Ukrainian War Developments

Pendemic said:

Off topic, this will be my only comment on this matter.

General Qasem Soleimani was at the time of his murder the numero uno military man, literally the commander-in-chief got Iran’s armed forces. He was lured to a meeting in Iraq and his entourage was blasted into smithereens enroute from the airport to the meeting. The Americans didn’t even bother to deny that they planned the ops to execute him, if you remember, Trump answered on Twitter with an American flag when asked if it was a CIA operation.

It was definitely outside all boundaries of decency and an act of war but the Iranians were careful in their reprisal missile attack in the sense that they deliberately avoided areas with American troops. Why? Probably because the Iranians know that a much more powerful bully was egging them for a fight and had they directed their rockets on American barracks, the only beneficiary would be Israel.

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Or, more realistically, Iran is a weak nation that cannot hope to match either the US or Israel militarily or economically, so they have to swallow their pride and tolerate these attacks on their officials and nuclear scientists.

Sucks being them, but China learned that lesson in the 19th century. Weak nations have no foreign diplomacy.

Indeed. Talking about countries, the weak are weak and are only allowed to live comfortably because the strong allowed for that to happen.

Coming back on topic, this is the situation Ukraine is facing now. Russia and US are negotiating on Ukraine's fate. Ukraine has no qualifications to participate in this discussion.
Even the much advertised "strong and independent" EU is getting sidelined as mostly irrelevant.

Unfortunately or fortunately (for some), that's how geopolitics work.

Reason why the borders are scared for the USA.

During the 20th centruy they sliced and diced the bigger countries into smaller ones to create weak, internationaly insignificant countries.

See Europe and the fate of the Austrian - Hungarian Monarchy.

This stuff is more of a phase transition, as soon as there is a strong country, that can give even partial protection ( china/russia) Iran could start to collect population and territory to become more and more significant.

The same could happens in Europe.

solarz said:

Or, more realistically, Iran is a weak nation that cannot hope to match either the US or Israel militarily or economically, so they have to swallow their pride and tolerate these attacks on their officials and nuclear scientists.

Sucks being them, but China learned that lesson in the 19th century. Weak nations have no foreign diplomacy.

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Iranian government system did not help much in clarifying the ways it could strength itself either. It's a democracy but not a typical democracy. The religious elements of its government are fervently anti-American while its populace and technocratic officials are more muh on the idea. (Their younger populace in the cities are definitely pro-western in many ways)

zxy_bc said:

Iranian government system did not help much in clarifying the ways it could strength itself either. It's a democracy but not a typical democracy. The religious elements of its government are fervently anti-American while its populace and technocratic officials are more muh on the idea. (Their younger populace in the cities are definitely pro-western in many ways)

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It took China more than 100 years to find the way, the Iranians will have to figure out their own path in due time.

Their best hope right now is US being too occupied with China and Russia to bother with them.

Unfortunately, this whole thing is beginning to look like a Putin temper-tantrum for attention from the “big guys”. Didn’t he just have a teleconference with Biden and, now, he’s requesting another one???

james smith esq said:

Unfortunately, this whole thing is beginning to look like a Putin temper-tantrum for attention from the “big guys”. Didn’t he just have a teleconference with Biden and, now, he’s requesting another one???

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You underestimate Putin and pay too much attention to western media if that's what you think

Putin can act like this because he knows that the US urgently needs to "Pivot to Asia" (lol) to counter China. This gives him leverage in order to advance Russian national interests against the US as he knows that Biden cannot afford to waste time at the European Front

This is calculated. Russia is correctly using the US-China competition to advance its interests. India should take note..

Overbom said:

Ukraine has no qualifications to participate in this discussion.

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They brought this on themselves, though. Instead on relying on the massive industrial and agricultural base the USSR left them with which would have helped them retain economic power vis a vis the other former USSR republics, they decided to believe in the whole neoliberal bullshit while whitewashing their nazi heroes and making up a glorious non-existant history of resistance and whatnot.

