I know. He's totally wrong. But in a weird way, this might not have happened with him at the helm. Unfortunately, bullies will be deterred with a higher likelihood by other unpredictable bullies than by people they perceive as weak and whose actions they think will be easy to predict.
why would Putin be deterred when every available piece of information indicates Trump would have praised and supported Putin, and criticized zelenski, UN and Western Europe. And then consider the other idiots in the Republican Party who also praise and support Putin. The question isn’t whether Putin would have invaded. The question is whether Trump would have sent arms to Putin and left the U.N.
Trump is unpredictable and as I stated many times, only cares about himself, but from talking to those who actually made policy around him, no, I don't think that would have happened. I might of course be wrong.
Also, Trump would have welcomed the invasion because he would want to be the one to broker some kind of deal, no matter how ridiculous the deal, because he is so desperate to win the Noble prize.
It would not have happened with him during the first term when it would have affected his reelection but it would have still occurred at some point. I'm sure Putin planned to use every minute of trump's time in office to get what he wanted. Trump has even stated, that he and Putin had previously discussed he would not invade during his presidency. I'm only surprised the war didn't start sooner in Biden's first year. Probably hoping Jan. 06 would be successful.
yet you somehow think Putin would be deterred by trump? When trump does nothing but suck up to him? You can argue that trump wouldn’t have actually sent Putin arms, but to think that Putin would have been deterred… that’s some fancy dancing
It's not a pleasant thought but that is a very likely outcome. Most of us support the Ukrainians because we see a democracy wanting to be part of the West fighting a corrupt authoritarian regime. That doesn't mean that victory of the side we see as good is anywhere close to guaranteed. And while it might be easy for us sitting thousands of miles away protected by NATO and the most powerful military in the World to say that Ukraine should fight until Putin is defeated that's a lot different when thousands of your countrymen are being killed and there is a legitimate fear that the whole country could fall. I think we should support the Ukrainians as much as we can, without directly fighting, but the fate of the war should be decided by the Ukrainians.
I agree that Putin does not care about the loss of life, but he should care about loss of military equipment. At this point with the sanctions, Russia does not have the money or the technology to rebuild their destroyed tanks, jets or ships. It is hard to project power without them.
You are very wrong, he fired those that disagreed with him. You continually post about Trump as if he wasn't that bad, he was way way WORSE.... Our DEMOCRACY almost fell because of him....and we are the most armed nation on the planet.....how would you like a PUTIN in charge of our nuclear arsenal and army? Stop trying to ****ing normalize him, you don't have a clue how close we came to having our own Adolf Hitler. DD
I'm a little concerned that the US doesn't seem to have any firm statement on what we'd do if Russia deployed nuclear weapons. Which might be strategic ambiguity. For managing Putin, that might be the best approach, but I don't think it's so good for managing Americans' expectations. If Russia uses nukes and then the US escalates -- or doesn't escalate -- how is the public going to react? With a friendly US president, Putin might have believed he could achieve his strategic goals without military force. A smaller NATO or a hollowed-out NATO, a US-brokered deal with Ukraine for land and concessions, a coup without international resistance, use of corruption and propaganda to undermine the Zelenskyy government, assassinations -- many things he could have done if he had a US president willing to help or look the other way. And of course military invasion would also be easier with those conditions. So maybe, maybe not, but Ukraine is definitely better off with Biden in the White House right now.
They mostly have a surplus of rundown, worn out tanks like they are using in Ukraine in their reserve tank storage. They'll buy a few more T-14 Armatas, which they haven't used in Ukraine at all, and they can pull a few thousand T80s and BMP2s out of long term reserves. They will be worn down from sitting in fields for decades, but they won't be worse than what they are fielding. Russia has more crappy armored vehicles than they know what to do with.
Unjust and unneeded war. Putin has done a poor job convincing his own troops that this is a war worth fighting. If you are going to die, you want to do it for a cause. That being said, don't underestimate Russia's ability to sacrifice bodies at things for long periods of time. They lost the most people in WWII by an order of magnitude, they were in Afghanistan forever, etc. Russians just don't value human life including their own. A country run by mobsters.
Does this really matter if India/China/Pakistan/etc keep buying from Russia? I thought I read that they are still purchasing from them. Basically, those guys would buy cheaper Russian oil instead of mideast oil. The rest of the world will just buy from the middle east instead and it ends up being a big wash (except for stuff like the natural gas that is harder to transport). I have no idea what Russia's revenue from gas vs oil looks like.
