Ukrainian War Developments
- Thread starter james smith esq
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Just remember what the great favorite American general of WWII fame, Gen. George S. Patton said about then Soviet Russians and it's a doozy.
"The Russians are mongols. They are Slavs and a lot of them used to bebruled by ancient Byzantium. From Genghis Kahn to Stalin. they have not changed. They never will and we will never learn, at least , not until it is too late."
"The difficulty in understanding the Russians we do not take cognizance
of the fact he is not a European, but an asiatic therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than Chinese or a Jepanese. From what I have seen of them I have no particular desire to understand them except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other amiable characteristics, the Russians have no regard for human life and they are all out son of bitches,barbarians and chronic drunks."
I'd cite the example of the US and UK. Canada was never a world power with its own global ambitions which it had to abandon.
In the China-Russia case, what will matter are the possible conflicting geopolitical interests between these two parties. As long as they can cooperate in those areas (e.g. Central Asia) the relationship can be peaceful, and be based on mutual respect and equality. But wherever those interests clash, either Russia will have to be willing to concede, like the UK did in the Suez Crises, or China will need to be very generous.
The questions of civilizations and "cultural homogeneity" are not necessary here. That only applies when one side is trying to convert the other. But neither Russia nor China are trying to establish global 'paradigm dominance' (that's a new term I just invented.) The Soviets did, with Communism, but that is no longer the case. Whereas China has always been an ethnic civilization, it doesn't care about converting people to be Chinese.
I don't even know what point he's trying to make. This isn't 20D chess, it's very simple: Russia issued an ultimatum and if it isn't obeyed, Ukraine is going to get the snot beat out of it.
Not a big fan of George Friedman, just as I am not a big fan of Peter Zeihan. You can look back at their predictions way back and see how many came true. Peter Zeihan has even been downgraded to promoting some real estate firm recently.
Well, your hypothesis is going to be tested soon. Let's see if Russia executes the invasion (because its 'ultimatum' isn't going to be 'obeyed.') In fact, officially, it's already been rejected. So if the invasion doesn't happen now, that means your hypothesis is incorrect and that it was never 'simple' at all.
I listed my reasons for skepticism (of the chances of invasion) many pages ago, but now we're arriving at the point of execution, as the winter eases up. We'll find out soon.
Either way, I think Russia's primary objective is to test NATO's cohesion while maintaining its gas supplies to Europe. And so far, NATO hasn't cracked. But that doesn't mean that the game is over, even if Russia backs off. Russia can keep up pressure and continue trying to break Germany away from the center. And if/when that happens, Ukraine becomes irrelevant. Russia can take Ukraine anytime it wants even now, but I don't think that's Russia's real objective. It wants to have its cake and eat it too i.e. taking Ukraine without the follow-on economic costs of losing the European market, while simultaneously removing a united NATO threat on its borders for good.
I know, I have a lot of bones to pick with his general outlook and past predictions too.
The National Interest is a rag with all sorts nutty ideas. If the U.S. provide these weapons and still controls the operations, I can see them being launched into Russia to provoke Russia, but even the U.S. wouldn't dare launch them against China. If Ukraine and Taiwan truly have full control of these weapons, there would not be a snowball chance in hell that they would use them, even if some small conflict did take place in Ukraine, because they know that using such weapons will be the end of them.
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