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That may be true, but the war they want is not destruction of Putin's regime. What they want is something like the current war in Ukraine - remote, long, expensive in money but not in American casualties, low-stakes as to anything pertaining to the US, and prolonged as far as possible to ensure return business, preferably without generating too many headlines that would promote changing anything. This has nothing to do with "Putin's skull" - if fact, if anything, that requires Putin to be in power, otherwise who'd the war be with?
That's why I object to the premise she wanted Putin's skull on the wall - Putin is a business partner for her, not a mortal enemy. True, in these spheres there are no friends and sometimes competition is very vigorous, but until Feb 2022, Dems did not even see Russia as a real opponent (the 80s called, remember?). And Clinton saw it as a regular business partner, among others. The war does not prevent that too - war is business too. Maybe not for Ukrainians (though for some there it is, unfortunately), but for Clintons it would be. And that's why it emboldens Putin - he knows that for the right prices, he can have Ukraine or almost anything else he wants - because it's just the question of finding the right deal. And he thinks he can afford the price of some hundreds of thousands of Russians being dead and some oil money spent - if that gives him what he wants.
I disagree. I think that what they want is a balkanisation and breakup of what is currently Russia into multiple competing breakaway republics which have a series of constant low-level conflicts. These can be manipulated and played with, selling arms to them all the while, in order to both boost sales of MIC gear, increasing the total threat and providing an excuse for higher military budgets.. and of course making sure that Russia is no longer a major power on the world stage. They do in fact need to kill Putin for this, or his successor, because he's one of the factors keeping the country together.
That was your claim, not mine! I at no point said that Putin was her mortal enemy - my position is that Putin is someone who the MIC/"deep state" wants gone, and Clinton has no principles beyond venality and self-interest. If she got the job of president, she would mount no objections or resistance to the pursuit of their favoured policy, which would include wiping out Putin and more war in Ukraine. There's no personal animus involved at all - just business. Don't forget that she wanted to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria, which even the most partisan of Americans agreed would be the start of the next world war.
Putin hasn't been emboldened by anything, this conflict has been a problem imposed upon him by the US that he really would have preferred not to deal with. He has already taken the territory that he cares about and nobody outside the most committed partisans believe that it'll be returned - Crimea. His motivation for the conflict now is to make sure that Ukraine is a servile client-state that can never host NATO forces/missile interdiction systems, does not interfere with the flow of gas to europe and does not cause problems for the native Russian-speakers in the area/attack Russian territory. He's most likely going to get what he wants too, no matter how many Ukrainians the Americans want to sacrifice.
That would be a very nice thing if it happened, and would lead to much rejoicing among Russia's neighbors, but the Deep State explicitly does not want it and is doing everything to avoid it. It even sternly reprimanded Ukrainians not to try and take advantage of the clownish Prigozhin's aborted coup, back when it wasn't clear that it is a clown show. Because last thing they want is to Putin's throne to actually shake and even more horrible, collapse.
Nice theory, except their behavior conclusively proves they want nothing of the sort.
Again, literally every action of the US government - which right now can be considered functionally identical to the MIC/"deep state" - suggests the opposite, not only they don't want Putin gone - they don't even want him substantially weakened. And, paradoxically, neither does the alt-Right, who pretend to be the mortal enemies of the Deep State. Very strange situation, but it is what it is.
This is not only absolutely false, this is very obviously false for anybody who has even a passing knowledge of Russian political and propaganda (which is one and the same) scene for the last decade or so. The most sacred event of the Russian national myth is the Great Victory in the Great Patriotic War (that's WW2 for the Western heathens) and the most cherished dream of every true patriot is to repeat that sacred event again. Putin has been itching for a conflict with the West for a very long time, and has been considering himself in war with the West since he decided he's going to be Peter the Great 2.0 and would re-establish the Great Russian Empire. To his chagrin - and to some feelings of contempt too - the stupid Westerners didn't even realize he'd waging war until he finally sent tank columns to Kiev. Nothing short of that was enough for them. Yes, he didn't just want the conflict - it was his most cherised dream to be the leader of the New Great Patriotic War against the West. And every Putin supporter - there are thousands of them online and they are very very verbose - shares that dream.
Some feeble-minded American conspirologists think because their immediate, closest enemy is the US Deep State, everything in the world, especially - everything evil - is caused by it and nobody has independent agency but their Big Satan. Like in a children's tale, where the mice thought the biggest, strongest, most powerful monster in the whole universe is their house cat. Because that was the limit of their conseptual universe. But we can - and should - do better. There are a lot of forces - and evil forces - that have independent agency and aren't caused by the Deep State. The world is dark and full of terrors. Sorry to disappoint. No, Putin's evil not caused by "US meddling", whoever sold it to you lied to you.
No he didn't. He wants the Russian Empire in the long run - yes, the whole thing, as much as possible - and Ukraine as a wholly owned protectorate at the short term. And he has almost achieved that - if Russian generals were a little less of a gang of thieves, if Ukrainian field troops were a little more of a cowards, if the money allocated for buying Ukrainians was not stolen 99% but only about 60%, if Ukrainians wavered in 2022 like they did in 2014 - Ukraine would have Medvedchuk or some other puppet as a premier minister and the war would have been in Karpatian mountains, mopping up disorganized guerrilla troops. What he has now is what he had before the war, plus a bit of useless ground where his army already stole everything movable and ruined everything that could not be stolen. Now, when his goal, which seemingly has been so close within reach, is completely outside his grasp, he may pretend it's exactly what he wanted, but it is a lie, he knows it is a lie, we know it is a lie, and it is belied by his own and his comrades' own words many times over.
