Vladimir Putin Speech on Ukraine: Read It For Yourself
Address by the President of the Russian Federation, 21FEB22, Photo by The Kremlin.
Vladimir Putin spoke for almost an hour, but Al Jazeera & Reuters have a list of the important parts. Read excerpts from Vladimir Putin’s speech that is his justification for invading Ukraine for yourself.
On recognition of pro-Russian separatists
I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago – to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic.
On Ukraine’s NATO membership
If Ukraine was to join NATO it would serve as a direct threat to the security of Russia.
On origins of modern Ukraine
Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917…
As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine”. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents… And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunisation. Do you want decommunisation? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunisation means for Ukraine.
On Ukrainian statehood
Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.
On break-up of USSR
Russia assumed obligations to repay the entire Soviet debt in return for the newly independent states giving up part of their foreign assets. In 1994, such agreements were reached with Ukraine, but they were not ratified by Ukraine…
[Ukraine] preferred to act in such a way that in relations with Russia they had all the rights and advantages, but did not bear any obligations…
From the very first steps they began to build their statehood on the denial of everything that unites us. They tried to distort the consciousness, the historical memory of millions of people, entire generations living in Ukraine.
On NATO’s 2008 membership promise to Ukraine and Georgia
Many European allies of the United States already perfectly understood all the risks of such a prospect, but were forced to come to terms with the will of their senior partner. The Americans simply used them to carry out a pronounced anti-Russian policy.
A number of member states of the alliance are still very sceptical about the appearance of Ukraine in NATO. At the same time, we are receiving a signal from some European capitals, saying what are you worried about, this will not happen literally tomorrow. Yes, in fact, our American partners are also talking about this.
Well, we answer, if not tomorrow, so the day after tomorrow. What does this change in a historical perspective? Basically, nothing. Moreover, we know the position and words of the US leadership that active hostilities in eastern Ukraine do not exclude the possibility of this country joining NATO if it can meet the criteria of the North Atlantic alliance and defeat corruption.
At the same time, they try to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance, saying that there are no threats to Russia. Again they propose that we take them at their word. But we know the real value of such words.
On a threat to Russia
We clearly understand that under such a scenario, the level of military threats to Russia will dramatically increase many times over. I pay special attention to the fact that the danger of a sudden strike against our country will increase many times over.
Let me explain that US strategic planning documents contain the possibility of a so-called preemptive strike against enemy missile systems. And who is the main enemy for the US and NATO? We know that too. It’s Russia. In NATO documents, our country is officially and directly declared the main threat to North Atlantic security. And Ukraine will serve as a forward springboard for the strike. If our ancestors had heard about it, they probably would simply not have believed it. And today we don’t want to believe it, but it’s true.
On sanctions
They are trying to blackmail us again. They are threatening us again with sanctions, which, by the way, I think they will introduce anyway as Russia’s sovereignty strengthens and the power of our armed forces grows. And a pretext for another sanctions attack will always be found or fabricated. Regardless of the situation in Ukraine.
There is only one goal – to restrain the development of Russia. And they will do it, as they did before. Even without any formal pretext at all. Just because we exist, and we will never compromise our sovereignty, national interests and our values. I want to say clearly and directly that in the current situation, when our proposals for an equal dialogue on fundamental issues have actually remained unanswered by the United States and NATO, when the level of threats to our country is increasing significantly, Russia has every right to take retaliatory measures to ensure its own security. That is exactly what we will do.
He definitely likes to go big and never go home. Which is about to cost a lot of good people their lives.Report
Just in case it isnt’ clear all this aimed at whipping up support inside russia. None of this is about the US or what we are doing. Points 3 and 4 are just just a bully telling you he is taking what is yours because he wants it. Should obvious this is about as subtle as Hitler/Germany faking an attack by Poles to justify the invasion they happened to have at the ready.
I hope the Ukrainian’s kill many invaders and there is an off ramp somewhere before the russians just straight up murder civilians and urban fighting starts.Report
Yikes, even as he describes it, it’s not blackmail, it’s extortion. Blackmail is about demanding payment for not revealing secrets, which is not what he’s describing even is.
Yeesh.Report
There was that period after the end of the Cold War when it looked like Russia and China would transition into relatively free states which wouldn’t threaten the world peace.
But unfortunately, that doesn’t look like its going to pan out.Report
If Russia had troops near our borders I wonder what our reaction would be.Report
I’m increasingly convinced we needed to treat Russia after the Cold War the way we did Germany and Japan after World War 2. Unfortunately it seems the window has closed.Report
Replacing the gov, occupying the country, and overhauling the system were never options.
Further remember just how big this was and how many countries this covered. The USSR had 15 republics and that doesn’t include Poland, East Germany, and others.Report
That’s not really what I meant. I understand occupying the country wasn’t possible nor the kind of forcible change of government, particularly on the order of what we did with Japan. I meant more like the Marshall Plan and trying to help them follow the path of the rest of the former Eastern Bloc. Essentially giving them a path into the West.
Obviously the EU has had mixed success with integrating central and eastern European countries but even if Russia was in the more dysfunctional end of the spectrum (say, comparable to Romania or Bulgaria) I think we would take it compared to what we’re dealing with now.Report
Difference between Russia and the East Block is…
The East Block viewed the dysfunctional system they had as imposed on them by the Russians and had memories of a past before that. They were taken over in 1945.
In Russia the Communists took over in 1917. They had no one who remembered a previous system and were missing a lot of the basic cultural on how to make it work. Their memories of Communism would include “Russia was a world power rivaling the USA”. They’re also a lot bigger than any of the East Block.
We lacked the resources to support their dysfunction while they got better and they had no clue what a non-dysfunctional system even looked like.
Granted, the EU gave Poland and other East Block countries huge amounts of money and let them join and all that… but that was a huge amount of work by itself.
