So let me get this straight. If this war proceeds the U.S. will deplete its munitions and become a hollowed out shell but, simultaneously, if this war proceeds Russia will only grow stronger, with more weapons and munitions. Am I picking up what you're putting down?

And nothing would have emboldened China more than to have watched the U.S. buckle in its support for Ukraine.

Mearsheimer would say it only matters what Putin thinks. Nobody can read his mind, not even those in his own cabinet, but it's clear he's a very paranoid strongman dictator who has seen the US get rid of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Mullah Omar etc etc. By all accounts he was obsessed with the video of Hussein being hung and Gaddafi being beaten to death by a mob.

This is what Putin said when he was in London many years ago:
"I know you’re a great country with a great history. You all think I’m not democratic like you. I won’t argue with you — I’m an ex-KGB man. 'I’m wicked and scary with claws and teeth, and you’re all so well-bred and so well-educated." -Putin
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1731221/putin-david-cameron-meeting-documentary-spt

But, I also can't emphasize enough that in the post Soviet world the US and Russia are not equals. Russia has a military roughly equivalent to India's military and an economy roughly equivalent to Italy's. Every administration since the 90s has told the Russians they don't get to have spheres of influence. The difference is India and Italy don't go stomping around punching above their weight because of some "historical greatness" about their country.

Russia and the US were never equals. The US has no equal....yet. Putin knows this which feeds the paranoia.

So if Russia gets no sphere of influence why are we giving them one?   Why did state fuck around in Ukraine using soft power,  Russian lost political influence,  started a poorly disguised insurrection, then massed troops on the border for a year and we did nothing of consequence.  Then the invasion and we play proxy games...badly?

Either Russia, due to its nukes, does actually get a sphere of influence or we are epic dick bags and fairly incompetent.

Possibly both.

The only conclusion I can fit over this set of observations is that this is a diplomatic cluster fuck that probably could have been avoided.

Actually what a lot of people don't remember is Russia had their troops massed on the Ukrainian border for 2 years. Russia was going to invade in 2021 but Biden called a summit and got them to back down.

Here's William Taylor, former ambassador to Ukraine (at 46:13):

Interviewer: And he (Biden) then launches a furious period of trying to convince Putin not to do it (invade). There’s video conferences, phone calls, shuttle diplomacy. There are public warnings; there is rallying; there’s releasing intelligence. And yet it doesn’t dissuade Vladimir Putin. What was Biden trying to do, and why did it not work?

Taylor: Well, you know, at one point actually, it seemed to work. At one point in the spring of 2021, there was this buildup, this initial buildup of Russian forces around Ukraine which caused a lot of concern on the part of the United States government and on the part of the Ukrainian government and on the part of European governments. And President Biden surprised a lot of people by placing a phone call to President Putin. Again, this is the spring of 2021. There was a threat—not as big as the subsequent threat that we now focus on—but this phone call that President Biden put in had three components, had three messages. First message was, “Back off of Ukraine; do not invade Ukraine; stop the threat to Ukraine that is posed by your forces, Mr. Putin.”

The second message—and again, we remember that this was shortly after President Biden was in office. So this was—I think this was in, like, March. [He’d] been inaugurated in January, so he hadn’t been in office more than a couple months. So for him to call Putin and tell him, “Back off of Ukraine,” and to tell President Putin that “The United States is going to put sanctions on you for what you did during the election, in our election, and those sanctions are coming”—President Biden told President Putin in this phone call.

The third thing he said was, “And I’m willing to meet you. I’m willing to have a meeting, a summit, to talk these things through.” So he had both—threatened is too strong, but had warned President Putin not to invade. He had told President Putin he was going to put sanctions on. And it turns out, two days later after that phone call, sure enough, those sanctions were imposed, announced and imposed. And then he also said, “But I’m willing to talk.”

