Putin’s Bluff
The U.S. and NATO should call Putin’s bluff re the ostensible threat to invade Ukraine….
Putin knows that Russia cannot survive a war with the United States with the backing and support of NATO.
The ultimatum should read something like this:
Invade Ukraine and we will wipe Russia off the face of the earth. And then, come after YOU!
Putin is an egotistical bully who, like all bullies, will wither in the face of superior strength, power, and force.
When playing poker, I can often win hands by going ‘all in’ against big bettors who try to exert control of the game by bullying players of lesser bravado into folding their hands….
I am successful with the ‘all in’ gambit because I’m good at reading the bullies’ frame of mind and lack of appetite for confrontation.
The other reason why I’m successful with the tactic is that I’m used to being broke.
The bullies don’t want to lose any money to the old black guy who looks like the kind of player who will win the pot and quit the game with their money in his pocket, thus depriving them of the chanceĀ of recovery.
Their egos won’t allow it. .
Putin is looking for an opening, an excuse or an opportunity to cross the border….
A Biden faux pas, or perhaps a NATO false move/start….
He’s trying to create enough pressure to cause the slip up that he will then use as the justification to move as the West folds…
However, if we become proactive and go ‘all in’, I’m certain that Putin doesn’t want to risk everything he has with no chance of recovery.
If we don’t have the stomach for this kind of stuff, we shouldn’t be in the game in which case, Putin’s bluff wins…
01/28/2022 @ 4:44 pm
Perhaps due to cognitive-affective-synchronicity,
I’ve had a newspaper clipping of *Guernica* pinned to a cork board
and had the opportunity to include it in my most recent WWW poem:
*Poem*
Upon reflection, I surmise it must have been in the morning after paper for its 85th anniversary.
I have thought fondly of recreating this piece ‘Art and War’ on a mantle-scale canvas board.
Or weathered limestone.
However, I have opted to continue my search for a better rendering of
Picasso’s *Sad Guitarist* —
my humble space requisite.
The thing about *Guernica* —
the top left center eyeball SUN with a light bulb,
why spook the horses or the
‘rooks of the marble chessboard’
as the case maybe
Hey did you hear it? … that top left center eyeball SUN with a light bulb, you know,
why spook the horses or ‘pawns row upon row’
of the chessboard’: three void dimensional
dynamic with straight red line lightning
Also, I’d forever confuse this *Guernica* with Joan Miro’
not as Picasso.
And this, Counselor Powell, from Joan Miro’:
‘The painting rises from the brushstrokes as poem rises from the words. The meaning comes later.’
01/28/2022 @ 6:20 pm
Putin is considered to have been persuaded by the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. I think that is a logical conclusion. I also think it is dangerous to underestimate your opponent. Iād be somewhat surprised if Putin made such a simplistic evaluation of the USās and the Westās motives. While the withdrawal from Afghanistan does say that the US is war weary, it would be somewhat silly to think the US would think of the stakes as being the same in both cases.
So, this analysis of Putin is either accurate, or it is not. I am hoping that it is. If it is accurate, it means that Putin was leaning heavily on his ability to bluff, and he doesnāt have the cards, as it were. If it is not accurate, Putin is very, very, very dangerous.
01/28/2022 @ 6:54 pm
Very well said!
I honestly believe that if he were going to do something, he would have done it by now…
01/28/2022 @ 9:04 pm
I agree.
Several years ago, I wrote something about Putin when he invaded Crimea. I said then, he is either rational, and he will stop when faced with sanctions, or he has some irrational motivation, and he will not. That is essentially where we are now, and it is more clear that this is the event horizon. Losing Crimea to Russia isnāt a big deal to NATO, but Ukraine, and who knows what else, apparently is.
01/29/2022 @ 12:18 am
You donāt say āWe will wipe you from the face of the Earthā to the worldās second largest nuclear power. You especially donāt say that to a country that has faced another countryās trying to wipe it from the face of the Earth and costing them twenty million dead. āWe will wipe you from the face of the Earthā is precisely why Russia cannot afford NATO on a long border like that. NATO was founded to oppose Russia when Russia was communist. They havenāt exported a revolution in decades but NATO never really changed its mission. NATO is expanding toward Russia and no one has figured out that Russia justifiably views this as threatening? This would be like the Warsaw Pact admitting Mexico.
The extent to which Russia hasnāt invaded is they hope NATO will get off this having Ukraine join kick. If they donāt, he has to invade to keep Ukraine out of NATO.
Why wonāt NATO give him security guarantees? They want to reserve the right to attack him?
We have this backward. Putin is trying to defend his country. This is about a geographic cushion, not about regular expansionism.
01/29/2022 @ 1:11 am
“Putin is trying to defend his country. This is about a geographic cushion, not about regular expansionism.”
The problem I have with this is that Putin is the chief executive of an autocratic oligarchic kleptocracy who cares about as much about the people of Russia only to the extent of what he is able to steal from them.
Putin is a criminal who heads a multinational criminal enterprise.
He is an existential global threat to democracy, the rule of law, and the brotherhood of mankind…
Putin would be much easier to deal with if he were a regular, run of the mill, expansionist….
“You donāt say āWe will wipe you from the face of the Earthā to the worldās second largest nuclear power.”
The ‘ultimatum’ is crafted as rhetorical hyperbole to make a point. It is not an example of the working or functional language of international negotiation and diplomacy.
01/29/2022 @ 1:09 am
Khrushchev’s Heel?
The writing (with the exception of awkward title) swells. Beyond nihilistic brinkmanship, let’s also note the number of creatives who left us in 1962.
A tangential correlation to the murder of President John F. Kennedy is a particularly ominous ‘drop dead America’ speech before the U.N. General Assembly on October 12, 1960–wherein Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev pounded the heel of his shoe upon the podium. Among other bellicose issues, Khrushchev viciously declared that America would ‘fall from within’.
I mention this rather naively, as it is too easy to extrapolate and dovetail events into well woven conjecture. Regardless how erstwhile and righteous our quest for truth and justice remains. Carrying the thread further, the U.S.S.R did yield to the U.S.A during the Cuban Missile Crisis and, a valid guess would have it that the failing and corrupt Soviet status quo conspired to assassinate our charismatic leader of the free world, as retribution toward imagined parity.
The younger demographic nowadays may be interested to learn that, astonishingly, presidential candidate RFK did not have police protection at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when he was murdered by ‘lone gunman’ Sirhan Sirhan. And, of course, Dr. MLK was murdered in Memphis earlier during that bleak spring of 1968.
There is distinct pattern of violent opposition to progressive
politics. The Powers That Be vs. The Power of Love.
01/29/2022 @ 4:07 pm
Krushchevās assessment that we would fall within or that they would bury us (meaning they would outlast us, not bury us alive) wasnāt vicious, it was an ideological prediction that capitalism would collapse due to forces within itself that capitalists wouldnāt have enough sense to stop, leaving communism still standing.
He was clearly wrong about communism. Communism doesnāt work. However, the question of capitalism is unfortunately still open because we donāt know if it could fix itself. It could, it could have gone a long way toward fixing itself if Biden had had an actual majority in the Senate, but Iām still not sure it will. During Krushchevās time capitalism was pretty healthy. Right now itās sending a lot of the West, particularly here, toward Third World status as we get closer to having a small extremely wealthy class and the rest of the country mainly poor. If labor grows we could be saved but weāre now looking at a country where it will be OK for Republican state legislatures to overturn Democratic wins in the Electoral College.
01/29/2022 @ 5:39 am
Itās difficult to react to the āwipe you off the face of the Earthā comment without knowing the complete context. But, Russia/Putin know the West and the US in particular enough to know that they are not trying to destroy Russia. At one time, there was an ideological conflict, but there isnāt any more. The West is not trying to end, whatever Russia is, militarily. No one believes that. Putin and the Russian people donāt believe that. NATO exists to prevent from being conquered, not to conquer. Putin is a thug.
01/29/2022 @ 3:11 pm
Putin is certainly a thug, but Iām not sure thatās whatās driving this. I donāt know what Putin thinks about American intentions toward Russia. I canāt imagine he thinks theyāre as benign as we do. When the Soviet Union dissolved and Russia stopped exporting a revolution, it was up to us to improve relations. Militarily, we kept a lot of the Cold War going. We did what we could to break off republics and expand NATO eastward, keeping in mind that NATO was founded to counter Russia and really continues with that mission.
We canāt figure this out without trying to look at it through Russian eyes and doing so through the eyes of a thug is way too simplistic in this case.
01/29/2022 @ 5:21 pm
“We canāt figure this out without trying to look at it through Russian eyes and doing so through the eyes of a thug is way too simplistic in this case.”
Looking at it through Russian eyes and looking at it through Putin’s eyes are two markedly different, separate and distinct things.
Putin is not Russia any more than Trump is America.
01/29/2022 @ 9:13 pm
Bingo.
BindleSnitch - Kasparov with Velshi on MSNBC
01/29/2022 @ 9:33 pm
[…] Putin’s Bluff […]
01/29/2022 @ 11:07 pm
The two nations developed a modus vivendi in order to avoid war. [Merriam-Webster] We can hope, meditate, pray.
However for sure we’ve plausibility of command error with Moscow’s military industrial complex machinations.
As though Premier ‘Posturing’ Putin’s ennui unimaginatively swapped blackjack for hierarchical blackmail.
Curious where & what our well-civilized United Nations has in store with its olive branch plausibility for Ukraine’s dilemma?
Darn good winter’s night to read ‘Lily’s Promise’ (Lily Ebert, 97 year old holocaust survivor, great work!) an impassioned, incredible memoir of one who’s endured the inhumane pathos of fascism. Imagine if Russia, Inc. would devote its resources
to the Epcotization of urban blight, enhancing UNICEF — space exploration — ballet— not fear based greedy belligerence!
01/30/2022 @ 2:39 am
“The two nations developed a modus vivendi in order to avoid war. ”
Referred to as peaceful coexistence or detente…
01/30/2022 @ 12:44 am
Putin is not comparable to Trump at all. Trump is a megalomaniac with no government experience before taking office, no real national loyalty other than as an extension of himself, terrible international skills and no understanding of history. Putin is a career government official who came out of the Soviet system and thinks his country was better off that way and, in fact, the Soviet Union was a more major player than Russia is. Neither has a lot of respect for democracy but that lack of respect is far worse in an American because Americaās history and identity are wrapped up in democracy while Russiaās are not. Putin is acutely aware of his countryās position. Trump never has been – he just makes up whatever he feels like and gets away with it because bigots are so relieved to be able to be bigoted without universal disapproval.
01/30/2022 @ 2:56 am
Kosh, you say that;
“Putin is not comparable to Trump at all.”, and then go on to compare them re democracy.
Both men are criminals. Neither are representative or the embodiment of the people of their respective countries.
They are not the same re their intellectual capacities, preparation, temperaments, and state of mind. To assert that they are the same by comparison would be to articulate a false equivalency.
Although they are not the same, they most certainly can be compared to one another as you have done here in your comment…
01/30/2022 @ 10:00 am
āComparableā can mean two things. Any two people can be compared but comparable with the accent on the first syllable means in some way equivalent. I donāt think theyāre equivalent at all. Putin is a lifelong government insider, Trump is a spoiled brat who remained one as President and remains one as former President. Nation means entirely different things to them and that is a critical difference in this situation.
01/30/2022 @ 7:39 am
Kosher, how do you know that Putin thinks his country was better off in the Soviet system? If that were so, so is he not returning them to it? I donāt think there is any real evidence to support that.
01/30/2022 @ 9:51 am
Iāve read that heās moving in that direction, though thatās presumably the opinion of a commentator observing his long-term actions. Iāve read recently that he has stated that the dissolution of the Soviet Union in terms of the republics separating was a catastrophe.
01/30/2022 @ 10:00 am
That doesnāt mean I think he really wants to resurrect communism so much as its authoritarian structure.
01/30/2022 @ 10:53 am
I have read that also. I believe that he does believe that. And the evidence of his actions shows that he is trying to return to the part that he valued about the Soviet system, namely dominating the countries around him.
The point of my question is that your statement about that, and the notion of being surrounded by NATO work together as an implication about his motives. I believe both of those are wrong. The true analysis of Putin is as an international criminal. He seeks wealth power and influence, and it has zero to do with whether or not the Soviet system ever existed, except for its ability to hold other countries captive. There is nothing humanitarian about Putin.
01/30/2022 @ 12:18 pm
“There is nothing humanitarian about Putin.”
AMEN!!!
01/30/2022 @ 4:29 pm
Iām not claiming that thereās anything humanitarian about Putin. Not my point at all. I do think he worries about how easily his country can be invaded. That may be for patriotic reasons, personal reasons, ethnic reasons, or some combination. I think the point behind dominating anyone else is safety. I certainly donāt think Russia needs land. I think he thinks it needs a buffer.
01/30/2022 @ 7:29 pm
With no humanitarian component to Putinās reasoning, he is just a paranoid criminal trying to bully Ukraine into surrendering. Given his paranoia, NATOās existence is justified. Given his actions, NATOās current position is justified.
More simply, what Putin thinks has no value without duty and responsibility to others. As it is, he shows no responsibility to anyone but himself.
01/31/2022 @ 1:56 am
And again, AMEN!!!
“As it is, he shows no responsibility to anyone but himself.”