It’s not even clear the various institutions the EU has would work on this scale. Picture Mexico and all the countries in Central America joining the USA.
It’s not that no one saw that Russia was dysfunctional and were headed for problems or that we were unwilling to give advise, it’s no one had the authority or ability to do things for them.Report
I think you’re making a few mistakes in this analysis, including the same ones the US foreign policy establishment made.
First, keep in mind that less than 20 years ago Russia was inquiring about the possibility of one day joining NATO. Whether that was ever a realistic possibility is besides the point. Their stated openness to it suggests there was another path on security in Europe.
Second and most importantly, we needed to avoid looking at the Russians as synonymous with the communists. This gets at what I meant above regarding Germany. We were able to separate in our minds Germany the country/people from the Nazis. From the perspective of many Russians it was Russians who were throwing off the communist yoke of the USSR, even as they were also the dominant ethnic and linguistic group. We made an enormous error by conflating the two.
Third, we, the USA are in a free trade association with Mexico, a much poorer, much more dysfunctional country. The EU of course has its own serious issues, but to the extent it is a free trade bloc it does have power of appeal of membership. That does not have to be the same thing as shared government. The appeal of the EU and joining the West in large part what has motivated other former Eastern Bloc countries to at least some degree clean up their acts to passable minimum standards of government and economic policy. A happy byproduct of that has been to increase the cost and greatly lower the chances of armed conflict. We and they stupidly foreclosed that possibility. Even if they were not currently members, and I doubt they would be, just the realistic chance at it would create an enormous number of different incentives.
So counterfactuals are inherently iffy but this outcome was not written in stone.Report
Yeah agreed, there was a lot of stuff, especially nato expansion, that in hindsight looks really stupid. We can’t forget, of course, that neocons were a very strong force back then and weren’t discredited until the WoT/Iraq. So it was a very different political environment too.Report
You’re not being cynical enough. Picture Russia as a core member of NATO. Why should that prevent them from doing anything they’re doing right now?
How the heck does NATO respond when Russia-a-member is in there vetoing action or otherwise making it impossible to function?
Or picture NATO simply not existing. Would us being weaker and having fewer options to respond appease Russia into good behavior?
Putin views the fall of the USSR as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. He would like to put it back together again.
That’s not a goal that can be reconciled with the Ukraine being independent of Russian domination. For that matter it’s not even a goal that can be reconciled with Poland being independent of Russian domination. Fear of that goal is why Poland is a NATO member and Ukraine wants to be.Report
There’s no way to know. Maybe it could have been good. Drained away all the paranoia. Had them on the inside making decisions during the WoT and Arab Spring stuff when they really got pissed off at being ignored. Counterfactuals are really hard.Report
I don’t think it’s about cynicism it’s about reality, as it actually exists. I also didn’t say Russia should, as of today, be a member of NATO. I’m saying it was an error to slam the door on that ever being a possibility even as we brought in and made openings to its former vassal states, to say nothing of its historic enemies. Of course they read that as hostile.
You’re also reading your history way too narrowly. Yes, Russia is both a nation and a formerly imperial power. The same thing is true of every major European country. We don’t say that the UK can’t be reconciled with the independence of the Republic of Ireland or that Germany cannot be reconciled with Alsace-Loraine being in France, to say nothing of significant parts of its former empire now being part of Poland and Lithuania. Both Greece and Turkey are in NATO and the issues between their peoples go back even further than those between Russia and Ukraine.
These things can and have been worked out, sometimes very painfully. And yes, there’s a chance that eventually NATO would no longer need to exist which would be an enormous win for everyone. We could be focusing our attention into the Pacific without having to simultaneously acts as a guarantor of European security because there would be other ways of managing these ancient grudges.
So you say lack of cynicism, I say lack of wider historical perspective.Report
Oil and gas are responsible for more than 60% of Russia’s exports and provide more than 30% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). (google).
So expect the usual oil country issues, it’s really hard to manage the money, it’s easy to steal, and it can be used for all sorts of bad behavior.
That plus losing their empire will create political problems.
All this could have gone a lot better… but mostly it was on them to handle the transition to a real economy better and that’s asking a lot. The people in charge were so clueless they held a fair election thinking they’d effortlessly win. They thought empty store shelves were normal.
We had very limited influence compared to those guys.Report
If the UK wanted that land that it was willing to destabilize the country as a prelude to war, then yes, we would say the UK can’t be reconciled.
Your solution is Russia gives up it’s desire to put it’s empire back together.
That’s a wonderful solution. I fully support it.
It has nothing to do with the current reality or with Putin in general.
If the plan is to get Russia to give up that desire, then they probably need to see a lot more benefit to the world order than they currently do.
One of the big problems is they have almost no exports other than minerals and their gov’s budget is heavily dependent on that. Or put differently, their economy is terrible.
If we’re going to rewrite history so we (the west) change that, then we have the problem that any money we give them is instantly stolen and their gov culture is the root of that.
For perspective, we couldn’t fix that problem with Afghanistan where we had FAR more influence and the amount of money we were giving them was far more significant.Report
You’re arguing like I’m saying we could have guaranteed outcomes. I reiterate, I am not.
What you’re discounting is that the last 150 years of European history have been precisely about managing the sorting of empires into nation-states and dealing, at times violently, with the disputed edge cases. War is always a possibility for reaching a resolution. I do not think it is an inevitability at this point, though I think our actions made it much more likely.
But look, if you think our foreign policy elite has done a bang-up job I don’t think I’m going to be able to convince you otherwise.Report
If you talk to actual Russians, they’re deeply invested in a concept of independence which entails being a great power and there being no one in the world that dictates anything to them.
Joining up with NATO would entail an existence much like France, where you still have an informal empire and sphere of influence, but you’re clearly a tier below America in status and independence. Even after the fall of the USSR, the Russian intelligentsia don’t think of themselves as so defeated as to accept that bargain.
