War in Ukraine

One....one "funny" ranking. I think @uftaipan is intelligent and perceptive enough to realize his posts are appreciated and respected, one random rating does not make a trend and that you are trying to cause problems between he and the other posters, a page out of Putin's handbook, likely due to the fact most of your posts are dismissed out of hand.

 

If Trump were president today would Ukraine be receiving more, less or the same amount of assistance it is getting from the Biden administration?

Also, your contrast between Obama and Trump may be a little simplistic, at least according to U.S. News & World Report:

"While the Obama administration refused to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons in 2014 to fight Russian-backed separatists, it offered a range of other military and security aid — not just “blankets.” The administration’s concern was that providing lethal weapons like Javelin anti-tank missiles might provoke Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate the conflict in the separatist Donbas area of Ukraine near Russia’s border.

By March 2015, the Obama administration had provided more than $120 million in security aid for Ukraine and promised $75 million worth of equipment, including counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies, according to the Defense Department. The U.S. also pledged 230 Humvee vehicles....

Ultimately between 2014 and 2016, the Obama administration committed more than $600 million in security aid to Ukraine. In the last year of the Obama administration, the U.S. established the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which provided U.S. military equipment and training to help defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. From 2016 to 2019, Congress appropriated $850 million for this initiative.

The Trump administration in 2017 agreed to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, later committing to sell $47 million in Javelins....But two years later, Trump delayed the release of congressionally approved security assistance for Ukraine as part of an effort to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation of his political rival, Joe Biden. The matter was part of Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial."

https://www.usnews.com/news/politic...eck-trump-distorts-obama-biden-aid-to-ukraine

 

We would not have had a February 23rd, 2022 situation if Trump was still in office. Russia had already seized vast swaths of Ukraine and Crimea before Trump came into office. Russia made zero advances during Trump’s term. What strategic advantage did Russia gain by waiting 8 years to take it further? Especially if they were in cahoots with Trump?

Putin didn’t move on Ukraine during Trump’s term for a few reasons. One, Trump is a boss. Of course, he shows Putin respect publicly. He shook the hand of Kim Jung Un. He’s called Xi a “friend” multiple times. Un aside (who is obviously much less a threat than Putin or Xi), Trump will always show these men respect when the cameras are rolling. What does he have to gain by insulting them in public? Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. What did Joe Biden gain by going on national TV and calling Putin a murderer? He gained February 23, 2022 by doing that, is what he did. Trump knows that you don’t show disrespect to other bosses with the public watching. Bill Clinton has explained this concept very thoroughly. Insulting these men publicly only hurts America in the long run.

Both Putin and Xi know Trump doesn’t (mess) around based on his various actions in the Middle East. Especially, when he lit Syria up (a strong Russian ally, no less). And I’m quite certain the conversations these men have behind closed doors are much different than what you see on TV. Trump handled it correctly. What was he supposed to say in Helsinki with Putin standing right there? “No I think he’s guilty as sin and I wanna punch him in the face?” Of course, he’s not going to say that. As far as the intelligence community goes, last time I checked, they work for the president. Not the other way around. It’s not their job to question how their boss handles foreign adversaries on the world stage. Notwithstanding the fact that Trump’s comments haven’t damaged our intelligence gathering capabilities one iota.

Attacks on the military? Trump ran on a platform of significantly boosting military spending and did so quite profusely while in office. He did way more for our military as President than Obama ever did or that Biden has done.

John McCain was indeed a war hero, but once he became a politician, he didn’t get some sort of immunity from political attacks just because he stayed in the Hanoi Hilton for 5 years. Every politician gets attacked. Notwithstanding, McCain was the one who initiated the barbs with Trump, not the other way around. McCain was more than fair game at that point.

Sending javelins to Ukraine was still much more than Obama did to help Ukraine defend its sovereignty and you don’t send weapons to one country if you’re in cahoots with their #1 adversary next door.

How in the lord’s name did Trump attempt to disband NATO? Are you talking about that time he chided NATO officials about all the oil and gas they were buying from Russia?? Or when he asked them to pay their share of the tab they had originally agreed to? Wouldn’t NATO countries contributing more to the kitty make NATO a stronger alliance? Especially if it meant them holding up their end of the bargain?