It is in this regard that Putin and Trump are comparable (emphasis on the first syllable).
To put it more plainly, Putin and Trump are pretty much the same..
01/31/2022 @ 11:13 am
This is from Salon.com this morning, in a feature they send in daily email called Crash Course:
Putin may have a point re: Ukraine
Russian leader Vladimir Putin may not be what many Americans would call a “good guy.” But are his current demands all that unreasonable, given the circumstances?
As Salon contributor Glenn Sacks writes: “It’s doubtful that Vladimir Putin wants war with the U.S., and unclear whether he is willing to risk a large-scale ground invasion of Ukraine. What he wants is for Russia’s grievances to be taken seriously.”
Putin’s central demand is that NATO remove troops from countries that joined the group of U.S.-allied nations after 1997. In 1990, under George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State James Baker repeatedly promised Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that if the USSR let the Warsaw Pact nations leave, NATO would not “move one inch eastward.” As is detailed in declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents released in 2017, Bush and the leaders of West Germany, the U.K. and France gave similar assurances …
Today, [Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia] and two others, in addition to the three former Baltic Soviet republics and several formerly neutral countries, are members of NATO.
01/31/2022 @ 12:01 pm
That is pulp, Kosher.
āPutin may not be what Americans would call a good guyā¦ā. Check. In addition to that, that may be the understatement of the last several centuries combined.
āIt is doubtful that Vladimir Putin wants war, and unclear whether he is willing to risk a large scale ground invasionā¦ā. So, heās admittedly not a good guy, and when he wants something, he takes it if he can, and threatens war if he has questions. And he is concerned about NATO.
Putinās issues can be solved. They do not involve the Westās capitulation, or letting him accomplish whatever he can come to from his own unscrupulous devices. There is a solution for what ails him. I will not name it, but it is very hot, very loud, and very sudden.
01/31/2022 @ 12:37 pm
I think this is Glenn Sacks. They mentioned that he has written for WSJ, and some others, and this is from a class in 2007. It takes as little as 40 seconds to see the bs formula that he uses. Heās something of an iconoclast. My assessment of him is that he formulates his opinions more to gain your attention than to actually deliver useful information.
His formula works like this. He tiptoes up to an issue, and offers the opposite of what one might expect. Then he slides in some generalization that canāt really be rejected, and builds upon that as if it has been established fact. I saw a Thanksgiving guest do a similar thing at dinner with his treatise on ātoxic femininity.ā It was laughably absurd, and contains all of the same argument wiggles that Sacks has used in this video, and in his quote from Salon. āPutin is not what Americans would call a good guyā¦ā. Yeah. Ridiculously reductive, but not false. And in this video, about 40 seconds in he talks about how mass media is very anti-male. Then he relates a story about how Amy Winehouse allegedly used to get drunk and beat up her husband. His implied message is, the biased media reports on violence against women, but they are swallowing the real issue, that being violence by women against men. It is rubbish as an argument. It is rubbish as an opinion, and it is transparent as a technique. Yes, Amy Winehouseās treatment of her husband is violent, but her violence against her husband is dwarfed by many orders of magnitude by general violence against womenā¦which actually goes under-reported, not over reported.
Yes, Putin may be nervous about NATO being near his border with armies. It is well that he should be. NATO isnāt attacking anyone, undermining democracy, and killing political opponents. Putin is though. If only fear can keep Putin from doing some of these things, and decency, or respect for laws canāt, then fear it is.
02/01/2022 @ 11:34 am
Letās say Glen Sacks is a putz. My only question here is whether his information about declassified documents is false. If true, putz or not, his point is valid.
01/31/2022 @ 1:21 pm
I had technical difficulties that prevented commenting earlier.
By this time, I am appalled at the non-street savvy comments pandering to the criminal Putin.
The wise things have already been said.
01/31/2022 @ 7:22 pm
My problem is that I donāt think everything Putin does is criminal, nor do I think that he can be completely immune to whatever internal politics there are in Russia and you know the military has to be worried about this. Putin is not Stalin. Yes, he arranges to kill political opponents. However, what heās presenting are historical Russian concerns. Regardless of what I think of him personally, he has a legitimate grievance. An alliance that was created to counter Russian interests is now threatening to show up on his border. He wants guarantees that he doesnāt have to worry about them militarily. For him to regard NATO as a threat is entirely expected and would have been expected by any of his predecessors. I donāt know why everyone here is regarding him solely as a personal actor and ignoring him as a national actor. This action makes complete sense in relation to Russian history.
01/31/2022 @ 7:48 pm
“I donāt know why everyone here is regarding him solely as a personal actor and ignoring him as a national actor.”
Putin’s perspective and thinking are not consistent or in line with that of the Russian people:
“According to a poll by the independent Levada Center published last month, almost 40 percent of Russians see war as either probable or certain. Almost the same number, 38 percent, consider a war between the two countries unlikely, and another 15 percent completely rule out the possibility. That means, in effect, that a majority of Russians are psychologically unprepared for war.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/12/russia-ukraine-putin-war-526967
Putin doesn’t act in the best interests of the Russian people and they know that he doesn’t…
If they don’t know it, they can sense it.
02/01/2022 @ 11:26 am
Ron,
I went to your link. Hereās the first thing it says under the headline:
āRussians largely believe Putin is right about Ukraine and NATO.ā
The first thing the link does, before the article even starts, is make my point concerning how Russia views NATO.
02/01/2022 @ 4:24 pm
“The first thing the link does, before the article even starts, is make my point concerning how Russia views NATO.”
Then the article veers off into a self-contradictory discussion re the mindset of the majority of the Russian people and Putin’s sabre rattling.
Putin is not Russia…
My post is not about NATO.
It’s about the prospect or possibility of Putin’s starting a war with Ukraine.
Please, see my follow-up post.
02/02/2022 @ 10:02 am
I actually think, having reread the post, that Putin is not looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine. Heās looking for an excuse not to. Thatās what heās doing talking to the US right now.
I can hear the answer from here: He doesnāt need an excuse not to.
Thatās exactly what I dispute. I think Putin is more afraid of NATO on his border than he is of the consequences of invading Ukraine. He hasnāt invaded yet because he keeps trying to keep NATO off his border without invading. It doesnāt look good.
You might think that his move on Crimea was about Russian imperialism. It wasnāt; he certainly didnāt need the land. It was about the military value of a port. When Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union the Russians had the port. Then, after Ukrainian independence, they didnāt.
Putin doesnāt need Ukraine for Ukraine. He needs it for geographic protection and heās shouting this to the world: Give me security guarantees and I wonāt cross the border. Heās not asking us to figure out what his purpose is, heās blatantly telling us. However, for some reason the West, including the writers here, including a highly intelligent White House Press Secretary, canāt fathom that he should be afraid of an encroaching NATO. The Warsaw Pact got eliminated, which was NATOās raison dāetre, and all NATO does is expand. Toward Russia.
Gee, how could anyone possibly think weāre not benign? I donāt know, the other side during the Cold War?
So hereās my question:
If weāre so damned benign, why wonāt we give Russia security guarantees? Itās not like heās asking us for territory.
02/02/2022 @ 10:52 am
Kosher, it is absurd to argue whether or not it is about imperialism. It does not matter what it is about. Invading to take Crimea was wrong. Thatās it. Invading to take anything else is wrong. Thatās it.
Putin wants a warm water port. Iād like a private jet and a crew of pilots. Iād like to avoid freeway traffic. Just because I have a reason does not make my desire justify any means of satisfying that desire. I donāt give a fig if he wants a warm water port.
Whether or not we are benign is nearly as ridiculous. What we are not doing is invading for territory. That is enough. NATO exists to prevent countries near the region from invading democracies in the region. You donāt need any guarantees beyond that. Donāt invade democracies in the region. Russia can give itself that guarantee. Any more of a concession would be absurd.
02/02/2022 @ 12:59 pm
“Putin is not looking for an excuse to invade Ukraine. Heās looking for an excuse not to.”
The only way this could make any sense is that Putin is looking for a compelling reason not to invade Ukraine is to save face and make standing down not to appear to be an admission of shabby thinking and miscalculation.
Since when do you need an excuse to do the right thing?
02/02/2022 @ 1:07 pm
“I think Putin is more afraid of NATO on his border than he is of the consequences of invading Ukraine. He hasnāt invaded yet because he keeps trying to keep NATO off his border without invading.”
Kosh,
If you replace the word ‘NATO’ with the word ‘Democracy’, a resolution to the articulation of the issue here becomes more readily apparent:
“I think Putin is more afraid of a Democracy on his border than he is of the consequences of invading Ukraine. He hasnāt invaded yet because he keeps trying to keep a Democracy off his border without invading.”
02/02/2022 @ 2:41 pm
āI think Putin is more afraid of a Democracy on his border than he is of the consequences of invading Ukraine…āāR.P.
Good to the last drop.
02/03/2022 @ 5:58 pm
This isnāt about democracy. Thatās already happened. The Baltic states, Poland, Ukraine, they vote. Itās about tanks, planes, missiles, and troops. NATO is not a democratic organization, itās a military alliance.
02/03/2022 @ 9:43 pm
Kosh, a core principle of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is that member states adhere toĀ democratic values.
NATO is a military alliance for defense purposes only.Ā
Can you identify a Democratic member of NATO that has been characterized as the aggressor in an armed conflict?
Keep in mind that if you can’t, Putin can’t either.
02/04/2022 @ 12:02 am
Turkey
02/04/2022 @ 12:35 am
Kosh read my reply carefully:
Turkey IS NOT a Democracy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/13/nato-members-are-supposed-to-be-democratic-what-happens-when-turkey-isnt/
02/04/2022 @ 3:53 pm
So why restrict your question to democratic NATO members? From a Russian standpoint, that makes no sense at all, particularly given that Turkey has illegally shot down a Russian fighter.
02/05/2022 @ 9:21 am
“So why restrict your question to democratic NATO members?”
As a matter of ideological principle, Democratic nations are not military aggressors.
And because Putin is more afraid of Democracy than he is of NATO.
You need to stop conflating and confusing Putin and Russia.
Putin isn’t Russia and he isn’t representative of the Russian people who would replace him with a Democracy in a heartbeat if given half a chance to do so…
This is why Putin imprisons and assassinates political opponents.
02/24/2022 @ 6:31 pm
https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/NPZ2018.pdf#page=17
This report was referenced by Paul Krugman. It states that Putin and his oligarchs have stolen and are hiding offshore an amount of money that equals 85% of Russiaās GDP. That is a staggering figure. Russiaās oligarchs are hiding more wealth overseas than all of Russia holds domestically.
03/09/2022 @ 11:59 pm
I think the US is closer to that figure than you think.
03/10/2022 @ 10:12 am
https://www.businessinsider.com/wealthy-money-offshore-makes-inequality-look-even-worse?op=1
Funny that you offered no data to back up that insane defense of Russia. Most of what one can find does not show that the US and Russia are close in that respect. Also, most do not speculate about the massive amount of hidden Russian wealth illegally gained through the oligarch network. The data shown here, for example, would give credit for Putin having an annual salary of $140,000 per year, but not his net worth speculated to be over 100 billion..
What is it with your insane urge to defend Russia? I think the figures are not close. If you have data to suggest otherwise, present it. Putin is not a āpickpocketā. Heās a ghoulish butcher.
03/11/2022 @ 12:13 am
Iāve been writing about the concentration of wealth in the US for many years. As of several years ago, I mean a few years pre-Trump, the wealthiest 20% of Americaās population had 84% of Americaās wealth, and the further up you got in that quintile the more concentrated it got, meaning most of that was in a few hands at the top. Now that 84% figure would be considerably higher. I suppose I could research how close we are, probably not quite there. The difference between Russia and us is there the politicians take the money directly whereas here the wealthiest hire the politicians to take it for them.
Iād like to know how much the rest of the money is skewed in Russia. Here the poorest 40%, again, several years ago, now it would be worse, collectively owned less than a third of a percent of Americaās wealth. At that point the Walton family was wealthier than that by themselves. Now we can add at least Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates to that list; unlike before, weāre now talking about individuals rather than whole families with that kind of wealth. I donāt know if in Putinās Russia the poorest get that kind of disadvantage.
This is not to excuse Putin but Iām afraid those numbers arenāt as shocking as weād think at first glance because we really arenāt that far off. Things are that sick here. The last time the middle classā standard of living was improving Nixon was President. Thatās an insanely long time by American standards.
The amount of money in offshore accounts, not just American, is utterly insane. If I remember correctly it exceeds the GDPās of the US and Europe combined.
I hope the guy gets overthrown because I donāt see another way out and Iād like to be shocked by the sheer awfulness of those numbers but our concentration is pretty insane. Further than that, if Trump could have pulled off what Putin pulled off in terms of robbing his country he absolutely would have. We elected a guy who would do that.
What we havenāt done recently that he has is we havenāt attacked a country whose people were not being oppressed by their government. Thatās a big deal. Thatās a very bad crossed line. I have no reason to defend that. Itās not defensible. But when it comes to Putin I canāt play holier than thou too hard in general, though I can at least about this. We could have avoided this at several stages and we didnāt. Thereās too much I canāt be outraged about. Iām simply too disappointed by the lost opportunities and I understand how this happened a great deal better than Iād like to. The inevitability of these events is really sad. And the sense of entitlement at poking a world power is something I find very disturbing. If someone worked for me and was that impolitic in business Iād probably fire them. I wish I were incapable of seeing the US through Putinās eyes but Iām not. I am, thank God, incapable of seeing Ukraine through Putinās eyes.
