Ukraine Invasion

[Eternal]

What will be truly interesting is the position Trump loyalists will take after the US midterm elections, given Trumps pro Russia stance and the likelihood that Republicans will take both houses.

[exploited]

They'll take whatever position they are told to take. It is amazing how willing to listen to Trump they are. Depressing, but amazing.

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Saz]

You can see Putin's point though...it is and always has been imperative for Moscow to control Ukraine from a geographic perspective, not only for the black sea but to set the borders at the capathians, basically the only natural barrier. Mearsheimer writes alot on this topic and in fairness it does seem history has borne out his theories. Fundamentally, we want to treat Russia like Italy given its political and economic circumstances, when in fact Russia is still clearly a regional power capable of dominating the states on its borders. It was always a mistake to aggressively push into these regions without the racist consent of the Russian state. The Baltics will come back to bite us in the ass as well I think. This is what scares me more than Ukraine. I could easily see a situation in which putin generally gets his way in Ukraine, NATO does little to nothing, and next thing you know the Russians have serious designs on the Baltics. The Russians may miscalculate and think because we gave away Ukraine (and by this point, probably Taiwan), that we will give away the Baltics when in fact that will be NATO's redline.

https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/ ... sis-Is.pdf

[Kane]

I don't think Biden is weak - he knows what he has. But he also knows he's dealing with Europe and he doesn't want to commit the US to anything if the Europeans can't get their own shit together. EU member states still need to increase defense spending and aren't prepared for any kind of invasion by Russia. And Biden knows that - he doesn't want to commit the US to standing up Europe because he knows China is in the pacific.

Europe needs to up their game and they've had multiple chances and multiple US administrations have prodded them on this.

[Kane]

[Saz]

[Saz]

[uebermann]