No it wasn't laughable in hindsight. At the time it was though. I was watching a show the other day that was filmed around 2012 and the running joke of the show episode was a Russian character and how the dumb American redneck still thought we were in the Cold War, and hated Russians. Important context for how much Putin royally screwed up Russia's relationship with the West starting around 2014 and how threatening he has been to world stability. It aint about Russia as much as it's about one small little man's grievances from 30 years ago. My guess is Romney coming from the business world as an executive gave him more insight into the upcoming hacking capabilities of Russia, and that's the experience, and foresight he was drawing from. 2014 to 2016 was really the period of people waking up to the realization that because of Putin, Russia is a severe threat. So no.... it was not laughable now. We underestimate just how dangerous it is for one dictator without checks and balances to have control over nuclear weapons. He operates with impunity and has delusions of Alexander the Great Conquest in his brain that only can be enacted because he has nukes. That's why it's imperative that we get back into a Nuclear agreement with Iran, and continue to keep a close eye on Kim Jung even with the distractions of Putin.
At least the appearance. After all, they don't have real freedom of speech. If you speak out against the boss, you might find yourself eating some polonium or locked up. Here? We used to stop at the water's edge. That degraded a bit over time and today, it's gone. The attack is he's both too weak and he wag the dog. Logic is unnecessary.
Germany immediately suspended the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. After coordinating sanction plans with Europe and talking to the German Chancellor, Biden said it would happen if Putin invade. Someone here was laughing at that assertion.
What about China though? I'm not really sure what Republicans want to happen in the Ukraine situation other than for it to be as terrible for Biden as possible.
Republican politicians treat Putin better than Biden. That says to me that they would sell their soul to the devil if they thought they could get something in return. Putin puppets and American Traitors.
They all support Russia over their own government on some level and have since 2016. Some of them openly want Russia to steamroll all of europe under Putin as god-emperor, even killing american soldiers along the way. Senator Ron Johnson, R-WI, Taylor-Greene, Cawthorn etc. Some of them (mostly in the Senate) don't want that to happen but want Biden to take an L any way possible. Little Marco, etc. That's basically the divide. Maybe there's some Liz Cheney type outliers but as we have seen, they're in the minority.
I stand corrected. Thanks. Although I think sending troops overseas is different than sending soldiers to war. So, every democratically elected US president has ordered troops to go to war. Of course, it's always everybody else's fault, and they asked for it. I should have left the name of Trump out of this thread.
Sure, if Ukraine and the West won't deal, we can make things painful for Russia. But I don't think the scenario in which Russia retreats with nothing to show for it is at all realistic. As you frame it, yes Putin wins. Put on your big boy pants and accept it. But I don't think your house metaphor is quite right - or perhaps it fits for Ukraine but doesn't really apply to the hegemonic struggle between NATO and Russia. In the geopolitical game, NATO has been the aggressor, taking advantage of the dissolution of the USSR to add Eastern European countries to the membership, increasing Western Europe's buffer between them and Russia and thinning Russia's. Now Russia draws a line in the sand before Ukraine to say 'no closer!' So, if we stop there to avoid war and say it's okay that they keep Ukraine in their orbit, are we really rewarding their aggression or just mediating our own? Had it been reversed and it was the US that stumbled in the 90s and the USSR added Germany and Italy to the Warsaw Pact before we regained our footing -- when France and Great Britain install USSR-friendly governments that start saying maybe they'll join the Warsaw Pact too, wouldn't the US have been alarmed? Now, we still have the Atlantic Ocean as a buffer, but it wouldn't be crazy to imagine in this scenario that we'd resist losing GB and France as allies. Maybe we'd do something dirty to stop that from happening like try to assassinate a key leader, blackmail their governments, or threaten nuclear war. That's exactly what we did do when Cuba aligned with the USSR. I'm not interested in saving the Sudetenland. I get the lesson of history, but we need to predict the next war instead of fighting the last one. The comparison between Putin and Hitler is too simplistic. The people and the situation are not similar enough to let that one data-point be our guide. We could skip over the Chamberlain step and go straight to fighting a catastrophic hegemonic war, but tens of millions could die. Or we can cut a deal that maintains the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, promises that NATO will encroach no further into (nor retreat from) Russia's sphere of influence, and nobody dies. We should try that first. If it fails, we can still all kill each other later.
Your last paragraph is interesting. Obama did a A LOT of drone strikes killing bad people and civilians both. Trump did even MORE. So I don’t know about “people” but damn sure “people” controlled aircrafts with lethal capabilities.
Ukraine planning to grant its citizens the right to bear arms . . . seems a little late for that, no? https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ukrain...arry-firearms-amid-existing-threats-1.5792225
Late, how so? Seems like it could be a useful provision if you've already resigned yourself to overthrow and occupation and you want to get a head start on the armed resistance movement. But short of that, arming civilians is just going to give pro-Russian, anti-government rebels more cover.
