We need to have a discussion on the Ukraine...

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Sac Arrow

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We do. And yes, it will get political. I wish we could push the politics aside (I have my stance) but this is important, people. It really is. A war with Russia will almost certainly go nuclear.

Mods, this is an important topic. Find a way to allow it.
 
SkyDog58 said:
We just need to stay out of it. Let Europeans solve European problems.
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I would certainly agree with you that the Ukraine is not worth going to war for. The other NATO countries? Well, convince me otherwise.
 
My uninformed opinion is to arm them like we did the Afghans when the Soviets invaded that country. Providing the Ukrainians are up to a long-term insurgency. Other than that, I've got nothing.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
My uninformed opinion is to arm them like we did the Afghans when the Soviets invaded that country. Providing the Ukrainians are up to a long-term insurgency. Other than that, I've got nothing.
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It sort of depends on who you ask. The Ukraine has always been a part of Russia historically but they had separated prior to the Soviet bloc that had reassumed them. Unfortunately, they are pawns, in a much bigger game of who has the bigger dick.
 
I’ve been to Ukraine and Russia both before and after the end of the USSR. Very nice people. I liked them a lot. The governments, not so much.

I feel very sorry for the people I met in Ukraine.

There’s one guy who has posted here on PoA, who made wooden props. Nice guy. I feel sorry for him.
 
Not so sure the Russians and the Chinese aren’t going to become the new Axis.

Interesting times.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
My uninformed opinion is to arm them like we did the Afghans when the Soviets invaded that country. Providing the Ukrainians are up to a long-term insurgency. Other than that, I've got nothing.
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This, information (intelligence) sharing, and economic measures to put Russia's economy in the tank as well as freeze as many kleptokrat holdings as possible.

The next step is a huge rearmament for NATO to make sure there isn't a "next time" in Europe or nearby.
 
I think we have to get a lot tougher, with trade & commerce. I’m talking to the point of cutting them totally off, not just us, but all ‘Western friendly’ countries.

If we had an energy surplus, trade/sell to Europe. The answer right now isn’t, ‘put up more windmills’.

I’m close to ready to send EVERY ship back to China if they want to be buddies with Putin. Yeah, I know we’re heavily intertwined, I’d rather do that than trade nukes. I realize the retort is ‘we can’t live without trade with China’. Well, some have been warning for decades, most want cheaper shoes.
 
kyleb said:
This, information (intelligence) sharing, and economic measures to put Russia's economy in the tank as well as freeze as many kleptokrat holdings as possible.

The next step is a huge rearmament for NATO to make sure there isn't a "next time" in Europe or nearby.
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Agree.
 
sourdough44 said:
I think we have to get a lot tougher, with trade & commerce. I’m talking to the point of cutting them totally off, not just us, but all ‘Western friendly’ countries.

If we had an energy surplus, trade/sell to Europe
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Elections have consequences, that ship has sailed. For now, Europe has to deal with the Bear for energy.
 
Unfortunately, when the USSR fell apart, we asked the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear weapons. In exchange, we and NATO promised to defend them from external invasion. Everyone seems to forget that treaty.

It is too late for us to do anything useful militarily now, but when the Russian troops were massing along the border, the best approach would have been for each NATO country to have a combined training exercise, and place a major military unit alongside each major road, just inside the Ukrainian border.

Then, if the Russians invaded, they would have had to run over NATO troops, and that would have been too dangerous to Putin, and unlikely to happen.

Syria prepared for an invasion of Lebanon in 1958, when Eisenhower was president. Airborne from
Germany and Marines from the Mediterranean Fleet were landed by air and across the beach, took up positions on the border crossings. The president called Syria, and announced that if a single shot was fired at our troops, they were to advance to the Syrian capital, and capture it.

Syrian troops were pulled back to their normal stations, and the threat was over.

A later president failed to understand this sort of diplomacy, and Syria later took Lebanon.

The planes delivering the Airborne passed directly over the Army post in Italy where I was stationed, and we fully understood that the seemingly endless string of heavy, 4 engine planes denoted a major military event, and we wondered if it would include us.

We did not sleep very well that night.
 
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NoHeat said:
I’ve been to Ukraine and Russia both before and after the end of the USSR. Very nice people. I liked them a lot. The governments, not so much.

I feel very sorry for the people I met in Ukraine.