So President Biden did go out of his way. He got some criticism for this. He got some criticism for talking to President Putin, but in particular for offering to sit down and talk with him person-to-person, face-to-face. But he did it anyway, President Biden. And it turned out, interestingly, that President Putin did, to some degree, back down from Ukraine. We should be clear: He didn’t pull all those forces back from around the borders of Ukraine, but he did pull a lot of the soldiers, those Russian soldiers, back off of that equipment. He left a lot of the equipment on the border with Ukraine, but he pulled a lot of the soldiers back, so it was less of a threat. It was a backdown in some real sense.

And as we remember, they did have that meeting in Geneva. Didn’t go particularly well, but it didn’t go terribly. They agreed to a couple of interesting things. They agreed—President Biden, President Putin agreed in Geneva in about, this must have been about June now of 2021. They agreed to have their experts get together and talk about an issue that was important, is important, to both countries, and that’s strategic stability. So these are the so-called strategic stability talks. And strategic stability is what the experts refer to—how the experts refer to discussions about nuclear arms control. It’s broader than just nuclear arms because it includes some of these new weapons. It includes cyber. It includes hypersonics. It recognizes that there are other things going on in the world that affect strategic stability, like the rise of China, for example.

So these strategic stability talks are broader than just nuclear arms control, but they focus on nuclear arms control. There’s no doubt about it. And the two presidents agree to have their experts sit down and do that. And it turns out over the next, about six months, so last fall, a year ago, the Russian and American experts did get together, I think three times, and had these conversations about nuclear arms control.

There’s an issue there that is important for the United States, important for Russia, important for the rest of the world indeed. That is the New START treaty, which President Biden extended as soon as he was in office. Expires in five years. And so the question for the Russians and the Americans and the strategic stability expert community is what happens after the New START treaty expires? Is there something to follow on? Is there something to expand? Is there something to continue? Do the Chinese play? These questions are really important ones for the big issues of nuclear stability, strategic stability.

And so at that meeting in Geneva, prompted by President Biden’s phone call that got President Putin to pull back from Ukraine, warned him about the sanctions but also agreed to talk, these strategic stability talks got underway. So there was some hope that the conversation, that the attempts by President Biden to deal with President Putin, could lead to some kind of results. All that said, later on in the fall—so a year ago now—so in the fall of 2021, sure enough, these Russian forces start moving back towards Ukraine’s borders, and not just the eastern border, but no, all three borders: the Ukraine border with Belarus; Ukraine border with Russia; Ukraine border with occupied Crimea; even the Ukraine border with Russian forces that are still in Moldova in Ukraine’s southwest.

So these forces started to menace Ukraine again even while these other conversations were going on. This is all to say that there was some progress in attempting to defuse the situation early that gave some reason to think that this could happen. So going back to your question about the briefing, that hope that had been generated by some series of conversations about other things—when President Biden heard from his intelligence community that there was a strong likelihood of an invasion of Ukraine [it] must have come as a disappointment. Surprise is probably not it. Probably not surprised because he had seen the buildup. But he had gone out of his way—you mentioned other phone calls. There was another phone call that President Biden put in to President Putin in, what, December of 2021 in order to lay out in some detail what would happen if President Putin followed through on what the intelligence community was telling President Biden that Russia was going to do.

And President Biden laid out for President Putin in some specificity the kinds of sanctions that he would put on. What he told the world was, “These sanctions are going to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen. They'll be harsher than any sanctions that have been put on any other nation,” and I’m sure he told President Putin more detail than that—exactly what to expect. So President Biden had gone to some length, both in the previous spring and in the winter and even into January, to try to convince President Putin that it wasn’t worth it. President Biden knew the importance of Ukraine. He went to great lengths to try to deter President Putin from an invasion. In the end, we know that failed.

And Julia Ioffe (at 51:14)

Interiewer: And then they get this briefing that the forces are massing, that it looks like an actual invasion of Ukraine could be being mounted. What kind of alarm does that set off inside the White House? And what are the stakes at that moment for President Biden?

