Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "Ukraine War Qu0026A Series: Who Really Started This Whole Thing? || Peter Zeihan" video.

@davidmclean357 2014 was a wake up call for Poland, Sweden, Finland, and the Balkans. Poland and Sweden increased defense spending and began rearmament programs after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
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I don’t think NATO has ignored Russia, per se. I think some of NATO’s member states didn’t take the Russian threat seriously. Germany in particular was sleepwalking. Even now, France seems to be 80 or 90% committed. On the other hand, Spain seems to be giving all it can, and it’s the furthest from Russia as all the other European nations. I could be wrong about France’s position. I realize that the French government has its own right wing domestic problems with pro-Putin fascists and old leftist tankies that never left off their Stalin worship. There might even be utility in France keeping diplomatic channels open with the Kremlin (just so long as Macron keeps the material support flowing). France has always been the black sheep of NATO and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While French stubbornness has been annoying to the U.S., their fierce independence has countered the propaganda the NATO is a tool of the U.S. We in the U.S. should acknowledge this, even if grudgingly. As far as the U.S.-French relationship, France is like that friend who will tell you the unpleasant truths you don’t want to hear. If we had listened to their advice and their concerns, we might have avoided the long term quagmire of Iraq.
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@S3NTRY You make it sound one sided. Do you think Baker freely offered such assurances to the Soviet Union without Gorbachev agreeing to stop Soviet aggression and meddling? And tell me, did Yeltsin or Putin honor the agreement? He hasn’t. Go ahead, keep taking things out of context to advance your false narrative.
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⁠⁠⁠ @S3NTRY With regard to your reply to Teddy, you’re the one taking statements out of context to advance your false narrative. You’re changing the subject by asking Teddy for an example of U.S. propaganda.
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Here’s the thing about hypotheticals used as counter examples: they must be at least remotely plausible. When the U.S. threatens to invade Mexico after first annexing Baja California, and after it it foments an insurgency in Tamaulipas and invades Mexico up to Monterrey in support of this fake insurgency, we can talk about your absurd hypothetical.
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1) Each and every NATO member has this veto power. If you know anything about NATO, you’ll know that the members aren’t all in lockstep with the U.S., and that decisions aren’t pushed through based on U.S. whims. A lot of consultation, debate, and diplomacy goes into formulating NATO policy. Seriously, do some deeper reading about NATO if you are truly interested in it. 2) Libya doesn’t have a nuclear deterrent. Nor did Yugoslavia. Russia does have a deterrent, so why would it need to fear aggression?
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⁠ @captainalex157 This comment addresses the original comment and some of your reply. Jim Baker, U.S. Secretary of State under Reagan, made an agreement with Gorbachev, an exchange of assurances. The U.S. wouldn’t support nations on Russia’s border joining NATO, but neither would the USSR use violence and aggression to put down their independence. The agreement wasn’t one-sided, it was mutually beneficial. (And let’s note that while Baker didn’t represent NATO in these talks, the U.S. could veto or delay admittance into NATO, as can any NATO member.) Yeltsin and later Putin broke this agreement, first in 1994. As a result, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were admitted in 1999. The Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania were added in 2004, again as a result of Russian aggression against an independence movement. What you call provocation is the response to Russian provocation. Look at the historical context. Also, fifteen nations, not twenty, have become NATO members since the fall of the Soviet Union, Finland being the last of the fifteen, but others applying or signaling their desire to join.
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Maybe it would be better for you to support the claim first, and then Peter can address it.