03/11/2022 @ 12:31 pm
What do you expect me to do with the fact that you have been writing about this for āmany yearsā? Whatās the point of that?
Add to that the fact that you did not address the things I mentioned. It appears that you scanned what I said and and then made your statement about your credentials, and then obviously missed the point altogether.
Allow me to tip you off about one significant difference. 85% of GDP hidden overseas is not the same as 84 or 85% of GDP held. Presumably the amount held overseas is only a portion of that which is held. To compare those two (your statement about the US economy does not compare that) you have to consider that the Russian oligarchs hold a significantly higher amount than 85%. Furthermore, the group called āRussian oligarchā must be an infinitesimal portion of the population, not merely 1%, or even .1%.
No, the US is not remotely close to that figure. 85% held overseas means the money no longer circulates in your economy, and is not taxed. As bad as wealth disparity is in the US, wealth held is not the same as wealth flowing through an economy over a given period of time. Russian oligarchs are repeatedly, over time, taking flowing capital out of the Russian economy to the tune of 85%. That is a massive figure.
03/11/2022 @ 7:11 pm
Wealth inequality is currently the highest among the major world economies. The wealthiest 1 percent in 2000 owned 54 percent of assets in Russia. In the US, this group owned a mere 33 percent. Today, the Russian oligarchs have slightly increased their share of the pie and own 58 percent.
The latest on the subject from Forbes, March, 2022:
“…Russiaās billionaire wealth compared to GDP was still higher as of March 3 than in the U.S., Canada and several European countries. A look at the figure from February 23, when billionaire wealth still stood at almost 21% of Russian GDP…
The U.S. also exhibited an extraordinarily high billionaire wealth at between 14-15% of GDP. But despite the fact that the United States is home to 35% of all the billionaires listed on the Bloomberg index, including the top 9 individuals with net worths between $97 billion and $226 billion, Russian billionaires were still richer in comparison to their countryās economic output.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2022/03/04/how-russias-ultra-wealthy-eclipse-their-countrys-economy-infographic/
03/06/2022 @ 12:59 pm
āThere is no more Russia,ā Anton Dolin, one of Russiaās best-known film critics, wrote on Sunday, announcing his departure. āWe are suffering a catastrophe ā no, not an economic or political one. This is a moral catastrophe.ā
This film critic from Russia sees this as a āmoral catastropheāā¦much like I feel.
01/31/2022 @ 8:01 pm
āMy problem is that I donāt think everything Putin does is criminalā¦ā. You do realize that this is true for every person in history, right? It is also true of every criminal. Andā¦it is entirely beside the point.
ā Putin is not Stalinā¦ā. See above.
So much of this is bonkers that I wonder what has happened to you. āRegarding NATO as a threatā is not a grievance. Any criminal will likely view the authorities as a threat. NATO being on his border is not a threat. Please, now, equate that to what he is doing with Ukraine. No, donāt. He has already taken a piece of Ukraine and has vowed to take more. NATO has not done that, and is not doing that.
In 1864, it made ācomplete senseā in relation to Europeanās histories to enslave Africans, sell them in the Americas, and hold them enslaved in various parts of Europe. Using enslaved labor āmakes complete senseā in plantations for products that made huge profits. That history did not make it legitimate. It made ācomplete senseā for Andrew Jackson to ignore the Supreme Court and move Native Americans to the West. That did not make it legitimate.
Putin is an authoritarian leader. He is acting in his interests, not his countryās.
āYes, he arranges to kill political opponentsā¦ā There is no āhoweverā after that. Thatās the end of the story. If this is some sort of a joke, it isnāt funny.
02/01/2022 @ 11:29 am
What do you mean āAuthorities?ā NATO is not an authority to Russia, itās an adversary. Itās an adversary that should have been completely outdated the instant Russia gave up communism and stopped exporting a revolution. Post-Soviet Russia certainly didnāt have territorial designs on Western Europe.
01/31/2022 @ 8:28 pm
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm
ā The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments.
They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law. They seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area.
They are resolved to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security. They therefore agree to this North Atlantic Treaty :ā
Above is the preamble to the NATO Charter. It is not essentially to counter Russian interests. Russia only makes it so by being counter to that. Once upon a time, the Soviet Bloc existed to counter this, but it failed, and the members left, because they wanted nothing to do with the Soviet Union. They requested to be part of NATO, and Russia does not have a veto on their free actions. How Russia, or Putin see this is not the relevant point. The point is that they are free to do as they choose within all laws and treaties.
01/31/2022 @ 11:51 pm
Kosh, The mentality depicted here is no longer a primary element of Western thinking re Russia or the now defunct Soviet Union…
Putin knows this but is nevertheless willing to exploit what he sees as a weakness re Western empathy toward the people of Russia…
A good bluff is also a con game which is the lie that is at the center of the bluff.
A key element of Putin’s bluff is to con Westerners into believing that his concern is couched in Russian history and heritage…
If you’re buying into that red herring, you’ve been conned sufficiently enough to bite on the bluff…
Please, take a good look at my follow-up post…
Hopefully it will provide you with some reassurance re the accuracy and validity of the position that most of us have taken here:
Kasparov with Velshi re The Matter of Putin’s Bluff on MSNBC
02/01/2022 @ 12:51 pm
Well, no, Kosher. NATO is an authority with respect to Russia, as well as an adversary. It is an adversary for obvious reasons, and it is an authority because it has the diplomatic and the military power to make Russia think twice about invading Ukraine again. There is no law outside of national borders except for military and economic might. Both will come to bear against Russia if Russia tries to steal more of Ukraine, and it appears that Russia knows it.
If Russia/Putin chose to operate differently, the authority would work differently. It could choose to act in concert with the civilized world. But, since it chooses to behave like a rabid animal, it is about to be put down.
02/02/2022 @ 11:43 am
Goodness through the ages one of the major news channels purveyed a heartbreaking synopsis of the Syrian refugee crisis: the children in thin clothes shoeless pattering upon thawed mud, families without fuel source huddled, shivering. An incredible report of survival — courageous perseverance. I mention hereupon to again question foresight, focus and resource logistics of government powers. One day we observe the astronauts in the International Space Shuttle changing T shirts — whilst the simulacrum of existentialism — existentialism wafts to a barely visible asterisk as though an orb hazing light years beyond imagination.
Yesterday Premier Putin defined his insouciant bellicose Ukrainian border occupation as ‘defensive’. Meanwhile, USA copes with anarchistic fact finding in order to maintain its Constitutional Rule of Law due to a euphemistically defined failed insurrection 6 JAN ’21. Along with the narcissistic rhetoric of failed former President 45. He apparently condones domestic mayhem with its intrigue of fascistic subterfuge, perhaps as it fuels his grandiosity. My odd encompassing thesis is the supposition that Putin (at this juncture) would not have staged his potential reclamation of the Ukraine if President 45 would have accepted his election defeat with equanimity.
No doubt the prowess of Artificial Intelligence proffers untold theoretical ramifications to include the end game of ‘man’s inhumanity to man’. Please consider P.F. Sloan’s/Barry McGuire’s mantra-like song: ‘Eve of Destruction’. It is adamantly imperative to be aware of Putin’s draconian treatment of Alexei Navalny and dissenters. Note our own acrimonious book banishing, our usurious distribution of countless guns, our road raging stupefaction of egocentricity. Screech and howl — the gone dead — perpetuity of winter’s night — monsoon thunder.
Or is our species controlled by Artificial Intelligence for the aggrandizement of Artificial Intelligence? Take care ladies and gentlemen. Maybe hydro cleanse those mushrooms.
02/04/2022 @ 7:19 am
Kosher, you know, certain ideas used to bother me. To some extent, certain types of ideas still have the capacity to do so. This defense of Putin is an example of that.
Often, when I have encountered an idea that I just canāt grok, I go through an analysis to understand where the connection has broken. Everyone does this to some degree, but I have been especially interested in this process for quite some time. One of my earliest efforts to understand where understanding leaked away from a conversation was in watching political debates while in high school. At the time, I recall discussions after debates having wide disparities, almost as though differing parties were comparing different subjects. I started taking notes during debates to have actual questions and answers in a transcript which could be carefully analyzed afterwards.
I learned several things by taking this approach, but it did not get me closer to understanding how to manage the communication of ideas. One thing I learned is that people are not primarily focused on relaying truth for the truthās sake. They are mainly focused on relaying facts when and where they are convenient for their purposes. The truth is secondary. The main reason that they are selective and arbitrary about facts and reasoning, to the extent that it exists, is usually to create an emotional product, like a painter chooses hues for a painting, leaving the observer with an overall emotional experience, rather than facts and logical construction. The Carter-Reagan debate in Cleveland was a profound demonstration of this contrast. As I listened closely to the questions and answers, with my head mostly in my notebook, I could hear Carter answer in a substantive way, bludgeoning Reagan who was positively vapid. His aww-shucks manner didnāt register with me, and he lacked any real substance to speak of. Directly afterwards, the pressās assessment was that Carter had defeated Reagan. The next day, after the TV audience response came in, Reagan was thought to have soared above Carter. Reaganās big line from the night was āthere you go againā. The line had essentially no substantive value, but was immensely persuasive for the voting public. It was a response to Carter having been serious, perhaps dour in his style. Reagan was glib and casual, and the American public was persuaded.
I did not know it then, but it was the beginning of forming the understanding that people mostly form their understandings on an emotional basis. They will go a long way leaning toward what they feel while rejecting what can be logically presented. I would not have believed that conclusion at that time, but in the 44 years since, there is quite a lot to support it.
Now, as this applies to a defense of Putin, you might say that you have not offered a defense of Putin. Candidly, from my perspective, it does appear that you have. That could be where some understanding leaks out. How Putin āfeelsā about NATO is entirely irrelevant to the facts, or at least should be. NATO exists to provide defense for democracies in that region. Nothing more. One must depart from reality to see it any differently. Am I biased in this assessment? Yes. I live in the region, and I prefer democracy. Those facts, however, should not condemn my view. Remove me and my bias from the question, and the facts are unchanged. My bias is created by the facts, and not the other way around.
Letās say Putinās position has a bias as well. In his case, his bias is not created by the facts. It is basically emotional claptrap. Your support or defense of Putin, if it can be called that, does not have a real rational basis. This āCold Warā comparison justification is poorly applied at best, and complete nonsense at worst. The USSR, at the end of WWII refused to release areas that it captured during the war. Like the āvanguard partyā concept that the USSR employed in their take on socialism, they were not allowing for freedom of choice in the region that they captured. An defensive organization like NATO is not about aggression toward USSR, or Russia. It is about aggression against freedom. USSRās approach to socialism did not even allow for freedom with its vanguard party nonsense. They chose a pure power approach to a system that was ostensibly about justice. By 1990, their take on justice had entirely imploded, but their use of power has remained unchanged. Their value on freedom, the individual, and truth is essentially zero. They can not be trusted to be honest brokers about their feelings, which can not be seen, nor can they be validated. And that is even if feelings could be used as justification. They have to be judged by their actions and their history. Putin and Russia are the ones with tanks on someone elseās border. All of that other stuff is nonsense.
02/04/2022 @ 4:30 pm
My point isnāt completely about Putin, itās about Russia.
Your point about the history of NATO makes sense up until the fall of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and German reunification. At that point NATO should no longer have had a purpose because Russia was out of the business of exporting a revolution. And yet NATO expanded. By the way, since then a NATO member has illegally shot down a Russian fighter. It happened with Turkey. it is debatable, and improbable, that the Russian fighter violated Turkish airspace. What is not debatable is that the fighter was not given enough warning time to react and leave the area.
This also ignores the legitimacy of what Russiaās asking for. If the West made commitments not to expand NATO toward Russia and violated those commitments, Putin or his military are not just being paranoid.
If youāre dealing with a nation, even a nation you consider irrational, it makes sense to figure out what theyāre afraid of. To refuse to acknowledge those fears, particularly when dealing with a nation as powerful as Russia, is irresponsible as Hell, particularly when addressing those fears is basically free.
This really shouldnāt be that difficult a negotiation. Back the Hell off Ukraine and stop shooting at them (thereās been low-grade fighting for years) and we wonāt push NATO to your border.
It doesnāt matter if Russia is right or wrong about fearing NATO. All that matters is that they do and that that fear has an important impact on international relations.
One of my greater frustrations in international relations is watching nations and other significant actors ignore each othersā concerns when addressing those concerns could be cheap and effective. Iāve watched this for years with Israel/Palestine and discussed it on several occasions. Iāve discussed this with you in slightly different language, about valuing the scarce commodity. If Israelis treated Palestinians with respect at checkpoints and Palestinians stuck to a non-violent script, we could have had a Palestinian state more than a quarter century ago. It doesnāt matter if Israelis are right to worry about their safety or if Palestinians are right to worry about their dignity; what we need to know is that they do and that taking that into account matters if you hope to accomplish anything important. Weāre running into the same thing with Russia. Again, they have one of the best historical reasons in the world to worry about who armed against them comes up on their borders. This is true whether Putin is a thug or not and his thuggishness does not make this irrelevant.