I think great power status in the modern world isn’t worth so much that you should be eager to cut yourself off from the industrial core and try your hand at being a separate civilization, but that’s where their political culture takes them and we’re probably not going to talk them out of it any time soon.Report
This is true. And it provides a nice foil from which Putin can quell any rising forces of democracy in his own yard.Report
They did go back to the previous system. Putin and his cronies are as corrupt as the Romanovs, if far more competent.Report
Russia lost the Cold War, not a total war.Report
See above response to Dark. I was talking more about a really aggressive plan of helping them integrate into the West. I understand the facts are different but I don’t think we should have foreclosed the path other Warsaw Pact states have followed. I doubt they’d be a model democracy right now but I don’t also think this situation was inevitable.Report
*also don’t.Report
I was only around 12 when the Cold War ended but I don’t get the impression there was much political will for a Marshal plan to ship that kind of money over to the Russians. Also, frankly, considering how their privatisation of state assets went I can’t help but think that any such Marshal plan would have simply gone the way of all our financial aid to Afghanistan and been simply an extra layer of cash in the oligarchs bank accounts.Report
That’s certainly a possibility and I am most definitely not saying there’s anything we could have done to guarantee a result.
I am saying I think it would have been better to look at them as the victims of communism, much like we did the Czechs and Poles (and Ukranians), and as a future stakeholder. If we had been more wise we would have understood that if they were not going to be a stakeholder they would eventually become what they are now.Report
I also wish we knew back then what we know now.Report
My vague recollection as a college kid at the time was that a lot of people did raise this very possibility. I also remember a lot of folks not believing Gorbachev or Yeltsin were in any way serious about anything.Report
The history of Russia is really fascinating. I took a class in college covering the late 19th century through Stalin’s death. In America we mostly talk about 1917 but there was another revolution in 1905 that, had it been successful, could have put Russia on a more normal European trajectory. Of course the same kind of forces were in play in all of Europe’s central and eastern empires, all of which were multi-ethnic and under governing systems not that far removed from the late middle ages. The tensions were enormous and blew up in all kinds of different ways.
There’s an argument that what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine now is the final sorting of ethnicities into states thats been playing out since the 1840s. Communism had just put the brakes on it for awhile.
I have no strong opinion on Gorbachev or Yeltsin, other than I think it’s pretty clear they weren’t able to achieve what they needed to. But I do think that to better understand the Russians we need to see that how they view themselves encompasses more than just the communist era.Report
From a pure rational self-interest point of view, any Russian ruler, communist, capitalist, or whatever, and generally well-intentioned or not, would: (a) want a good port on the Black Sea and (b) be wary of the expansion of an alliance explicitly designed to contain it to countries directly on its borders. Not that any of this justifies invading a sovereign nation, even if it used to be part of Russia.Report
My room mate as an undergrad minored in Russian studies and was in Moscow and surrounding areas in 1991. He learned a lot and passed it on.
And I agree they see themselves as more then Communists. That said, a LOT of the US foreign policy apparatus is from that era and still hasn’t retired or died off.Report
In 1905 the Russian liberals found out they had basically nothing in common with the peasants they were looking to liberate, which is a pretty key reason the revolution failed.
A more plausible path to a more normal politics is for the Agrarian socialists to take control in 1917 and enact the desperately needed land reforms while peacing out of WW1 earlier rather than later.Report
I thought out an alternate history where the Revolution failed and the aristocracy remained.
One scenario is where the aristocracy takes a sober reassessment of the situation and adopts liberalization reforms.
Another, and IMO far more likely scenario is where the aristocracy adopts a policy of repression and searches for a new Czar who is cunning and ruthless and willing to do what it takes to Make The Rabble Obey.
Someone like Josef Stalin.Report
I can easily believe they were serious. What I don’t believe is even they had perfect choices.
Ideally we have something other than the oligarchs take over and economic/political reform would have been less painful.
China showed there is a path to it if you start a decades before it totally melts down. But China was only convinced by watching the USSR melt down.
How do we convince the USSR that they should do serious economic reform and take apart Communism in the 60’s?Report
I’ve said before that I’m glad HW was president during the dissolution in ’89-’92. Can’t say what, if anything would have been counterfactually better after ’92… but one can wonder… though I suspect the mobification and plundering of the USSR’s natural assets was not really going to be managed/influenced by the West. It’s perhaps possible we might have nudged a different set of winners whom we might have bought off with a different set of policies. As it was, we backed the wrong kleptocrats… worse we backed the dumb ones.
The really weird quirk of history that future historians will not see as a quirk is that China was adrift in the late 80s and seemed ripe for the pick’ins in the 90s. Again, strange western assumptions about how politics work have led us into this nice Thucydides trap where all of our rhetoric and habits are directed at the weaker power who is choosing to align with the emerging power and providing a foil for the emerging power. These future historians will wonder why we didn’t see the real emerging power.Report
I think the plundering was probably inevitable but not necessarily the political trajectory. I mean, Ukraine itself has been plundered and some current EU (and even NATO) members from that bloc are not exactly running what we would think of as a normal democracy. However we’ve put them on paths that make war very unlikely in what is still a really touchy region of the world.
China… I don’t know that they could have ever been picked but I’d feel better about our ability to manage their rise if war was off the table in Europe because of our adroit management of the situation with the lesser, defeated power.Report
The long game being played by China is probably more analogous to the Trojan Horse.Report
I think it’s an open question of whether it’s a Trojan horse or an attempt to rapidly create as many beneficial facts on the ground as possible before their demographic time bomb becomes a significant drag on their capabilities.Report
The window was never really open. The groundwork for the oligarchs and Putin was laid right at the beginning when the state-owned industries were sold off to gangsters for pittances. How were we supposed to stop that?Report
Totally concede it’s possible we would be right here looking at this situation no matter what we did.Report
Russia has gone from one form of autocratic government to the next. It’s time with authentic Democratic government is probably under a year.Report
Germany has announced that they have, at least temporarily, halted certification of the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Said pipeline currently carries no natural gas. Does anyone think the German people will ever care enough about Ukrainian sovereignty to take the pain from not buying Russian gas delivered over the existing pipeline network?