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@S3NTRY You should address his main point which is not that you are trolling with a false narrative, but that you’ve neglected the important fact that Russia did not honor its side of the bargain made between Baker and Gorby. And your whole position is that the U.S. would unilaterally offer the Soviet Union assurances without getting assurances in return. This is nonsense and ignores the very nature of diplomacy. In exchange for Baker’s assurances, Gorbachev agreed that the USSR would not use military force against those that wished to have independence. This agreement Yeltsin broke in 1994 (and that wasn’t the last time Russia broke the agreement). NATO didn’t accept new members until 1999. If you don’t want to be labeled as a troll, you’ve got to stop repeating troll talking points, stop dishonestly taking statements out of historical context, and stop buying into the narrative of Russia being the eternal victim. Your whole story falls apart with less than ten minutes if research. Do better.
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Peter is excellent when he stays in his area of expertise. He’s a mixed bag when he gets out of his lane. Just a heads up because he’s not always right. He shouldn’t be your sole source. That said, he’s an important part of a balanced breakfast and understanding geopolitics.
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⁠ @sailinghaldis After Peri awkwardly asked Mary to go on a date, Mary thought peripatetic.
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There are no missiles in Mexico or Canada because the U.S. isn’t threatening to invade either country. Second, no NATO member that borders Russia has nuclear weapons on its soil. This is a false equivalence and an absurd hypothetical. You can’t just make up nonsense to justify Russian aggression. I gotta add that your comment contains many falsities that should be addressed, too many than I have time for. Maybe someone else can take up the slack.
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Unstick yourself from the false analogy. It’s a bad hypothetical. Here’s the thing about hypotheticals used as counter examples: they must be at least remotely plausible. When the U.S. threatens to invade Mexico after first annexing Baja California, and after it it foments an insurgency in Tamaulipas and invades Mexico up to Monterrey in support of this fake insurgency, we can talk about your absurd hypothetical.
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What NATO military interventions contributed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? What were the specific provocations by the U.S. or NATO that weren’t responses to Russian aggression? The U.S. assured Gorbachev that it wouldn’t expand eastward IF the Soviet Union didn’t use aggression and violence to put down independence movements in its former sphere of influence. Yeltsin broke his end of the deal in 1994, and there was no new NATO members until 1999. Who provoked who? Perhaps the greatest provocation by the U.S. was hurting Russian feelings about no longer being an influential superpower with global reach.
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Not really. There were mutual assurances between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, between Baker and Gorby. The USSR would cease aggression and allow former Soviet Bloc countries to gain independence if that’s what they wanted, and in return NATO wouldn’t take advantage of this to expand NATO. Yeltsin and Putin did not honor this agreement, rendering it moot. That’s somewhat of an oversimplification, though. Baker didn’t speak for NATO. What he promised is that the U.S. wouldn’t push NATO to expand. (The triggering event here being German reunification.) Even if the rest of NATO wanted to, the U.S. wouldn’t support it. NATO didn’t expand until 1999, after Russia violated the agreement in the first Chechen war and continued to violate it in our current century.
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So you’re saying that Russia has totally forgotten it has a nuclear deterrent to invasion of its territory?
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Well, absent any knowledge of the conditions that caused Russia to illegally invade Ukraine, can you tell me what conditions would end it? Seems to me that Russia could end the war today by leaving. Ukraine doesn’t have that option—where is it going to go?
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It would take you 2 minutes at most to navigate your web browser to the NATO website and locate the NATO charter. The question isn’t ignored, it’s just so easy to answer that you could have found out in the time it took me to type this reply. It’s easier to do than the boot emptying instructions printed on the bottom of your boots.
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NATO hasn’t placed nuclear missile bases in any of the NATO member states that joined after the Soviet Union fell . Actually, if you don’t count the 1990 German reunification as admitting a new member, Spain was the last new member added in 1982, and nuclear missiles weren’t based in Spain. So the best response to the argument is that it is based on falsity.
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So what I hear you saying is that Russia can’t stand competition in the resource extraction industries and this is another reason for invasion.
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Russia physically invaded Ukrainian territory in 2014. It was “invited” by a separatist movement that it had created inside of Ukraine.
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The fact that some NATO member states’ foreign policy is not in lockstep with the majority of NATO member states is actually a good thing, imo. Dissent from a majority view is not a bad thing.
