Comments by "Gavin Mc" (@gavinmc5285) on "Oliver Stone: Vladimir Putin and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #286" video.

  1. adapted from O. Stone (fb statement March 2022): The USA has wars on its books - past and present - but it still doesn’t justify Mr. Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. A half dozen wrongs don’t make thirteen. Russia was wrong to invade and is wrong to continue. It's mistakes include -- 1) basic geopolitical overconfidence, 2) international conceit of arrogance, 3) inflated ego of confused hubris, 4) underestimating sovereignty as an organizational principle of international relations, 5) underestimating the pariah status effects of isolation, 6) overestimating the power of lies and propaganda outside its sphere of fear. So, how could Putin have saved the Russian-speaking people of Donetsk and Luhansk? Institutionally? Nope. In resolution and mediation? Nope. Through aid, charity and internationally backed intervention? Nope. Through responsible statecraft and genuine best foot forward efforts? Nope. Ah, ok, well then terror, brutal repression, murder, license to rape and abuse, pillage and decimate then. That must be it. No doubt his Government after 2012 could’ve done a better job of showing Russia and her peoples how to better generate a sense of opportunity, possibility and optimism in their aspirations. Only ten years of suffering had to occur before Ukraine got the full brunt of the abuse that had run from Moscow through Crimea and even as far as the American White House. Nothing anybody really cares about anyway. It’s now later than they think. Putin has taken the poison that tastes good from the tree in the middle of the international relations garden and still refuses to acknowledge or potentially concede a mistake. With a state and a corporate military now committed to an everly intractable looking void the white rabbit soon cannot find time inside the rabbit hole of its own design. What a state of affairs. There seems to be no road back, now only one belt and one road forward. Or out. Hawks, vultures, jackals - all seem potentially interested if not actively engaged already. As Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine and Cuba to JFK so Putin seems to be giving Ukraine to Europe and the other thirteen CIS states at least a fighting chance of breaking from the Russian yolk. Yet, chokeholds or not it is clear that as the mud gets murkier and the swamp deepens the continuation of at least some back-channel negotiations remain. What is the price to bring these to the fore? The great unseen tragedy at the heart of this history of our times is the ever failing dissolution of hope that a sufficiently peaceful partnership between Russia and the U.S. might have been. With a PRC vs USA clash also looking ever more likely the quest for earth's supremacy card continues. Unfortunately, when power knows no bounds and opulence is treated as relative poverty a reality check might be what is needed. So far, that check has failed to materialize.
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