Unlike Russia, Ukraine never left the Wild 90's mentality.

Overbom said:

You underestimate Putin and pay too much attention to western media if that's what you think

Putin can act like this because he knows that the US urgently needs to "Pivot to Asia" (lol) to counter China. This gives him leverage in order to advance Russian national interests against the US as he knows that Biden cannot afford to waste time at the European Front

This is calculated. Russia is correctly using the US-China competition to advance its interests. India should take note..

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Without offering any immature and erroneous assumptions about your sources of information or bases of interpretation, I’ll simply say this: we’ll see how this all plays out.

I’ll go ahead and predict that Putin gets nothing out of this performance other than a photo-op, for domestic-consumption, and nothing else! I’m sufficiently observant to assess that Putin is no international political genius and sufficiently mature to separate wishful thinking from realpolitik.

I’d love to see the “West’s” ass handed to it; but Putin ain’t the one to do it!

So, there’s my prediction! What’s yours?

james smith esq said:

Without offering any immature and erroneous assumptions about your sources of information or bases of interpretation, I’ll simply say this: we’ll see how this all plays out.

I’ll go ahead and predict that Putin gets nothing out of this performance other than a photo-op, for domestic-consumption, and nothing else! I’m sufficiently observant to assess that Putin is no international political genius and sufficiently mature to separate wishful thinking from realpolitik.

I’d love to see the “West’s” ass handed to it; but Putin ain’t the one to do it!

So, there’s my prediction! What’s yours?

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It is all about timing right now given that the USA wants to focus most of its fire power on China that they want to take some of there important resources from Europe to Asia but the issue right now is that Ukraine can see right now that without USA backing, whether or not Russia intends to invade Ukraine, Ukraine has not much value right now other then being a weakening buffer state for Europe against Russia that is becoming poorer and poorer everyday so right now, the President of Ukraine is doing his best to provoke a conflict to try and prevent the USA/NATO from abandoning the nation it is own devices. Putin seeing this has to respond and given that he has chosen to be as hardline as he is in his response, this has scared the USA so much that they cannot fully withdraw from Europe to focus on China until they have worked things out with Russia but given that Russia sees this as an opportunity and given the current situation in the USA, is pushing back hard against NATO and the USA right now and is successfully diverting critical amounts of time where the USA could be fully focused on China, essentially making the situation worse for Biden. Also to note is that the reason that Putin can afford to push so hard now is because Russia and China are essentially allies right now due to the USA pushing against both their red lines when the USA should know damn well how that will honestly play out.

Keep in mind that the demands that Putin is making towards the USA and NATO are very unlikely to be allowed for given that if they do so and are made to pull back from Ukraine, this will become another great debacle comparable to the retreat of Afghanistan which will weaken the USA standing in the world even more, which is something that Biden cannot afford ever so he is trapped in a very hard place where he wants to fight China on its own, but Russia and a whole slew of issues is making this near impossible for him to do unless he makes real concessions, something he cannot do either unless he wishes to critically damage the US's standing in the world any further. In this situation, Putin alone cannot beat the west by himself although you have to admit, he did lead Russia back from the cliff that the previous leaders of Russia have lead them towards, but the combined forces of Russia, China and other likeminded nations can over a period of time push the USA into a true decline that cannot be salvaged if the cards are played properly which as the current event are know showing, they seem to be on the right track.

The USA is still the worlds super power but its resources are finite and the nation itself has issues that need to be solved in a matter of months or even days if they want to maintain their grip on the world but if Biden fails to focus on the real issues and continues to engage in saber rattling against Russia over Ukraine and China over Taiwan, well the very nation of the USA may be fast approaching its use by date. Also to note is that the whole 'Build, Back, Better' bill is basically shot dead by Joe Manchin or Biden's position is losing is security with each passing debacle and if his position is replaced by Kamala Harris, well the USA will finally have a crisis on its hands that will be much worse then what has already happened this year