protection of the Petro even in cases where our values suggest we should have different priorities (example: not executing regime change in Saudi Arabia). But my point still stands: we can replace a nation's government, integrate their central bank, and despite not formally annexing their territory still benefit from their country economically, because we need to keep as many banks as possible generating demand for our toilet-paper-money, which they need to buy energy to run their economy at all.
Did you read it all, thoroughly or otherwise? The author stipulates that petrodollar system may not be beneficial for US anymore and that abolishing it would eventually lead to better outcomes for US themselves, instead of "collapsing both the Western "international order" and the US economy. [1]
> Ya gotta keep up appearances, for the benefit of the masses. And it creates a paper trail to trot out in international forums such as the UN later. "See, we totally did everything the democratic way. It's all above-board. Will of the people. We've got the paperwork." "Your referendums are BS because you killed half the people living there first." "You don't have the documentation to prove that."
But to keep spooky-scary NATO out it would have been enough to maintain puppet people republics indefinitely. Formally annexing the territories is only needed for building an empire, otherwise it doesn't make sense to pay the very high cost that Russia is incurring due to sanctions.
>It figures prominently in Putin's Victory Day speech
Well, on Victory Day NATO is a good boogieman apparently. On other days of the week it could be biolabs, "same people", Nazis, water to Crimea, etc. I could provide links for all of these, but I assume you are familiar with them.
> Strong opposition from France and Germany.
So you are saying there has never been a consensus among NATO members regarding accepting Ukraine and that some of its most prominent members strongly oppose it? Seems we are in agreement on this one!
"In the phone call, Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the US ambassador in Kiev, are discussing the planned government reshuffle ... The two diplomats express reservations about Klitschko, who is best known as a world boxing champion."
"At first, having the global reserve currency is an exorbitant privilege, because the benefits of hegemonic power outweigh the costs of maintaining the system. Over time, however, the upside benefits stay relatively static, while the costs keep compounding over time, until the costs outweigh the benefits.
And from there, the value of the system depends on who you ask. Folks who are often on the higher end of the income spectrum who worked in finance, government, healthcare, or technology benefitted from this system, since they obtained many of the benefits of globalization and none of the drawbacks. Folks who are often on the lower end of the income spectrum, specifically those that make physical things, are the ones that benefitted least and gave the most up, since their jobs were outsourced and automated at a faster rate than other developed countries. But now with China also undermining the structure of the system, even the geopolitical/hegemonic benefits for the political class are subverted as well.
As the system frays, it’s easy to point to external nations as the cause of this fraying. When they begin pricing things outside of the dollar-based system, or employing mercantilist currency policies, or building pipelines, or deciding to do something with their dollar surpluses other than reinvest them in US Treasuries, it can seem as though they are undermining an otherwise sound system.
In reality, those external actions are a symptom of the more underlying flaws in the system: the fact that the United States is no longer big enough as a share of global GDP to supply enough dollars to fund global energy markets and global trade, the fact that the United States has to run persistent trade deficits to get dollars out into the system, and the fact that an all-fiat global currency system incentivizes mercantilist currency manipulation by many countries to generate trade surpluses against the US wherever possible."
"In addition, a system constructed around the US dollar decades ago when the US was 35% of global GDP, doesn’t work as well when the US is only, say, 20% of global GDP. It’s not about how big the US military is to keep its hegemonic status; it’s about whether the global monetary system as currently structured is still mathematically viable, and whether it even still supports the interests of the United States.
Put simply, there is a natural economic entropy to global reserve currency status, because inherent flaws in the system continue compound until they reach a breaking point. The challenge, of course, is identifying ahead of time where that breaking point is. A change in the global monetary system doesn’t necessarily mean bad things for the United States (indeed, the United Kingdom had an economic boom in the post-war years after it lost reserve currency status), but it does mean making a trade-off between international interests and domestic interests, and re-aligning trade as needed to obtain the desired balance."
Lastly, because of Russia’s geographical limitations, the research de facto chooses two of its only naturally occurring warm-water ports. Novorossiysk in the Black Sea was excluded from the analysis because it is primarily an economic port housing only part of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF),
from: https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/JEMEAA/Journals/...
