The Russians have amassed around 250k troops on the eastern border of Ukraine. Back in 79 the Soviets entered Afghanistan on December 24, winter military moves being an old Russian specialty.
One of the problems with having a senile puppet at the helm of this country is that it invites aggression. The US could well awake Christmas morning with a war on its hands. What do I think the Puppetmasters’ Administration will do? Probably back down after a large amount of huffing and puffing. Our woke military want a war with the Russians as much as they want their pensions slashed. Putin will then consider the next target of his ramshackle legions, with the Chinese taking notes as they plan their war to remove the US as a Pacific power. This Vale of Tears will soon have some very big new reasons to cry. We are entering slow motion World War III, with fast forward only awaiting some huge blunders.
“Today, almost six years after his death, Solzhenitsyn’s position is still the only sane and safe solution to the Ukrainian crisis. Those regions of eastern Ukraine which desire to secede from the Ukrainian-dominated west of the country should be allowed to do so. There are already two nations in the de facto sense. It makes sense, therefore, that this de facto reality should be honoured with de jure status. Any other suggested solution is not only unjust but will lead to even greater injustice in the form of war, terrorism and hatred. In this, as in so much else, the voice of the prophet should be heeded.”
“The Voice of a Prophet: Solzhenitsyn on the Ukraine Crisis”
By Joseph Pearce – June 6th, 2014
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2014/06/voice-prophet-solzhenitsyn-ukraine-crisis.html
Solzhenitsyn was always a Great Russian nationalist. Pearce should stick to literary matters.
https://www.rferl.org/a/Solzhenitsyn_Leaves_Troubled_Legacy_Across_Former_Soviet_Union/1188876.html
Encouraging countries to simi-quietly invade (does Russian military idiots tweeting out “look, Ma, I’m a Ukranian grass-roots now!” count as quiet?) does not seem like a wise choice.
That’s before considering the “say something against the “local” revolutionaries and your house burns down” veto.
“Today, almost six years after his death, Solzhenitsyn’s position is still the only sane and safe solution to the Ukrainian crisis. Those regions of eastern Ukraine which desire to secede from the Ukrainian-dominated west of the country should be allowed to do
The russophile parties took 43% of the vote in 2012 and 16% in 2019. The propensity of people to vote for them measured thus – (16/84) / (43/57) – declined by 75%. Some of that is a consequence of Russia seizing those parts of the country where the russophile parties had the greatest purchase, but some of it is also public revulsion at the bullying in which Russia has been engaged. The last public opinion survey I saw suggested that perhaps 4% of the population of the Ukraine favored incorporation of the Ukraine into Russia. Unionist sentiment in White Russia ca. 1995 encompassed nearly have the surveyed adult population; twenty years later, it was down to a quarter.
Anatoly Karlin runs a Russian nationalist page at Unz. You get to see what Russian nationalists proficient in English have to say on various subjects. Of all the problems Russia may have, what really burns their ass is that Novorossiya is in rebellion. Their preferred solution is the seizure of eastern Ukraine. They figure if they stomp on the opposition hard enough and offer them better pensions, they’ll fall into line. That only a single-digit minority in eastern Ukraine would favor any such thing under any circumstances does not influence them.
Note, it’s part and parcel of their discussion that the Ukraine as a nation is ‘fake and gay’, a marriage of people who speak bad Polish to the inhabitants of Russian territories unjustly pilfered. It’s also part of their discourse that Ukrainians are incapable of governing themselves and must be ruled by Russians. The whole attitude is the bad stalker boyfriend’s view of his situation as applied to international politics.
While we’re at it, it is absolutely on-brand for people of the Sailerite / palaeotrash strand of thought to manufacture excuses for the Russian regime’s behavior vis a vis the Ukraine. You could see the nonsense historiography being manufactured in real time by these people as events were unfolding in the Ukraine seven years ago.
Yakov Naumovich Pokhis, better known as Yakov Smirnoff, is a Ukrainian-American comedian, actor and writer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXas8Hp_LGY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4v6yqZ-JD0
I was poleaxed on one of Karlin’s threads when one of his pals issues a denunciation of Canada. What’s that about? Well, Canada is a modally English-speaking country next to another English-speaking country and there is no effective sentiment on either side of the border for merging them, which is embarrassment to bad-stalker-boyfriend Russian nationalists.