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@gregoryrowley1739 He doesn’t say that Russia’s expansionist plans are realistic. Just that Russia has them. And Putin apparently thought that its invasion of Ukraine was realistic and would result in a quick win.
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Tucker would first need to learn how to debate. The last time Tucker tried to debate was in 2004 and he got his ass handed to him and then his face pushed in to it. Since that famous debate he has never demonstrated that he’s learned how to debate. He’s only developed the skills to shut down a debate. So if Pete and Tucker were to have a debate, it’s only fair that we give Tucker time to prepare. What will it take? Twenty more years?
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If the U.S. “would have done the same thing”, why are Canada and Mexico still sovereign nations?
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@ChucksSEADnDEAD He’s probably referring to those cute little dogs. 😉
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@stephenderry9488 America, to India: Join me and we can defeat the Emperor. We can rule the galaxy as father and son. India: This is a shitty analogy. First of all, are you supposed to be the father? Because I’m much older than you. I should be the father. Furthermore, I don’t need lightsabers. I just slap a bitch with eight different hands. That’s 16 forehands/backhands before you even have the lightsaber out of your pocket. What else you got, padawan?
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You can’t drive a downloadable videogame to work.
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They realistically could, if they shipped by DHL or FED EX priority.
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@spm_hcmc There has always been a faction within the Left Wing that believes America is always wrong. They’ve never been mainstream. It’s not a merely a matter of being self critical or even overly idealistic. To them, America can’t ever do anything right. The American right wing also had its own extremist faction that pushed for isolationism as its foreign policy. The GOP always managed to marginalize these lunatics and keep them out of its mainstream conservatism. That is until recently. Now the isolationists control the GOP. They’ve cowed mainstream Republican politicians.
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It undermines the argument that NATO is aggressively expanding eastward. The truth is that Eastern European countries wishing to avoid losing their independence to Russia are looking westward and applying for membership. It’s worth noting that no new members were admitted until well after Russia began (in 1994) violently attacking independence movements within other countries of the former USSR, and also worth noting that it wasn’t until 1999 that three new members were admitted in the first post-Cold War round of admissions. The point here is that admitting new members in 1999 was the NATO response to Russian aggression and breaking of agreements. If Russia wanted to maintain the freeze on NATO growth, they shouldn’t have been invading others. They invited it with their own aggressive actions. TRIGGER WARNING: anal rape analogy ahead To put this in very crude terms, it’s like blaming the Alliance Against Anal Rapists for admitting members that don’t want to be anally raped, whose fears are justified because an anal rapist keeps anally raping people that aren’t members of the alliance. Yeah, right, the alliance against anal rapists is provoking the anal rapist. And by the way, the anal rapist keeps talking about how it wants to rape again some of its former victims in the alliance, as well as the alliance itself. And now that it’s anal raping a new victim/former victim, it’s blaming the victim for flirting with the alliance. My feeling is that people that support Russia really love anal rape. How does the anal rapist get away with all this anal rape? Mainly because it threatens the world with global nuclear bukake.
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If the West had taken the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine more seriously, Russia might have been deterred. Which is not to say that no one took it seriously and did nothing. Some Western democracies began supplying weapons and training to Ukraine. (Notably Canada, the U.S., and the UK really stepped up military training to the Ukrainian defense forces.) There were some sanctions imposed, but not nearly enough. If we had sent in a fraction of the aid in 2014 that we are now giving to Ukraine, Putin might never have escalated the war (which began in 2014). That’s something we must remember: this war began in 2014.
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They have a coast guard! 😬 I’m not saying that counts as a full fledged navy, but it counts for something!
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How was it provoked? You’re saying that feeling provoked is the same as provoked. You’re saying that the very existence of democracy threatens authoritarian regimes with aggressive imperial dreams. That’s not being backed into a corner. That’s being told to stay on your side of the line.