For a while there was a bunch of noise about the US blocking Russia from SWIFT, the international bank transfer system. That seems to have stopped. My first thought when I saw that proposed was, “So, the US is going to make the decision that EU countries can’t pay for Russian natural gas?” (There has been criticism in the past that the US has too much control over SWIFT.)Report
That’s the big question. If the Europeans are willing to endure genuine economic discomfort to punish Russia then they can bring Russia to its economic knees. If they aren’t then it’s an open question as to how much more involved the US should be in the whole mess.Report
I found this interesting….
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/22/hands-off-ukraine/
The best part…..
“And the West is not blameless in this debacle. Nor is the Ukrainian government, for that matter. NATO’s eastward expansion, its 20-year militaristic approach towards Russia’s borders, its flirting with Ukranian officialdom in an effort to create yet another pro-NATO, pro-EU state on Russia’s doorstep, played a very significant role in stoking tensions in this part of Europe and inflaming all-out war in 2014.”……Answer me this: why is Putin’s assault on Ukrainian sovereignty deemed any worse than Western governments’ destruction of Iraqi sovereignty or Libyan sovereignty?Report
Strong “why are you complaining about Hitler doing Poland when America has been so bad to blacks” energy here. “If only America didn’t steal the West from Native American’s i would be so pissed about Russian’s killing civilians right now.” “Why should i care about something happening now when bad things happened in the past?! Riddle me that”.Report
“Whataboutism” – one of the great traditions at OT.Report
And yet, no one is willing to do the work to explain why the US’s actions were just but Russian’s isn’t? The US had/has the Monroe Doctrine. Russian can’t have the equivalent?Report
Simple. Because the comparison is irrelevant to whether what Vlady is doing is okay. It’s the classic BSDI distraction. It does not matter if we were right or wrong to determine if this is good or not.Report
Well, I do think that the argument of “is our information coming from the same place as told us that Russia put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan?” or “is our information coming from the same places as told us that Iraq had WMD?” or similar questions from the last couple of decades is one that can’t be waved away.
“This is as good as our information on Libya!”
This isn’t a BSDI but a “you are asking me to believe in a level of competence that has not been demonstrated to exist and the last few incidents have, instead, indicated a much lower level of competence.”Report
Here is me waving like mad. Wave Wave Wave.
You dont’ actually even to look at US intell to find putin saying the Ukraine is his and he wants it. There are hundreds/thousands of open source pix of russian forces and reports from Ukraine of russian shelling. You can watch russian media saying “we want that, we’re taking it.” Don’t need any dirty dirty US intell for that.
You’re looking for an excuse to ignore the information you don’t like and dont’ want to refute.
Let me give you one simple descriptor of US intell. Sometimes its great, sometimes it’s just okay and sometimes it’s wrong. If you want to counter the info you dont’ like then give us counter info. We gots ourselves a marketplace of idea. Or at least a quik e mart of passing thoughts. Don’t just fling poo at the messenger.Report
“This time our information is good and we should totally go to war.”
So let’s assume that our information is good. Fair enough.
We’re due, after all.
So Putin wants to invade Ukraine. Therefore it is our job to send people over there to act as a deterrent indefinitely?
I suppose it’s good that we pulled out of Afghanistan. That freed up a lot of resources.Report
No, we’re probably not going to do that. However Putin is looking more and more like an aggressive dictator. With nukes. And that troll farm.
Poland has a long border with the Ukraine.
This really feels like the start of another cold war.Report
The UN largely overrides that idea today. If we go back to empire 19th century politics, then you’re setting the stage for WW1.
The Monroe document was designed to prevent France/GB from interfering with Central America. Poland (i.e. the EU) is the Ukraine’s neighbor. They share a border. It’s normally a good thing for neighbors to be on good terms.
Big picture, Russia seems to have a problem with Ukraine existing as a country.Report
They didn’t mind as long as Ukraine was a dysfunctional kleptocracy. But the Maidan revolution and Ukraines turn westward presented a serious risk of the country starting to sort out its endemic corruption and dysfunction. Having a democratic, non-corrupt and functional democracy full of Russian speakers on their border is emphatically NOT what Putin and his gang want to see happen. That is an existential threat. They remember back to the cold war enough to recognize that. This invasion is, fundamentally, a desperation play.Report
Here here.Report
The monroe doctrine was a statement of “sphere of influence”, ie the US was saying “this is OUR area of influence, stay out.”. Russia’s pretty much doing the same, although it’s more correctly “this was our past empire, stay out”.Report
This works very well as an evaluation.
Ethically it’s heinous. Ukraine borders the EU. The EU offers prosperity while Russia is effectively organized crime. Organized crime won’t lead to prosperity for the masses.
And yes, it was heinous when we used turned countries into banana republics. Arguably less so because those countries weren’t on the boarder of prosperity but whatever.Report
Since when was realpolitik “ethical”? The US agreed with Russia not to encroach on their sphere of influence back during the Bush (i think) years. That agreement was breeched. If a country believes that a practice is ethnically heinous, then it behooves them not to commit those acts. Condemning the acts of states that DID EXACTLY the same thing as the criticizing state is hypocrisy.Report
The word “DID” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
For the most part this is a relic of the past. It’s up there with Banana states and slavery.Report
Dude, we’re STILL talking about slavery.Report
“Strong “why are you complaining about Hitler doing Poland when America has been so bad to blacks” energy here.”
