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Why did they leave Afghanistan, which is close to Iran, China, Russia?
It's very difficult to find the promises Mr Bush gave when he ordered the occupation of Afghanistan. I guess he promised to create a prosperous and democratic country and destroy all communist atrocities: land for people, affordable healthcare and education, equal rights for women.
Why can't the president just give $2 trillion to Ukrainians instead of starting another war? I guess Putin wouldn't have a chance then.
Then, he should give $2 trillion to the Taiwanese, and China would have no chance.
No one can beat Afghan dan. Only way is to nuke it all out or gas it.
Well, the US president can provide $40 billion to "build green energy infrastructure in the Ukraine", $30 billion will help Westinghouse, $5 billion will be stolen by Ukrainian politicians, and Hunter will get a cool billion.
This pretty much sums it all up, unfortunately so...
NATO bases are not in Ukraine, as for domestic wars and human rights abuses, I think Mother Russia should look closer to home.
Oh but they are BNW, and what's more interesting - it's specifically the BRITISH Naval base that's been built lately near Odessa.
That Great Britain ( assuring its newly-found independence,) jumped straight into *Ukrainian politics* ( and on the wrong side of it) took me by surprise to be honest.
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Russia and Britain have being playing the global game long before the US, and I am more concerned with the men who play chess in Russia than I am the intimidating men.
That's true, and from everything I've noticed in the history of the old world, both countries were carefully staying on the opposite sides of the spectrum, rarely interfering with each other in wars, while balancing out the rest of the European powers. It looked almost as if there was some kind of unspoken agreement there - the Russians let Great Britain to "rule the Seas" ( and therefore the distant colonies,) while Russia was preoccupied with whatever it considered the sphere of its interests on the land mass around it.
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Both countries have a long history, and in terms of the latest conflict it's in the Russia's own self interest to negotiate peace.
Actually, it's the other way around.
In terms of the latest conflict, it's in the Russia's own interest to stand firm and to not to retreat an inch, instead of "negotiating peace."
Putin is a dictator and he is friendly with the Oligarchs. Furthermore Russia has extreme income inequality (like the US).
But Americans seem to think Russia is like in the movie Die Hard. They think Moscow is a bunch of rundown commie blocks with a perpetual grey overcast.
That was true in the 1990s but not anymore. Moscow is a developed global city like London or New York. The Russian military has advanced air fighters and ground troops.
Yes their Navy is a few decades behind and the M1 Abrams is better than the standard Russian tank but they also have state of the art tech and robotics. They tested their first hypersonic missile in 2018, before China or the US.
Their economy is also not the size of Italy. Jake Tapper jokes on his program that Russia's economy is smaller than Italy but this is misleading. Russia had a larger economy before the Ruble tanked. If the Ruble were to shoot up vs. the dollar everything would change.
That is because the ranking of Russia below Italy comes from Nominal GDP. But if we use GDP PPP Russia is the world's fifth largest economy. It also has the lowest external debt to GDP ratio in the world.
So yeah their economy is smaller but it is more stable than the US economy and less prone to fluctuation. They have a larger foriegn reserves holding, and more untapped economic resources.
American media still mocks Russia because everyone here is stuck in the 1990s when people saw Russia as a heaping pile atop the ruins of the USSR. But it is not the 90s anymore, wake up.
BS- CA has a higher GDP than Russia. If you have ever been to Russia, you would be shocked at how primitive it is compared to the US and western Europe.
"Russia" lives in the minds of liberals rent free and is their international boogyman, not our real enemy- China.
What should we do with Russia? Make then a NATO member that would eliminate their paranoia of being invaded again, as NATO has a mutual support treaty with its members. It also prevents individual aggressive military action by its members against another member. Problem solved and no more support or military maneuvers with China. China then becomes isolated with very few friends in the world, except rogue, terrorist states.
Why is Russia nipping at the heels of the Ukraine? There are areas that have ethnic majority Russians in the Ukraine who don't want to be a part of the Ukraine. It is like the ethnic Americans in Texas when it was owned by Spain. Additionally, the borders of The Ukraine and Russia were made after the breakup of the USSR without consideration of these majority ethnic areas. I don't condone military action to bring those areas back to Russia, but think that the people in those areas should be able to determine what nation they want to live in.