What Smirnoff says is that they speak Russian rather than Ukrainian in Odessa and that political dispositions in the eastern half of the country differ from the western half. The significance of these remarks is just what?
Question.
If indeed Russia made a Christmas rush into Ukraine do you think it would trigger China into Taiwan? I ask because it seems like it would be an opportunity given the weakness of the current administration.
Do you really want to get involved in a war between two countries that, thirty years ago (and for most of the last few hundred years), were part of the same country? Free Tannu Tuva! Sikkim – liberty or death! Yeesh! And no, I’m not a pacifist. I’m just not sure why “who owns the Donbass” a matter of U. S. national interest.
How long can the Russian economy keep 250,000 troops in combat action? At a minimum, the sanctions hits from Western markets would be a crotch-kick to it. And even though the Ukrainians are outmatched, Russian bodybags would still start to flow out, a la Afghanistan and Chechnya.
Pooty-poot can take the Donbass and hold it, but there will still be a guerrilla campaign. It will get worse with each kilometer Westward he presses.
The paleo love affair with Putin’s mafia state is proof that useful idiots span the political spectrum.
Do you really want to get involved in a war between two countries that, thirty years ago (and for most of the last few hundred years), were part of the same country?
Oh, now THAT is a brilliant argument that is totally not going to have horrific results– “Russia invaded this country before, so we should let them do it again! Ignore what happened LAST TIME we did the logic of ‘all of a sudden this doesn’t involve us’ in Europe.”
Who’s next on the “hand them over to the aggressors” Olympics? Poland, or Spain?
The Ukraine is not worth one drop of US
Blood. Let those who think it is volunteer to go to the Ukraine and fight.
But they won’t because they are classic chicken hawks.
Who wants to die for Danzig? All we learn from history is that a lot of people learn nothing from history.
“who owns the Donbass” a matter of U. S. national interest.
They already have Donetsk and surrounding countryside. Keep in mind Vladimir Zhirinovsky is on record as favoring the expansion of Russia to fill the Soviet Union’s 1985 boundaries. Other Russian nationalists want varying proportions of White Russia, eastern Ukraine, and western Ukraine. Keep in mind also that this is gratuitous. All the bullying has made the Ukrainian government more likely to favor associations with occidental countries and under cut the Russophile parties.
But they won’t because they are classic chicken hawks.
This from the guy who is reciting the century-old talking points that started two out of two hot world wars, and the Cold War, and oh yes also set up the freaking MESS in the middle east.
The Ukraine is not worth one drop of US Blood. Let those who think it is volunteer to go to the Ukraine and fight. But they won’t because they are classic chicken hawks.
Whether it’s an advisable idea or not is not determined or influenced by anyone’s personal situation.
I should note that the term ‘chickenhawk’ is seldom applied in any consistent way and is a puerile insult. I first saw it applied by the odious Hendrik Hertzberg to Dan Quayle. Problem, Hertzberg knew nothing about Quayle’s actual views on Indochina as it was in 1969 and knew nothing of what Quayle’s viewpoint was at various stages of the war. All he knew was that Quayle was a loyal Republican with no time for Hertzberg’s functional pacifism and affection for red-haze outfits. The complaints about Richard Cheney ca. 2005 presume that one cannot think one military operation prudent and the other not or that having made an ill-advised decision at point in time A, he is obligated to take the opposite tack at time B because reasons. (Cheney was classified I-A on and off over the period running from 1959-66, but never called up during his periods of eligibility; he was categorically excused with the birth of his first child in 1966 and again when he reached the age of 26 in 1967. The complaint about Cheney has been, in essence, that he did not enlist).
The paleo love affair with Putin’s mafia state is proof that useful idiots span the political spectrum.
The impulses of the palaeo crew are quite similar to the red haze left. There aren’t any communist insurgencies anymore, so they make the case for the troublesome foreign government du jour. Thomas Fleming of Chronicles, a publication that assured its readers frequently that the world abroad could be ignored, made itself the press agent for violent Serb particularists. Their rank and file will tell us nothing matters, then turn around and rage at Israel.
“Yeah, come on all of you big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.”
Country Joe McDonald – “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_p1JC3z2kU
Oh, so we’re supposed to surrender to Russia because you think the Democrats with the aid of the media are going to make sure deaths are in vain, even after the fighting’s won?