Ioffe: Well, you also have—I mean, before that you also have the Biden administration trying to maintain this relationship with Russia, right? Throwing Putin enough bones, enough phone calls, enough summits, enough meetings to keep him happy, to keep him feeling like, you know, Biden says Putin is a worthy adversary, feed his ego just enough to keep him from doing anything crazy, but not actually do anything with him, right?

And at one point one of Biden’s advisers tells me, “Look, we’ll do a summit once a month if we have to to keep him from doing anything crazy.” And as Angela Stent once said, they wanted to park Putin, but he didn’t want to be parked. He wanted to be the No. 1 problem of everybody in the whole world, but especially the No. 1 priority, the No. 1 threat, the No. 1 problem that the White House was dealing with.

Interiewer: So when they do have that summit in June, which was controversial apparently inside the administration, but the reason, as you understand it, was to show a level of respect so that he doesn’t have to go and take a dramatic action to get attention.

Ioffe: Well, he did. He had this massive buildup of troops outside Ukraine, on the Ukrainian border that spring, in April. And he only starts pulling those troops back once he gets a call from Biden and once he gets the promise of a summit, right? And it’s seen as a kind of pacifying of Vladimir Putin: “OK, we’ll give him a summit. Fine, if that keeps him from invading Ukraine, and if it gets him to draw down his forces, fine. What’s it to us?”

And there was a feeling in the fall that maybe he’ll take another summit; maybe we’ll do some more phone calls, and maybe he’ll take something smaller, and he’ll draw down his forces again; that maybe we can pull another kind of—another kind of Geneva and get him to back down again.

But very soon it becomes clear that this is different for Putin; that he’s not going to take any of the exit ramps that the Biden administration is putting out there for him; that he’s blowing through every single exit ramp one by one, and that he’s just stepping on the gas harder and harder and harder.

Interviewer: And how big a moment is that for Joe Biden? He must be realizing that this could be one of the most significant moments of his presidency, this question of whether Putin is going to invade or not.

Ioffe: I think it’s a huge moment for Biden and his staffers. I think it’s a massively frustrating one because this is not what they wanted to be dealing with. They have domestic concerns that they want to deal with. There’s the pivot to Asia that every administration since Bush wants to do, right? They want to get out of the Middle East. They want to stop dealing with Russia. There are other concerns. There’s a whole wide world out there, outside of the Middle East and outside of Russia, that this White House wants to deal with. They don’t want to get stuck here.

And when they realize that this is going to be the thing that defines their presidency geopolitically, there is a kind of frustration and anger that Putin has kind of trapped them into this, that they won’t be able to focus on and accomplish all of these big, lofty things that they had been planning for for the first Biden term.

Interviewer: Why can’t they? He calls him on video conferences. There’s lots of shuttle diplomacy. There are public statements and warnings at press conferences. Why can’t Biden, with all of the threats, with all of the rallying allies, why can’t they dissuade Putin and show him that he shouldn’t take this course of action?

Ioffe: Because Putin wants Ukraine. Because it’s fundamentally an unbridgeable gap. Because this has nothing to do with NATO. This has nothing to do with respect. This has nothing to do with the European—it has nothing to do with any of the things Putin is saying publicly. Putin wants Ukraine. He wants this pan-Slavic super-state with Moscow as the capital that basically folds Ukraine and Belarus into itself, whether officially or unofficially. He wants Ukraine. He doesn’t think it’s a real country. I don’t know how you compromise with somebody who just wants Ukraine, right? That’s not something you could build a bridge across.

Interviewer: And after what’s happened with Georgia, with Crimea, he thinks he can get away with it?

Ioffe: It’s not that he thinks that he can get away with it; he thinks that he can manage the consequences. He thinks the consequences won’t be bad enough that he won’t be able to deal with them. He thinks he’ll be able to manage the economic fallout. He thinks the war will be fast. He believes the faulty intelligence he’s getting. He believes that Ukrainians will greet Russian soldiers with open arms and as liberators. He believes that Ukrainians are basically just Russians who have been brainwashed to think that they’re Ukrainians. He doesn’t understand that Ukraine has undergone a profound shift that he has started in 2014; that before 2014 there was a significant chunk of the Ukrainian population that was nostalgic for the Soviet Union, that was nostalgic for Russia, that did see themselves as more Russian than Ukrainian, that he, by invading eastern Ukraine and taking Crimea, has set in motion a Ukrainianization of society that will greet him with fierce resistance in February of 2022.

