Is Russia Bluffing?

by Fisherman 39 Replies latest social current

• 

  TonusOH

  LoveUniHateExams: You know there are people in the Kremlin who are more hawkish and nasty than Putin, right?

  I have no doubt that there are. I am guessing that they would not be seeking to replace Putin if he were to be pushing the nuclear option, assuming it is what they would also do. But I don't see where things work out for Russia if they use nukes. Who will they nuke? Ukraine? That would risk damaging or destroying the valuable land and resources that make the whole war worth their while. Europe? NATO would have no recourse but to respond, and respond forcefully. And such a move would likely force China and India (and any other nations) to get involved in some way, even if it's just to denounce them. The US? That's a good way to usher in the end of the world, one way or another.

  Being more hawkish than Putin doesn't strike me as a good way forward for Russia.
• 

  Rivergang

  The four typical responses to a threat are fight, flight, submit or posture. In any conflict, there is always a fair bit of that last one in evidence! (Whether it be an altercation between two rival states, or a pair of bulls facing off in a paddock, the general idea is much the same).

  In many ways nuclear weaponry is like the poison gas of an earlier generation of warfare. That is, almost as great a hazard to the side which fires it off as it would be to its intended target. This still would not necessarily prevent somebody from being tempted to use it, though - and that “somebody” could well be Vladimir Putin!
• 

  Sea Breeze

  Anony Mouse,

  Not sure where you are getting your information. Czech and Slovakia have virtually identical languages. It is the same culture. The goverments are very close, even representing each other to the EU if the other president can't make an appointment. That is normally unheard of in politics. Your statement, "Divided into ethnic groups that really don’t care about their central overlords" certainly couldn't be farther from reality as far as the Czech Republic and Slovakia are concerned.
  
  The only land dispute my relatives who live there have ever heard of is with Germany on the other side of the country, which is not surprising, given Germany's history and the fact that Czechoslavakia was the first country Hitler annexed. As far as the gypsies are concerned that you mention; No one really knows where they came from. They are all over Europe and mostly live off state welfare.

  From the article I posted from a conference on Russia:

  "Putin invaded Ukraine after the U.S. rejected his demand for a guarantee that Ukraine not join NATO. We don’t have to excuse Putin, but we should note that, until quite recently, having Ukraine in NATO was a prospect that struck even many American foreign policy thinkers as a bad idea. These included George Kennan, who was one of the architects of the NATO alliance when the Cold War began in the late 1940s. Kennan was still alert and active, at about 90 years of age, when NATO won the Cold War at the turn of the 1990s. And in 1997, during the Clinton administration, he warned that American plans to push NATO borders “smack up to those of Russia” was the “greatest mistake of the entire post–Cold War era.”

  In a world that is becoming increasingly globalist, Putin is still a nationalist. That's the "problem".
  
  
• 

  cofty

  As far as the gypsies are concerned that you mention; No one really knows where they came from. They are all over Europe.

  India
  
  
• 

  waton

  NATO borders “smack up to those of Russia”

  well, where would you like the line drawn in the sand to be? The only way to stop an agressor is before he gets momentum, inside his own border. Let Russia build their own Westwall., east of the Brest Litovsk definition. (or january 1918).

  Napoleon's and Hitler's fate should be enough of a deterrent for the west to keep off ancient Russian soil.

  Is Vladimir bluffing? he will not be happy until her rules in Dresden and Berlin again

  Biden, Scholz, Macron will not trade New York, Frankfurt, Paris for Kiev in a nuclear exchange.
  
  
  
  
• 

  Sea Breeze

  None of this is any surprise; the time simply came to "punish" Putin for his nationalist ideology.

  More from the article:

  Many years ago, "William Burns, then President Bush’s ambassador in Moscow, now President Biden’s Director of Central Intelligence. In a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Burns wrote the following:

  Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. [It would be seen] as throwing down the strategic gauntlet. Today’s Russia will respond. Russian-Ukrainian relations will go into a deep freeze."