Actually, I was making a foreign policy point, you’re making an irrelevant domestic policy point. It’s very simple. We did stuff just like this and (weather or not Russia bitched about it internationally or not) Russia’s doing similar stuff to what we did in the past. We have no moral high ground to stand on, and anyone who claims they are different events and didn’t opposed EVERY single instance of the US doing something similar, is a hypocrite.Report
There is no moral difference between the invader and the country which is being invaded. Scalding hot take you got there.Report
“There is no moral difference between the invader and the ONE country and the invader of ANOTHER country. They are both invaders.” I fixed that for you.Report
The Iraqi gov had a history of genocide, seeking WMDs, using WMDs, and invading it’s neighbors. Absent that history there would have been no problems.
The first time it was invaded it was under UN authority. The very last time it was invaded, with the benefit of hide sight, it was innocent. As was pointed out by the people who got the previous time incorrect. The core issue was it’s leader decided it was dangerous to be viewed as without WMDs so he told the truth about not having them but made it seem like he was lying and told his various generals that units other than their unit had them.
Libya I followed less closely. Briefly reviewing it’s history… during the Arab Spring civil war broke out and Gaddafi seems to have decided to brutalize his way to victory. The UN Human Rights Council expelled Libya outright. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 to protect civilians and create a no-fly zone.
Russia and China didn’t veto it so that tells you just how far Gaddafi was over the line. Him having a multi-decade rep as a lunatic didn’t help. He ended up dead and the country fell apart.
So yes, Putin is breaking a lot of international laws here and he’s doing it for pretty naked self interest. It’s more akin to the US invading Canada so we can turn it into a 51st state than anything else.Report
I am not surprised that American right-wingers are taking the position opposite of Biden here. I am surprised that they are doing it in such a stupid way that it makes them look like pets for Putin. Is Cleek’s law really that strong?Report
Yes. Look at Jaybird.
“Well, I do think that the argument of “is our information coming from the same place as told us that Russia put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan?” or “is our information coming from the same places as told us that Iraq had WMD?” or similar questions from the last couple of decades is one that can’t be waved away.”
He’s JUST ASKING QUESTIONS. He’s just WONDERING IF UKRAINE ASKED FOR IT. He’s JUST QUESTIONING WHETHER AMERICA IS COVERING UP UKRAINING ATROCITIES.
Why? Because Democrats. He’s a living example of Cleek’s Law, and a living example of someone who knows what he’s doing and cleverly thinks JAQing off hides it.TO TRUMP that made him lash out.
(hilariously, his go-to about WMD’s is incredibly wrong and he knows it. That was literally a Republican — Dick Cheney — with another Republican — Donald Rumsfeld and another Republican — John Bolton under the Presidency of YET ANOTHER REPUBLICAN –, deliberately bypassing ALL of State and CIA’s analysists to create their own analysis which they shoved out — and he’s claiming those are the same people as Biden’s administration.
He doesn’t even bother to hide how bad faith and obvious his trolling is. And people wonder why this site has gone downhill. He’s 90% of every thread on politics, always JUST ASKING QUESTIONS and turning every conversation into his preferred conversation of “Look how bad liberals and Democrats are and everything is their fault and we have to address that before we can talk about ANYTHING ELSE”Report
No, I’m not wondering if Ukraine asked for it.
I’m asking “what makes this different from the last half dozen times?”
“HOW DARE YOU?”
Yeah, that got asked the last half dozen times too.
Remember the “Russians put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan?” story from a couple of years ago? Remember how that was quietly withdrawn?
Is that relevant?Report
What makes it different is this a different situation with different players involved and a very different context. Other than that it seems somewhat similar to the last time russia invaded a Ukraine.Report
Well, we should get over there with missiles as fast as we can.
Thank goodness our moral authority is so very legible to the rest of the world.Report
Now that is quality arguing. I guess you actually have no qualms about US intell since you aren’t talking about them now.
We have sent missles to the Ukrainians since they asked for them. Good.
What does Ukraine want? Are they turning away our help? Are they looking for us to be an ally? Sort of matters here. Because if the people being threatened are asking for our help against an aggressive violent bully then we aren’t exactly committing the second Holodomor now are we.Report
Will we be greeted with flowers?Report
LOL. I’ll ask my Ukrainian college friend how funny that is.Report
There is no argument being presented.
That’s the beauty of JAQ is that it is constructed entirely of the passive-aggressive voice.
No opinion or assertion is made.
Just…endless demands for other people to provide answers which are critiqued with…more questions.Report
Here is the (implicit) argument:
We said that we were going to make Iraq better.
Indeed, that toppling the dictator would have us be greeted with flowers.
We didn’t. We actually failed.
We said that we were going to make Afghanistan better.
Maybe we did? In some parts of it? But everything we did failed and Afghanistan reverted back to Taliban rule less than a week after we left.
We supported the toppling of Egypt’s dictator. Mubarak was replaced with a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. And Libya’s. This kicked off the First Libyan Civil War and was quickly followed by the Second Libyan Civil War.
Are the countries better off for our intervention? It’s certainly not obvious that the answer is “yes”.
So now Ukraine.
I’m not confident that this time will be different from the last four times. Convince me.
Oh, you have a Ukrainian friend?Report
This isn’t an argument.
It’s just a recitation of random and irrelevant historical facts, with an unstated conclusion left dangling in midair without a net.
Are you saying that levying sanctions on Russia will have a worse outcome for Ukraine than doing nothing at all?
Well, no, you haven’t said that. Merely implied it.
Which is an example of using the passive aggressive voice to create the illusion of a coherent argument. The final “Convince me” is the chef’s kiss.
But of course, none of your historical facts offer any evidence for such an assertion.
Why is this situation similar to Libya? Or Egypt? Or Iraq or Afghanistan?
You don’t bother to support those assertions, just hoping that we will forget all the other historical examples which directly contradict your implied assertion.
I mean, someone could list WWII and the 1961 Berlin airlift and Reagan/ Thatcher military build up as evidence that applying military, political, and economic pressure on authoritarian regimes often succeeds brilliantly.