Why didn’t you say so in the first place?
“What is happening today is that, after decades of moving NATO east from the Elbe River to the Baltic states and borders of Russia itself, the chickens of NATO expansion are coming home to roost.
Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has doubled in size.
We now have outstanding U.S.-NATO war guarantees to 28 nations on the other side of the Atlantic, some of them tiny nations deep inside Eastern Europe, in the very shadow of Russia, the largest nation on earth.
The day cannot be far off when the U.S. is going to have to review and discard Cold War commitments that date to the 1940s and 1950s, and require us to fight a nuclear power such as Russia for countries that have nothing to do with our vital interests or our national security.”
From “What to Do About That Russian Ultimatum” by Pat Buchanan – Dec 21, 2021
https://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2021/12/21/what-to-do-about-that-russian-ultimatum-n2600846
We now have outstanding U.S.-NATO war guarantees to 28 nations on the other side of the Atlantic, some of them tiny nations deep inside Eastern Europe, in the very shadow of Russia, the largest nation on earth.
And then we shall abandon the US states in the north-east, for they are tiny political units in the very shadow of the SECOND largest nation on earth!
Russia will take all of the full & partial Russian speakers (in the map in the post) to link up with Transnistria. That is their end-game. Combine that with Belarus being subsumed via a “Union” with Russia. Russia will be content for the time being.
Almost immediately, they’ll begin their huffing & puffing for the “lost provinces” of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, & Finland.
It won’t stop there either.
Russia needs their nose bloodied, but I don’t know how to achieve that.
NATO expanding to include the Baltics was a bridge too far in my opinion.
“What is happening today is that, after decades of moving NATO east from the Elbe River to the Baltic states and borders of Russia itself, the chickens of NATO expansion are coming home to roost.
Both Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan are unserious.
The countries which joined NATO did so because every last one of them had been stomped flat by Soviet Russia during the period running from 1940 to 1949 and kept in subjugation for decades. The only ones with an actual land border with Russia would be the three Baltic States, whose combined population approximates that of greater Toronto.
Russia isn’t under any kind of siege. They have the bloody buffer states Steve Sailer’s been telling us it’s reasonable for them to want. They have trouble building salutary relationships with their neighbors because their default impulse it to behave like the guy running protection rackets.
NATO expanding to include the Baltics was a bridge too far in my opinion.
No more than our mutual security treaty with Korea was ‘a bridge too far’.
some of them tiny nations deep inside Eastern Europe, in the very shadow of Russia, the largest nation on earth.
It’s the world’s sixth largest economy, Mr. Buchanan. The vast bulk of its territory is bereft of everything but conifers and tundra. There’s no motivation to maintain military alliance’s against the 2d, 3d, 4th, and 5th largest economies because they don’t have a history of brutalizing their neighbors.
From Aaron Amick at Sub Brief:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao5l0Qsa_ys&t=1s
“We never would be having this conversation if Trump was in the White House because, basically, peace through strength was a doctrine that was working with Russia, with North Korea, with China, with Iran and everything else,” Mr Navarro claimed while speaking on Newsmax on Thursday. “Right now, every dictator around the world is going to test Joe Biden, whether it’s Putin or whether it’s Xi Jinping.”
“With respect to the issue of Ukraine, I think a little history at least is useful,” Mr Navarro added.
“The Soviet Union back before Russia when it broke up contained all of Ukraine including Crimea. The country itself is not really a country because if you look at it, the western part of it, like it’s literally split in half, those are all Russian speakers,” he said, but quickly corrected himself.
“Excuse me, the eastern part is all Russian speakers,” he said. “The western part are all Ukrainian speakers. And it’s a country … that’s been kind of at war with itself with their election system.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-aide-ukraine-russia-border-putin-b1973730.html
K, and the USSR being not at all secret about their genocidal attempts but having gotten away with it until they collapsed means we should go “Hey, Putin! Go for Holodomor round two!” exactly how?