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@crescent4996 When you say that the Color Revolutions were supported by the West, what do you mean exactly?
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You’re probably not a centrist. You’re probably a solid conservative. It’s the extremists hijacking the party that makes you seem centrist-leaning. I unregistered as a Republican voter in 2006 because I saw things I really didn’t like in the GOP, this drift towards authoritarianism (with not a little resurgence of xenophobia and racism). And our party leaders weren’t addressing the problem of extremists with any vigor, as they had done from the 60s through the 90s. I don’t think I will ever register as a Democrat. But I don’t think I’ll come back to the GOP with the current lunatics in power. There are few rational conservatives still in the party with any backbone. Many that I thought of as solid conservatives have turned out to be craven cowards. Others have been driven out. (I mean, Jeff Flake is a R.I.N.O.? Only in MAGA land would anyone think that.)
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@Coastfog Right?
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@sburns2421 None of the post 1990 NATO members have nuclear weapons based on their soil. So your argument is based on a falsity. We should also note that the U.S. hasn’t invaded any Russian allies in Latin American after the end of the Cold War. There have been no invasions of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Ecuador. Let’s also note that Mexico isn’t an ally with the U.S. Mexico is a major trading partner and a friendly neighbor of the U.S. We don’t require Mexico to be a buffer.
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The key phrase is “view it as”.
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Did you mean mentally restarted? I think the politically correct term these days is mentally incrapacitated.
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Which post-Cold War NATO members have “nuclear missiles pointing at Russia”? None. Nor does every NATO member have NATO military bases. You’re repeating tired old propaganda talking points.
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To the Russian way of thinking, it’s all the same vast conspiracy acting against it. Putin has climbed so far up his victimhood butthole that even offering him friendship must have ulterior motives and must be a covert attack on his power. This is why to the Kremlin, the EU and NATO are synonymous.
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@goattalk3670 What a ridiculous counter example. Mexico itself wouldn’t tolerate it. You have some really weird ideas about international relations.
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That’s a very good point. Also, the U.S. isn’t threatening to invade either neighbor. The bullshit analogy of Russian military aid to Mexico would make sense if the U.S. annexed the Baja California Peninsula, fomented rebellion in Tamaulipas, and then invaded all along the Northern border to support the fake rebellion. So far that hasn’t happened, nor has the U.S. threatened it. With regard to invading Canada, that’s completely out of the question. Canada is a member of NATO. The U.S. would experience the full wrath of NATO if the U.S. attempted to invade. History fans will remember the last time the U.S. invaded Mexico. It was during the Mexican Revolution, and one of the revolutionaries, Pancho Villa, had been raiding border towns for arms and supplies. In 1916 the U.S. sent a contingent under John Pershing to capture Villa, chasing him around the desert fruitlessly. However, they did manage to kill some of the men under Villa’s command, and some of his subordinates. Pershing’s forces withdrew in 1917. Anyway, the point of the story is that the last time the U.S. military was on Mexican soil, over a hundred years ago, no attempt was made to annex any territory. And given the chaos of Mexico during the Revolution, it would have been a perfect opportunity for conquest because Mexico was so divided. So no, it’s not the policy of the U.S. to invade Mexico. 😂 It really wasn’t the policy in 1916, either. It was a necessity because bandit revolutionaries were attacking border town, but no territory was taken.
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When did the U.S. push for Ukraine to join NATO? Up until the invasion, the U.S. line was it wasn’t going to happen. Did you uncover a secret plan heretofore unknown?
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Well, for one thing, one cannot join if they’re in the middle of a war with another nation.
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@eliterun6214 Crimea would belong to the Crimean Tartars, had Stalin not removed them from Crimea by mass exile and extermination.
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@guidoulm1559 if you don’t see the difference between your statement and the UN Charter, you’re too dumb to benefit from an explanation. You’re comparing tricycles to swordfish.
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