METO Guido

Just another freedom loving rider. Born in DC. Educated in rural, integrated, public schools. On the job, gave it pretty much all I had. Every new hard day’s night. Done some things I’m not proud of but never once felt ‘ashamed’ of the immigrant nation calling itself the United States. Returning from assignment abroad, always brightened my day to come home. Like to imagine even thankless punks like you continue to have a chance to turn themselves around after boarding my flight west. Carry on commander.

BigZ

You ask the question as if the said Ukrainians are some homogeneous group, which they aren't. No group is ever homogeneous, that one in particular.
The ones that wanted to fight fought, even more lined up by the mobilization centers to go fight. Better half of them are dead by now, many are getting disillusioned - there's no rotation, no scheduled time off - just life in the foxhole - and no clear understanding of what the plan is. Think Germany late in the WW2.
"We are going to get javelins and turn the tide of war"
.....
"We are going to get himars and turn the tide of war"
.....
"We are going to get patriots and turn the tide of war"
.....
"We are going to get western tanks and turn the tide of war"
.....
"We are going to get storm shadow and turn the tide of war"
.....
"We are going to get F16s and turn the tide of war"
.....
Gets old after a while. If I recall, Excargo or someone posted an interview with a marine sent over to Krynky over the river to form a beachhead. Countless marines died there (and keep dying there trying to hold on to piles of bricks) for no other reason, but to simulate progress after the failed counteroffensive.
The only point of their sacrifice is for some dude in a high castle to be able to say "we have a beach head" in the interviews.

The problem with the current generation of the founding fathers is that they are nowhere near where the fighting is. Arrangements are made for when a public figure (or US auditors, for that matter) need to be near the front lines. Weird how it works sometimes.

Excargodog

In all honesty Hub, I think your viewpoint reminds me of many of the well-meaning people that pushed the COVID lockdown who counted on a gain from the lockdowns, vaccine passports, routine medical care shutdowns, school shutdowns, etc., without anticipating the costs of some of those things in mental health effects from societal isolation, increasing antivax sentiment, delay in diagnoses. Not saying there was ill intent, just a failure to look at the downside to the policy.

i believe the Russian threat to Europe is directly attributable to the failure of the Europeans to maintain their defense budgets at even the somewhat inadequate levels of the Cold War era. Look at the numbers - they've taken one "peace dividend" after another for the last thirty years and their big agenda items have been satisfying the greens by dumping their nuclear power plants and converting to a carbon neutral economy all the while massively increasing their dependency on Russian oil and gas. They in many ways made themselves a target and for all your protests about how would anyone threaten a country with the world's greatest supply of nukes, the Russians have always been a paranoid lot. They were bound to be threatened by the March of NATO eastward - something that it is well documented the Germans told them woukd not happen if they allowed German reunification. Now I'm not saying the German assertions were legally binding or even that the Germans had any right to make them for the West but you can scarcely deny the fact that they were made - it is well documented.
Just as you assert that the fact that Ukraine has started to lose because US aid was constrained I can assert that Russia became aggressive because Europe lost interest in funding their own defense. In neither case is the cause and effect exactly that clear but if that's going to be your assertion the latter will be mine. The USSR was held in check from WWII until its demise in part by higher defense levels and 30 years of underfunding their militaries created an opportunity for the paranoid Russian leadership to believe they can get away with assuring that the Ukraine NEVER becomes part of NATO and if the Europeans don't get off their fat @$$es and take defense seriously even US support will be unable to restrain the Russians if we become the least bit bogged down in any of a number of places because without going nuclear we have neither the people or the equipment to support fighting two adversaries simultaneously as we once did.

And while the Ukraine might have pioneered drone warfare, everybody else is now perfecting it. As the Iranians and Houthis are showing, it makes relatively long distance warfare possible on the cheap and can now do with a drone what in WWII took a railroad gun with a crew of 200 to do. Or perhaps a more recent comparison, it's like a V1 with far better range and accuracy and it's CHEAP, way to cheap for intercepting it with a multimillion dollar interceptor to be an economically viable strategy.