Good grief, the lesson from World War II was not “we should do anything wanna-be Hitlers demand, they’ll be happy and leave us alone.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
The country itself is not really a country
Mr. Navarro is recycling BS from the Russian nationalist combox. Again, the public sentiment in the Ukraine for merging with Russia encompasses < 5% of the population. It’s a single digit minority in every part of the Ukraine. There is regional variation in party preferences. However, the Russophile parties broke 40% in only 15 of the > 200 electoral constituencies in the country: 1 (of 7) constituencies in the Odessa region, 4 (of 6) in the Lukhansk region, and 10 (of 13) in the Donetsk region.
Note, it’s common in the Ukraine to speak Russian, speak Ukrainian, and to speak a vernacular jumble of them. However, even before the loss of the Crimea and fragments of Donetsk and Lukhansk, Only 17% when polled identified themselves as ‘great Russian’; a fat chunk of those who did now live in the occupied portions of the country.
I would be curious how some of ya’ll would respond to this load of crap I came across on Facebook:
“ Russia hasn’t done anything, they haven’t invaded Ukraine and if you watch the link I shared you can see that we know they have no intention of doing that.
The idea that the fall of the Soviet Union had something to do with Reagan’s “projection of strength”, this is a common trope from conservatives but has very little credibility in academic circles. The fall of the Soviet Union had many causes. If I could point to one person outside of the SU that was more responsible than anyone to my mind it would be Zbigniew Brzezinski. But there were major internal problems. Ukraine is a red line for Russia, they’ve said it many times. The endless expansion of NATO eastward, which the US promised they would not do, is extremely alarming. NATO is a military alliance, ostensibly hostile to the Soviet Union, it remains hostile to Russia even though it should in theory be obsolete. But of course it is not obsolete as it is a tool of empire to destroy independent economic development, which has occurred in Russia since Putin was elected. Putin is not a socialist, so not any kind of particular hero of mine, but he is adored in Russia because he took a country where people were dying like flies and turned it around, there is no denying that. He did it by nationalizing oil and natural gas and using that wealth to improve people’s lives. This drives western oligarchs nuts because in the 90s they were looting Russia, and they want that to continue. That’s why Ukraine is overrun with fascist elements. These are people that have not extracted themselves from neoliberal hell and this generates radicalism. Russia is much better off today comparatively, and the west wants to stop that.
I’m not saying I think a nuclear conflict is likely, but even a 1% chance should terrify us all. They are not going to let the west bring them back to the 90s, when child prostitution and alcoholism were rampant. They cannot allow the continued western encroachment. If you had lived through the hell they did in the 90s you would understand why. So there is a real risk here. We do not need to control their oil and gas, we have plenty of riches of our own, we need to stop buying the excuses the ruling class gives for attacking other countries to stop their economic development. This is the same thing with China. China has done nothing to Taiwan for decades, content with letting them be autonomous. The US is trying to escalate the problems. Again, this is a red line for China. Look into what they call the “century of humiliation”. If you know what they have been through you know why they cannot allow the US to carve the country up. This is the old playbook and it means millions of dead Chinese. We have to face the fact that they are a nuclear power and they are not going to allow this. Stay in your own country, protect your own borders, don’t send your aircraft carriers around the world threatening others.”
The idea that the fall of the Soviet Union had something to do with Reagan’s “projection of strength”, this is a common trope from conservatives but has very little credibility in academic circles
That someone is listening to “academic circles” after they spent years declaring that the USSR was more moral AND stronger than icky capitalism rather kills the implied argument from good judgement dead.
They cannot allow the continued western encroachment.
The “encroachment” where we don’t help them invade their neighbors….
My response to the “academic circles” argument was that what is credible in academic circles lacks credibility in reality.
We should probably remind them of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, too, Greg.
Not that they’ll listen, it’s not about being rational.
“But but but Russia hasn’t invade the Ukraine RECENTLY! It’s been, like, more than five years since they sent in military guys to kill people and take their stuff!”
As for the statements on China… When the BBC describes their relationship as improving because totalitarian, Communist China said ‘hey, if you absolutely surrender to us, we’ll let you be another Hong Kong!’, no sane person can claim that China has been “content” with crud, especially when even stuff living under rocks is aware of China’s activities in Hong Kong.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34729538
If I could point to one person outside of the SU that was more responsible than anyone to my mind it would be Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Who held an advisory position at the White House. There was not one soldier and not one diplomat and not one spy who reported to him. He left office just shy of 11 years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The administration which employed him had not one accomplishment in foreign affairs that anyone not on the payroll would remember.