We can shout āyouāre wrongā and then be right while we watch a lot of Ukrainians get killed. Thatās not success, itās failure. We arenāt going to war over Ukraine. We and the Ukrainians will be better off if Russia doesnāt invade.
So now Russia is getting closer to China because of trade threats from the West. Just what we need, more Chinese access to Russian military technology. If Russia invades we get to punish them but it costs us and it doesnāt help Ukrainians. We could say that such an action would damage Russia and thereby be irrational but to do so would be to ignore their fear. Freedom from that fear makes their action rational as far as theyāre concerned.
02/04/2022 @ 6:56 pm
‘[sic]…It happened with Turkey. it is debatable, and improbable, that the Russian fighter violated Turkish airspace. What is not debatable is that the fighter was not given enough warning time to react and leave the area.’ Koshersalaami, I googled (G’d)
the 24NOV2015 shoot-down you reference and learned that Turkey has a viable explanation as well as some adroit empirical rationalizations–substantiations for its defensive action…BBC’s website includes a video along with a horrific ‘dice roll-like’ continuum of the fatality. Also, your most recent 23 lines includes use of ‘fear’ a half-dozen times…please consider that the aggregate 944.52 m NATO residents probably perceive Putin’s rogue, menacing behavior as aggressive. Obviously he doesn’t ‘act’ alone. However his outrageous authoritarian flouting (mobilization) of WMDs is unacceptable to peace-seeking free people. At least he’s rethought his intrusion of Ireland’s territorial sea. Protein and not pyrotechnics is the quest. Nutrition and may God help us! no apocalypse.
02/04/2022 @ 11:16 pm
Russia isnāt threatening NATO, unless somethingās going on that Iām not aware of. Russia is threatening a non-member. Weāre moving to protect nations that used to be in the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact but I havenāt heard that Putin is threatening them directly.
Sure Iām saying āfearā a lot. Thatās the issue as far as Russia is concerned. NATO has never been anything other than an armed opponent of Russia. Russia has a long history of being invaded and the last invasion was horrific and on a scale completely different than anything we have experience with. The Holocaust was bad and Jews lost a third of our world population in about three years. Russiaās casualty count by Nazi hands was more than triple that. We can dismiss their experience all we want but that doesnāt affect their perceptions and it is their perceptions that will determine if Ukraine gets invaded.
02/04/2022 @ 9:11 pm
As NATO expands toward Russia, they only do so to protect democracies. They do so at the request of the countries joining. Ukraine has not joined yet, but has requested to do so. By what standard should Russia determine who countries ally themselves with? None.
As for shooting down a Russian fighter, shooting down an aircraft is not an invasion, no matter where it occurs. It is an act of aggression. You might even argue that it is an act of war, but a country can not be grabbed and held by shooting down any aircraft. That action can not be used as the equivalent of an invasion, like Russia has already done with Ukraine.
I donāt find the Israel/Palestine comparison useful. Israel/Palestine is a special case. I favor guarantees for Israelās existence. I do not favor the same such guarantees for Russia, especially when they have a thug leader, and when they are intentionally against democracies. Both of those characteristics matter.
Russia may or may not fear NATO. We know that Putin certainly does. Putin is not doing Russia any favors by allowing him to stay. If they are unable to get rid of him, and he tries to increase his holdings, then we all lose. Giving in to him isnāt going to ameliorate anything. Neville Chamberlain learned that in 1938 re: the Sudetenland. Giving in to someone like Putin will not bring peace.
02/04/2022 @ 11:09 pm
āRussia may or may not fear NATO.ā According to Ronās link, for the most part the Russians do. But it doesnāt matter what you think the Russians should think. No one is approaching your border. You have no experience with your border being approached. And thatās one of the reasons the Munich analogy doesnāt hold. Czechoslovakia was not expanding toward Germany.
It is what the Russians think that is going to determine whether there is an invasion of Ukraine. If they are more afraid of a NATO presence on their border than they are of Western sanctions, an invasion is very likely, and we are not likely to commit troops to fighting Russia unless they invade anyone else. Right or wrong, thatās reality. It doesnāt matter whether you think we should have to deal with it, we have to deal with it. If Russia is afraid of NATO on their border, we insist on Ukraine being able to join NATO, and the Russians believe (correctly) that the only way to prevent that is to invade Ukraine, the logical outcome is a Russian invasion. We will not commit enough to prevent it and Germany hasnāt committed to sanctions if they invade. We can write what we want but what our country controls is sanctions and security guarantees. We can arm Ukraine but not enough.
02/05/2022 @ 10:03 am
‘ āRussia may or may not fear NATO.ā According to Ronās link, for the most part the Russians do.’
According to the article I linked, the majority of the Russian people aren’t even psychologically prepared for a war with Ukraine or NATO much less fearful of the prospect of being attacked by either.
Putin is more afraid of Democracy than he is of NATO.
You need to stop conflating and confusing Putin and Russia.
Putin isnāt Russia and he isnāt representative of the Russian people who would replace him with a Democracy in a heartbeat if given half a chance to do soā¦
This is why Putin imprisons and assassinates political opponents.
According to recent reports from reliable sources, Putin operatives have been caught in the process of staging a fake video which depicts a purported atrocity perpetrated by Ukraine against Russians.
The video was to have been aired in Russia to gin up public support as the justification for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine….
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russia-planning-video-fake-ukrainian-attack-corpses/story?id=82651966
If what you are arguing about the RUSSIAN PEOPLE bears a scintilla of truth, why would Putin need a phony video to gin up public support for putting an end to a ‘perceived’ threat?
02/06/2022 @ 12:33 am
Iām not at all sure the Russian people want to go to war. I didnāt state that. What I said was that the Russians agree with Putin about Ukraine and NATO. They may not favor the same solution but they do see the same problem. Thatās from your source.
Why he would do that, which I certainly do not justify, and assuming the information is reliable, which it may not be, is to bring Russians around to his solution.
02/05/2022 @ 7:13 am
Russia is on my border. It has tanks on the border of a democracy. You can draw a straight line from where I sit on this couch to where Russia has staged tanks without crossing a totalitarian state. That is the border.
02/05/2022 @ 10:10 am
‘I donāt find the Israel/Palestine comparison useful.”
You nailed it!!!
In my view, this is the impetus behind Koshersalaami’s entire argument….
02/06/2022 @ 12:44 am
I have looked at Israel for longer than I have looked at Russia in this regard because Israel has faced existential threats all along and Russiaās threats have been a lot less pressing, but I have written for years that Israel and Russia have this in common – they both understand existential threats because they both experienced them being realized by the Nazis. The West canāt relate to this. Even when France was occupied by the Nazis, we didnāt see enormous mass murders of the French like we did in, say, Poland, and certainly in Russia.
My question for both of you is this:
What is so unreasonable about security guarantees?
That doesnāt strike me as a warlike demand. And theyāre being blatant about this, saying security guarantees mean they donāt invade Ukraine. The Russians have been extremely vocal and extremely clear that what they will not accept is NATO on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
If NATO is benign, why would NATO object to giving Russia security guarantees? Weāre not talking about the freedom to interfere with Ukraine, thatās not what a security guarantee is. In fact, a security guarantee could easily be conditional. If the West had any sense at all, thatās what would be negotiated.
The closest thing the West has experienced to this was the Cuban Missile Crisis. (By the way, we had to remove nuclear missiles from Turkey but they either didnāt all come out or some went back because I knew someone stationed at a secret American nuclear outpost in Turkey way, way after the Cuban Missile Crisis.)
02/06/2022 @ 9:23 am
āā¦The West canāt relate to this…ā
This is an absurd proposition. It is logically unsupportable for reasons that I do not care to list, and even worse, you seem to be claiming an area of expertise within which you imply that no one else can challenge nor comprehend. I donāt know what I hate more about that kind of crap. First, it is just absurd. Second, it is insulting, and third, probably most importantly, if we can not understand one anotherās condition in civilization, then civilization has no chance. Language and cooperation depend entirely upon the ability to understand beyond oneās personal experience, or tribal connection. Without even getting into a list of examples that refute that notion, it can be asserted that it is a fatally flawed proposition. I do assert it.
Security guarantees are not unreasonable. I certainly did not say that they were. The only thing that I said that is close to that is that it is unreasonable for Russia to determine how other countries form their alliances. Donāt confuse the two. NATO exists as a treaty. That treaty functions as a security guarantee of primarily democratic countries in a specific region. How could you possibly miss that? Russia is the country opposed to the security guarantee.
I said I would not list them, but I probably need to mention just a few. For starters, people face existential crises everywhere, and all the time. They take that understanding to everything that they do, including forming governments. Poland and Israel did not invent the awareness of being alive, and threats to that condition.
As a normal part of a normal workday, I used to drive home with my ID and badge DISPLAYED on the passenger seat to reduce the chance of being killed. I am considering moving out of state to get away from my own state which now has barns painted with Confederate flags, and Trump signs. One of the few times I recall my parents slipping up and allowing themselves to be seen arguing in front of me was about Bull Connor, and a car trip through the South. Eventually Dad drive alone, and I was placed on a plane by Mom, and retrieved by Dad when he arrived. We were not trying to escape an invading army from a police state to escape to freedom. That was just a trip to see my grandparents. We (I) still live in that police state. I am not unique either. Lots of people face existential crises here and now. I live in a country where my rights are guaranteed by a piece of paper. A repeal of a couple of amendments changes my condition drastically. No such clauses apply to you in our country.
You once said that you came to a rather late understanding of racism in our countryā¦on Open Salon, etc. I certainly welcome that belated understanding, but this bit about āthe Westā not understanding existential crisis shows that the lesson has not fully taken. I am a large, physically capable man. I am trained in the use of a number of weapons, and physical self defense. Outside of my job, I have never seen the need to be armed. That changed when Trump was elected. The threat to me, as I see it, is not being on the wrong dark street at any particular time. I have a reasonably good advantage there. The threat to me is know-nothing-ism, authoritarianism, and the advance of racism of the last half decade. Have you mapped out your escape in the event that the government declares your existence to be illegal?
āā¦they both understand existential threats because they both experienced them being realized by the Nazisā¦ā
I could go on, and on about this, but I will leave it at this. Most of the experience that you cite here is by people who are now dead. The understanding that people there had has been passed on to the living. So, do you imagine that Poland and Israel are hermetically sealed, and no information gets in or out? Do you imagine that there are no people in the West who have that experience from exactly the same sources, rather than merely similar ones? Ridiculous. When I first met my college roommateās parents at their home in Ashtabula, Laszlo Sr, my roommateās dad went and retrieved a book from a shelf without saying a word. He was a stern, serious man who had escaped Hungary in 1956 with his wife and baby daughter. Laszlo Jr (my roommate) was born in Ohio. When Lazās dad reached me, he opened the book he had selected to a specific page. The book was entirely in Hungarian, so I obviously could not read it. He pointed to a statue of Martin Luther King Jr. Then he explained to me, in heavily accented English, how important Dr. King was to Hungarians. By the way, that man, Dr. King was murdered because of the principles he represented. Those principles were and are hope for people like me, here, as well as people like Laszlo Sr from Hungary. So, is it your understanding that information only gets in to countries in the East, but it does not get out?
02/07/2022 @ 9:03 pm
Of course itās possible for the West to relate to it but thereās no sign that they get it at all.
Yes, generations are dying out, but donāt expect the attitudes to die out that quickly. Iām too young to have experienced the Holocaust and Iāve never experienced a pogrom, but I was raised on those. I was brought up with that as my perspective. No Southerner can remember the Civil War but I assure you that too many of their attitudes are still shaped by it.
We know that the Second World War is huge in Russian history and mythology. We know that the senior Russian military leadership was raised on that war and experienced the Cold War, so they all have very ingrained attitudes toward NATO. The Cold War is over and itās not. I assure you that the US and Russia still have one Hell of a lot of ICBMās and submarine launched missiles aimed at each other. We still attempt to track each othersā nuclear subs. We are still involved in a sort of arms race. The Russians are the best in the world at antiaircraft missiles precisely because theyāre afraid of being targeted by aircraft, particularly stealth aircraft.
Hereās the real reason I think what I think about this threat to invade Ukraine. It is exactly what Iād predict. Now, I could be wrong, there could be factors I donāt see pushing down that domino, but the chain of dominoes I do see lead straight to this. This is what Iād expect to see. If the real possibility of Ukraine joining NATO were raised, Iād expect them to pitch a fit about it precisely because of what I know of their background, how they view the threat of invasion, and what their militaryās background is when it comes to NATO, starting with the former KGB agent and Cold Warrior who heads the country. Iād expect them to find Ukrainian membership in NATO intolerable to the point that they would engage in war to prevent it. If they were not to invade I would expect them to demand security guarantees.
Maybe Iām wrong but it looks exactly like where my view of them would lead. I hear them screaming about NATO. I hear them talking about security guarantees. And I see a Western reaction that consists of āNo, youāre not being reasonable.ā And I think āDo you have any idea who youāre dealing with? Are you looking at these people? Are you looking about what has been driving them?ā
Maybe Iām full of shit. Maybe this is Putin being power hungry, not having defense concerns at all, that a warm water port happened to be on his Christmas list, that this is all about regional hegemony and not perceived threat reaction at all.
How justified this is or is not is beside the point. All that matters is whatās driving the Russian train.
I guess weāll soon find out. If Iām going to doubt myself it will be because you donāt see it, but itās slapping me in the face. But again, I could be full of shit. Maybe the threat of sanctions will prevent an invasion.