He’s not getting this intelligence. And when he is, he doesn’t believe it. So he makes a series of miscalculations that lead him to believe that the war will be fast, that he will conquer Ukraine very quickly and leave a little rump state around Lviv that he can just chuck to Poland or to Europe and that whatever sanctions Biden will be able to cobble together with a divided NATO. He also believes NATO is still very mad at Biden for pulling out of Afghanistan without giving them much notice. He thinks NATO is very divided against itself; that America’s very divided against itself; that they won’t be able to present a united front, and therefore, whatever sanctions they’ll be able to muster, he’ll be able to weather them, much like he’s been able to weather every wave of previous sanctions.

He is shocked by the unity. He is shocked by the severity of the sanctions. He is shocked by the resistance his army’s meeting on the ground. And he is shocked by his army’s performance. I think he didn’t realize that the corruption that had eaten away at everything in Russian society had also eaten away at the core of his army; that everybody had been stealing and lying inside the army and the FSB, too.

Yeah I watched both of those interviews when they were published. They chronical an ineffective strategy.  If the goal was to prevent military escalation/aggression, sanctions aren't the right tool, certainly not once troops are massing.  

Putin correctly saw Biden as an extension of Obamas administration. Obama had a legacy of weakness once things got serious.  To a certain extent Biden got setup by Obamas legacy.  I don't think it's a coincidence that Russia didn't escalate the conflict during Trumps term. He was an unknown and fairly unpredictable, that might be an understatement.  

Thr Soviets were convinced that Regan was a war monger and ideologically driven to the point that they were convinced he'd start a pre-emptive war. Hence the KGBs interpretation of Able Archer 83.  People give credit to Regans policies for ending the cold war, but the Soviets perception of his personality played a significant role.  When this guy that was clearly willing to start a war offered peace, Gorby and senior leadership saw it as a good alternative. Economics also played a role, but even our economics weren't sustainable.

Bidens personal history, medical status, corruption, and legacy as part of Obamas administration added up to an opponent that didn't pose a high risk.  

Professional diplomats and analysts aught to be self aware enough to see this situation develop.  They are bright people, which means they probably did see it developing and either Biden wouldn't course correct or preventing military escalation wasn't the ultimate goal.

Everything leading up to the invasion and everything since suggests to me that the ultimate goal is the degradation of Russia. Even Biden discussed regime change early on, like that was the plan or at least had been discussed.  I think in bidens addled state he often says the quiet part out loud, at this point I bet they don't tell him anything they don't want said publically.

This is speculation on my part, no doubt.   But combine it with other world event, even today in the gulf and it fits a pattern.

I'm very concerned that this pattern, even if only perceived, will encourage further aggression around the world.  Now appears to be the time.

I'm not saying everything the US has done has been correct or honorable. Fortunately we live in a democracy where we can criticize our leaders, diplomats and policy. We could spend all day criticizing that, and indeed we have an obligation to. But let's not forget who is really at fault here. As Taylor says, we did a lot to try and prevent the invasion. As Ioff says, Putin fundamentally wants Ukraine and doesn't consider it a country - there's no bridge to build there. Putin didn't need to invade, he wanted to and thought it would be a 2 or 3 day special military operation. This behavior predates NATO and in fact predates the USA. We tend to put too much emphasis on our ability to influence their behavior.

Ivan the Terrible


Peter the Great:


Stalin:


Putin:

You can say if only Ukraine had behaved like Belarus and not Westernized they wouldn't be in this mess (and we shouldn't have pushed them to Westernize), but you can also say if Russia had only behaved like India and Italy they wouldn't be in this mess either. Russia has not been our #1 priority until now. US foreign policy has always been the Middle East, and then a pivot to Asia. Until Russia forced us to make it about them.