No one can beat Afghan dan. Only way is to nuke it all out or gas it.
It's simply a myth - this *invisibility" of the "Afghan warriors."
As I've already pointed before, Afghanistan is the country where the interests of Russia clash with the interests of the Anglo-Saxon world through the ages.
And that's what gives the *Afghan warriors* the ultimate advantage.
BS- CA has a higher GDP than Russia. If you have ever been to Russia, you would be shocked at how primitive it is compared to the US and western Europe.
"Russia" lives in the minds of liberals rent free and is their international boogyman, not our real enemy- China.
I just came back from Moscow.
"Primitive" is not the right word to describe it - absolutely not ( unless one doesn't know the language and can judge the city only on the superficial level.)
But I had to deal with their banking, ( among other things I encountered an interesting concept - the bank that exists on-line ( or rather via the phone) only. ( Practically everything is done over the smart phones over there - bill payments, communications - everything.) The customer service of that bank ( the IT department including) was 24/7, with someone always being there to take care of your needs.
(Excellent customer service btw, not the kind I encounter in the US lately.)
I had to deal with bureaucracy, with paperwork, and I was taking the number and was directed to certain window in the same manner like, say, in the local DMV.
I had to deal with Covid tests, getting the results of it on-line in the most expedient manner, and a number of other things, which showed me that the functionality of Russian apparatus is far more efficient than what it seems on the surface.
But you wouldn't know any of it, of any of those "undercurrents," if you are just a *tourist.*
Of course the kind of "arrangements" ( i.e. the kind Putin's government wants between them and "the masses") stifles the country's development big time, but to paint Russia as "primitive" is precisely what leads to the misconceptions about that country.
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What should we do with Russia? Make then a NATO member that would eliminate their paranoia of being invaded again, as NATO has a mutual support treaty with its members. It also prevents individual aggressive military action by its members against another member. Problem solved and no more support or military maneuvers with China. China then becomes isolated with very few friends in the world, except rogue, terrorist states.
Unfortunately, that "paranoia" is well founded.
Question; why right after the fall of the Soviet system Russia was not admitted in NATO?
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Why is Russia nipping at the heels of the Ukraine? There are areas that have ethnic majority Russians in the Ukraine who don't want to be a part of the Ukraine. It is like the ethnic Americans in Texas when it was owned by Spain.
Pretty much.
What would such people feel if they were forcibly "Spanishized?"
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Additionally, the borders of The Ukraine and Russia were made after the breakup of the USSR without consideration of these majority ethnic areas. I don't condone military action to bring those areas back to Russia, but think that the people in those areas should be able to determine what nation they want to live in.
And THIS was the whole problem behind the narrative of the "will of the Ukrainian people" that "unanimously supported" the coup d'etat in Kiev back in 2014.
The false narrative that has been sold to the public by the Western media.
Oh but they are BNW, and what's more interesting - it's specifically the BRITISH Naval base that's been built lately near Odessa.
That Great Britain ( assuring its newly-found independence,) jumped straight into *Ukrainian politics* ( and on the wrong side of it) took me by surprise to be honest.
Odessa is not a British Naval Base, and there are no British bases or NATO bases in Ukraine.
The main overseas Royal Navy bases are at Gibraltar, Bahrain (HMS Jufair) and Diego Garcia (shared with US), with a smaller naval party based at Singapore (Sembawang wharf). The UK also has bases on Cyprus, Ascension Island, St Helena and the Falklands ( East Cove Military Port) in the South Atlantic. The UK has access to allies ports including NATO members.
That's true, and from everything I've noticed in the history of the old world, both countries were carefully staying on the opposite sides of the spectrum, rarely interfering with each other in wars, while balancing out the rest of the European powers. It looked almost as if there was some kind of unspoken agreement there - the Russians let Great Britain to "rule the Seas" ( and therefore the distant colonies,) while Russia was preoccupied with whatever it considered the sphere of its interests on the land mass around it.