That's some computer-game style BS, his motivation in 2022 was to own Ukraine, and now his motivation is to not lose the war as much as he can. NATO forces are already at Russian borders, and any "interdiction" can be done from Poland, Romania, Baltic states, Finland, etc. On top of that, where these missiles would be aimed at? France? What for? It's a completely ridiculous scenario.
Before the war, the last thing Ukrainians wanted to do is to interfere with any gas flows. They made tons of money on it, and they were fine making tons of money of it during the whole lukewarm war of 2014-2022. If Putin wanted to ensure that, the exact thing he needed to do is - nothing. Ukrainians loved the gas money, Germans ecstatically loved the gas money, everybody loved the gas money. Putin sacrificed all of that for his Imperial Dream.
Nobody gives half shit about the "the native Russian-speakers in the area", In fact, most males of the military age that lived in that territory has been used as cannon fodder long ago. And the trademark way of Russians dealing with any built area is a massive artillery bombardment until there's literally no intact buildings is left. I'm sure "native Russian-speakers" that survive that by some miracle appreciate the protection. I realize not everybody knows the situation on the ground well, but some effort needs to be taken not to take the basest propaganda bullshit as truth. This has as much truth in it as Hitler's actions in 1939 were to ensure Czechs and Poles do not cause problems for the native German-speakers. I mean, one has to be real special case to really believe something like that.
That depends mostly on whether the Ukrainians prove to be smarter and better warriors than the Deep State thinks they are. Right now they are given as much weapons as needed to not lose, but not to win - exactly because the Deep State wants the conflict to be frozen and festering, not decided in anybody's favor. Putin, largely is now ok with that, because he could use time to re-arm, upgrade his military capabilities (for example - his drone game is shit, but he's learning fast) and turn the captured territories into hellscapes that would cost Ukrainians a lot to recapture - hopefully, to him, more than Ukrainians want to pay. As he is completely insensitive to losses, and Ukrainians are quite sensitive, it's a smart game for him. As I said, the only people who are not OK with this arrangement is the Ukrainians, but their task is not enviable - they need to do much better than the Deep State thinks they can, and fast, because otherwise as soon as the Deep State notices they win too much, shipments will start to be delayed and contracts start to fall through and all that kind of thing. I don't know if they can do it - it's up to them now.
This is a gigantic comment with a million points but I think our core disagreement lies upstream of a lot of the individual datapoints. As far as I can tell we're living in separate universes - your view of the deep state and MIC is incredibly different to my own. I think they're far more constrained, less competent and less capable than you're implying, and when I look at their actions and see them failing to achieve their goals, you see them as succeeding at a different set of goals. Similarly, our views of Russia and their goals are extremely divergent as well - I view Putin as a rational actor with his own motivations and goals, and you seem to view him as a cartoon dictator who walked straight out of Inspector Gadget.
But beyond all that, I find the paternalistic tone you're taking with lines like "The world is dark and full of terrors. Sorry to disappoint. No, Putin's evil not caused by "US meddling", whoever sold it to you lied to you." to be annoying enough that I just do not think continuing to engage with you on this topic is worth my time. If you really want to know what I think about these issues, just go back through my comment history on the topic.
No, that's not true at all. Of course he has his own motivations and goals. And these motivations and goals can be easily seen from his speeches, his state propaganda and his actions. I mentioned some of them (though yes, the long comment was long, so maybe you TLDR it) - for example, his desire to restore the Russian Empire with him at the helm, and his view that he is in the existential struggle with the West. Once thing that is needed to consider them rationally though is not taking them as true factual statements. When he's saying his goal is to liberate Ukraine from the Nazis - it reveals a lot about his motivations and goals, but it does not mean he actually thinks Zelenskiy is a Nazi and he wants to liberate anybody.
Always your choice. For me, it is equally annoying to be confronted again and again by Russian propaganda templates taken at face value and presented as facts, even when it can be easily seen they have nothing in common with easily observed realities. It is equally annoying to encounter again and again a myopic worldview where everything is blamed on "meddling" and no critical analysis is even attempted. I guess each person has their own pet annoyances. Yet I took the time to explain where, in my opinion, you went wrong. Of course, you don't owe me anything here. Good luck.
This is the point where we depart - I just do not think that this is the case when you look at recent history and this difference is so stark that I don't believe it is possible or really consequential to debate anything beyond it, in the same sense that there's no point having a serious discussion about whether Jesus would beat Krishna in a fight. There's no point litigating the vast array of points you provided when there's a much more fundamental disagreement. I agree that "denazification" is not really his goal or a true statement, but I just don't think the truth behind it is what you think it is.
And so did I. But I stand by my original point regarding tone:
This paragraph in particular was so incredibly smug, confident and above all wrong about the motivations and actual content of my position that it read like an incredibly thinly veiled insult and felt like a paragraph that you came up with for some other argument with someone else, repurposed for use here despite the lack of congruence to what I was actually saying. If you want to actually converse with people, or even change their mind, this kind of writing is worse than useless and (irrationally, I fully recognise - faulty arguments for a position aren't actually arguments against it) made me more hostile to your position than I would have been otherwise.
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