Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
- Messages
- 14,671
Which countries do you suggest the USA (regardless of President) is keeping an eye on with a view to invading with regime change in mind? Canada, perhaps?
-
Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Russia invades Ukraine
- Thread starter kristiang85
- Start date
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 1,354
Did I say, or even suggest that everything was going as planned for Russia? I just said it would be dangerous to assume things are going as badly as some journalists are suggesting. There is a big difference, and if it was really as much of a disaster as many of us would like, then the bombing and killing wouldn't still be continuing. Since it is continuing, and the Russians are still advancing, then things really can't be going all that badly for them. Unfortunately.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Reports? Perhaps I could provide evidence??? I think you've misunderstood. You've said yourself within your same post, that "it really isn't going anything like as well as they had planned for". My point is that however badly things might be going for the Russians, they're not going badly enough for them, otherwise the carnage wouldn't be continuing. I'm saying that perhaps things aren't going as badly as many, yourself included, might be saying. I wish the Russian advances would collapse, but as yet they're not really showing all that many signs of doing so.
Last edited:
Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
- Messages
- 14,671
Putin won't be satisfied until Zelennsky is killed, or at least captured and spirited off. Satisfied doesn't mean sated, by the way. The Wagner Group was charged with this months ago: interesting choice of name, after Hitler's 'favourite' anti-semitic composer. Argentina and Chinese state controlled Hong Kong are amongst the countries that tolerate the existence of this group.
The advance has been very slow. The reason it is still continuing is because Putin wants to defeat Ukraine at absolutely any cost. The alternative for him after all is utter humiliation. Putin is having to resort to desperate measures. I really don't understand your reasoning here
The main player in NATO is the US though.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
The material reality of 2022 is that the US has successfully enforced its buffer zone thanks to vehemently repressive foreign meddling in the Americas, not to mention their invasion of Cuba.Which countries do you suggest the USA (regardless of President) is keeping an eye on with a view to invading with regime change in mind? Canada, perhaps?
I do invite you to consider how Americans would perceive a hypothetical: a nuclear armed Soviet satellite state in Mexico with bases capable of striking the United States. It’s not good enough to suggest “ah well the Russians wouldn’t *invade* America, they’d be outnumbered, wouldn’t they?”
How would you feel at a theoretical Warsaw Pact Ireland having nuclear weapons and 100,000 Russian soldiers?
I don’t think people are really prepared to entertain the absolute privilege the West has in consolidating its geographic position unlike Russia. Sure, that’s too bad for them - the western way of doing thing is superior and we shouldn’t apologise for that. But don’t make out you wouldn’t feel the same level of suspicion and worry about being surrounded by unfriendly forces, whether you deserve the unfriendliness or not.
I am quite concerned people have forgotten Russia is heavily armed with nukes and expect there to be no material consequences to actions which make them feel excluded, threatened or surrounded.
Last edited:
I hope you don't mean superior as in good. The only real difference between both sides, is Russia can be read like a book, it rules through strength, and respects strength. NATO (mainly the US) is a lot harder to read, using a lot of smoke and mirror and subterfuge. However, if you do some digging, the truth can he found, like the stuff the CIA did during the cold war, or the stuff that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange leaked.
It’s superior in the sense it’s been more successful and promulgating itself.
Russia does respect strength and does not respect nations it sees as weak. This is in many ways why Trump and Putin didn’t butt heads so much. Trump - an abomination of a politician - is an old fashioned strongman and Russia felt they could at least coexist because they operated in the same way.
I know this is heresy, but you could say Trump might have prevented the war.....
Also, I'm glad you seem to be looking at the situation in a neutral manner. I see too many people that just say, effectively, 'Russia bad, West good', with very little understanding of the truth, that the choice is really about the lesser of two evils.
Or just the fact Trump benefits massively from Russian money.
Shrop
Established Member
- Joined
- 6 Aug 2019
- Messages
- 1,354
My reasoning is that Putin is still a lot stronger than he should be. I agree that he may be showing signs of desperation, but what I said earlier is that the 40 mile convoy appearing nearly dead, wasn't as much of a hopeful sign as many of us wanted.
Trump merely delayed the war. He was unpredictable enough not to mess with. He had form in this area with his air strikes in Syria and Baghdad. The one in Syria was on a Syrian base with Russian forces stationed there.
Biden and the other major NATO-player leaders are relatively staid and predictable with a significant appetite against escalating conflict.
I do understand the human urge to hate Russia. I watched a video showing a Ukrainian attack on a Russian convoy today and felt pleased to see the burning wreckage and human cost of the invading Russian forces. Nonetheless we have to be intellectually honest in analysing exactly why there is a war in Europe at the moment.
Which is why the West needs to show strength and contain Russia into the foreseeable future. It's also why is neighbours absolutely need NATO and EU membership, and why we shouldn't build our foreign policy around Russia's completely unjustified victim complex.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Theoretically. But if that's the case, why did Putin work so hard to keep him in power ?