Of course everything - not just drone warfare - is changing the environment and becoming a hidden cost. The Administration is now saying that $20 billion of the $60 billion they are asking for isn't actually for Ukraine at all, just restocking our own inventory of things we've ALREADY sent to Ukraine that now constitute a deficit in our own war readiness supplies (made worse by the Israel-Gaza situation. But the unintended consequences continue to proliferate. Germany is in a minor politico-economic crisis from energy costs and subsidizing their industries to get through the loss of of cheap Russian gas due to the sanctions, and the unintended consequences of the sanctions include the Russians now supplying a lot of what previously went to Europe to China and India, gaining closer relationships with the worlds two most populous countries. While the sanctions were supposed to cripple the Russian economy the actual effect seems to have been to cause competing systems to be developed. Example: excluding Russia from the Western SWIFT banking system has not caused the collapse of Russian trade but merely the establishment of a competing system less controlled by (and now competing with) the Group of Ten SWIFT. And that competing system is now undermining the dollars preeminence as an international reserve currency.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/business/russias-exclusion-from-swift-an-opportunity-for-china-to-internationalise-rmb/articleshow/97157881.cms?from=mdr

The other unintended consequences include shoving the four sort of worst threats to us - Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China together in a closer union and expanding the reach of their coalition into what is now becoming known as the "global south". So it's a lot more nuanced that the "Putin bad, Ukraine good" that you make it out to be. Europe will ALWAYS be at risk until/unless they get over their reluctance to fund their own adequate defense, and paranoid ideations or not, the fears of the Russians (and it is not just Putin) PARANOID OR NOT - need to be taken into account in planning for Europe's future. And the budget of the US (and the patience of the US electorate) is not inexhaustible either.

Nor, I might add, is everyone whose opinion differs from you some Vlad loving, right wing porn addict, anti-American ignorant scumbag. Sometimes they may just be weighing factors you are choosing to overlook.

You need, IMHO, a far more nuanced view of the world around you.

Hubcapped

this is a reasonable response with valid points. thank you for being civil.

I differ in that allowing russia to control odessa and the wheat fields will only cost us more in the long run. Give them the equipment, let them fight (if they want). Support a negotiated settlement at current lines, etc….after all we made a promise after we took their nukes.

allowing major powers to absorb their neighbors at will is a very bad precedent (taiwan). If we want to be able to shape world politics, we need to stay involved.

and as for meto, i am absolutely, 100%, unequivocally ashamed at how the GOP behaved. The fact that you think that someone who doesn’t agree with you or the slimy backstabbing politicians in our broken government is a “punk” for feeling this, is your problem, not mine.
I
OWE
YOU
NOTHING

to say i do is so arrogant and childish its no wonder you cant talk like a normal person. You clearly think very highly of yourself

METO Guido

Respectful. Fair with those fair with me. When they’re not, got another side. Not happy about the misguided effort to kill again in EU. But it is what it is. Run when prudent. Aim small if you can’t.

Excargodog

Hub, I agree that through the Trilateral Process and Budapest Memorandum the leaders of three (actually four counting the UK ) nations signed a statement committing them to security assurrances for Ukraine as soon as they gave up their nukes and ICBMs and signed the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trilateral-process-the-united-states-ukraine-russia-and-nuclear-weapons/

The problem, of course, was that the Western signees had no more legal authority to make those promises than the West German leadership did to promise there would be no NATO expansion farther East than Germany if the Russian federation acquiesced to German reunification. It may have been the right thing to do - I'd concede it probably was because even then the Ukraine didn't have the forces or resources to protect the weapons and there was widespread corruption that was worse even than today - BUT THE PROCESS WASN'T FOLLOWED. In particular, it wasn't ratified by the US Senate as an enforceable treaty and Clinton's signature therefore became essentially worthless when he left office in 2001. So no further US Presidents were even obligated to go along with it.

The PBS gives a pretty good analysis of how we got here:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/a-historical-timeline-of-post-independence-ukraine

But a significant part of it was that we had diplomats FROM A NUMBER OF COUNTRIES making promises and signing Memoranda and Understandings, making verbal agreements that were neither clearly defined nor put through a process of formal ratification and never did carry any real force after those individuals died or left office.

Not the only problem with this process, but an avoidable one that should never have happened.

METO Guido

So much for metars. What’s in the TAF?

Excargodog

My assessment? Pick your option:

1. a negotiated settlement unfavorable to Ukraine (I said over a year ago that the Ukrainians were going to come out of this feeling betrayed whatever the outcome).
2. NATO boots on the ground and those would overwhelmingly be US boots because the rest of NATO pretty much has Jack...
3. Tactical nukes, assuming it can be kept to tactical.
4. Strategic nukes.


Not sure what broke the link above but hopefully this will work

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/a-historical-timeline-of-post-independence-ukraine.

METO Guido

1: Yes, you did. 2: Unlikely as ever, now. Is it even logistically on the table? 3,4: Less unthinkable each passing week. With everything banging around at loose ends like this, somebody might actually get tanned this time. But who, where?

Seems links are getting derailed by an unintended icon insert somehow?

Excargodog

Apparently part of some urls correspond to the code for some emoticon.