Actually, it's the other way around.
In terms of the latest conflict, it's in the Russia's own interest to stand firm and to not to retreat an inch, instead of "negotiating peace."
Russia didn't leave us to rule our Empire, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, coupled with Russian ambitions, caused the Crimean War. Britain's interests in maintaining the balance of power and the new French regime's readiness for military success exacerbated the conflict.
The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and Sardinia.
Last edited by Brave New World; 12-12-2021 at 08:02 AM..
Odessa is not a British Naval Base, and there are no British bases or NATO bases in Ukraine.
The main overseas Royal Navy bases are at Gibraltar, Bahrain (HMS Jufair) and Diego Garcia (shared with US), with a smaller naval party based at Singapore (Sembawang wharf). The UK also has bases on Cyprus, Ascension Island, St Helena and the Falklands ( East Cove Military Port) in the South Atlantic. The UK has access to allies ports including NATO members.
I didn't say "Odessa" - ( such location would be too scandalous, too straightforward) but the shady deals are going AROUND it.
The naval military base I kept at the back of my mind actually belongs to Americans; it's in Ochakov ( which is near Odessa)
"Navy Seabees are building a maritime operations center on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast, for use during annual U.S. and Ukrainian military exercises and to assist allied maritime operations.
Seabees assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (NMCB) 1 are constructing the $750,000 maritime operations center on Ukraine’s Ochakiv Naval Base, located near Odessa."
But the one I was thinking of ( the BRITISH naval base) was negotiated in Nikolayev so far
"Undoubtedly, access to the UK’s advanced shipbuilding technologies, the possibility of Ukrainian industrial personnel learning from the knowhow of British engineers, as well the opportunity to modernize the shipyard facilities in Mykolaiv all look attractive to Kyiv as it seeks to renovate Ukraine’s indigenous shipbuilding industry, which fell into a deep slump following the collapse of the Soviet Union (Interfax, October 26)."
Such base would be the next logical step after increased British military presence in Ukraine.
"The United Kingdom’s Operation Orbital, a military training mission to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, has been extended by three more years through March 2023, as the British Ministry of Defense said late on Nov. 4.
The decision was made following a September visit of the UK’s Defense Secretary Ben Wallace to the war zone of Donbas, during which the official also met with Ukrainian military commanders combating Russian-backed militant forces, particularly near the key Azov Sea port city of Mariupol."
So obviously, under these circumstances it's in Russia's interests to not to "settle for peace," but to stand its ground, and to attack Ukraine in response, if Kiev dares to attack the LDNR first ( where it's escalating the violence lately on the front lines.)
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Russia didn't leave us to rule our Empire, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, coupled with Russian ambitions, caused the Crimean War. Britain's interests in maintaining the balance of power and the new French regime's readiness for military success exacerbated the conflict.
The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom and Sardinia.
Sorry, but I told you "rarely interfering with each other."
Crimea is vital for Russian geopolitical interests - always has been, still is.
It's Russia's turf.
And that's why it was one of those rare interferences between the Russian and British Empires. ( Central Asia being the other one, but that one was of less lethal consequences - just "intelligence sparring" for the most part, or the "Great Game" as it has been called.
If you have ever been to Russia, you would be shocked at how primitive it is compared to the US and western Europe..
Obviously you have never been to Russia yourself. Looks like you judge Russia by video reports, which deliberately showed Russia as primitive. Many tourists who visited Russia were amazed by her beauty and modernity. Even Edward Snowden, answering a question in one of his interviews about how he saw Russia, said that it is a very beautiful country. And Russia turned out to be not at all of what Americans think of it.
"NATO is already in Ukraine. Besides NATO instructors and advisors, the US creating NATO bases in Ukraine under guise of training centers. One of them is already in Nikolayev town. And NATO naval infrastructure is already being built in the port of Odessa."
Don't fall back on "Western media won't cover it" either. Show some credible evidence that this is true.
There's also "advisors" in the East. I've seen pics of what is obviously Americans in the East close to the fighting.
There's plenty of evidence out there.
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