Last edited:
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Personally, I wouldn't expect anything much to happen if it was a case of a democratic Government freely choosing to align itself, with the evident free consent of the majority of the voters there, other than the US probably heavily beefing up its security along that border, some verbal protests, and a likely cooling of relations between the US and Mexico. This is 2021, not the 1960s: We tend to have different standards in terms of recognising the freedom of voters and democratic countries to choose their own destiny than we perhaps did 60 years ago.
Why, what do you think would happen?
I suppose we'll never really know, and it's all speculation.
I don't think Biden in particular has helped though. There's a reason some call him potato-in-chief.
As for the Russian hatred, they are the aggressors, of course people are angry at them. However, I worry about responding to war with essentially calls for more war. The only people who have ever benifitted from conflict are those in high places, while the pawns on the ground do their bidding, and the civilians suffer. Of course I feel deeply for the civilians, but I also feel deeply for the pawns.
I don't hate Russia (except when they're threatening us with destruction). It's just one of those countries that's always bad news.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
I can't speak for anyone else but I'm pretty sure I feel no hatred for Russia, as a country. If anything, I feel rather sympathetic towards a population have been repeatedly lied to and repressed by an awful Government. But in the end, as long as that Government is in power, it is (very deliberately) posing a very clear danger to our liberal democracy and our way of life, and we have to respond to that.
You mean the Russia collusion case that found no evidence? And wasn't picked up again after Trump was gone (removing the possibility he used his power to stop the case).
As I understand it, there was Russian interference in the American election through social media etc. If that has been been shown not to be the case, I withdraw my comment.
The allegations mainly revolved around direct interference as far as I remember, but maybe I'm wrong. As for social media, there's fake posts all over the place, so I don't doubt those include Russian posts. However, I also doubt the power of social media, at least for the entire population. It works to convince businesses about a cause to support, for example, but most older people still get most of their news from the MSM (which does include Fox News I might add), and the majority in the US is still older people, as far as I'm aware.
Nicholas Lewis
Established Member
Totally correct and most of the media in this country are just fuelling that fire without realising the consequences of what is playing out here in respect of the wider global impact. The West wasn't ready for this and whilst naked aggression can't be tolerated you have to be prepared to counter it and we aren't so we knee jerk and up the ante and before you know it things spiral out of control. Best outcome here is for Ukraine is to be coached into letting Donbass go and for NATO to say Ukraine won't be admitted to NATO.Won't happen of course because world leaders will never climb down irrespective of which side they are on so on it goes with us all hoping Russia doesn't deploy nukes but we can't stop them.
Pete_uk
On Moderation
I worry that Russia is rigging Chernobyl or Zaporizhzhia to blow big time.
Full surrender or they are going sky high.
Full surrender or they are going sky high.
Yes, I admit I was thinking of the fake news agenda. I don't for one moment believe that the US's electoral procedures were compromised.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
This is nonsense, the West has been the definition of restraint in not directly intervening. Anything less than what we are doing now would be pure appeasement.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
That is only the best outcome if you (a) don't really care about the people of Ukraine or their right to defend themselves, and (b) don't care about what happens more than a few months into the future. It's all but guaranteed that if that was the outcome, the secondary result would be an emboldened Putin, having found that he can get at least some of what he wants by force, re-arming his forces and being back to take another bite out of either Ukraine or some other country a few years down the line.
== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: ==
Social media doesn't have to work for the entire population to change an election result. In the UK 2016 US Presidential election a swing of 0.4% from Republican to Democrat compared to the actual result would have flipped Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan - which would have been sufficient for Clinton to win. In other words, if the social media fake news had swung just 0.4% of voters, that would have been enough to have swung the outcome and caused Trump to win. Given what we know about the extent of Russian meddling, it doesn't seem at all implausible that Russia's interference might well have swung that many voters.
Last edited:
brad465
Veteran Member
In the past, Chile was a key target, where they backed a coup to get Pinochet in. They probably wouldn't get away with that now, but there certainly is a "wrong sort of dictatorship" mentality, where some dictatorships get sanctioned to the hilt by the US (Cuba, North Korea, Iran), but others get cosied up to (Saudi Arabia, UAE).Which countries do you suggest the USA (regardless of President) is keeping an eye on with a view to invading with regime change in mind? Canada, perhaps?
They'd have to be careful themselves though as it's right next door to Belarus, and also Russia itself isn't far away, so they can only really do it when the wind is blowing E/NE/S in Ukraine. Some days in the 10 day forecast have this pattern, but there are other days with virtually no wind at all, which could lead to areas being impacted they don't want to be.
I think the United States would try to effect a regime change in that scenario.
What the US would do is secondary to what we as European States understand as the threat from Russia. You can try and cast this as a US issue as much as you want, but this is primarily about Russia being an untrustworthy/bad neighbour to its European neighbours.
But the principal factor here is NATO which usually takes its lead from the United States.
Nonsense. The principal factor is that Eastern European countries wouldn't trust Russia as far as they could throw it, and as recent events have shown, they are quite right.
Some wouldn't necessarily trust the West either, such as Poland or Hungary, and are just choosing what they see as the lesser of two evils.
Indeed. And where has the West prevented those countries (Belarus being a key example) from choosing the Russian way ?
Poland and Hungary have complex political situations, none of which require an invasion by Russia.