It’s not so much as Trump is a paper tiger as it is American hard power is vastly overrated and its soft power is waning.
Ukraine launched artillery against Russian-speakers in Eastern Ukraine on February 16, 2022. Ukraine increased the number of shells fired every day for a week. Russia didn't invade till February 24. Why did Biden predict in early February that Russia would invade February 16? Because Biden new that's when Ukraine would start provoking Russia by killing ethnic Russians in violation of the Minsk agreements.Russia cited Article 51 of the UN Charter to justify their invasion. Recall that the US cited Article 51 to justify the bombing of "Russia's little brother" Serbia. The US dragged Ukraine into war with Russia and our neocons thought they could devastate the Russian economy with sanctions. Then Putin could be deposed and Russia could be subdivided into as many as 32 different countries. Geopolitical experts like Stephen G Cohen (Princeton, NYU), John Mearsheimer (University. of Chicago), Greg Copley (Australia, US), Jacques Baud (Switzerland, NATO), Glenn Diesen (Norway), Alex Mercouris (Greece, London) and others warned of the folly of this plan for years. Ukraine never stood a chance in this war Roughly a million people dead on both sides and many of the Too Hot Democrats still support war.
Russia initiated conflict through false flags. Russia then started through the war through one false pretense after another. Russia’s plans were caught by western intelligence and exposed before Russia invaded. The intelligence proved to be exactly correct. The lies don’t help you.
From “Ha-ha! Russia is losing!” to “Russia is mean and shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing!” Murica! *Dubya voice*
While 17,000 sanctions have scarcely fazed resolute Russians who understand that the U.S. has designs on seeing their leader ousted and their country weakened. https://www.aol.com/1-4-americans-functionally-unemployed-155455839.html
The OSCE was monitoring ceasefire violations in Eastern Ukraine. The highly respected blog Moon of Alabama reported the ceasefire violations that the OSCE was reporting. After Ukraine softened up the Donbas resistance (while killing many civilians) it planned to invade with troops (I heard 60,000 Ukrainian troops were supposed to invade in March but my recollection is that Zelensky admitted 100,000 men would invade the Donbas). Russia entered the Donbas to prevent the Ukrainian army from doing so.
Listen to Swiss geopolitical analyst Jacques Baud. Highly respected expert on the Russian military. At one time Baud worked for NATO. Check out the video from 1:04 to 1:09 and he'll tell you how the Ukraine war. As I posted many months ago: War in Ukraine The video: https://www.youtube.com/live/RIzKxXR5pvA?si=9SI0_Rw41TI7eQ25
There are certain realities about Ukraine, which are undeniable: In April 2019, the Ukrainian Parliament passed the Law on Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language. This law established Ukrainian as the sole state language and required its use across all branches of government, public services, education, and media. While the law allowed for the protection and use of minority languages from European Union countries, it specifically excluded Russian from those protections. It also created the office of a language ombudsman to monitor and enforce compliance. Although the law did not ban private use of Russian, it substantially limited its use in the public sphere, including in historically Russian-speaking regions such as Donbas. The same period also saw the formal dismantling of Russian’s prior status as a regional language. Following the 2018 decision by the Constitutional Court of Ukraine invalidating the 2012 Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law, which had allowed Russian to be granted regional language status in areas with large Russian-speaking populations, local councils in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts revoked Russian’s regional status. This revocation led to the withdrawal of official use of Russian in administrative proceedings, signage, and other government functions across much of Donbas. In January 2022, another key provision of the 2019 language law came into force, requiring all national print media to publish in Ukrainian. This policy applied to Russian-language publications, which could no longer be printed alone unless accompanied by a full and equal Ukrainian-language version. Although media in English or official EU languages were exempt, the rule applied fully to Russian, which historically dominated media consumption in eastern Ukraine, including Donbas. From 2019 through February 2022, Ukraine enacted nationwide language policies that removed Russian’s official administrative status, restricted Russian-language instruction in schools, required Ukrainian-language print media, and mandated Ukrainian use in most public-facing services.