But why should anyone want to convince you, when you offer nothing to support your own assertions?
Is this situation more like the military quagmire of Vietnam, or the liberation of Paris? Why or why not?
More like political debacle of supporting Ferdinand Marcos, or the success of supporting the Taiwanese? Why or why not?
Put a little bit of work into this and perhaps you will convince us.Report
You feel that the facts are random and irrelevant.
I see them as happening within the last two decades and relevant to our current debate over intervention.
Are you saying that levying sanctions on Russia will have a worse outcome for Ukraine than doing nothing at all?
I’m saying that it looks like the last four times we did something had worse outcomes than if we had done nothing at all.
I am going to say that the burden of proof is on people who think that this time will be different from the last four times.
Why is this situation similar to Libya? Or Egypt? Or Iraq or Afghanistan?
Because we will be the ones taking the lead on intervention.
You know how you date one chick and it blows up magnificently and then you date another chick and it blows up magnificently and you date another chick and it blows up magnificently and then you date another chick and it blows up magnificently and then, like, you say “I’m getting ready to go on another date” and someone else might ask “have you learned anything from your last four relationships?” and you say “I don’t see what any of those things had in common!”?
Well, I’m saying that the thing those four relationships had in common was you.
I mean, someone could list WWII and the 1961 Berlin airlift and Reagan/ Thatcher military build up as evidence that applying military, political, and economic pressure on authoritarian regimes often succeeds brilliantly.
So stuff from the 1940s and stuff from the 1960s?
I remember when those things were used as justification for Iraq and Afghanistan.
We’re using them for justification for Ukraine?
Is this situation more like the military quagmire of Vietnam, or the liberation of Paris? Why or why not?
I’m more likely to think that they have more in common with the last four things than with the thing that happened 60 years before the first of those four things started.
Put a little bit of work into this and perhaps you will convince us.
I’m not confident that it will work. You’re the one who is confident that it will.
Share the info that gives you your confidence.
Convince me.Report
In 1964, your argument would have clearly indicated that the Gulf of Tonkin was similar to Pearl Harbor or the Chinese incursion into Korea, which was precisely the argument made at the time.
The superior and more logical example would have been the web of alliances which forced the European nations into WWI.
But that example was as far away in time from 1964 as the Reagan/Thatcher example is to 2022.
So yeah, the fact that the last four interventions didn’t work out well doesn’t mean squat.
You still have to put some work in to explain which is the better exemplar and why.
I mean, is the example of “doing nothing” the Rwandan Massacre? Or the Serbian Ethnic Cleansing? Why or why not?Report
So… I should have supported Vietnam in 1964?
Which means that I should have supported it in 1968?
I don’t understand.
So yeah, the fact that the last four interventions didn’t work out well doesn’t mean squat.
I’m not sure that it doesn’t mean squat.
I’m using it as the baseline for what the next intervention is likely to be… in the absence of an argument for why this time is different.
“Maybe it’ll be like Vietnam, but Vietnam in 1964” is not quite as persuasive as I think you want.
“This will be like Gulf War I!” might be persuasive, I guess.
Rwanda is a great argument against a UN-based approach, that’s for sure (as is Bosnia, for that matter). So we should do something more like what Bush did for Gulf War II?
Whatever we do, it will be better than standing idly by?
Well, for that, I have to go back to the last four times we refused to stand idly by and question the premise.Report
The use of historical examples is arbitrary and lazy.
I say this is Munich, and requires a forceful response.
You say this is the Gulf of Tonkin and requires caution.
Both are failed arguments because history never repeats the same way. And worse, they assume that history was inevitable and couldn’t have turned out any other way.
For example, there is an alternate history where WWII was a catastrophic failure for the Allies. Where today, the line in Princess Bride is “Never get involved in a land war in Europe!”
All it would have taken was a few different decisions here or there, by either side. The Allied victory was not predetermined.
Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan weren’t inevitable failures either. There were an infinite number of different ways in which those could have played out to reach different outcomes.
Just asserting “This is Munich ’39” or “This is the Gulf of Tonkin!” is idiotic because it is fundamentally lazy- The argument depends on selecting an arbitrary example and letting it do the work.
If you think that doing nothing is the better course, by all means say so. But then you own that decision, and its outcome.Report
Benedict!!Report
I don’t think there’s anything baseless or outrageous about your questions. A question of my own to answer your question:
My understanding is Biden has been pretty emphatic that he has no intention of committing military forces over l’affair d’Ukraine. Doesn’t that make is very different from the last half dozen times we’ve gotten involved? Or is he mustering the Marines on the side and I just have missed it?Report
If we aren’t committing military forces, I suppose that that’s better.
We’re just jumping to sanctions then and hoping that Putin backs down and then we’ll play this game again in a couple of years?Report
That does make it “different” than the previous interventions- wouldn’t you agree? Or do you view this as a kind of Iraq redux where military force will follow when policy makers are unsatisfied with the results?
If it is the latter I disagree. In my own view there’re two outcomes:
-Europe is willing to eat the economic pain necessary to make sanctions bite; in which case Russia will be royally fished and will either back down/accomidate or will end up a wholy owned tributary of China or
-Europe lacks the will to eat the economic pain necessary for effective sanctions in which case Russia will take what chunks of Ukraine they want and everyone will kind of mutter and eventually pretend nothing happened.
In neither scenario do I see a shooting war being likely.Report
Or do you view this as a kind of Iraq redux where military force will follow when policy makers are unsatisfied with the results?
Yes. I fully expect us to be in a war-adjacent emergency by October.
I suppose I should wait and see how much economic pain Europe is willing to stomach, of course. I’ve already seen reports that Israel doesn’t want Iron Dome tech sent to Ukraine and Germany got a little wobbly a few days ago (though it appears that Germany stiffened up and Nord Stream 2 is now off).
