Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice_Major
Not being cleaver at all, simply stating facts.
Who decided to push NATO borders eastward despite repeated warnings, setting the stage for this conflict?
Who prevented a possible peace deal at the start of the war?
https://europeanconservative.com/art...ne-peace-deal/
Who continues to pump weapons into the conflict with no condition for negotiation.
Not here to argue if Russia was justified in its invasion, but at this point in time, it's clear the U.S. along with the U.K., Poland, and the Baltics are using Ukraine as proxy to weaken Russia. No interest in seeing the bloodbath come to end at least under the current administrations. |
That’s because, from where the US sits, the “good guys” are winning. Heck, if half of Ukraine--or possibly all of Ukraine--were occupied by Russia, it’s still a big fat “W” for the United States and its allies. Putin’s adventurism was a jackpot for the USA and its interests.
Hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers,
the Russian military gutted
an intelligence bonanza regarding the capability (or lack thereof) of modern Russian weapons
A massive boost to member NATO nations’ military spending
A even bigger boost to NATO with the Swedes and Fins clamoring to be let in.
The “free world” aligned in sanctions against Russia.
All of this at zero political cost, and practically no actual cost to the United States.
That said, none of this justifies the loss of life and destruction caused by a war of aggression in Ukraine or Taiwan. The USA wins, but most of the people of the United States would rather not remain citizens of the undisputed hegemon at the cost of hundreds of thousands of foreign lives, but we will, if the dictators in charge of Russia and China insist.
Military and political analysis were wholly convinced that Ukraine would quickly fall to Russia and that the Russians would then slowly be bled out by trying to maintain their occupation of their next-door neighbor.
It made sense,
Ukraine was fractured, partially carved up by Russian covert (and not-so-covert) action.
It was thought to be deeply infiltrated by Russian operatives. It had a weak, unpopular, pro-western democratic government that had recently replaced a semi-despotic pro-russian government and lost a major chunk of territory to Russia.
The west was unwilling to ship advanced/heavy arms, fighters, radars, and missiles to Ukraine prior to the invasion.
Their military was in poor shape and most of their defenses were pointed (or at least designed to be pointed) to the West. Two decades ago, it was unimaginable that Russia would invade Ukraine.
Nobody thinks conquering Taiwan will be as easy as Ukraine was supposed to be.
The island has been actively fortified against Chinese invasion since before 1950
Politically, the Taiwanese are totally unified against Chinese aggression. No one welcomes the Mainlanders unless they’re coming as tourists. The KMT wants de-escalation and trade, but they still buy weapons when they’re in charge, just in case that doesn’t work. Not a single speck of Taiwan territory would be as easy to carve off as was the Donbas or Crimea.
The west has/is/will be generally happy to sell Taiwan modern, effective, integrated defensive and offensive equipment. Compare all the hand-wringing over shipping Abrams tanks and F-16’s to Ukraine--as it was being invaded by Russia--to the paucity of wrangling over selling the same equipment to Taiwan long before Putin reminded us that dictatorships do not have to act rationally. I think it’s a safe bet that the weapons floodgates will open as wide as they’ll go the second a Chinese military build-up to invasion starts.
The big hope for the PRC is that the Taiwanese won’t be willing to fight for their freedom. The west can put a weapon into every willing hand, but that won’t matter if there aren’t any hands willing. Well, that might have been the case before HK’ers came flooding into Taiwan warning just what “One country, two systems” really means. System Option 1: Join ours. System Option 2: Go to Prison. Despots always seem to think that their people are stronger because they suffer through their abuses and deprivations, and that democracy and that too much freedom has made democratic peoples not do what humans naturally do when their homes, friends, and families are threatened. Putin clearly thought so. The people of Ukraine have dispossessed him of that notion. I’d put my money on the Taiwanese people acting like humans too.
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