What good are we if we can't influence world events?  

Isn't that the point of being the super power?  Isn't it a moral good to have a democratic and nominally moral people leading the world?  At least compared to the alternative?

Why do I pay for health care if the trade isn't global influence in the hands of moral people?

Kinda kidding on that last one but...everyone else bought universal health care...we bought a military.  

I guess I'm nostalgic for the 80s, when America was the good guys and that was reason enough.  It was probably never like that in reality but that's nostalgia for ya.

Chicken or egg?

Russias wars of conquest following the 90s followed a clear pattern.  When their bordering nations began to threaten Russias interests they invaded.  This had been the status quo since WW2.  

We thought that changed in 91,  they didn't.  

We had an obligation to either leave Ukraine in Russias orbit or fully bring them under the protection of our orbit.

We did neither and got a predictable result.

Is Russia responsible? absolutely. But it takes two to tango.  

You want to make your country and by extension the world a better place?  Be critical of it.

Russia's just its own bag of problems. They could never be just another European country like Italy or France. They consider themselves the saviors of Europe from Napoleon and Hitler, so they are above that. They would only join the UN if they had a security council veto. I think we've done a lot to influence this world event, but there was no stopping it. The parallels with Taiwan are all too similar.

You can look 30 years back with hindsight and say this, but it wasn't so obvious at the time. And Bill Clinton has now publicly come out and said he regrets getting Ukraine to give up their nukes:
https://nypost.com/2023/04/05/bill-clinton-regrets-having-ukraine-give-up-nuclear-weapons/

Germany and France are the only reasons Ukraine didn't join NATO in '08. They didn't want a confrontation with Russia. They got it anyway.

Of course they did.

I'm not being critical of Clinton, different time.  I am being critical of the Obama thru Biden foreign policy thinkers that had the benefit of hindsight.

If Obama/Biden is the camp you want to criticize, fine. Blast away. But keep in mind that encouraging Ukraine to leave Russia's orbit while leaving Ukraine with no way to protect itself against Russia is a policy that predates Obama's inauguration in 2009. They gave up their nukes in '94 and their NATO application was denied in '08. And it's not even the Presidents who made this policy, it was career diplomats and policy makers in the state dept.

When Putin took Crimea it was quite a surprise for the Obama administration. They were able to deal with it as effectively as they could given they had 2 wars to deal with, Europe didn't want an arms race in Ukraine, and Obama had an America first policy. Trump could care less about Ukraine except for Hunter Biden and Burisma. When Joe Biden came to office there was an impending invasion that could not be stopped. Some say they should've shown more teeth, but no one says that would've prevented this.

And lets not forget that every President since Clinton has tried to get along with Russia:

Why did we even try to get along with Russia? Daniel Fried addresses that
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interview/daniel-fried/
"So it was actually a complicated policy, a mixed one. And it was wrong. But, you know, if Bush hadn’t done it, and if Clinton hadn’t done it, you would ask me the legitimate question, “Well, why didn’t you even try?,” to which I would have no answer. So I'm glad we tried. The failure is principally a failure of Russia to take advantage of the opportunities Clinton and Bush opened up to it. "

LOL

Not a revelation but nobody cares about Russian FSB installed Viktor Yanukovych. He was a Russian puppet who betrayed Ukraine daily.

When Ukrainian patriots got rid of him, he ran to,,,,,,,,,Russia.

What would you expect them to say?

Accountability is not something politicians and diplomats tolerate.  That's the most galling aspect of so called intellectuals, when your only product is ideas you have no real world accountability.  Your ideas can kill 100k people and you can spout the drivel you quoted. "we tried, it wasn't our fault"  Fuckers aren't even ashamed.

Bullshit. You were the captain of the ship,  when a cargo ship hits a Burke somebodies naval career is over, doesn't matter who hit who.  That's understood when you take the job.  

