Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "Binkov's Battlegrounds"
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@roshanchachane142 No. The US decided opposing the Russia, China, and mostly Pakistan-backed Taliban was taking away resources from the defense of the Pacific Rim, support of NATO and Ukraine, and its need to pay for military modernization programs. There was also a sense that the Afghan conflict had gone far past a proportional NATO response to 9/11, and that anti-terrorism cannot mean stationing troops in every possible anti-American sanctuary country. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was a strategic choice and, yes, also a whim of Trump's America First ideology. It did reveal that the Afghan military was too intertwined with NATO to stand on its own, but not intertwined enough for the US to know how fast it, the Afghan military, would retire from the field. The notion that the Taliban by themselves ejected NATO from Afghanistan is what Russia, China, and Pakistan want the world to believe. Kind of like saying the Afghan mujahedeen ejected the Soviet Union by themselves.
The "ragtag group of Talibanis" and their backers apparently did not have a plan to replace American and NATO economic support of Afghanistan. Is anyone going to hold hearings about that? Taliban posers need to go back to school and the farm and figure out how to expand and improve their irrigation under drought conditions, and provide safe access to their mineral resources, or they are going to be very stuck in poverty. They didn't seem to have any kind of a plan for climate change. They predominantly had a will to power to establish their idea of a religiously pure society.
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@TheOne-ve7hs In the case of Venezuela, if it can pay, that country can get almost anything it needs from Russia or China, and it does have agriculture and commercial fishing. But Russia, having considerable oil production skills, has only modest interest in helping Venezuela repair its oil industry, because any Venezuelan petroleum export capability would put downward pressure on the price of oil and thus downward pressure on Russian oil revenue. And neither Russia nor China are in much of a position to be charitable. Looking forward, US and Russian oil producers see many forces acting to reduce demand for their product. It makes perfect sense for them not to restore a Venezuelan petroleum export capability. Venezuela needs to find new ways to make a living.
As in many countries, in Venezuela the classic pride of the accomplished stoked populism in the masses. And insolent populism chased Venezuelan skill right out of the country, leading to a significant loss of expertise and maintenance of the infrastructure and economy. Somehow the populists cannot get enough people interested in learning petroleum engineering and all the related engineering it takes to be a reasonably self-sufficient oil exporting nation. Perhaps it is another lesson in human limits of tolerance for income inequality.
In the US, the people can and do have a lively public debate on social justice and make enough progress on it to keep its constitution. In other countries, one needs to be careful what one thinks.
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There are a lot of major problems going on within Russia right now. I don't recall Putin listing US economic collapse as a war objective. I recall pretext about Nazis, demilitarizing Ukraine, NATO "expansion" (liberty from Russia), and rescuing supposedly oppressed Russian speakers in the Donbas. Whatever its particular set of problems, the US and the West's population and their economies outweigh that of Russia, yet Russia presents itself as essentially infinitely resourced and infinitely capable. That is delusion and hubris. What Russia has, next to China, is the world's most potent system for domestic control, which gives the leadership of the regime an outsized sense of power. At the same time, that domestic control does not create a large mass of motivated soldiers. The regime obviously sees the common soldier as expendable. This lack of empathy and undue sense of power has led Russian leadership to a large-scale confrontation with its own limits, right up to waving its nuclear cards. Limits and loss are something very uncomfortable for the regime's psyche. In the West, loss more often leads to evaluation, correction, and returning to compete again. What Russia does is look at the speck that is in someone else's eye, and not at the plank that is in it's own. It is a form of avoidance behavior. "Everything is going according to plan and will be fine." Delusion and hubris. The US government, in consultation with the people of the US, and of course its special interests, are in a continuous and often contentious dialogue of self-improvement. In Russia, people have to be very careful about complaining about the government's plans. The Russian regime is driving people out of their country and essentially committing the genocide of tens of thousands of Russian speakers, be they Russian or Ukrainian Russian speakers, for the sake of the leadership's vanity. Millions of foreigners are trying to get INTO the US. Why? Usually, to make more money, because it is here to be made. The Russian population is far less than it should be because of the practices of the Soviet and Russian regimes, and the trend does not look good for Russia at all. But no worries, China, with its own problems, yet with its huge population and economy, will help manage things in the Russia of the future. That's something even Putin is scared to talk about.
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@starchild692 Soviet concern with American nuclear missiles in Turkey was as valid as American concern with nuclear missiles in Cuba.