I’m just noticing that the enthusiasm for conflict and the desire for international order and, for some reason, the US is the only country capable of Doing What Is Obviously The Right Thing and I’ve also noticed that we’ve more or less been in a state of conflict (excepting a handful of years in the 90’s) for my entire life.
Rally ’round the flag, boys. Rah rah rah.Report
Nord Stream 2 delivers exactly zero gas to the EU. Come get me when Germany or France or one of the other big EU economies says, “Turn off the spigot, Vlad. We’re not buying natural gas from you.”Report
Is Wikipedia’s map inaccurate?Report
Construction is complete. It’s not certified for operation yet. Germany had previously said certification wouldn’t be finished before 2H22, and has now suspended that whole process. There are various legal actions ongoing. It is possible that the EU courts will rule that the EU is obligated to allow Gazprom to use the pipeline to make deliveries.Report
Oh, I misunderstood.
Yeah. But Nord Stream 2 was such a sure thing a few months ago that Germany turned off half of its remaining nuclear plants.
The assumption that NS2 was going to kick in had a lot to do with that decision, I’m sure.
And here we are.Report
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/correction-germany-nuclear-shutdown-story-82051054#:~:text=The%20decision%20to%20phase%20out,of%20Gerhard%20Schroeder%20in%202002.&text=Advocates%20of%20atomic%20energy%20argue,for%20reducing%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions.
If I am going to keep doing your research for you I need to get paid better.Report
I stand corrected!
I still can’t help but wonder if Germany wasn’t relying on NS2 to the point where the possibility of NS2 going away was what made them wobble a little last week.
Otherwise I don’t know why they’d be so wobbly.Report
You don’t think a smaller nuclear state would get wobbly when a larger and closer range nuclear state starts sabre rattling?Report
The NS2 situation is a long standing but strangely low level controversy in Germany. Keep in mind Schroeder is both the former German Chancellor that approved it and also now Chairman of the Russian gas company Rosneft that stands to greatly benefit from the pipeline. There have been allegations for years and well before the Ukraine crisis that the entire project is the fruit of high level corruption. Which isn’t to say there aren’t also people who see it as in the country’s national interest.
In my experience the Germans still have kind of a shell shocked political psyche. The result is a lot of awkwardly papering over and just not talkig about what in any English speaking country would be the subject of intense and very visible debate.Report
It’s like Creationism or 9-11 trutherism or antvaxxism, in that when one absurd question is raised (is our information solid?) and answered ( yes Putin confirmed it) then another equally absurd question is raised (is it our job to send people). Then another, and another ad infinitum.
The point is not illumination but endless distraction and red herrings and confusion.Report
Hey, it’s time for another war and questioning it is unpatriotic.
Nay, it’s treasonous.
And that is not déjà vu.
I mean, there are at least a dozen reasons that I can think of that are bad ideas for risking a land war in Asia. Like, not just one.
The fact that there are many means that if you get rid of one reason, there are still others that haven’t been gotten rid of yet.Report
You’re assuming things which no one seems to be saying.
Which is remarkable, given that people as disparate as Pinky, Dark Matter, and me are all in rough agreement about what should be done ( essentially some combination of sanctions/economic pressure).
Even when I browse sites like RedState or LGM, no one appears to be pounding the drums for a shooting war.
Who are you even arguing with?Report
He is arguing with the girls who were mean to him in high school and he assumes were completely for Hilary in 2016 and also assumes have RBG-fan kit.Report
Saul, what I’m going to say will probably sound crazy but I have been happily married for more than two decades and look forward to the next two.
What I remember about high school, at this point, is my relationships with various teachers who I idolized and standardized testing.
I imagine that you’ll understand when you’ve been married for a couple of decades.Report
I’ve been married for three decades, high school was 50 years ago, and I remember a lot more about it than that. And my memory is pretty bad.Report
Would you say that your arguments with me are due to your relationships at the time? Working out your issues with the jocks, or the nerds, or the greasers, or the hippies, or the various members of the Pink Ladies?Report
What I meant to say is what I said.Report
Like a great many around here, Jaybird can’t accept that the words you chose mean what they mean on their face because so many of his words don’t mean what they mean on their face.Report
Phil, it’s more that I saw Saul’s accusation as absurd on its face and thought that applying it to CJ would demonstrate that.
Out of curiosity, would you say that you keep coming here because of your interactions with your preferred gender going back a few decades?
I don’t know your age but it could be anything from the chicks who read Kerouac to the chicks who read Twilight.
Do you think they’d finally be impressed?
Or do you think that the attack is so baseless and wrong that the assumption must be that I have to be projecting to bring something like that into a discussion of whether we want to get into a brinksmanship game with Russia?
It was the Twilight chicks, wasn’t it?
You were Team Jacob, weren’t you?Report
Never read Twilight, two of my three daughters have though . . .
I came here initially when this was still the League of Ordinary Gentlemen because I struck up an enduring friendship with Mike Dwyer. I stayed because the site needs more liberals. No other reasons . . .
And frankly I still know and occasionally communicate with the female objects of my earlier affections – and they would say me writing and commenting here is entirely in line with the world affairs policy geek I was in high school.Report
My high school experience was pretty good. What happened there had a major impact on my later life, though I’d have to think long and hard before drawing connections between specific experiences from back then and specific aspects of my current life. But my point was that even with a fairly mediocre memory, I remember a lot more, from a lot longer back, than Jaybird said he did. (Why the lengths of our respective marriages might affect that — other than as a proxy for the sheer passage of time, at which I have him beat handily — is for Jaybird to explain.) His account of his sparse memory was , therefore, hard to credit. Anything else is between him and Saul.Report
You were here back then? You were dexter, weren’t you?Report
um no I’ve always been myself. Even guest blogged for Mike a couple of times.Report
I would start with the recognition that this is a second cold war. Russia remains a nuclear power so the usual rules about no direct wars with each other remains in force.