We tried something similar with China, Clinton thought capitalism would democratize China, instead we bought them a shiny new military and a mountain of geopolitical influence.

All of which led us to this moment, where all these things are converging to create a global crisis like we haven't seen since WW2.  Day by day it becomes more clear that all of the recent chaos is probably related somehow.

Well, Clinton has expressed regret over his role in denuclearizing Ukraine. What more do you want from him? The Bush administration tried to get Ukraine into NATO. It was primarily Merkel who blocked it (and was also the architect of the soft approach in 2014), and she has gotten a lot of flak at home for her appeasement of Putin. If either of those things didn't happen, there would be no war today. I'm not sure you can point to a third thing on the West's part.

And Trump was impeached by the House for trying to get political favors by holding up Ukraine aid. So it's not like there's been no accountability. Just because hindsight shows you made a wrong choice or didn't do good enough doesn't make it illegal like Iran-Contra or Watergate or the Plame Affair was. Intentions are important. They've been held about as accountable as they can.

In the end we can point fingers at ourselves all we want but it was Putin who decided on an unnecessary invasion, not us. I'm pretty sure he would've invaded even if the US and NATO never existed, and in fact almost any historian would tell you that. We failed to stop Hitler from invading Poland, but we don't beat ourselves up for it.

Again...failing to bring Ukraine fully into the fold we should have left Ukraine in Russias orbit.  

Instead we set them up and then played proxy war.  A proxy war that just ran out of funding. Europe even if they reach down deep and find a pair, don't actually have the ability to protect Ukraine.  So the proxy war will likely lead to the actual loss of Ukraine anyway placing NATO in exactly the same position it would have been in anyway.  

Sure it's Putins fault, he's a raging cock bag that deserves to go swimming duct taped to a lawn chair.  Still would have been better to deter him than to end up here.

We're still a long ways from Ukraine being lost. If Ukraine doesn't want to go to the peace table that's on them. And whatever we've done to promote liberal Western democracy there and promote them joining the EU doesn't justify a Russian invasion. For the record, Thomas Graham was Director of Russia policy during the Bush years and he said Bush's Freedom Agenda shouldn't extend to Russia and their neighbors. He was overruled, but you also can't fault Bush for promoting freedom

I don’t think you should have been banned. Different opinions are allowed.


Signed


UAFCINCGD

I think you should change your screen name.

Heads would explode.

People can’t even get my current screen name right in tagging me. Going to a new one will only trouble their addled minds even more.

But the heads would explode.

I might save the one screen name change for when I retire.

You might want to read up on the NDP for the last several years (including 2024)
Russia is a distant second not even close to "our" number 1 priority

Is there some other other country we've sent $100 billion to in the past two years? Not to mention the time, resources, energy and brainpower the Pentagon, CIA, NSA etc is spending there.

That's why it's become a political football. Using the fate of a country to get political concessions. If Ukraine fails then US foreign policy fails, and more importantly Joe Biden fails. Then maybe the opposition party can get their guy elected. It's sad that people want to see America and her allies fail, just so their guy can get in power.

And we can knock out number 2 and focus on number one.

It's a no brainer.

I've read art of the deal and this is a good deal. The Trump on my shoulder agrees  

Hmm
I didn't know we were targeting the one thing that makes Russia an actual threat to the US.

How many Russian  nukes has Ukr destroyed?

The one thing?
They don't need nukes to trigger article 5.

Nukes aren't the only thing Russia has that can threaten the USA with.

Those cruise missile and anti ship missile carriers that the black sea no longer has are part of that equation too.

The loss, damage, and wear of the strategic bomber fleet is a part of that also. Those are nuclear capable and numerous have been damaged and destroyed.

The damage to Russia's transport fleet of IL76s is also sizeable.

The VDV is also a shell of what it once was.

Your assumption also predicates on the fact they won't strip nuclear forces or funding to maintain the invasion of Ukraine. Seeing as how we have already seen vehicles and troops with the rocket forces marking that's false.