The American justification for the invasion of Iraq was flawed. Iraq did not have WMD. Many Americans see the errors of that war. Hussein was a threat to his neighbors, having the world's fourth largest military at that time, but that threat, similar in some ways to the Russian threat to its smaller neighbors, could have been countered by alliances of neighbors rather than an American invasion. The American invasion of Iraq was wrong, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is wrong.
There are certainly arrogant forces in the American business community that prod the government to use the military to advance their interests, but there are also moderating forces that restrain that arrogance. The US does not invade Cuba or Nicaragua or Venezuela just because it has potential interests and could invade any of those countries. America does restrain itself.
"yet you fail to see the russians security concern in the Ukrainan scenario which is hundredfolds of that of Cuba." C'mon, that's hyperbole. It was a win-win when Ukraine relinquished its share of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. Nukes in Ukraine would have been even worse than nukes in Turkey, and all parties saw that and came to an agreement. And the 1994 Budapest Memorandum by Russia, the US, Britain, and Ukraine was intended to secure Ukraine's borders and Russia's security. The US and Britain did train Ukraine's military, but pulled their advisors out when Russia invaded. That pull out was an attempt to de-escalate the situation, but has been largely ignored by Russia.
Russia has only made its security worse by invading Ukraine. All adjacent nations that value their independence will enlarge their armed forces and invite American forces to establish permanent bases. Economic sanctions will remain in place as long as Russia postpones a settlement agreement in an attempt to increase its gains in Ukraine. Rather than take responsibility for its disrespect of its neighbors, Russia projects its own arrogance onto the US and its neighbors, who did not invade Russia. Russia's "security concerns", especially in light of Ukraine's relinquishment of nuclear weapons and Russia's primacy in having the world's largest nuclear arsenal, are exaggerated to advance its own economic and imperial agenda. America, too, is an empire. I do not deny that. There are numerous domestic justice issues with First Nations and African Americans whose ancestors were slaves. We work on these things. Progress is slow, but perhaps Barack Obama was evidence that there is good will in America, not just arrogance.
One must understand how Anti-Social Personality Disorder impacts Russian leadership and its narratives. One aspect of that is blaming everyone else for one's problems, rather than facing one's own responsibility for one's problems. That is called "projection." And Russian leadership does a lot of projection. That is, in part, why the system of government they have set up is self-defeating. But, of course, they blame everyone else.
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That's a bargaining position. Remember the Soviet Union deferred on infrastructure development to focus on matching or exceeding the West in military power. That was fine as long as oil prices were good. Look up the history of oil prices in the 80s. They dropped and the Soviet Union was ended. For a time the world enjoyed the end of the cold war and economies improved. The American budget finally ran a surplus. The Chinese and Russian economies improved. Then the US wasted power on Iraq and Afghanistan. Then China and Russia decided to be imperial again, and the world is again at an increasing level of war. Russia needs to consider that as climate change becomes more apparent to more people, the sale of oil and gas will have to go down just to save this planet's ecosphere. Russia's long-term planning appears to be about restoring a large military. It's the same mistake the Soviets made. This tendency seems to be a part of Russian leadership DNA. It is obsessed with winning the next thing.
Ukraine is going to try to get Crimea back, and it might be able to do it. It is also in Ukraine's interest to shorten its border with Russia in eastern Ukraine because it will be easier to defend from Russia in the future. That might be what Russia wins in this conflict: large amounts of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts and a stable border with Ukraine. That border is likely to look like the DMZ between North and South Korea. There probably will not be "NATO" forces in Ukraine. Per the Budapest Memorandum, there probably will be rotations of British and American forces in Ukraine. Polish and other forces from selected European countries are likely to rotate in and out as well. Ukraine will not be defendable without them. No other options . . . maybe. That's part of a bargaining position for Ukraine.
The parties need to look at the Budapest Memorandum. If Russia is not going to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, then, in order to prevent the next Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine (like North Korea) will need to have nuclear weapons. The Budapest Memorandum was a great deal in the service of reducing Russian paranoia. Ukraine did not later build a nuclear arsenal, but Russia busted the deal with its disrespect of the Ukrainian border. The only excuse for ending that respect would have been Ukraine building a nuclear arsenal. Now Russia, because of its disrespect, deserves to face a Ukrainian nuclear arsenal. That's a bargaining position. I'll bet you don't like it. I don't like yours either. Have some more moderate ideas?
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