Exactly. And Putin knows that he's negotiating with a mentally-deficient and morally-deficient American president who will agree to anything if his ego is stroked the right way, and there is money in it for him (er, I mean America).
Except for the fact that Ukraine was winning (while Russia was going bankrupt) under Biden. All Trump did was throw his pal Putin a lifeline by stopping aid. Too many short-sighted republicans do not have the intestinal fortitude required for a long war. If they were alive during World War II, they would have thrown in the towel by 1944. It's far easier to declare the opponent not so bad and turn a blind eye to exterminations, Geneva Convention violations, mass slaughter, and tyranny than to fight it to victory. They can pretend that they are saving money by this approach, as well!
So cringe on so many levels. I can't believe there are still people in this thread carrying this idiots water.
So your source is not actually the Moon of Alabama, who is not well known or highly respected, but someone he is quote tweeting. The person he is quoting is a Nazi apologist and citing an extremely obscure organization's report that doesn't actually say that.
You need to realize that anyone that tries to sell you on the idea that a possible border skirmish in the Donbas requires a full invasion and the taking of Keiv, is not credible. That clip was pure nonsense. A Contingency plan for a border skirmish would be a limited incursion to push an artillery back out of range of the border. It would not be a total invasion of the country that results in Russia sustaining over 700k casualties. BTW - Here is the OSCE website covering that time. Show me where it says the Ukrainians shelled the Russians. Daily and spot reports from the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine | OSCE
Moon of Alabama is one of the most respected foreign policy blogs in the world. "Bernard" runs the show there and he famously debunks stories put out by MSM news outlets. I'd give you his full name but he flipped out on me once when I used his last name on Twitter while trying to raise money to fund his website. Turns out he gets a lot of threats on his life. Moon of Alabama was getting 45,000 page views/day in 2020 (50,000,000 total in 2004-2020). Many of the top foreign policy commentor in the world follow MoonofA on Twitter. The OSCE, which you never heard of before is, from their website: "The OSCE stands for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. With 57 States from Europe, Central Asia and North America, the OSCE is the world's largest regional security organization." Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe The OSCE was literally in Ukraine monitoring ceasefire violations. There is no better source. In the video I provided Jacques Baud (Switzerland), one of the world's top strategic analysts, explains how the war started. and he reveals that NATO had plans to divide Russia into as many as 32 separate countries. Interestingly he mentions that Zelensky called Switzerland the day after the war began. He wanted Switzerland to broker a ceasefire/peace deal with Russia. The EU vetoed the idea. It wanted war. I think you might be psychologically tethered to the Ukraine war beliefs you formed from reading and listening to the MSM years ago. Your mind can't accept that Ukraine, the US and NATO wanted war. Put yourself in Russia's position. Ukraine announced around February 19 that they were going to acquire nuclear weapons. Eventually those missiles would be sitting on missiles that could reach Moscow in 3 minutes. It's inconceivable that ZMoscow would allow that. Especially when you know Russia lost 20M plus in WW2 fighting Nazis. There is a strong Maxi/Banderista element in Ukraine. As Putin noted, the US/NATO kept putting "pressure, pressure, pressure" on Russia. Not smart.
It's one of the most respected FP blogs but the owner will not put his full name behind it? Where did "Bernard" develop his FP experience? And why does his blog look like it was designed by the same people that did MySpace? Out of curiosity, where do you come to the conclusion these people are the "world's top strategic analysts"? Is there a website for military planners similar to 247/Rivals/On3 websites that is giving out 5 and 4 Star rankings? Are there certain schools that get you a higher ranking? If someone has been to SAW and then goes on to JAWS, do they automatically get a 4 star ranking? Does the NATO Defense College only get you a 3 star ranking since it is not considered JPME II? And we are now at the stage where they are "ceasefire violations" and not artillery shelling.