In short....yes, Russia is indeed losing the forces they threaten America and the west with.

If Russia is destabilized does that increase or decrease the threat of their nukes?

It's yet another story that comes from an exclusively western slant, denying the agency and activity of the Ukrainians. It's so tiresome. Other people do things without being directed by US government agents. It does happen. Mearshimer is supposedly an "expert," but he doesn't seem like one to me. He's another one like Zeihan: smart, informed in a limited range of knowledge, but extends that authority to things he doesn't know any more about than I do.

You know, I was going through my ignore list, and you were on it. But your recent posts have been pretty reasonable, so I pruned my ignore list.  Maybe you just came on too strong in a brief series of posts.

Going off historical precedence, no.

When the USSR collapsed in 1991 there was a marked decrease.

How many Russian nukes has Ukr destroyed?
Until that happens, nothing happening over there is of any benefit to the USA

It's been known for years that the conflict over Ukraine was not about NATO, but there are still people that carry this talking point. Either they're completely ignorant, or they're Russian shills, but the former seems more likely to me than the latter. Either way, it's dishonest.

Define 'threatening Russsia's interests' and provide examples. How is applying to join the EU 'threatening Russia's interests'?

It's not a complicated concept. Russia feels that having EU/NATO/western political influence over Ukraine to be threatening to Russian state security.   That's the whole game. Everything else is just window dressing for the actions they have been taking.

We poked the bear, the bear ate 20% of Ukraine...here we are.  

Ukraine will be lucky to hang on to what they have right now.  Funding probably won't happen anytime soon. If at all. Putin smells blood. He'll be in no mood to make a deal.

I've come to learn that Mearsheimer's views on NATO expansion really come from George Kennan. Kennan died 20 years ago at 101 years old, but there was a time when he was considered the best expert on Russia in the United States and we really haven't had someone fill his shoes since (though Kotkin comes close). When Clinton started the first wave of NATO expansion in 1997, Yeltsin strongly objected  (after a brief period where the Poles got him drunk and convinced him it was ok) and Kennan (in his 90s then) was strongly opposed to it. Kennan said it was a "strategic blunder of potentially epic proportions," "there was no reason for this whatsoever,"  it would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic" opinions in Russia, and "The Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies" among other things. In fact a lot of diplomats got together and told Clinton not to do it. Mearsheimer shared their opinion.

But then in 2000 Putin came to power and he said he did not oppose NATO expansion. So Kennan et al lost the debate. Kennan was 97 years old then and the debate was over until 2007 when Putin started opposing it (Kennan died in '05). But by then the expansion was pretty much over. We just added a few countries in '09 nowhere near Russia. Mearsheimer has simply resurrected that 1997 debate 25 years later.

But since the invasion, Mearsheimer has really come off the rails and become a Russia sympathizer. Still, I'll quote him because he has a reputation to protect and he doesn't repeat Russian propaganda or claim anything he can't back up, unlike the pedophile Scott Ritter or Judge Napolitano who was fired from Fox News for making claims he can't prove. Mearsheimer just happens to share the Russian point of view on most things. Jeffrey Sachs is another one that's usually respectable but has gone off the rails too. They're much like the academic/university commie sympathizers during WWII and the post-war period.

This was written a few weeks before the invasion:
"By (Putin) calling on nato to pull military infrastructure out of Eastern Europe, and on the U.S. to offer written guarantees that it will never support Ukraine’s accession to nato, historian Sarotte told me, “he wants a do-over of 1997.”