What are useful sanctions and what are not I am not an expert in…
However an obvious move is Russia is heavily dependent on selling gas for money for it’s gov, and it’s ability to cut off that gas on a moment’s notice is probably not a great thing for the EU countries that are receiving it.
As it happens, the US is also a major gas producer and would love to sell more to Germany or whomever.
I’m not sure how realistic that move is or how long it will take.Report
Agreed and it’s complicated by the fact that a lot of Western elites, both individuals and institutions are heavily implicated in Russian money laundering and can’t be counted on.Report
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/332270-eric-trump-in-2014-we-dont-rely-on-american-banks-we-have-all-the-funding-we
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-jr-said-money-pouring-in-from-russia-2018-2Report
The fundamental problem is that the only way to get natural gas to Europe is to liquify it and ship it in container ships. LNG facilities (both sending and receiving) are high tech and expensive. Also Asia mostly bought up most of the North America’s LNG capacity back when prices were lower so to move LNG to Europe now would require getting those contract holders to cooperate. Moreover the gas and oil markets are pretty unconstrained and global which means prices will hike so long as individual states mostly let them swing so shipping more LNG to Germany, for instance, won’t really change the cost of LNG in Germany. The upside though is there’s not a scenario where Russia turns off the gas and Germany flat out has no fuel. The price will just spike.Report
One thing I will say: the fact that Russia hasn’t spilled everything it knows about Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine probably indicates that his dealings over there weren’t even interesting enough to make a Steeleish Dossier about them.Report
So it took Russia invading Ukraine to convince you that the Hunter Biden story was a big nothingburger? Well that still puts you further ahead on the curve than Glem.Report
Here have some generic upvotes for whatever app or social media site you want then credited to.Report
You are too kind.Report
Well, if “nothingburger” means “NOTHING AT ALL HAPPENED!”, then no. If “nothingburger” means “the same level of corruption as is found in his art gallery”, then yes.Report
It’s a “nothingburger” in that what he did was legal.
The outrageous part is it’s legal to hire the relative of a powerful politician for a high paying nothing job that requires no skills or experience or anything other than having a powerful parent.
It’s illegal for US companies to do that with the children of foreign politicians, but when congress outlawed that they exempted their own children.Report
I remember saying as much at the time on OT and being repeatedly told I needed to go sit in the corner and suck my thumb because I didn’t understand why this meant Trump should remain president and Biden shouldn’t get elected. Good times.Report
Sure, but the whole point of the Hunter story was that the right has been desperately trying to inflate it into something illegal for ages. No one anywhere has suggested that Hunter himself is anything but a total waste of space parasitizing off his last name. The right has alleged, repeatedly, that Hunters Father was actively involved/benefiting in some way in Hunters schemes.Report
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1496262215829180422?s=20&t=zUoVvPB9yTapGYev84N1zwReport
More reasons to get involved:
Report
Gee, and didn’t we have a pipeline from Canada all set up to bring sweet sweet petro to the States? Oh, yes, until Biden took office, and revoked the permit, and the entire effort was abandoned 6 months later. Hmm….Report
The main Keystone pipeline is still in place, and still pumping oil south from Canada into the US. What Biden revoked the permits for was the extension directly to Nebraska, which even the American Petroleum Institute admitted simply duplicated existing pipeline and railcar capacity. Canadian oil never started or stopped flowing in that pipe, and today it still flows via the existing pipelines.
If you want to get mad at someone regarding US Oil policy, the judge in this story might deserve some of your wrath, since he actually prevented Biden from doing something that Biden said he would to keep oil flowing:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jan/28/gulf-of-mexico-oil-gas-drilling-leases-judge-blocks-climate-bidenReport
Yeah Bidens been quite loudly environmentalist while being quietly very functionally pro-oil development. Record numbers of extraction leases signed an all that. Probably properly so I’d say.Report
Look as much as we wanted the pipeline, its intention was to get Alberta crude to tidewater to export out of North America, because North America has become oil-self sufficient and there is a significant price disadvantage to having to take interior of the continent prices rather than tidewater prices.
Although by the same logic, the US doesn’t rely on Russian oil at all, but NA oil can replace Russian crude in the European market.Report
Yeah, it’s a global market. So it’d be highly unlikely, barring military intervention, that Russia could turn off the oil and Europe would flat out have no gas/oil. The global market price -everywhere- would just spike as oil flowed to the places that normally got their oil from Russia.Report
As if 0600 local, Putin has ordered his troops into Ukraine to “demilitarize” the country. One hopes the Ukrainians give him one hell of a fight.
But this will not end well. Innocent civilians will dies needlessly, cities will be destroyed. And economy may be brought down, all so one man is spared the consequences of his and others decisions.Report
On the BBC world service, they are discussing Ukraine enacting marshal law.Report
well when you have been invaded that would seem a logical if horrible thing to do.Report
Tell that to Canada!
“Peaceful Protests” mean “Let’s Enact Martial Law and break into private homes and seize people’s life savings!”
When Canada’s parliment tried to protest, they were told “anyone who votes against me will be viewed as an enemy of the state, and punished accordingly.” (Said in open Parliment).
We will note that the Ukraine had already enacted martial law (overriding the prior state of emergency that’s been ongoing for years) in its separatist provinces.Report
way to gaslight . . . . notice we didn’t invade Canada over their internal decisions? And as for the separatists provinces – they are under martial law because Russia has invaded them.Report
The separatist provinces have been under a state of emergency for years. I’m not entirely certain what that means, but it appears to mean government censorship of media and control over people’s movements.
I’m making fun of Canada (and Justin Trudeau) for declaring Martial Law over peaceful protests. (Donald Trump didn’t declare Martial Law when DC was on fire, for god’s sake. And Donald Trump was crazy).Report
Trudeau has taken that order down:
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/23/1082637172/trudeau-revokes-emergency-powers-after-canada-blockades-endReport