>>>I think you could find some hot take on Twitter (which your linked article seems to be based on besides unnamed "multiple former senior U.S. officials")
The article links to Ukrainian Pravda which cites unnamed sources close to Zelensky. So are the Ukrainian journalists credible in their reporting, or not?
>>>But they would have managed by now if they wanted to, wouldn't they?
They don't have the manpower, partly because in their arrogance they waited 6 months too late to mobilize.
>>>I guess next thing you are going to tell me is how revolution in 2014 was completely orchestrated by the West (my friends that participated are still waiting for their paychecks BTW!)
Fully orchestrated? No. Subsidized and facilitated by the US State Department and NGOs? Yes.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-tape-idUSBREA...
>>>You assume NATO will just "walk over" Russian layered defense of endless Thors, Pancirs, Buks, S-300s and S-400s in hours to allow tank blitz on Moscow?
Not in hours. I'd assume at least 30 days for a thorough air campaign, with 1000+ sorties per day for at least the first week.
>>>Something that is factually correct but presented in certain way is one of the best and most effective kinds of propaganda.
With that mindset almost anything can be misconstrued as propaganda.
>>>I believe is is important to frame the start of WW2 in the correct way.
Except the point was never about the start of WW2. It was about identifying the terrain-related strategic vulnerabilities of central Russia which spans centuries. The purpose of highlighting the WW2 experience is simply that it is still within living memory and colors perceptions of Russian decision-makers more than, say, the Battle of Borodino.
As an aside, I also argue we should consider WW2 as starting in 1937 with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident. Eurocentrism of the major Allied Powers is the only reason we don't.
>>>what is your assessment on the likelihood of western invasion into Russia in 21st century?
Extremely extremely low. Always has been, just look at our force posture. But I absolutely assess that we aim to neutralize Russia as a Great Power, through a mix of external and internal pressures. I'd also argue that we've deliberately destabilized the nuclear MAD balance of power in pursuit of this goal, and everything that has happened in Eastern Europe in the past 15 years is fallout from that.
The same jerk has been running Russia for 20+ years, but compare what his security concerns were in 2001: https://ibs.colorado.edu/johno/pub/Putin_911.pdf
Look at our security relationships in the early-GWOT era: https://2001-2009.state.gov/p/eur/rls/rm/33912.htm
>>>What would be the motivation of invaders and their plan to prevent the war from quickly escalating into nuclear?
1) Undermine a Eurasian-spanning power bloc (reference Brzezinski's "The Great Game" for why)
2) Prevent the creation of an alternate reserve currency backed by Russian natural resources (oil + gold, Gaddafi wanted to do this before he was killed)
3) Finally eliminate the most credible nuclear existential threat to the US (China's nuclear triad, in contrast, is small and inadequate)
I don't think escalation can be prevented with sufficient reliability to approve a conventional regime change operation. The problem is, Russia's paranoid leadership likely sees things differently.
>>>Do you believe that Russian analyst has different assessment than you on the matter? If so, why?
Yes, because their lived experience and cultural environment is completely different. Their historical trauma + cultural ego/chauvinism combine to cause them to weigh the variables in the equation differently than I would. The Marine Corps suffers from similar issues, just in a different context. Our historical trauma = the Navy "abandoning" us at Guadalcanal, so we have an irrational attachment to maintaining our own air support, with stupidly-expensive/complex VTOL performance requirements. Our organizational chauvinism reinforces our refusal to source assistance from our sister services because we think we can do anything and everything by ourselves.
>>>do you believe that security concerns are indeed _the main motivation_ for the invasion? no empire-rebuilding for ideological reasons and political gains involved?
I think there must have been an assessment of security concerns and economic trends that led to "if we don't knock Ukraine out of NATO's orbit permanently NOW, it will only become impossibly difficult to do so in the future". Combined with a REALLY poor intelligence assessment of the West's reaction AND overestimating their own ability to successfully execute a regime change against the largest country in Europe, which has had 8 years of combat to improve itself.
But aren't the four (security, empire-building, ideology, politics) always inextricably linked? National leaders express "security concerns" usually because The Other Guy is interfering with their empire-building, both foreign and domestic. I loathe every time I hear a general talk about our vague "national security interests". A friend of mine used to provide communications support for Tier 1 spec ops units. He said "I didn't kick in doors with them, but I traveled with them and made sure they had working radios. What I learned was..... everything is about money, family, and power."