- Joined
- Oct 20, 2019
Yes. That's another good example of the same principle being applied. Just as it's always "Putin" and never "Russia", it's always "Ukraine" and never "Western Ukraine" or "Kiev". Same reasoning - they don't want nuanced discussion that recognises it as being a civil war which started in 2014 and which Russia has finally entered on one side of. Ukraine is a single unified people! Never doubt it.
That's why I find it interesting to drop in facts that undermine that viewpoint very quickly. I mention things like as many refugees fled into Russia as into the West. Or that this kicked off with the government being overthrown in a Western backed coup removing the elected leader. Or that this leader's successor Zelenksy was elected on a platform of ending the civil war and re-establishing good relations with Russia and the Russian population. Or simply that the country is around 70 years old - that's pretty effective.
Surprisingly my bringing up of the Volyn massacres to a Polish person did nothing, however. Russia = Bad Guy even when Ukranian nationalists are killing them. That ones a mystery to me.
That may well be the Western mindset but I'm not sure it will work out for them. Western govts. are still writing checks that they can't cash if the Ukraine project fails. Blackrock and Bill Gates expect to get their farmland, the US expects to be able to control energy supplies to Europe and have control over food supplies in an upcoming time when food supply becomes more constricted. They're burning money to achieve these things. If at the end of all this they're looking across the Dneiper at a bunch of Russians cossack dancing with bears and laughing at them, I don't know if the USA has a plan B. Europe certainly doesn't. It's a two-hundred billion dollar bad investment.
And it will probably happen. Russia right now (sorry, "Putin") seem willing to take a few body blows in Kursk to stick with their plan in the East. That's pretty impressive, imo. One of the fundamental strategic mistakes in warfare and chess, is to become purely reactive to your opponents moves. When you see a player in chess or war focusing on that, they are nearly certainly going to lose. Hell, same is true of boxing - it's a general principal. Whoever is controlling the fight it likely going to win it. And Russia hasn't wavered. It is containing Kursk but not being diverted. Once it has reached whatever it feels are appropriate way points on the Eastern front, I expect it to hammer whatever remains in Kursk, if anything does.
I expect that point to be when Russia has secured the four oblasts (possible exception Kherson as that's going to be hard to retake the north bank), but who knows. The Neocons have until January when Trump,Vance,RFK take power. Expect increasing desperation on their part to escalate before then.
Which I think is partly Putin's mindset (they've got me doing it now!). He knows that there's likely going to be a powershift at the end of the year. He also knows that the more likely it looks the more the current lot will be trying to escalate things to make it impossible for Trump to "back down".
So yeah, the whole "red line" thing is true from one point of view. But if you know, or have a good expectation, that there's going to be a fundamental shift in a foreseeable future, there's a logical reason to keep your gun in its holster even in the face of provocation. For a bit longer.
If Trump doesn't get into power, of if he does but can't control the Deep State, then we may see some fireworks. Until then I imagine either Russia just keeps taking body blows and grinding forwards; or a collapse on the Ukraine side.
Some Western Feminists love to say how there would be no war if there were more female leaders. I find that hilarious personally. Women are nearly always more bloodthirsty than men when in charge.
I get the logic and mindset in the above, but I feel the rules of the game have changed somewhat. I feel globalism has changed them. If Western democracies were truly responsive to their electorates' needs then what you say would make sense. If we were still in an age of smaller nation states where consequences to the population of it led to consequences for its king or other elites, then it would make sense. But neither is as true as it was because the rulers of the Western democracies are globalists who are independent of the countries they supposedly represent. And thus insulated from the consequences. Case in point, the UK govt. is currently locking up people for voicing opposition to it or being in the vicinity of a protest. It's pursuing a policy of going to Nigeria to recruit its soldiers to make up the British army. Your logic is "if Britain crosses Russia's red lines, then hit Britain". But you can hit the British people all day long and you're not punishing the decision makers because they hate the British public. And fear them. Kier Starmer honestly views actual British people as the enemy, it feels like.
They're all globalists and they care more about what their other globalist friends think of them than whether their actions are harming their constituents. Much of what I said about Ukraine not acting in its own rational self-interest works for Western countries as well, if by self-interest you mean that of the population. Unless the Russian response can hit the leaders of the countries, its effectiveness is weakened and can in fact simply strengthen that leaders' hand because now they have an outside enemy that the public desire retaliation against. Instead of grumbling about why we're spending billions on a war that is half way around the world from us.
It was once the case that if you hurt Britain or France or Germany, that was bad for the leaders too because their interests were tied to the country. That is no longer the case. Ukraine is a vassal state and all the senseless deaths of Ukranian people hasn't dissuaded its government from pursuing a path of even more blood. We can all see that. What I'm saying is that to a large extent, all of the Western democracies are now vassal states. The leaders no longer belong to their countries, but to globalism.