There’s one guy who has posted here on PoA, who made wooden props. Nice guy. I feel sorry for him.
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People are the same everywhere. Nearly all wanting to live peaceful lives with loved ones. It's their dick swinging governments that seem to mess that up.

@meglin You hanging in there?
 
geezer said:
Unfortunately, when the USSR fell apart, we asked the Ukrainians to give up their nuclear weapons. In exchange, we and NATO promised to defend them from external invasion. Everyone seems to forget that treaty.
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I don't know that anyone forgot it, but they certainly have not risen to the occasion to stand behind it. Probably because of the obvious downward spiral standing behind it would lead to at this point. The really foolish thing is that everyone has (more or less) sat on their hands for 8 years since Russia and proxies took part of Ukraine. That was an obvious trigger to draw a line in the sand, station a handful of NATO forces there as a tripwire, and help Ukraine modernize to make the next round extremely painful for the USSR. Huge missed opportunity.
 
One of the big problems here is that there is a lack of reciprocity. What I mean is that "we" have Western values. The West, at least in recent decades, has been reluctant to fully relase the hounds of war. We could have gone into Afghanistan or Iraq with a scorched earth, take no prisoners approach and forced the survivors to kneel at the throne and kiss the ring or face the consequences. We didn't.

I don't think Putin will have the same reservations about killing Ukranians. That makes his job easier in the short term.
 
If the Europeans are upset by it, let them figure it out. Germany won't help because it relies on R for gas and oil. Everyone else is too broke from its heavy socialist spending. Ukraine is hardly a democracy. It's a corruptocracy, as we have seen. We have been closing oil leases, shutting down fracking and canceling American pipelines. And buying a quarter of a billion barrels of oil from -- Putin. So, we're making ourselves poorer while we're making Putin richer. We couldn't have put ourselves in a worse position if we tried.

I'm afraid we're going to try a cyber war with R. We have a much more complex country, and it is much more vulnerable to cyber attack. Every dam, power station and factory. R probably has a few vodka-soaked guys running their powerplants, and you can't hack that.
 
Not the first time Russia wanted to "take" someone else's land for a buffer: A Thousand Lakes of Red Blood on White Snow | Arto Bendiken

My grandmother loved telling how the Finns blew up the frozen lakes to sink Russian tanks as they trundled across. It was The Winter War and Finland was attacked by a force larger than our D-Day invasion. I hope the Ukrainians can fare as well. Stalin starved Ukraine by the millions by taking their crops for the rest of Russia, if I'm not mistaken. The link above is about the war that spawned the Molotov Cocktail, a Finnish invention.
 
Ukraine is lost. If Putin were simply trying to menace them, or take a little territory, he would have moved a Division or two, some planes, some warships, and held some maneuvers. When a nation moves ten or more full combat arms divisions along with their associated logistics tails and support units, they generally intend to use them. It’s incredibly expensive. We cannot help Ukraine at this point. The Europeans are completely dependent upon Russia for more than half of their fossil fuels. They will not implement or support harsh sanctions against Putin. It’s cold in Europe.

we need to be looking ahead, and much further east. More troops to nato are wasted.
Look for ways to try to defuse the conflict, not enlarge it.

send the troops to Taiwan. Tomorrow. Send the planes there, and reinforce our naval presence. Organize an international movement to fully recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Quietly communicate to the Chinese that an attack on Taiwan is an attack on the U.S.. The loss of Taiwan to Chinese aggression would be an incalculable disaster for the US and the rest of the world. Geopolitically and economically, it would be a loss that would ultimately shift the global balance of power and locus of influence away from the US to an ascendant China. A very different world.

just one dinosaur’s opinion.
 
orca64 said:
Ukraine is lost. If Putin were simply trying to menace them, or take a little territory, he would have moved a Division or two, some planes, some warships, and held some maneuvers. When a nation moves ten or more full combat arms divisions along with their associated logistics tails and support units, they generally intend to use them. It’s incredibly expensive. We cannot help Ukraine at this point. The Europeans are completely dependent upon Russia for more than half of their fossil fuels. They will not implement or support harsh sanctions against Putin. It’s cold in Europe.

we need to be looking ahead, and much further east. More troops to nato are wasted.
Look for ways to try to defuse the conflict, not enlarge it.

send the troops to Taiwan. Tomorrow. Send the planes there, and reinforce our naval presence. Organize an international movement to fully recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Quietly communicate to the Chinese that an attack on Taiwan is an attack on the U.S.. The loss of Taiwan to Chinese aggression would be an incalculable disaster for the US and the rest of the world. Geopolitically and economically, it would be a loss that would ultimately shift the global balance of power and locus of influence away from the US to an ascendant China. A very different world.

just one dinosaur’s opinion.
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You have hit the nail on the head.
 