The endless expansion of NATO eastward, which the US promised they would not do, is extremely alarming.
Citation needed. For the record, NATO hasn’t ‘expanded eastward’ since 2004. Accessions after 2004 were all in the Balkans among states which never had a land boundary with the Soviet Union; one was Albania, which ceased to be a working member of the Warsaw Pact in 1961 and the others were components of Yugoslavia, a state which had never been a member of the Warsaw Pact. The only accessions after 1991 which have a land boundary with Russia are the three Baltic states. whose total population exceeds that of Denmark by perhaps 200,000 and whose total annual output is lower than that of New Zealand.
The idea that the fall of the Soviet Union had something to do with Reagan’s “projection of strength”, this is a common trope from conservatives but has very little credibility in academic circles.
Purely co-incidental, I’m sure. Give me the name of someone in those ‘academic circles’ who anticipated what occurred in 1989-91. Just how perspicacious are they about political developments?
But of course it is not obsolete as it is a tool of empire to destroy independent economic development, which has occurred in Russia since Putin was elected.
NATO does not and cannot function that way. Your ‘academic circles’ should have schooled you about that.
He did it by nationalizing oil and natural gas and using that wealth to improve people’s lives.
MBITRW, what’s been notable about the period of economic reconstruction in Russia over the last 20-odd years has been the incremental reduction in the ratio of fuel exports to domestic product. The buyouts by state companies began in 2012; the Russian economic recovery began more than a dozen years earlier.
That’s why Ukraine is overrun with fascist elements.
Only in your imagination.
These are people that have not extracted themselves from neoliberal hell and this generates radicalism. Russia is much better off today comparatively, and the west wants to stop that.
There is no such thing as neo-liberal hell and western governments have done nothing which causes more than episodic inhibition of Russian economic development.
They are not going to let the west bring them back to the 90s, when child prostitution and alcoholism were rampant.
You mean they’re massing troops on the Ukrainian border to fight child prostitution and alcoholism?
If this Dunning-Kruger exemplar is a relative of yours, you have my sympathies.
Merry Christmas.
More than 10 thousand Russian troops are returning to their permanent bases after “drills” near the Ukraine border:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/more-than-10000-russian-troops-returning-bases-after-drills-near-ukraine-2021-12-25/
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20211226-russia-announces-end-of-10-000-troop-drills-near-ukraine
Nevertheless, an article in USNI News states, “The West must be ready to send air defense systems and anti-ship missiles to Kyiv while preparing to slap harsher sanctions on Moscow to deter the Kremlin’s bullying of Ukraine, five experts in European security said this week.” That statement was made the day before withdrawal of 10 thousand Russian troops, a number which is very small compared to the 100 thousand troops moved there recently.
https://news.usni.org/2021/12/24/panel-west-must-be-prepared-to-send-more-military-aid-to-ukraine-to-deter-russia
I think that Russia was practicing war games, and when its Belgorod submarine with its Poseiden 6 nuclear powered, nuclear armed torpedoes is ready (the Belgorod is undergoing sea trials), along with China having its fractional orbital bombardment system ready, Russia will invade Ukraine and China Taiwan. Those Poseiden 6 torpedoes can idle for months and months hidden undetected and undetectable underwater in harbors where US Naval bases are located and can be detonated when desired, and China’s hypersonic weapons will come across the south pole up the souther border of the US where there is no early warning radar system. Preemptive strikes by the Russians on our Naval bases and by China on our in-land Minute Man siloes will leave just the Ohio class SSBNs out on patrol as a last resort response that likely will never be given. Biden and the Democrats are cowardly chickens.
Doomsday science fiction? Perhaps. But the Russian Poseiden 6 nuclear torpedo and the Chinese nuclear-tipped hypersonic fractional orbital bombardment missiles are first strike weapons, not deterrents like the Trident ICBMs on the Ohio class SSBNs. Russia wants Ukraine and China Taiwan. Would they risk something so insane? Well, when times were sane, the answer would be no.
Greg and Art,
That guy’s hit the nail on the head: “in academic circles.” That says it all. Ninety-nine percent of everything in academia is total BS. For example, only the legacy media, WHO, and academia [wholly-owned subsidiaries of the CCP] believe anything that comes out of China.
.