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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   27993 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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The US can’t just call up Russia

Of course they can -- they do it all the time. Russia even provided an opening bid for negotiations around limiting NATO expansion in Ukraine back in December 2021 -- State just needed to pick up the ball.

There is a lack of evidence that Russia would have agreed to that.

There is evidence that NATO was disarming at the time of December 2021. The bulwark of NATOs war machine was mechanized German units. In 2021 Germany had like 1 tank battalion. At that point in time NATO probably didn’t even have the necessary equipment to invade anyone and especially Europe.

There are serious question that NATO-ex US even have the equipment to deal with Houthis today.

There is a lack of evidence that Russia would have agreed to that.

The fact that they sent a document to NATO saying that they would agree to that seems like evidence?

Anyways, what I said is not that Russia would have necessarily agreed to any particular terms, but that the lack of engagement from NATO (and the US in particular) is evidence that they were not in fact interested in averting the war.

Now of course Russia holds territory in excess of what they were asking for in December, and are conducting the demilitarization of Ukraine by... other means. So it will be more difficult to convince them to engage in negotiations than it would have been pre-war. (or even in the early stages, although that is more murky)

A lot of this is just trying to create a pre-text for war in advance when you have already decided on going to war.

Dick Cheney did this. He tried to prove in the media that Iraq had WMD. They did not. But Iraq was pretending they had WMD and that is true. For various reasons they really did do that. But the entire argument Russia said they just wanted x,y,z is just them trying to establish a semi-credible justification for war. When they have already decided on war.

A lot of this is just trying to create a pre-text for war

I mean, sez you -- and AFAIK you are not Putin. But if NATO were interested in avoiding the war, engaging with the (possible) pretext would have been the thing to do.

They did not do so.

They showed up for the negotiations. Then Russia did war.

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