It would be great if Iām wrong.
02/07/2022 @ 9:56 pm
Kosher, youāre stacking. That is a long response saying that, with you as an example, you can operate on principles taught from the lesson of the Holocaust. I agree that you can. I had a history teacher in high school who taught a class called āOppressionā, who used to say, ādonāt get on that train.ā Iāve told that story. His family was lost in the Holocaust. I think about that lesson to this day. That lesson, and many more have been absorbed in āthe Westā. You are an example of that yourself. You canāt have it both ways.
If we were to come under attack here in the US, would there be shock? Absolutely. But, to say that the West canāt comprehend existential threatā¦is just absurd. It would not even be worth arguing except for the fact that you want to use it as a pillar in your argument that Russia feels a certain way, and therefore NATO must do something that would assuage their fears. Thatās bananas.
The fortunate thing is that no one is apparently sharing that view among the people who will either make this thing happen or not. If Russia does invade, it wont be because NATO concedes that it is the threat, and it frightened Russia. It would be a compound tragedy if they did. They may invade anyway, and there may be war, but if NATO concedes that it is the problem, that will be the first stage of its collapse. And if that happens, lots of other dominoes start to fall. Significant among them might be Taiwan, since the collapse of NATO would demonstrate that the US is not good as an ally.
02/08/2022 @ 2:17 pm
Whatās Stacking?
You ignored part of my answer. I said of course the West is capable of understanding it but they show no sign of doing so.
I want to argue that Russia feels a certain way?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russia-biden-putin-macron/
If youāre subscribed to the Washington Post, have a look at that. What Putin is telling Macron is pretty much exactly what Iāve been telling you and itās what Macron is reacting to.
02/06/2022 @ 7:48 pm
“What is so unreasonable about security guarantees?”
Assuming that ‘security guarantees’ would come as the result of a negotiated arrangement or settlement, which model or paradigm would you prefer:
Plea Bargain or Let’s Make a Deal?
02/05/2022 @ 4:35 pm
I suspect it too. To be fair, he needs to declare it overtly before it can be rebutted. So far he has only hinted at it. To declare it is to destroy the value of this argument because matters like these have to be case specific. The comparison asks that you focus on how either Russian people or Putin feel. Starting a war must not be justified based upon feelings. They may choose actions based upon feelings. I donāt deny that, but to tell the world that you are making war based upon a feeling will never meet the definition of casus belli.
02/07/2022 @ 1:21 pm
Dammit Koshersalaami why don’t you watch/listen to Gary Kasparov and respond to his assessment and analysis?
If you can continue to wax poetic and rhapsodize about the ‘feelings’ and ‘perceptions’ of Putin and the Russian people, which you have continued to brazenly confuse and conflate here, this conversation and debate cannot result in a productive understanding of the issues raised.
If you haven’t already done so, look at the video!!!
“Kasparov was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein (Russian: ŠŠ°ŃŠøŠŗ ŠŠøĢŠ¼Š¾Š²ŠøŃ ŠŠ°Š¹Š½ŃŃŠµŠ¹Š½, Garik Kimovich Vainshtein) inĀ Baku,Ā Azerbaijan SSRĀ (nowĀ Azerbaijan),Ā Soviet Union. His father, Kim Moiseyevich Weinstein, wasĀ Jewish, and his mother, Klara Shagenovna Gasparian, wasĀ Armenian.[13][14][15][16]Ā Kasparov has described himself as a “self-appointed Christian”, although “very indifferent”[17]Ā and identifies as Russian: “although I’m half-Armenian, half-Jewish, I consider myself Russian because Russian is my native tongue, and I grew up with Russian culture.”[18][19]”——Wikipedia
Kasparov is an American Russian Jew who serendipitously agrees with what I have articulated here point for point and in typical OS fashion you have chosen to ignore the post which contains this video because it clearly, unambiguously, undeniably, and indisputably refutes the case you are making here.
Kasparov would say that you’re wrong and it seems to me that you simply can’t handle the idea that my assessment and analysis, as corroborated by Kasparov, is correct and accurate…
This entire thread has been extended to nearly 70 comments because of your persistent pursuit of the notion that there is a similarly and relationship between the respective Russian and Israeli circumstances and conditions.
It is in this regard that your argument and case are flat out wrong.
An idea can be absorbed and engulfed by the mind while the mind can be absorbed and engulfed by a belief.
02/07/2022 @ 8:44 pm
Iām not waxing poetic about that at all. My source for that is your link. The first thing it says is that in general Russians feel the same way about Ukraine and NATO as Putin does. Later on it says that when Putin took Crimea his approval ratings rose over 80%. It also says that a lot of them donāt want war, but the idea that Putinās attitude toward NATO is Putinās alone is refuted by your source. Thatās the source Iām using.
Kasparov is making a prediction, that itās a bluff. Heās saying that as a result of Soviet oppression the former Warsaw Pact nations are heading straight for NATO. That part is true, but the fact that itās true has no bearing on whether Putin invades. So for our purposes theyāre irrelevant. It doesnāt matter if Putin is right or wrong. All that matters is whether this is a straight bluff or not and what security guarantees cost us.
We can simply wait. We can say āIf you invade, the sanctions will be really, really severe.ā And we can mean it. And, if the invasion happens, we should do exactly that, no question. And then weāll shortly find out if heās bluffing or not. I hope so but I doubt it.
02/08/2022 @ 1:15 am
“…former Warsaw Pact nations are heading straight for NATO. That part is true, but the fact that itās true has no bearing on whether Putin invades….”
Kosh, you’ve spent a significant portion of your argument decrying the notion that Russia is threatened by the advance and spread of NATO which may indeed “surround” Russia at some point.
You have repeatedly argued that it is this ‘existential threat’ that gives Putin his justification for moving to protect the Russian people against ‘perceived’ NATO aggression.
It is more than somewhat duplicitous for you to now suggest that the fact that former Warsaw Pact nations heading straight for NATO is irrelevant..
“It doesnāt matter if Putin is right or wrong. All that matters is whether this is a straight bluff or not…’
The bluff is all about being right or wrong.
The bluff is employed when the person bluffing believes he/she has made the correct and accurate analysis and assessment of the
opponent’s position and posture.
The way to beat the poker ‘bluff’ is call or raise it.
Putin expected the US and NATO to give in and fold…
The West must make Putin believe that they have no intention of doing that.
02/08/2022 @ 4:07 pm
Letās understand ājustificationā here. It is how heās justifying invading. That has nothing to do with my justifying it.
His opinion is the one that matters because hie makes the decision to invade or not.
Actually, I have thought for years that the smart thing to do was to offer Russia NATO membership.
02/08/2022 @ 5:30 pm
“…the smart thing to do was to offer Russia NATO…’
I’m assuming that you meant membership in NATO.
That being so, it should have been done before a criminal gained control of the Russian government.
02/08/2022 @ 6:05 pm
Well, yes
02/08/2022 @ 4:34 pm
Stacking is listing a series of facts in a line of reasoning that are either not relevant, or they are relevant but not contested. I should not have said it. While we do both know that WWII is huge in Russian mythology, etc, I was a bit impatient in wanting to excise it. I directed focus to your statement about being raised with that focus. If that is true, I assume, you have to count that awareness in in the West rather than count it out. It seems granular, but I think it is important in not allowing Russiaās perspective to be some sort of abuse pathology.
Youāre not full of shit. Your reasoning is good. I see one, maybe two areas of disagreement. First, I donāt believe Russia should be allowed to call the tune. This particular tactic will repeat until it is stopped. Second, as Ron and Kasparov have pointed out, Putin is bluffing. It is reasonable to conclude that Putin would like to accomplish his goal at the lowest cost to himself and his country. That said, that does not mean that he will no go through with an invasion. I agree with you that he is likely to do so. I just think it is not in our best interest to allow it, not in Europeās best interest, and likely not in Taiwanās interest either.
02/08/2022 @ 6:20 pm
Thank you
What do you mean by āallow it?ā Strictly speaking, we canāt prevent it. We can sanction if it happens but at this point thatās damned near a given.
So what are our choices?
If heās bluffing, give him nothing and it costs us nothing.
If heās not bluffing (and, given what I know of Russian thinking, I very much doubt heās bluffing, even if that puts me at odds with Kasparov) and we assume heās not bluffing, we have two choices.
1. Give him a security guarantee. Attach lots of conditions. Avert the invasion. Because the guarantee is likely to be both conditional and intangible (he gets nothing of substance up front), an invasion nullifies the guarantee, meaning heās gained nothing by the concession if he invades.
2. Give him nothing, let him invade, and slap sanctions on him.
Those are our options.
I do not think giving him security guarantees costs us anything. It may actually benefit Ukraine because it takes the big part of Russiaās worry off the table, meaning it takes a lot of the incentive to worry about Ukraine off the table. But Iām not talking about this for Ukraineās benefit.
Ukraine is not an ally and yet weāve supplied them with a lot of arms anyway, meaning NATO doesnāt fail as an ally.
The question then comes up about China. This is not analogous to the mistake Obama made with his line in the sand with Syria. He should have bombed something immediately. Does it give China the signal that we can be pushed? The situation there is actually backward: It is China that is trying to expand, not allies of the US. Russiaās aggression has been limited and local. Chinaās has been a whole lot wider. Theyāve managed to piss off an almost unbelievable number of nations including even picking a fight about fishing rights with Ecuador. Yes, Ecuador. By overfishing around the GalĆ”pagos Islands. Theyāve pissed off the Vietnamese, the Indians, the Japanese. Hell, they managed to piss off the Russians by saying that Vladivostok is actually Chinese.
One thing about a security guarantee is it might have the consequence of slowing or stopping Russiaās current move toward China because right now they need each other. Their relationship isnāt like the old days when Brezhnev approached Nixon about nuking China and Nixon refused to allow it. (That one wasnāt very public.)
02/08/2022 @ 7:04 pm
Good question.
I said the West canāt allow Russia to call the tune. By that I mean that Russia vs the West is a pure power struggle. Russia can not be allowed to define the struggle by their terms and determine the solution. A subjective feeling that Russia may have is not a legitimate bargaining position. Try going into a car dealership and bargaining for a car based upon how much you feel you should have it. The terms that will settle the negotiation will require some universally valued money, not some subjectively defined feeling.
As for bluffing, my understanding of bluffing is not determined by whether or not Putin will attack. Heās bluffing hoping that he does not have to. I think it can not be known for certain if he will attack. NATO just has to be prepared for Russia to invade in either case. Russia has NATO backed up against the edge of a political cliff. Heās banking on the fractures within US society itself will make it unwilling to defend Ukraine, and he is banking that the pressure that he and Trump have placed on NATO will cause NATO to crumble. If NATO does not defend Ukraine, it is demonstrated that it may not defend anyone else. It is a bluff at this point because he has not already invaded, not because he never intends to invade. Heās trying to extract concessions without war. Basically, NATO has to make him make warā¦or not.
02/09/2022 @ 12:29 am
The car dealership analogy is exactly whatās wrong here because Putin does have the ability to invade no matter what. As to the West not having the stomach for it, no one has said theyād send troops. Or fighters or bombers. The US has committed plenty in arms but has no intention of providing people. Putin does āt have to bluff to get that. He has that now.
02/08/2022 @ 8:04 pm
Bitey, If you believe that Putin “is likely to do so…”, then you can’t believe that he’s bluffing…
“…Putin would like to accomplish his goal at the lowest cost to himself and his country…”
Hence the bluff.
Putin and his inner circle of Russian oligarchs have over 3 billion in personal assets in America that would likely be frozen the moment he puts a boot on the ground inside Ukraine.
My experience with high stakes, big stack, egotistical, money grubbing poker bullies is such that they aren’t willing to risk all they have when confronted with the prospect of losing with a marginal hand….
Putin calculated that, if he applied enough pressure, the US and NATO would give in and fold.
If the West can show him that he was wrong, he will seek an “off ramp” and use it if he can do so without losing face….
02/08/2022 @ 10:52 pm
I had a lengthy response to this, but BindleSnitch would not let me respond. Then it blocked me for a few hours.
Basically, I think Putin is bluffing until and unless he decides to go beyond a bluff. I think he would be willing to take NATO down, and absorb Ukraine without firing a shot if he does not have to. I also think he may invade if his bluff does not work. I am persuaded by your analysis, and Kasparovās. I just think both possibilities exist currently. Itās kind of a Schrƶdingerās cat scenario.
02/09/2022 @ 5:30 am
The car analogy is not about the ability of the transaction. It is about the appropriateness of the negotiation. Russiaās ability to do this is not questioned. NATO exists because USSR has demonstrated its ability to swallow neighboring countries.
02/09/2022 @ 12:23 pm
“NATO exists because USSR has demonstrated its ability to swallow neighboring countries.”
…And Putin’s continued and continuing willingness to do so…
02/09/2022 @ 6:42 pm
NATO exists because the Soviet Union was exporting the communist revolution and was trying to overthrow governments in a way analogous to that of Iran or ISIS. However, when the Soviet Union dissolved Russia gave up communism. This is the key piece of the puzzle that I find strangely, strangely ignored. Russia stopped exporting a revolution, and that revolution was Russiaās biggest threat to the world. The threat stopped thirty years ago. NATO has expanded since.
