c_hawkbob wrote:https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/23/world/russia-ukraine-news
So this is how it starts, mercenary strongman instead of one of the regular military Generals. M guess is this does more toward stopping the Ukraine war than anything else.
obiken wrote:The question is River, will it make Vlady better or worse, I vote for worse.
Aseahawkfan wrote:Be nice to see a coup. Yevgeny backed off, seems like not a great idea as Vladimir never forgets. He will take his revenge if he survives this war.
Aseahawkfan wrote:Be nice to see a coup. Yevgeny backed off, seems like not a great idea as Vladimir never forgets. He will take his revenge if he survives this war.
c_hawkbob wrote:Yeah too bad it didn't play out, but I don't think it's over yet. I'm also not sure Prigozhin is any less safe today than Putin is. Prigozhin had to have gotten some assurances from someone to have called off the march so close to Moscow. Zelenskyy says Putin is not in Moscow anyway and that could have played into the deal brokered. Either way I think this is a tipping point in Ukraine's favor.
NorthHawk wrote:We should be a little concerned about who might take over.
If it's someone who is a harder liner than Putin and decides to nuke Ukraine, then we could be sent into another huge conflict but this time nuclear.
And that's the danger - someone worse than Putin.
This is the beginning of the end for Vladimir Putin regardless of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s decision to turn around last night. That may seem an odd thing to say. But Putin’s power rests on projection, on propaganda, on the image of invincibility. Now, all of a sudden, the curtain has been snatched back, revealing the Wizard of Oz as a small, mediocre, frightened man.
I-5 wrote:Yup, just like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 80's, the US in Vietnam, and now Russia in Ukraine..time favors the home team. I attended a rally here in Vancouver BC during the very first few days of Putin's invasion (yes, it's mostly Putin, not Russians that wanted this), I saw a sign that summed up the feeling quite succintly and elogquently: "If Russia stops fighting, no more war. If Ukraine stops fighting, no more Ukraine."
Aseahawkfan wrote:Americans can hate on their country as much as they feel like because they are free, but America by far does more good in the world than bad by a huge measure, even when we make war with other nations and we rebuild them.
America has a very intelligent process and means of managing nations.
Russia does not. Ukraine will be far worse off losing to Russia, same as all the nations that lost to the Soviet Union when it was in power. Russia doesn't have a good process or ethic once it has achieved victory.
RiverDog wrote:This is true. With few exceptions, the United States has been very successful at nation building: Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea. Not sure about Iraq. My guess is that they're better off than they were under Hussein.
Ukraine is likely to be a campaign issue in 2024. So far, Americans still approve of supporting Ukraine's war effort. Even a majority of R's support it and it's only the far-right Republicans that oppose it. We'll see how long that support lasts. I figured it would start to wane by now, but there are no signs that support might diminish. If it stays strong, it might be a plus for Biden as he could use it to draw a contrast between him and Trump to go after the moderate swing voters who will decide the election.
RiverDog wrote:This is true. With few exceptions, the United States has been very successful at nation building: Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea. Not sure about Iraq. My guess is that they're better off than they were under Hussein.
Ukraine is likely to be a campaign issue in 2024. So far, Americans still approve of supporting Ukraine's war effort. Even a majority of R's support it and it's only the far-right Republicans that oppose it. We'll see how long that support lasts. I figured it would start to wane by now, but there are no signs that support might diminish. If it stays strong, it might be a plus for Biden as he could use it to draw a contrast between him and Trump to go after the moderate swing voters who will decide the election.
Aseahawkfan wrote:No. Iraq pushed us out. The nation's that are successful let us run things for decades.
NorthHawk wrote:Some nations don't want democracy. And that's where we in the West get into trouble.
Many places in the Middle East have traditions of powerful leaders who are not at all democratic and the population is accustomed to that.
It was suggested to me that Russia might be one of those places as well considering they went from Czars to Totalitarian Communism and now to a Dictatorship in Putin.
There are people within those countries that do want to be able to say who leads them, but often times the majority is either uncomfortable with the change it brings or worried that other in the area like what we saw in Iraq would fill the vacuum and it could be worse for them.
NorthHawk wrote:Some nations don't want democracy. And that's where we in the West get into trouble.
Many places in the Middle East have traditions of powerful leaders who are not at all democratic and the population is accustomed to that.
It was suggested to me that Russia might be one of those places as well considering they went from Czars to Totalitarian Communism and now to a Dictatorship in Putin.
There are people within those countries that do want to be able to say who leads them, but often times the majority is either uncomfortable with the change it brings or worried that other in the area like what we saw in Iraq would fill the vacuum and it could be worse for them.
RiverDog wrote:This is true. I've heard the Middle East likened to a collection of tribes with no one wanting a central government. The Japanese, for example, are much more compliant and easier to govern once they've accepted an authority. In Japan, we did not dispose of their emperor, and although he didn't have any real authority, it made it a little easier for the Japanese to accept the American occupation and the government that was eventually established, so it's probably not fair to compare that situation to the Middle East.
I have a good friend who is a native Iraqi and claims that the country is worse off after the US invaded, that you could avoid Hussein, but not so with ISIS. I haven't talked with him about the current political situation for a number of years, so I don't know if he's changed his mind or not. My friends and I practice the three taboo subject you're not to talk about on a first date, ie sex, religion, and politics.
RiverDog wrote:For "decades", as in 20 years or longer? I would contest that statement. We weren't running Japan or West Germany in 1964.
But I get your point, although I don't think we should be staying in a country where the majority of the population resents our presence, which is likely what caused us to leave Iraq.
Japan's biggest postwar political crisis took place in 1960 over the revision of the Japan-United States Mutual Security Assistance Pact. As the new Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security was concluded, which renewed the United States role as military protector of Japan, massive street protests and political upheaval occurred, and the cabinet resigned a month after the Diet's ratification of the treaty. Thereafter, political turmoil subsided. Japanese views of the United States, after years of mass protests over nuclear armaments and the mutual defense pact, improved by 1968 and 1972 respectively, with the reversion of United States-occupied Nanpō and Ryukyu Islands to Japanese sovereignty and the winding down of the Vietnam War.
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