For some reason it is far easier to be reactionary than proactive. I say this from the point of view of all aspects in life and a procrastinating attitude that moves in favor of shiny new objects. This often leads to the comment of we will cross that bridge when we get to it. I see the possibility but I'm not wasting time on an in depth analysis.
I would tend to agree and a hungry world could care less whether it is with Russia or Ukraine. Solve the conflict and move on.
reading stories like this make me feel bad for these poor kids sent into a no win situation. Russians became separated from unit, stole car to try and find their unit, saw a guy on a phone, paranoid leader says shoot him or he will reveal our location and we will be killed, kid refuses, superior whips car around and says shoot him or you will be prosecuted for failure to follow orders, kid shoots, civilian killed. Widow confronts Russian soldier accused of war crime (msn.com) Ivan Maltysev, another slight and young-looking 21-year-old, told the court how the Russian soldiers spotted 62-year-old Oleksandr Shelipov while they were driving the stolen car. Mr Maltysev claimed that Vadim Shishimarin was then ordered to shoot the victim because he was on the phone. "Vadim didn't do it. So the soldier, whose name I don't know, turned round in the car and shouted that Vadim had to carry out the order, or we would be informed on". "At this point, we were almost alongside the civilian and, under pressure, Vadim fired. He fired three or four rounds."
And that's why I want trials. Obviously guilty. No win for him. This is a kid who at least admitted his guilt and explained. This is the type that deserves jail not death. For example his superior deserves death. The ones racking up bodies, recording, bragging deserve death. But the grunts not given a choice, especially when they confess and cooperate to help nab bigger fish, jail is fine. Once they serve their sentences if they don't want to return to Russia let them apply for asylum because you know they'll be killed when they go home.
Those missiles will certainly hurt the Russian blockade, but I don’t think they will break it. Certainly they can’t do anything about Russian submarines. To break the blockade is going to take someone with a navy capable of going into the Black Sea and forcing the Russian navy to either port up or die fighting. Do we know anyone with a navy who could do that?
I still like my Turk Dardanelles idea. But Erdogan already has enough leverage right now with NATO expansion. Of course, we talked about how we don't want to initiate a confrontation but we could play a bit of brinksmanship similar to Lincoln resupplying Fort Sumter but refusing to take the first shot. We could send an ordinary unarmed commercial vessel under a US flag to Odessa to effectuate a commercial transaction, and dare them. I don't think they'd sink it but I think they would disable it. And I wouldn't want to be a crewman. But it is a tactic. Maybe not even a US flag. Trying to think who else would make it very precarious for the Russians to interfere with.
India. Both us and Russia need them, and Russia desperately needs them. Let India go in and pick up a full load of grain and see what happens. Even if it stays with India, it will be grain India doesn’t have to buy on the world market and further drive up prices.
I would be completely on board with sending an unarmed merchant relief fleet and daring the Russians to touch it, yes. If they do, then we start of a blockade of our own as you suggest. We don’t even really need Turkey to impose it as we could have our fleet stand off the Dardanelles in international waters and search every vessel going in or out. I do think the vessels need to be U.S. flagged, though. It’s the only way we could justify having a monster stack of close air support over Romania waiting to tip in on any pirate vessels attempting to interfere with our lawful shipping in international and/or Ukrainian waters.
India has already proven to be a secret Russian ally in this war. You won’t get them to help in my opinion.
It is an interesting thought process. Of course I like the idea even more if there is more than one such ship, a grouping under multiple flags, again daring the Russians to do something
i think they are more looking at it functionally. I don’t think they have a side, but if cheap oil or grains are out there, they will take them. They have not taken sides mainly because they need Russian arms, but this came out today. So they are starting to go down the right path. Putin facing nightmare as India turns on Russia and vows to cut cash flow: 'Learnt lesson'
I agree. It would be very naive to assume Ukraine is not going to sustain heavy losses in a war with Russia. Let’s not forget, most of us thought they would hold out for weeks at best and that they would not be able to retake lost ground on their own. I stand by dark prediction that Russia eventually get its act together and start using its massive resource advantages to smother Ukraine. The bravery of the Ukrainians has given us, the West, an unexpected blessing of time to get our own act together. What have we done with that time? Very little.
In "2034", (spoiler alert), India is the dominant world superpower after the US and Chinese duke it out and India has to step in. Not very convincing, IMO
I hope that is true. Of all the disappointments from all of the countries in the world since this war started, India’s actions have been most disappointing to me relative to my expectations.
I think it is, not so much because they are all of a sudden turning on Russia, but a more self aware view that if Russia collapses they have no military, and they don’t want to rely on the west either because that makes them beholden. So time to start their own true defense industry and be self sufficient. Also noted was the US offering aid, which I am sure helped sweeten the pot. But this will mean India can be more independent in this geopolitical views going forward and not be beholden to Moscow, which is a good thing. it really is amazing how much this relatively tiny war is reshaping the global order. It’s almost a Saddam Hussein level miscalculation by Putin. And in some ways it’s even worse. I would also say that for all of the things Biden has gotten wrong in his presidency, he has done almost everything right here in my view. To date (and circumstances can change) we are basically bringing down Russia and reordering the world in our favor without a single American life being lost. Putin gets a big assist of course, but this would have been easy to mess up a dozen different ways.
Meanwhile, China is issuing more threats of its own, calling our support of Taiwan “dangerous.” My first thought was our response to China should be to agree with them that any invasion of Taiwan would be very dangerous for them, given what we are seeing in Europe with a motivated, free country holding its own and causing enormous casualties to a bully neighbor who thought it was going to easily overrun them. But then I saw it was Jake Sullivan who took the call, so we almost certainly didn’t do anything to push back against the threats. China Warns US a ‘Dangerous Situation’ Forming Over Taiwan