02/09/2022 @ 6:43 pm
There is no Iron Curtain.
02/09/2022 @ 4:15 pm
One of the choices presented is to do nothing but sanctions if the invasion happens.
From what I can see the Russians are not as,Ing for money or territory. Theyāre asking for what is in essence a non-aggression agreement.
So the Russians, if they are serious about what they really want, are offering a choice. Theyāre going to stop Ukraine from joining NATO. Will it be forcible or not?
Appropriateness in terms of outcome is not relevant. Our reaction to Russian fears is irrelevant because Russian fears are what determine Russiaās actions, not our take on their fears.
02/09/2022 @ 5:39 pm
This has been an interesting process because I think we have the distilled essence of our disagreement. I get how you have arrived at your view. I just disagree with it. I disagree with the notion that Russia fears NATO so much that it is willing to risk war with it. I also donāt trust Putin at all. Iām not sure if you have addressed it, but it seems important that Putin seeks to create a propaganda video to make Russia look like victims of a Ukrainian attack. Have you addressed that? Is it reasonable that someone would make a fraudulent argument about the very matter that is at the center of their complaint? It seems to me that only a tangential point can be made fraudulently. A distraction. Russia wants to kill the peaceā¦to save it?
02/09/2022 @ 6:36 pm
Putinās concern is not Ukraine, itās NATO. Sure I know what Putin is rumored to be planning – the Nazis did it when they attacked Poland in 1939, actually putting German soldiers in Polish uniforms so that it looked like Polish aggression.
Putin is a Machiavellian with a problem. He is afraid of having NATO on his border, at least to that extent. Everything weāre looking at amounts to his figuring out how to solve the problem. He and his officials have been very vocal about exactly what his problem is.
Youāre very worried about Putinās morality. Iām not because I donāt view it as helpful to the problem at hand. That Putin fears NATOās close presence is a given. He has said āNATO has been moving toward Russia, Russia has not moved toward NATO.ā The Russians have acrimonious arguments with the Americans about this and theyāre utterly unambiguous about what their problem is. Wondering whether this is on the level complicates the problem, particularly given that it is 100% consistent with both their history and their behavior. We donāt need to look under rocks to find out whatās really going on. Theyāre screaming at us about whatās really going on.
Putin doesnāt want to look aggressive. Putin just wants to keep NATO out of Ukraine. If he has to attack Ukraine to do that, it is entirely feasible that heād try to make Russia look like the victim. Not that it would fool anyone.
Why would we negotiate with anyone threatening to invade a neighboring country? If we were to do so seriously, the reason is that what the other country wants is not the sort of thing that typically shows up in a blackmail negotiation. Heās not asking for territory. Heās not asking for money. Heās asking for safety.
Whether or not you think that it is irrational for him to be doing that doesnāt matter. That is what heās asking for. You can say that he had safety to begin with because of the nature of NATO. He disagrees, and being senior in the KGB means heās aware of the nature of NATO in ways weāre not.
Now we deal with something morally interesting. Assuming he isnāt bluffing, if we give him his security guarantees – as conditional as we want to make them in the course of negotiations – he doesnāt invade. That saves a whole lot of lives. One could say: Iād rather tens of thousands of Ukrainians die than we negotiate about NATO with Putin.
And weāve caused ourselves another problem, not so much by not making an agreement about NATO but by not taking his concern seriously at all. Xi Jinping is traveling to meet a head of state for the first time in years, and itās Putin at a time when we really, really want to isolate China.
02/09/2022 @ 6:37 pm
Now, you might disagree with the notion that Putin is wiling to risk war because heās that afraid of NATO in Ukraine. My answer to that is call his bluff. Then weāll know. If he invades, youāll know he wasnāt kidding.
02/09/2022 @ 7:57 pm
āā¦Whether or not you think that it is irrational for him to be doing that doesnāt matterā¦ā
Give me a little credit. Here is how it matters. In an emergency situation, like a hostage taking, one of the first things you do is ascertain the emotional state of the suspect. If he is acting irrationally, your ability to negotiate with him is more limited. The goal is to de-escalate the situation, and free the hostages, but if the suspect is nuts, you lure him into the open and a sniper puts two rounds in his head. Granted, this is not a bank robbery, but the lesson holds for determining the state of mind of the aggressor. It will always matter whether or not he is acting/planning irrationally. I guarantee you analysts have pored over video of Putinās meeting with Macron, and are making every effort at determining Putinās state of mind. Youāre kidding yourself if you think otherwise.
02/09/2022 @ 7:01 pm
“…Putin seeks to create a propaganda video to make Russia look like victims of a Ukrainian attack. Have you addressed that?”
Bitey, I addressed this issue a while back in the thread…
Kosher reacted to it but not adequately.
Here’s my comment and question:
‘According to recent reports from reliable sources, Putin operatives have been caught in the process of staging a fake video which depicts a purported atrocity perpetrated by Ukraine against Russians.
The video was to have been aired in Russia to gin up public support as the justification for Putinās invasion of Ukraineā¦.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-russia-planning-video-fake-ukrainian-attack-corpses/story?id=82651966
If what you are arguing about the RUSSIAN PEOPLE bears a scintilla of truth, why would Putin need a phony video to gin up public support for putting an end to a āperceivedā threat?’
02/09/2022 @ 3:08 pm
WTI Crude?! 89.47
Hazy shade of winter … woke up, bad dream:
Putin skateboarding!
Artificial turf — winking his pecs — scraped knuckles.
02/09/2022 @ 7:19 pm
No, not so much. USSR didnāt invade Czechoslovakia with communism. It invaded with tanks. Yes, they brought communism along with them, but they shot people at the Berlin Wall with rifles, not books of Marx. That wall was topped with concertina wire, not harsh looks.
Has it been 30 years already since the end of Communism? Hmmm. How long ago did Russia snatch Crimea? Has it been 30 months?
02/09/2022 @ 7:43 pm
This may be the worst argument I have ever seen.
āPutinās concern is not Ukraine. Itās NATOā
All the more reason to stop him where he is. There is moreā¦in fact ALLā¦of NATO is beyond Ukraine. Your assertion means this is just the first step in a longer process.
Letās see, Russia didnāt advance toward NATO. Technically, yes. But the USSR did advance toward the free world, and then never let go of the countries until it failed, and they could extricate themselves. And donāt do the switch this time re: socialist revolution. That is an insult to everyoneās intelligence. USSR didnāt even apply the socialist revolution within its own borders. It was a totalitarian state with a leadership that lived very different lives from the worker. All of those former Soviet satellite nations could have easily chosen to remain if they wanted to. They did not want to. They donāt want to now.
02/10/2022 @ 12:16 am
You think the USSR was what, capitalist? I donāt like how any of those nations applied communism but the government sure as Hell owned industry and, for most of its history, agriculture. You write about this like you have a short memory or perhaps itās a question of age. When the USSR was the USSR, people couldnāt leave. Artists couldnāt leave without their families staying behind so youād be separated from your family if you Defected. And Russia was exporting its system, to China, Cuba, North Vietnam, North Korea, Eastern Europe. The end of communism in Russia was worldwide a huge thing. It was a major thing that the USSR let the Jews leave given that religion was mostly illegal in the USSR. Donāt talk to me about insulting intelligence. I have too long a memory.
02/10/2022 @ 6:38 am
I certainly remember all of that. There are so many points that I have not even raised several. The fact that people were not allowed to leave was just one of many. When I said the nations could have remained if they wanted to, I meant the nations, not the individuals. Yes, they were held captive too. Yes, the end of communism was a huge thing. That did not mean that Russia stopped oppressing people. It stumbled forward for a couple of years under Yeltsin until Putin took over and started assembling his Kleptocracy.
Look, of course USSR was not capitalistic. And there is exploitation in capitalism because it is essentially a power system. Wealth, as a form of power controls everything. Socialism was a system of social justice. āEach according to his needāā¦etc. However, as applied in Russian and Chinese, and Korean, and Cuban communism, it is just another power system under the guise of justice. Leninās āvanguard partyā concept just created a system of exploitation where some were more equal than others. All of the ills that you listed and more resulted from that. Capitalism is not perfect. Our society has some deep social issues. But it is better than communism.
02/10/2022 @ 11:31 am
“It stumbled forward for a couple of years under Yeltsin until Putin took over and started assembling his Kleptocracy.”
The Yeltsin years were the West’s best chance to help Russian development toward becoming a Democracy and bring Russia into NATO….
From the beginning of his ascension to power in Russia, Putin wanted no part of either Democracy or NATO…
He had other plans….
02/10/2022 @ 2:52 pm
I am not arguing that Leninism and especially Stalinism was good for the population. I of all people can give you a detailed explanation about the advantages and disadvantages of each. My point is that Russia under communism and Russia now are not remotely the same thing. Sure there are similarities, particularly under Putin, but there are some very big differences. There are a lot more freedoms under Russia than in the USSR which is why we donāt talk about the Iron Curtain any more, but thereās a bigger difference in terms of Russia and the military and alliances:
Communism was a revolution that the USSR was extremely active in attempting to export. One could say that it was less about ideology than about expanding Russian influence and one would probably be right, though far from 100%, probably further than youād acknowledge. However, Russia has not been in the business of exporting a system of government since the fall of the Soviet Union. The tanks in Czechoslovakia were about Soviet fear (and possibly not only Soviet) that the freedoms of the Prague Spring would make surrounding Warsaw Pact populations jealous enough to foment unrest given that the only way the communist countries could reliably stay communist was by enforcing communism. But Russia doesnāt export that any more. The big thing NATO was about was curtailing the export farther West. This is not remotely a trivial difference.
02/10/2022 @ 3:53 pm
Nothing you said was trivial. Everything you said was beside the point.
Russia has tanks aimed at Ukraine now. USSR has invaded with tanks previously. I donāt care if the point was to hand every child a chocolate chip cookie. It is an armed invasion. Thatās it. Frankly, my friend, the rest is bullshit. I could be new to Earth, and not know a thing about USSR and communism (which I assure you is not the case), and I could tell you by virtue of the direction of the tanks guns, and in a few days or so the direction of their travel, that they are mounting an invasion. Nothing you have said changes any of those facts.
02/11/2022 @ 11:44 pm
At what point am I denying that itās an invasion? Thatās a straw dog. I am not justifying his action. I am explaining his action. This is what I believe itās driven by. If you want to stop the invasion, this is what you need to take into account. If you donāt – unless heās bluffing, which I doubt and which you and Ron donāt – I think heāll invade. I donāt think he thinks he has a choice. You may say āOf course he has a choice, thatās absurdā but what you think doesnāt affect what happens; what he thinks does. If he doesnāt invade, youāre right. If he invades, Iām right. If he gets an agreement, either could in theory be true depending on whether he fails to invade out of intimidation or out of the elimination of the necessity of invading.
Our disagreement comes down to this:
As far as you and Ron are concerned, Putin is a thug. As far as Iām concerned, Putin is a thuggish Russian. You think his being Russian is beside the point. I think that when it comes to whatās driving this possible invasion his being Russian is the point. We canāt get past this. Iāll stop commenting because weāre going in circles. This is our impasse.
02/10/2022 @ 11:51 am
As things stand, Ukraine is a developing Democracy and as such is a few years away from gaining NATO membership.
When the time comes, let Ukraine give Russia the security guarantee, underwritten by NATO, that Kosh speaks of as a condition precedent to admission….
The U.S. and NATO have Putin boxed in. They now must help him get out of the mess he’s gotten himself in to.
Keep in mind that if the situation is resolved without military action, the scenario will never be referred to as ‘Putin’s Bluff’ by diplomats or journalists….
02/12/2022 @ 5:54 am
First of all, I think he can bluff, and then invade. I am alone there. Iām not trying to be right about it.
Second, you donāt think what I think matters, but you think what Putin thinks matters. Of course thatās true. When I said something about his state of mind, you argued against it. What he thinks and his state of mind are essentially the same thing. You have been arguing mostly for argumentās sake.
Ohā¦Putin is a thug versus Putin is a thuggish Russianā¦. Ok.
02/12/2022 @ 10:43 am
“I think that when it comes to whatās driving this possible invasion his being Russian is the point.’
Kosh, Putin being ‘Russian’ is a key element of the con that is at the center of his ‘bluff’.
As far as Putin being ‘Russian’ is concerned, he’s an international criminal who views the Russian people as little more than poker chips to be played in his high stakes game of greed and acquisition.
“I think he can bluff, and then invade.”
Bitey, if Putin had the intention to invade all along, with no desire to reach a diplomatic solution to the crisis he’s created, then there was no element of ‘bluff’ in his strategy at all, unless you think that he has strategized feigning a bluff.
Feigning a bluff at the poker table is often done to entice an opponent into calling what he/she has been made to believe is a bluff.
Thus losing a pot that he/she had no chance of winning at the outset.
I just don’t believe that he has raised procrastination to the level of geopolitical gamesmanship.
We both agreed that if he had intended to invade, he would have done it by now. Hence the notion that what he’s doing is an elaborate and dangerous ‘bluff’.
In my opinion, if Putin invades it will be because his ‘bluff’ fell apart at the seams and failed, leaving him with no way to save face but to attack Ukraine thereby advancing no interests other than his own personal selfish interests.
02/12/2022 @ 2:18 pm
Bluff until it doesn’t get the fold he’s looking for, then invade.
Entirely possible for both to occur.