I hope we stay out of it. We can’t be the world police for every conflict. If we do put our nose in it we should be prepared for WWIII. I feel like this is a test of US resolve. As soon as we enter the game so will China. It’s time for other NATO nations to get in the game if they feel it’s worth it. We are in a position very similar to the start of WWII. A divided nation with a military at rest that’s become very dependent on China and the Middle East for resources. In a way, China has placed sanctions on the US without calling them sanctions under the guise of Covid. This could very possibly go either way right now and poor Ukrainians are suffering.
 
I can think of about 81,000,000 reasons this is all happening.
 
Sanctions are useless when used against someone that doesn’t care about sanctions. I’m surprised that’s so difficult for many well educated and air conditioned people to understand. It’s made a huge difference in N. Korea and Iran, right? And don’t tell me it takes time. It’s measured in generations in those two examples.

Too much book learning and not enough street smarts on one end of our politics, and a lock yourself in your compound attitude on the other. The world is big and it’s mean and we don’t help one another as much as we really should anymore, locally and globally. Selfish really.
 
I don't know what the reality is, but we had a ground army in the 1990's, that could have done exactly what geezer mentioned above, parking troops on the border as a trigger, if we'd had the courage, if we valued long term stability. But after the end of gulf 1, I believe the perception is that we don't have a ground army anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. We have occupation forces, light infantry units, special forces, driving around in armored cars. Or a shorter version - in 1990, we were a 1st world force ready to take on another 1st world force. Now, we're built around trying to suppress 3rd world nations, like a bad version of the UK trying to keep colonies, and we're not ready for a 2nd world force.

Not to be too political, but during the entire cold war, even the worst leaders were capable of going head to head with the soviets. They had to. The stakes from 1945-1990 were our existence. Over the past 30 years, we haven't had to worry about that, and we've lost the ability to play at those stakes. Technically, we could have put the 82nd Airborne in, just on friendly exercises, last week. With maybe a phone call reminder that it would take all of about an hour and a half for the Russian navy to cease to exist is we find ourselves in a shooting war. But we don't have the political capability to do anything like that anymore.

So now we don't lead the world, we don't make the decisions, we just watch. That's too bad, because the world doesn't need another USSR. And I agree, at this point it's too late to do anything about the Ukraine.
 
It broke my heart to hear the Ukrainian foreign minister give one reason why Americans should care, that we keep our promises (see geezer's comments about the disarmament treaty with them). We don't. I got an earful about this from a Hungarian colleague who was old enough to remember when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956. He was still mad about it, and I couldn't blame him. We keep our promises when it's convenient. In this sense, our government is no different from any other government. Our strength is our people, not our government.

I mourn for the Ukrainian people, and I think we should put on more severe sanctions, but that may not be possible. Apparently some of our allies do not want us to ban Russia from the Swift banking system, and the same may be true for putting sanctions directly on Putin and his family (does he even have a family?). It is, to a large extent, Europe's fight, so I'm not sure going over their wishes is a viable option, even if it would be the best option.

I've found this to be so depressing. I feel like we're being dragged back into the height of the Cold War, but then again, I'm not too sure we weren't already there--with China.
 
Albany Tom said:
I don't know what the reality is, but we had a ground army in the 1990's, that could have done exactly what geezer mentioned above, parking troops on the border as a trigger, if we'd had the courage, if we valued long term stability.
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I think the truth is very few people want to see a bunch of 20 year old kids have to suffer through the kind of war their Great Grandfathers fought in the '40's. Losing the Ukraine (by itself) is not an existential threat to all of Western Civilization like the threat was from the last opportunist dictator on the continent.

The real question at this point is how do you make it as painful as possible for Putin while doing everything you (Western Democracies, inclusive) can to make sure it doesn't happen again. Forget technology transfer rules. Just don't trade with them. Advise Putin that if he sets foot in a Western country, he's subject to arrest for war crimes. Take any holdings he, his children, their children, or any associates have and sell them at auction to pay for weapons for Ukraine. In 5 years, when he can't get replacement parts for his Mercedes Limo and his 286 based laptop dies, the truth will begin to dawn.
 
