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Vladophilia
From the head of a think-tank, recent thoughts on Ukraine’s disinclination to be absorbed:
This is not an uncommon view, also expressed the other day by Noam Chomsky: it was unwise for Ukraine to resist invasion. If Russia wants your territory, you assume a supine position while gesturing broadly towards everything that was once yours, and is now theirs to control. If Russia is required to kill your people and level your neighborhoods to get what it believes is theirs, that’s on you.
Freedom is nice and all that I guess, but economic growth is the true metric of a society’s health. Really, those idiots in the tractors, do they care who the boss is? The tech sector of Ukraine – does it matter if they’re making West-facing consumer products, or working for the FSB? What counts is the end-of-the-year balance sheet.
Previously from the same account:
The means by which you add those 44 million are irrelevant. What counts is the world historical accomplishment.
The population of France in 1940 was 41 million, and I suppose absorbing it into the Reich was a world historical accomplishment, but history doesn’t seem to regard it with any particular affection. On the other hand, France did surrender, and while that made things difficult for the eventual defeat of the militaristic statists in Berlin, France was spared additional physical trauma. Except for the Jews, of course, but (bored continental hand-waving gesture)
Another earlier sentiment:
Men of a certain age of Ricochet: did you find a spring in your step after the invasion? Perhaps a sudden urge to make changes, act boldly? Did you feel a strange charge in the older-dude zeitgeist, as though men around the world about to walk over the border of 70 suddenly felt empowered and revivified?
Perhaps, because that Putin guy is a strong leader, and cares for his nation, unlike our guys. Granted, he’s presided over the wholesale transfer of wealth from his people to a select group of elites, and the craptacular state of his military suggests that he was either ignorant of the true state of his capabilities or uninterested in the human cost of shoving his shambolic forces into the meat grinder, and hey maybe the Defender of Christendom shouldn’t have lost a purported piece of the True Cross because his flagship wasn’t refitted because they were broke but the oligarch’s yachts had 5G and Roombas in the master suite. But at least he’s not woke. And it’s ridiculous to think he’s not strong. Just you wait. He’s going to kill a lot of people.
That’s what leaders do.
Published in General
Senator Koons wants us to go to war with Russia.
Eventually he will cross a line that will be intolerable. Because he is who he is.
He’s drawing his lines. “If you continue to supply arms to Ukraine, . . . And if Denmark and Finland join NATO, . . . ” Those are his lines. And he makes good on his threats.
Where are our lines? I ask in all sincerity. We need to be clear. I suppose it would be an attack on U.S. soil.
I’m sorry I’ve irked you @henrycastaigne – I will try to be more open minded in the future.
Part of the problem with waiting that long is that not drawing a line earlier, encourages him to cross more of them, and perhaps not even worry about the “last” one.
His appetite grows with the eating. It’s perfectly reasonable to give him as much indigestion as possible.
As early as possible.
That said, I don’t want to be pulled into a war. A no-fly zone guarantees a war so I’m against that. But I also want to be as anti-Putin as I can be without getting into another war.
Of course, part of the problem is that even if we don’t want war, Putin might.
I think if we play our cards right the generals would kill him before sending the nukes.
At this point, he has to be reading those force readiness reports with slightly more circumspection. Or he has a learning disability. He was supposed to be in Kviv that weekend for the victory parade.
What is he thinking? I honestly have no idea.
Somehow it seems to me that’s more likely the more ridiculous his claim is. And that means it should made earlier rather than later.
If it were now, it would be like “give me Kiev Or Else Nukes.” They might easily take him out for that. But if he were to – in an extreme case – control the world except for the US and demanded the US surrender Or Else Nukes, the generals might think he has a valid point.
Biden family not getting their monthly stipend.
What makes you believe his generals are not behind him?
They might be, up until the point where they snuff it.
At this point, he has to find something that can be colored as a victory and get the hell out.
For sure, he should. Whether he will or not, remains to be seen.
I honestly have no idea.
This isn’t a pro-Putin website, but thanks to the Big Tech social media companies that have cut off Russian government media from YouTube and Twitter, I have to come here to get my pro-Putin propaganda. I’d rather get it in unfiltered form, as I don’t think every element of that propaganda makes it through the filter of Ricochet members. It would be interesting to be able to compare and contrast.
That is to say nothing of the bad example such censorship sets for Ukraine and Russia in how to handle dissent.
A good start in understanding them is to think of them as “alleged concerns” or “stated concerns.”
Remember how the media always tell us how the Democrats have concerns, while the Republicans “seize” on issues or “exploit” them? It would be more accurate to refer to them as stated concerns or alleged concerns.
Calling them “concerns” is doing Putin even more of a favor than he does for himself.
No, not a different culture. Some of it is a somewhat different culture, but you can’t identify all or even most of that 30 percent as a pro-Russian culture. Even Volodomyr Zelensky’s first language is Russian. It’s the language he is most comfortable with.
There is a contradiction here. You’re calling for isolationism and also saying that what matters is what Vlad thinks.
I don’t think he wants one with us until he’s in a better position for it. In the meantime he’s got the weakness of a U.S. president to exploit.
Let us agree with this. An American President should never appear weak before Russians. Period.
So why not accommodate Russian in the public sphere? Seems like that’s both good policy and (?) good politics.
I think the count of Flag Officers Killed in Ukraine is up to 8.
I am late to the party so I cannot conceive that my thoughts are original, but here goes anyway:
One need not slobber over Putin to recognize some truth in the position that net net Ukrainians would be better off having ceded the Donbas and declared neutrality. Through no fault of the Ukrainians the USA is in the absurd position of supporting sovereignty in Ukraine while embracing invasion in America. Russia will in fact embrace ruling rubble. Were we to succeed in toppling Putin there is no guarantee that what follows would be better. The impulse to autocracy is always and everywhere present. It takes energy and and abundance in a population to prevent its malign control. War saps energy and abundance and makes a people ripe for autocracy. What follows in Ukraine (and America) is not likely to be a better form of democracy. And if the USA gets into a direct shooting war with Russia we will be made even poorer even if in victory.
What’s the relevance?
Do you believe Mexico has a legitimate case to invade and annex the southwestern US because a significant minority there speaks Spanish?
Appeasement doesn’t work.