That’s my edited response.
02/12/2022 @ 2:46 pm
Art, Kasparov and I believe he’s bluffing because he doesn’t want to invade.
His calculation is that the threat of invasion would bring about the desired result.
Thus far the threat has caused the development of a united front against him. And, the resistance is hardening.. .
The miscalculation
is the cause of the hesitation which has given the U.S. and NATO time to further galvanize and prepare a response.
If he forms the intention to invade subsequent to the failure of his bluff the error of such a move will be exacerbated by the shortsightedness due to lack of adequate strategic planning re the consequences of an armed conflict that he really doesn’t want.
You can’t correct one mistake by making another…
02/12/2022 @ 3:03 pm
I just tried to post a comment that disappeared. If it shows up, sorry the content is up twice.
I think weāre playing with semantics a bit too much here when it comes to bluffing. If Putin has decided beforehand that if he doesnāt get the concessions he will invade and then he invades, thatās not a bluff. Heād have to change his mind about invading without concessions and I donāt see that happening.
Bitey, what I disagree about is Putinās state of mind. I assume, given what youāve written, that youād say that if Putin really cared about Russians heād give them more freedom. Thatās an American perspective but not a Soviet one, particularly from a cold warrior out of the KGB. Putin would think that Russians were safer in the Soviet Union than now. That lack of freedom gave Russia a series of allies to their west and more military respect. Power hungry thug or not, he is likely to think this.
What does he think of the safety provided by democracy? Our democracy has enabled him to pick our government apart, not a weakness heād ever want to see in Russia. We got Trump in office and weāve got a substantial portion of the population believing the last election was rigged, both with a whole lot of help from Russian internet trolls per our own intelligence community. As an authoritarian, heād get to limit the damage by Western internet interference with his own government. This certainly isnāt in keeping with traditional Western ideals but quite frankly itās not far from current thinking of the Republican Party.
You can write all this off to thuggishness but for me too much of this adds up to Soviet era Russian nationalist thinking. To Ron I say that in lawyer slang this sure as Hell looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.
02/12/2022 @ 4:51 pm
“Soviet era Russian nationalist thinking…”
Which is definitely not in the best interests of the Russian people.
I REPEAT!:
Kosh, The mentality depicted here is no longer a primary element of Western thinking re Russia or the now defunct Soviet Unionā¦
Putin knows this but is nevertheless willing to exploit what he sees as a weakness re Western empathy toward the people of Russiaā¦
“I think weāre playing with semantics a bit too much here when it comes to bluffing.”
This post is about the ‘bluff” the intricacies and nuances of which have yet to be fully explored.
02/12/2022 @ 6:44 pm
This is a test because BS is rejecting my comments again.
Ah, good. I see this worked this time.
Kosh, you give Putin entirely too much credit ethically. This bit about weaknesses in our democracy only go so far as justification for Putinās protection. You say that he would not want his country to have such weaknesses, implying that he is thinking in his countryās best interest. Tell me this. Would he want his country to have a leader to steal hundreds of billions of dollars, making that leader the wealthiest man on the planet off the books? Does that make his country stronger or safer? No, man. It doesnāt. Putin supports weakening his country by his actions because he specifically benefits from them, not his country. If you donāt like the term āthugā, replace it with the term vampire. The only difference is that this vampire doesnāt suck blood. He sucks money, and freedom. I have an endless list of expletives to describe that defense of Putinās motivations, but I donāt want to insult you or Ron, and I would wear my fingers to the nub. Itās crap, Kosh. Putin is a dangerous criminal. Heās a sadist and a murderer. He enjoyed frightening Merkel with a dog because he knew of her phobia. Heās broken.
02/12/2022 @ 6:56 pm
I very much doubt that Putin feels secure that even if NATO feels benign at the moment that theyāll necessarily stay that way when on the border. You look at NATO being peaceful as a given but his experience is far, far different than yours. His arms developments are geared to counter Western arms advances and have been for three quarters of a century.
Ask yourself a question:
Why is his demand for security guarantees?
If thereās any way to telegraph his thinking, it should be what heās negotiating for.
No, it is not obvious at all that Putin or his military view NATO as benign.
Iāll leave it at that.
02/12/2022 @ 8:18 pm
Previously you scoffed at a moral evaluation of Putin in this process. Now, you are essentially doing the same thing regarding NATO.
Come clean. Say what you have against NATO. It has been stated what I have against, what one should have against Putin. We have gone round and round about whether or not Putin in a thug, and that is grudgingly accepted. I donāt even consider that to be at issue. Debating Putinās criminality is conspicuous. Whether NATO is viewed as benign by a criminal or not doesnāt concern me in the slightest. A criminal like Putin should fear the authorities. Thereās that word again.
Again, my question for your is, what do you have against NATO? Whose side are you on?
02/13/2022 @ 10:15 am
The more I think about this issue the less I think Putin is behaving as a thug.
Iām approaching this by examining a straightforward question:
What would make a Russian leader do this? Yes, the leader is Putin, but I donāt find his actions inconsistent with my question.
The answer to me is so obvious that Iām embarrassed by my failure to convey it, but Iāve failed miserably. Maybe I should put it in the form of a post because it could get long. Or maybe I should just let it go and accept that this is a point I canāt get across.
Putinās actions, given his background, his experience, and the history of his country, make complete sense to me to the point where if I were in his position with his empirical observations I might very well think this was the most responsible course of action to keep my country safe. Iām dead serious, I get this, and I can really, really understand his frustration when he offers the West an alternative that doesnāt cost them anything to avoid this invasion and they treat his concerns like theyāre complete bullshit and not worth considering at all.
But Iāll answer your question about NATO, what my problem is with NATO, particularly with the US. I have one.
When WWII ended, the US went to its former enemies and helped them rebuild, in many ways in our image.
When the Cold War ended, we did the exact opposite. Not only did the Soviet Union dissolve but Russia gave up communism, went free market, introduced a ton of previously unavailable freedoms (like travel) and stopped exporting a revolution. I canāt emphasize this enough:
Exporting the revolution is why the Cold War happened. The Soviet Union turned countries communist, used them as military partners (oddly enough, not China) and helped them in their attempts to turn other countries communist. That happened through most of Eastern Europe with the odd exception of Austria. That happened in Vietnam, successfully. And Vietnam was not a Chinese venture, it was a Soviet venture. Vietnam had border clashes with China and a ton of assistance from the USSR.
When the Cold War stopped, that was the time to welcome Russia. Instead we did what we could to isolate Russia. We picked up its assets at bargain basement prices. We allied with former Soviet republics. We kept our nuclear missiles aimed at Russia and we competed with them in nuclear submarine warfare.
If weād done things right, Russia would be IN NATO. Instead, in many respects we continued the Cold War with a weakened, somewhat humiliated enemy. And NATO spread into former Soviet Republics for only one reason: to counter the Russians. Pointlessly. NATO was created to oppose Russia and didnāt stop.
To think the Russians should view NATO as benign is disingenuous as Hell. It is analysis not worthy of you.
Russia is an old country whose greatest historical threats have been invasions from the West. This is how their military thinks. First Napoleon, then Hitler. And Hitler cost them more lives than any country in the history of Earth has lost in a war. So they worry about a buffer to the West, a buffer that is being gobbled up by the one alliance created to oppose them.
Germany was benign in 1932. Governments change, and that includes governments near your border. Hell, NATO is learning as a result of Trump and his legacy not to trust the United States. What happens if Ukraine turns hostile backed by the West?
For Russia, too big a risk. Hereās the two lessons that the Russians share with the Israelis:
1. When it comes to ethics vs. survival, always choose survival.
2. Never take someone seriously when they downplay a potentially existential threat because they can always afford to gamble with your survival but you canāt.
Thatās what drove Crimea. What the Hell does Russia need the land for? Why do they need a warm water port? For defense. It was an easy decision to make because Crimeaās population was overwhelmingly Russian, not Ukrainian.
Why would they think they needed it for defense? Defense against whom?
The Russians are being completely, unusually transparent about what their concern is. They will not allow NATO on that border. That is everything theyāre screaming about. Itās all they talked to Macron about. Putin told Macron that Russia had not expanded at all toward NATO but NATO had expanded toward Russia. And what are they asking for?
Security guarantees.
Thatās not an offensive demand, itās a defensive demand.
What do you do when an alliance created for the sole purpose of opposing you is about to spread to a large border, and youāre Russia? You prevent it however necessary, including changing the neighboring government, and you start to ally yourself with whoever is left, which in this case is China, not a direction Putin really wanted to go.
You donāt want to do this so you tell NATO that if they give you security guarantees, because all you want is guaranteed safety for your country, you wonāt due it.
They damned near laugh you off.
Of course Putinās going to invade. Heās not irresponsible enough not to. He has no choice. If you look at this from a Russian standpoint this is obvious.
Being as Iāve started down this road, I might as well finish. I clearly am writing the damned post here. Letās talk about freedom.
Weāre in the West. We love freedom, weāve been brought up on freedom, it is intrinsically obvious to us that itās desirable. Why would Putin think anything else? Without the simplistic answer that heās a thug.
In all probability, because he views his country as safer with less of it.
What has freedom bought the US? Trump. Serious vulnerability to a concerted internet troll effort to the point where a major portion of our population believes the last election was stolen. That is a potentially devastating attack on a country because of where it can lead. Heās intimately aware of that vulnerability and the last thing he wants to do is duplicate it at home. The way to limit that vulnerability is to control information more. To me as an American that vulnerability has so far been worth it, though the last five years have made me understand a whole lot better that that vulnerability can get damned expensive and really dangerous.
Economically, where itās brought us lately is pretty much where the communists feared. Real middle class incomes havenāt risen since I was in high school. Iām fucking 67. Thereās only one sector really prospering.
Who is Putinās biggest political problem domestically? A billionaire.
Putin has never seen freedom protect his country, only make it vulnerable. Coming from the KGB, protection has been his focus for his entire career.
I donāt share Putinās values. Iām an American and a Jew and I worry about justice a whole lot. But as an American that is a luxury Iām aware of. My country has always been way safer than his.
Maybe youāll tell me that the existential threat he sees is complete bullshit but if you do Iād be tempted to double down on something I said earlier that you called me on:
Maybe it really helps to be Jewish to see it
though Iād imagine if I talked to most of the American Jews I know they would probably agree with you, not me, because theyāre not looking at Putinās behavior as a reaction to an existential threat either
but it blatantly is.
02/13/2022 @ 4:34 pm
Well, I hope NATO puts a red hot missile up Putinās Russian ass ā¦so he doesnāt feel threatened any more.
02/13/2022 @ 3:18 pm
“Hereās the two lessons that the Russians share with the Israelis…”
Aye, there’s the rub.
You are consumed by the belief that there is some equivalence or commonality between Russia being surrounded by NATO and Israel being surrounded by Arab nations.
The equivalency you posit is false and the geographic similarity is coincidental, not strategical or tactical.
An idea can be absorbed and engulfed by the brain while the brain can be absorbed and engulfed by a belief.
Putin is not a leader of the Russian people. He is the head of an international criminal enterprise that is couched in the current government of Russia which is an autocratic kleptocracy headed by Putin and his inner circle of criminal oligarchs and cronies.
That’s what should be obvious to you and anyone paying attention…
I purposely articulated some of Kasparov’s personal background, accomplishments, and credentials to establish the fact that there are American Jews who bring a great deal more experience, insight, credentials, and credibility on this issue than you can muster.
I’ll stand with Kasparov’s analysis and assessment and agree with your assertion that he and many others would argue that you are wrong.
02/13/2022 @ 6:06 pm
i donāt view NATO as equivalent to the Arab world. Not my point. And, in actuality, a whole lot of the Arab world has gotten way friendlier with Israel in spite of the Palestinian issue, which the Arab world is sick of enough to stop blaming on the Israelis. Saudi Arabia has cooperated with Israel under the table for a long time, as have Egypt and Jordan. The gulf states have begun to have open relations with Israel, as has Morocco. I recently found a post I never published about this. While the Left in the West has grown more and more anti-Israeli, the Sunni Arab world has moved in the other direction.
The parallel Iāve drawn is not about that. Iāve been very clear about what the parallel is. It has to do with how they view what they consider to be existential threats.
The question isnāt whether NATO is a threat. The question is whether Putin and Russia view NATO as enough of a threat to invade Ukraine to prevent Ukrainian membership, and the associated question is what that means for options of avoiding an invasion.
We have two choices:
– Give Russia security guarantees involving NATO not landing on their southern border, in which case Ukraine doesnāt join NATO.
– Fail to give Russia security guarantees involving NATO not landing on their southern border, in which case Russia invades Ukraine and keeps them from joining NATO.
What do these have in common? Ukraine not getting into NATO.
In the second way, a whole lot of people die and China gets the most important ally they possibly could.
And we teach Russia a lesson that they donāt see themselves as having a choice about. In other words, it teaches them nothing because the punishment remains a lesser evil to Russia. The West canāt ramp up sanctions enough to be worth NATO on that Russian border to the Russians. And yet we will have absolutely no choice but to apply those sanctions. We canāt not.
Iāve got nothing else to say on this. Iām sorry for how many people are about to get killed for a gain of nothing.
I hope no one has illusions about getting involved in a ground war in Ukraine.