There’s no way to justify Putin’s decision to hold a gun to Ukraine’s head in order to extract a better deal from the West. Still, I asked Sarotte if the current crisis could have been avoided. “I don’t want to say the West took advantage of Russia,” she said. “After all, Russia signed these agreements (the '97 NATO-Russia Founding Act that Russia signed said Russia doesn't have a veto on NATO expansion) and knew perfectly well what it was signing.” But, she added, Western powers would have been wise to keep in mind an aphorism of Winston Churchill’s: “In Victory: Magnanimity.” ... As Sarotte put it, “I don’t think Putin is all that worried about historical accuracy.”
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-historical-dispute-behind-russias-threat-to-invade-ukraine

And this is how Clinton saw it at the time when Russia signed the '97 NATO-Russia Founding Act that was a green light for expansion:

Setting the goalposts artificially as "nukes" as the only way that Russia can threaten the USA is false.

There is plenty of other ways for Russia to threaten the USA.

Losing dozens of nuke delivery systems to include..ahem...a submarine is one of those.

@temetnoscesax Please explain in detail how the US did it if it is so clear to you.

They shot over 100, and burned about 50 to death.

I've pointed this out so many times, and nobody can ever address it. They SAY they're concerned with NATO on their borders, but their actions simply do not back this up. They say it, because people will believe it. Not only are there 2 new members of NATO and thousands of new miles of NATO border with Russia, but they MOVED troops AWAY from NATO borders with Poland and the Baltics to fight in Ukraine. It makes ZERO sense.

Establishing a new positive relationship with Ukraine is NOT poking the bear.

Why do you think the former Soviet Union had the borders it had?  The point has always been Russia proper and Russia proper is essentially Moscow and St. Petersburg. Just like any country they seek to protect their homeland.  I'm not saying they need to, I don't think Ukraine or nato had plans to invade but that's likely how ethnic Russians that have paranoia hard coded into their DNA at this point likely see it.

I never said putin was smart.  All I'm saying is that the 20 years post 91 were the exception not the rule.  We mistakenly believed that when the USSR disolved Russia lost and gave up.  They certainly didn't. They are still a factor and still have many of the same priorities.


It's the same world view that Moscow had during the cold war, and Moscow is being run by a guy that was trained by the KGB during the cold war when Andropovs KGB was at its most paranoid.

It would be a miracle if putin didn't share the same paranoid outlook


It is stunningly and I mean stunningly obtuse to look at the fact pattern around Russias behavior and not see how the west played into the decisions.  My most generous opinion is that we were arrogant and foolish. You could also argue that we were careless or calous and had some idea of what we were doing or the risk.

In the end it doesn't really matter. It's amusing to see the ideological lines even here and what is accepted and what is rejected.

Every time I point out that the west played a part it gets a pretty strong response, I don't know how we make better decisions going forward if we can't even admit that there are two parties involved in Ukraine.

That's international relations and power games, old as time itself.  I have no problem that we do it, I have a problem that we do it in a way that destroys countries and lives.  If we were going to poke the bear we were obligated to protect Ukraine.  We shouldn't be a malevolent force in the world that gets inflicted on innocent people, that's Russias shtick and the reason why we consider them evil.  The world is watching and this will have a diplomatic effect in other areas.

At the very least pursuing Ukraine as a proxy war is ethically questionable.  Now they will likely lose as funding slows down. Then what?  What did we gain?   Who will want to be an ally of the US going forward?

Nukes are maintenance intensive. We spend more on that than russia spends on their entire military. Russia cannot afford to keep them in top shape, there are 3 US states that have a larger gdp than russia. They have been sending troops from the nuke side to be blown up by drones, as well as their instructors from all branches.
Their hypersonic missiles are easy to defeat, and their latest ballistic missile is 50% successful in the testing so far.
Russia is not the ussr. They were too fucking stupid to ride that pony to mutual prosperity, and fucked up any attempts by the west to join the rest of us. You don't skim enough money from the military to buy multiple 400 million dollar yachts, and keep a functioning nuclear arsenal at the same time. Especially with a piggy bank the the size of russia.

We didn't poke the bear. The Ukrainian citizens did. They voted to align with the west because other than moscow and st petersburg the country is pretty much a third world shithole that has everything sucked away to maintain the elite.
They wanted a future for themselves and their children based on the chance of prosperity with the west. It's about what the Ukrainians wanted, it wasn't "we".