My take - Russia and China are supporting each other in doing the same thing. Every 5-10 years they conquer a nearby country. Then everyone settles down and they do it again. What’s the opposite of blitzkrieg? Nobody ever gets angry enough to do anything about it.

Meanwhile the US spend more on paying interest than on defense, so could we even do anything if there was will?

Our interest in Ukraine? Stopping Putin because if we don’t now, he will pick the next country off in another 5 years. And the next 5 years after that. Additionally, it is the moral thing to do. The immoral thing is sit around on our thumbs hoping it all gets better. It won’t.

but it doesn’t matter. Nobody is doing anything.
 
I have some neighbors in their 70s who grew up in Ukraine when it was part of the USSR. They came to the US in the 90s. I asked one of them how she felt about the situation. She thinks both governments (ours too) are corrupt, but tends towards the Russian side. She doesn't like to discuss it because it has caused a big split in her family, with the children (in their 40s) taking the Ukrainian side. I don't think they were historically Ukrainian, though. Their families fled from Poland during WWII.

Last time I spoke to her, she didn't think Russia was going to invade. Actually I didn't either. I thought it was what they used to call "sabre rattling".
 
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An existential threat doesn’t start off as one and when it becomes one it’s too late. That’s how they can build a head of steam...otherwise everything would be nipped in the bud and stay within the bounds of control.

Financial sanctions are useless. They are laughed at by the opposition. It’s embarrassing.
 
kyleb said:
I think the truth is very few people want to see a bunch of 20 year old kids have to suffer through the kind of war their Great Grandfathers fought in the '40's. Losing the Ukraine (by itself) is not an existential threat to all of Western Civilization like the threat was from the last opportunist dictator on the continent.

The real question at this point is how do you make it as painful as possible for Putin while doing everything you (Western Democracies, inclusive) can to make sure it doesn't happen again. Forget technology transfer rules. Just don't trade with them. Advise Putin that if he sets foot in a Western country, he's subject to arrest for war crimes. Take any holdings he, his children, their children, or any associates have and sell them at auction to pay for weapons for Ukraine. In 5 years, when he can't get replacement parts for his Mercedes Limo and his 286 based laptop dies, the truth will begin to dawn.
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We parked about 200,000 soldiers in Europe in the 80's mostly as a trigger. Nobody wanted to fight a 1940's war again. It wasn't a bluff. It kept, mostly, the peace. Now from a political and probably technical standpoint, it isn't effective.

Not to nit pick, but in the 1940's there were at least 6 opportunist dictators. The Russian one, the German one, the Japanese one, the Italian one, the Spanish one. Half of them survived, one lasted until the 70's.

Sanctions? That's not a capability anymore. We don't make much here anymore that's unique, except movies and marginal software.
 
kyleb said:
Take any holdings he, his children, their children, or any associates have and sell them at auction to pay for weapons for Ukraine. In 5 years, when he can't get replacement parts for his Mercedes Limo and his 286 based laptop dies, the truth will begin to dawn.
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Do you really think he can’t get anything he wants? Most of what you just named isn’t even manufactured inside a US jurisdiction anymore.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
Sanctions are useless when used against someone that doesn’t care about sanctions.
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At least not the sanctions that they have imposed. But they still haven't removed Russia from the SWIFT banking system. So, the West aren't even really serious about imposing sanctions.
 
I understood that the Budapest Memorandum also provided some economic assurances to Russia w/ Ukraine which seemed to have been broken [by Ukraine] starting sometime around the Yushchenko/Yanukovych situations in 2005, or 2010, or 2014 or so… including going back on the deal to keep Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol … among others…

Why none of this worked it’s way via sanctions or via UN I’m not clear. This would have been a good [marketing] opportunity for Russia to stay in the fold. Sure they’re mad that US/NATO seems to be continuing their advance post-1991… but they won big post-Fukushima when Europe got nuclear cold feet and pivoted back onto coal/gas. But now we’re at all out conflict - seems like an over rotation.

Given this over rotation, and that Ukraine plans on conscripting all men 18-60, I’m afraid this will be another Afghanistan.
 
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