02/13/2022 @ 11:07 pm
āThe question isnāt whether NATO is a threat. The question is whether Putin and Russia view NATO as enough of a threat to invade Ukraine to prevent Ukrainian membership, and the associated question is what that means for options of avoiding an invasion.ā
This is bullshit. Yes, avoiding an invasion would be wonderful. However, you canāt say that Putin fears NATO as a threatā¦and then say that other nonsense. You use the threatening NATO bit to justify Putinās actionsā¦because of Russiaās historyā¦etc, and then say that it is not about a threat, it is just about whether they feel threatened enoughā¦
Good lord, man.
02/14/2022 @ 12:49 am
I canāt tell you if NATO poses an actual threat to Russia. Putin has better intelligence on that than I do. I can tell you that NATO acts more threatening to Russia than weāre prepared to acknowledge and I can tell you that Russia is reasonable in viewing it as threatening. NATO was formed to block Moscowās communist expansion. After Moscow gave up communism and its associated expansion, NATOās main reason for existing disappeared and yet they continued expanding toward Russia.
02/14/2022 @ 4:12 am
“Of course Putinās going to invade. Heās not irresponsible enough not to. He has no choice. If you look at this from a Russian standpoint this is obvious.”
Koshersalaami,
Herein lies the fault and flaw in your argument and logic.
You use ‘Putin’ and ‘Russia’ as though they are interchangeable equivalents.
Once more:
Putin is not Russia and Russia is not embodied in or even channelled by Putin.
If Putin invades it will be to further his own personal self-interests.
“Of course Putinās going to invade. Heās not irresponsible enough not to.”
Where does this kind of BS come from?
You have yet to identify a Russian humanitarian who would say that it would be irresponsible of Putin not to invade.
Putin is incapable of seeing things from a Russian standpoint.
Putin can only see things from Putin’s standpoint, which is that of an international thief and thug who is more than willing to fleece his own people and use them as cannon fodder.
If he invades, quite a number of Russian soldiers will be put in harm’s way.
My guess is that many, if not most, of the young men and women being used in that manner would openly protest against it, but for the fact that Putin’s idea of national security includes and entails the assassination and imprisonment of political opponents and the silencing of those who would speak up and speak out in opposition to his repressive autocratic kleptocracy.
02/15/2022 @ 12:47 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/15/path-out-of-ukraine-crisis/
02/15/2022 @ 12:58 pm
Can’t get past the pay wall.
02/17/2022 @ 10:28 am
Putin is incapable of seeing things from a Russian standpoint? Where the Hell does that even come from? His graft? As you point out, thatās what the position he came to occupy has done for a while. Bitey says you canāt want to protect the people you steal from. I think that if those who have occupied that position view that graft as a perk of the position then the cognitive dissonance required to want to protect the people you steal from is more than possible.
02/14/2022 @ 6:20 am
100%!
02/14/2022 @ 11:47 am
I’ll raise that.
110%!
02/14/2022 @ 1:22 pm
Sustained irony above if we calculate the precious time, gold and silver deployed to the psychological schema of Putin the person. Earlier Richard Engel, MSNBC, enriched our sentiment by profiling a 79 YO Ukrainian great grandmother as she sighted her rifle prone on a sidewalk in Kiev. Wet-eyed and inspired, I delved into Ukraine (UKR) demographics and had the privilege to study: UNICEF for every child — UNICEF Data: Monitoring the situation of children and women — which includes a brilliant world map with Ukraine centered. Also I had reason to purvey NATO learning that it commenced 4 April 1949 in Washington, D.C. — less than four years post obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki === forty-years prior to the take down of the Berlin Wall (9 NOV 1989). At which time President Pushkin (S/R) Putin was a full-stride presumably robust 37 Y0. Hence, I can only conclude that Putin is a serendipitous by-product of fascism with an unquenchable thirst for power — prone to megalomania, plausibly arguing that his ‘profile’ is replete with insatiable sado-masochism. And he’s such an egocentric know-it-all possibly exploring nonvisualized early childhood ‘cruel and unusual’ trauma. A kinder fortuitous humanity would provide a ‘Too Much and Never Enough’ profile wherein our diplomats might conclude a ‘done yesterday’ non-violent dĆ©tente . But at the same time we’re engrossed with a species who’ve, day by day, coined such inhumane WMDs such as theatre nukes. We’re overdue for an ‘out-of-box’ round table with taps of old soft shoe & resonate clink of
NA ZDOROVIE !
02/15/2022 @ 5:01 pm
Wow, that is a stunningly awful column by Vandenheuvel. I generally like her, but she is playing semantic games to make her very weak points. First, she equates ādefending Ukraineā with ādefending Ukraine militarily.ā They are obviously not the same thing. It is quite possible to do one without the other. Second, she says something about Ukraine not being able to align with NATO without joining NATO. Sheās making up her own rules and inserting them. That column isnāt worth the electrons used to send it to my iPad.
02/15/2022 @ 7:29 pm
It doesnāt matter if Ukraine āalignsā with NATO if NATO doesnāt align with Ukraine. To that extent sheās right.
She gives a bunch of reasons why NATO isnāt admitting Ukraine any time soon anyway. And sheās right about Russia wanting the status quo. So she says Russia is asking for the status quo and is likely to get it anyway, so why not negotiate neutrality and get rid of this?
You can criticize her details but it would make more sense to criticize her point.
And what is the difference between defending Ukraine and defending Ukraine militarily? If there are troops coming over the border, how exactly do you defend Ukraine non-militarily?
02/15/2022 @ 8:03 pm
It would be foolish to negotiate neutrality because that is what Putin wants. Putinās behavior should not be rewarded, because it would likely make him repeat it.
Letās seeā¦as for the many ways to defend something, a thing can be defended legally, spiritually, logistically, etc. Do you smell what I am cookinā yet? The US, and the democracies in the region, a gang that likes to call itself NATO, are, so far, defending Ukraine with support, arms, an opening that Russia can not occupy along the border of Poland, intelligenceā¦a wide variety of necessary things. Also, presumably, none of these are available to Russia.
Are you just trying not to see this?
02/17/2022 @ 10:07 am
Whatās the problem with neutrality? The only problem I see is if Russia violates that neutrality. I donāt have a problem with neutrality just because Putin wants it.
I very much doubt Putin is thinking in terms of invading Poland. The last time that happened it triggered a world war.
Yes, NATO is supporting Ukraine right now in ways other than committing their own forces. But if Russia invades thatās highly unlikely to be enough.
02/17/2022 @ 10:36 am
Now you are definitely being disingenuous. I did not say that there is a problem with neutrality. I said, āit would be foolish to negotiate neutrality because that is what Putin wants.ā
If you canāt see the difference between your question, and my original statement, then no amount of explanation will work.
02/17/2022 @ 10:43 am
No, not from his graft. Putin is incapable of seeing things from the Russianās standpoint because he is a narcissist. To Putin, the Russian people donāt really exist as people. They are just props to manipulate to get what he wants.
I think it is safe to say that if you kill dissidents because they are dissidents, you are incapable of seeing other viewpoints from other perspectives. You demonstrate that you only see them as obstacles to your own. It is a very important difference.
02/17/2022 @ 11:30 am
“Whatās the problem with neutrality?”
“I donāt have a problem with neutrality just because Putin wants it.”
Putin doesn’t want a neutral Ukraine. He wants an isolated Ukraine.
Neutrality is an element of the self determination that every sovereign nation is entitled to exercise vis-a-vis relationships with other sovereign nations.
Putin cannot force neutrality on Ukraine or any other country without violating the sovereignty of that country.
As a matter of fact, insisting that NATO not admit Ukraine would be a de facto violation of the sovereignty of the member nations of NATO.
Putin cannot determine with whom a sovereign nation can form an alliance…Or, why….
02/17/2022 @ 1:06 pm
‘Contempt is key to Putin’s troubling psychological profile.’ [Ian H. Robertson Ph.D. Psychology Today, 17MAR2014].
Vladimir Putin was only four YO when he probably heard the great Dinah Washington’s ‘Relax Max’ (Mercury Records 1956).
Right now, we would bode well to cloud source an erstwhile children’s essay or direct letter competition (crayons, no?) to the
Russian President pleading ‘pretty please’ not to invade Ukraine. I see he’s pushing 70. ‘Don’t start another war because: …’
02/18/2022 @ 4:59 pm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/01/26/vladimir-putin-does-not-think-like-we-do/
I recommend this opinion piece by Michael McFaul regarding Putin, Russia, and the prospects for an invasion. It covers many of the points that we have discussed here. The post is broadly about how Putin thinks, and that goes to our discussion of his āstate of mindā, as we discussed it. Other points are about how most Westerners are realists, and Putin is not. It mentions that Putin is more concerned about free states and democracy movements than he is about a military advance by NATO.
And today, just about an hour ago, McFaul offered his opinion about Russian false flag operations which are now taking place in Donbas. He said, had NATO not expanded following the fall of. The USSR, this would likely be happening in the Balticsā¦under the same false premise. Putin would claim that ethnic Russians were being subjected to a āgenocideā, as he is trying to claim regarding Donbas.
02/19/2022 @ 8:05 am
Dictionary entries near Kremlin
02/19/2022 @ 5:51 pm
Yet another expert on Ukraine who focuses on Putinās frame of mind, says that this is all about Putinās feelings, not Russiaās. She also says that Putin is bluffing to get what he can, until and unless he changes his mind and approach. Hmm, who offered that ābluffing until he isnātā analysis? It sounds so familiar.
02/19/2022 @ 8:44 pm
Bitey,
We have been in agreement on this matter from the beginning of this thread and we both have cited professionals and experts who reaffirm our position.
Good job!
02/19/2022 @ 9:46 pm
I agreed once you and Kasparov pointed it out,
02/22/2022 @ 12:55 am
Whereās the bluff? Putin threatens to invade if he doesnāt get a security agreement, he gets no security agreement, he invades. The very definition of a bluff is if itās called you donāt go through with the threat. āHe isnāt bluffing until he isā is a rather ridiculous semantic game that you both would be calling on me if Iād pulled it. Kasparov blew this. Putin wasnāt bluffing.
Now, if you want to argue that Putin would have found a way to invade even if his demands were met, thatās a different case, and though we canāt be sure itās a case with real evidence behind it.
What will be interesting is exactly how China handles this. China is now in Russiaās corner, but China respects Ukrainian sovereignty, not because China gives a damn about Ukraine but because the validity of breakaway republics validates Taiwanās independence.
02/22/2022 @ 1:15 pm
āHe isnāt bluffing until he isā is a rather ridiculous semantic game that you both would be calling on me if Iād pulled it.
You have Bitey’s assertion backwards:
As he puts it:
“Putin’s bluffing until he isn’t.”
Is significantly different semantically and otherwise from your misquote.
Putin has ‘bluffed’ himself into a corner. He has managed to unite and galvanize opposition that might not have come about but for the increased threat of an invasion of a benign neighbor.
The irony here is that he wants “security guantees” in circumstances where such ‘guarantees’ are neither necessary or warranted.
If there is a Biden/Putin summit, I would advise Biden to semantically give Putin what he already has.
If Putin agrees to a summit, it will be because his ‘bluff’ has been called and he must put his ‘cards’ on the table…
An invasion of Ukraine would be clear evidence, and admission, of the fact that his ‘bluff’ failed…
Genocide against Russians in the ‘break away republics’ is a far cry from the threat of NATO at the border….
02/22/2022 @ 7:06 pm
Yes, I phrased it backward. My point makes a lot more sense if you phrase it right. Thank you.
The whole idea behind a bluff, in any circumstance, game or otherwise, is to threaten but when the bluff is called not go through on the threat. The bluff is a bluff because the threat is phony. Putin threatened an action if he didnāt get what he wanted. He didnāt get what he wanted. He proceeded with the action. What this says is that he wasnāt bluffing. Any other conclusion is a semantic game. It assumes at some point that if his bluff was called he did not intend to go through with this threat. I havenāt seen any evidence of that.
02/20/2022 @ 1:39 pm
I know genius whence I read it NYT (Hounshell, Askarinam, Hill) however Fiona Hill speculates ‘what if Vlad Putin’ [sic]
‘… could be president until 2036, in terms of whatās possible for him…’ (?) Putin in ’36 would be 84 YO ! Hence one must reflect upon the magnanimous U.S. Senator George McGovern’s maxim: “I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
Take a deep breath y’all!
02/20/2022 @ 2:38 pm
“…Senator George McGovernās maxim: āIām fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”
AMEN!!!
02/26/2022 @ 3:00 pm
I quantified the cost of a single javelin missile, say, $207,000 and comped it to the price of a sundry ice fishing auger: $70.00! And the equation proofs that our systemic could churn-churn-churn 2,760 augers for sustenance, fresh air, and recreation. Deadly MAD bullseye! Yet what dark force compels Putin’s invaders to have such heartless compunction to attempt to obliterate the humble innocents of Ukraine. What type of lopsided illogical cruelty has possessed the Putinites? Have they not at least read LIFE SENTENCES — William H. Gass? Hammer and Sickle black on red is a putrid ugly flag! Just cool it!
Readers, TY. My line is taut {…} in the land of the FREE …!
02/26/2022 @ 5:14 pm
Everyone on Earth should read this column in the New York Times. This is so much bigger than Ukraine.
BindleSnitch - From Putin's Bluff to Putin's Invasion
03/02/2022 @ 8:17 am
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