  Biden (and his handlers) has demonized nationalist Putin the same as he did his nationalist opponents here in the USA. Nationalism is the enemy of Globalism, with all its world courts, open borders, world economic forumns, and cronyism.

  God has been against globalism since the tower of babel, because since man is evil by nature, consoladated power allows for the consoladation of evil. "Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely".

  But to answer the OP question: No, PUTIN IS NOT BLUFFING. I believe globalist leaders have done the math and calculated that even with a nuclear exchange, out of the ashes a far more powerful globalist ideology will emerge, with them in charge.

  Their MO is to create a crisis and then announce themselves as the solution to the problem they created.
• 

  LoveUniHateExams

  Boris Johnson is still at it, our now ex-PM is prancing about on the world's stage, dispensing his priceless wisdom hither and thither.

  Boris writes in today's Daily Mail, pleading for the UK to send tanks to Ukraine.

  Hang on a sec, what if you're concerned about Putin's nuclear threats if the West gets involved? Well, Bellend Boris knows better than you, you thick bastards! So just shut the fuck up, do what Boris says and believe what Boris believes.

  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11667727/BORIS-JOHNSON-sooner-help-Ukraine-victory-sooner-suffering-over.html
  

  Why doesn't he just fuck off back to his Uckfield constituency?
  

  Strange that he seems to care more about Ukrainians that Uckfieldians ...
• 

  mikeflood

  Chancellor Scholz from Germany likely announce today sending Leopard 2 main tanks to Ukraine .... so fate is sealed, fasten your seatbelts...or maybe not
• 

  Sea Breeze

  Rueters is reporting that : Germany will approve sending heavy battle tanks to Ukraine

  Looks like Poland will send also. The United States may supply Abrams tanks.

  I can't see a way this can end well.
• 

  Anony Mous

  @Sea Breeze: the Slovaks have been purging Czech language from schools and media. Yes, they had a “friendly” breakup but they still broke up, you don’t do that if you’re a happy singular group of people. Basically for most of the 20th century the Slovaks were the “hillbillies/dumb farmers” in the region that had to be educated proper Czech language while resources were extracted for not much in return.

  The only reason they didn’t start fighting is because of what happened in Yugoslavia, the central Czech government wasn’t nearly as powerful and understood under pressure from the US that negotiated breakup was their only way out of civil war.

  Czechs and Slovaks breakup was gerrymandered so Czechs maintained significant influence weakening Slovak politics with US propping up corrupt governments until a few months ago when the government collapsed while nationalist and anti-EU parties have sufficient popular support to coalesce.
  

  There is a lot of information and context you don’t see in mainstream media. The culturally and socially imperialistic dreams of a United Europe is coming to an end and the chickens have come home to roost. I’m not saying the Czechs will start fighting the Slovaks, but there is a pathway for Russia to find a foothold there and expand into Europe, and there is enough local popular support.

  If Russia starts funding the new Slovak government economy with cheap gas in exchange for leaving the NATO/EU for example, since that was the primary cause of the government downfall last month (all of Europe has been subsidizing the excessive gas consumption in Germany because they shut down their nuclear reactors).

  Slovak nationalism and nationalism in all countries has been on the rise, like the Donbas region which wants to be independent and has been at war with Ukraine since 2014.

  The US can bring many tanks in, I don’t see how that will stop the Donbas from wanting to be free. If anything it will deepen those feelings even further. And even if they even have enough people to drive tanks, where will they drive them? Are they looking to invade Russia? The Donbas doesn’t want to be liberated and it is a logistical nightmare for tanks in those swamplands between Ukraine’s border and the Donbas.

  Ukraine should simply agree to a cease fire and give up the Donbas as a free independent state, but as said before, Biden and Zelensky both have personally profited significantly from this war so they want to stretch the inevitable out, Biden probably hopes at least 2 years until the next President so his image isn’t tarnished. Having a buffer region that can be “bribed” into favoring your foreign policies is better than having Russia as your neighbor.