We wouldn’t have a war in Ukraine right now if Trump was in office. We wouldn’t have tens of thousands of dead soldiers and millions of families, particularly women and children displaced from their homes as refugees. All of that happened on Biden’s watch.

 

Yet, you reply to a lot of them. Yeah and I had no illusions I was making problems for either poster. I already assume they are both grown men and can handle their own shit. And it’s not just one funny rating. Your side, in particular, are very good at dropping the come on man’s and laughs on several posters here without offering any rebuttal for genuine discussion. One or two here and there, okay. But it’s not just one or two from your side, bruh.

 

LOL, spin it any way you want. At the end of the day:

Obama refused to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, because he was “scared” of Russia.

Trump provided Ukraine with lethal aid and shut down Nordstream 2, because he was NOT scared of Russia. Guess who lifted that sanction?

 

Russian MOD now recruiting prisons and requiring 18 month contracts.

Russia Triples Contract Length for Prisoners Fighting in Ukraine War (newsweek.com)

Russian prisoners are now signing contracts with Russia's defense ministry to fight in Ukraine for an extended period of time, indicating that Russian President Vladimir Putin's war might drag on for another year, according to Russian prisoners' rights activist Olga Romanova.

Romanova, director of the prisoner rights group Russia Behind Bars, wrote on Telegram on Saturday that the defense ministry has been recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine since February. The recruits would sign contracts with the ministry to fight for six months, but this period has now been extended to 18 months, Romanova said citing reports from the Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl regions in Russia.

"New about the recruitment of prisoners. Since February, this has been done mainly by the Ministry of Defense. They report from two regions, Sverdlovsk and Yaroslavl: they began to sign contracts with prisoners not for 6 months, as it was before, but for 18. That is, they expect to fight next year as well," the activist wrote on Telegram.

 

Just in case I haven’t been clear about my feelings on the former president, I would not piss on him if he were on fire. I was introducing complexity to the equation, not sunshine. A few posters have tried to neatly characterize one side of the American political spectrum as pro-Ukraine and the other as anti-Ukraine. The narrative requires, among other things, minimizing the role Trump played in Ukraine’s successful initial defense as well as equivocating on the myriad of questionable decisions Presidents Obama and Biden that have had negative impacts on this war in the past and present. The truth is, as I’ve said, complex. Both sides have done good as well as harm. Instead of wasting all of this time on the minimizing, equivocating, and/or exaggerating to make our side look better and their side look worse, people more interested in defeating Putin than their political opponent should focus on doing more of the good decisions and fewer of the bad ones, regardless of which side was originally responsible for either.

You bring up two examples of what I’m talking about in your post. You wrote “… I'm afraid sending a few javelins to the the sector hardly carries the traction you seem to suggest.” That’s minimization. We are not talking about “a few Javelins.” We are talking about a goodly number of a critical weapon system, along with the training on how to employ them, which more than any other factor on the ground blunted Russia’s attempt at a lightning victory last year. This was followed in importance by the training our Air Force gave to theirs. Without getting too detailed, the Russians probably would have destroyed the Ukrainian Air Force within the first two days of the conflict (per the Russian plan) without the advice and technical assistance they received beginning in the 2018-2019 timeframe, authorized by Trump.

What you wrote about Trump trying to destroy NATO does not wholly agree with the facts either. This is an exaggeration. Like you, I think he was pigheaded and unstatesmanlike in dealing with our allies, but his basic point was correct at the time and is even more correct today: this alliance will not work if the U.S. is more concerned with European security than Europe is; they have to pay their fair share for their own defense. I could go on for pages about how his methods were counterproductive, but I cannot emphasize enough that Trump correctly had his finger on a problem that no other President in recent memory would address, even though they all knew it was a problem. Most people who bring up the “Trump was trying to destroy NATO” narrative these days also want to ignore the most ironic element that NATO member states were mad at the U.S. about: the Western European members, Germany especially, were pissed about the lethal assistance we were giving Ukraine. They called it provocative, mainly just because they wanted those cheap Russian hydrocarbons, completely ignoring the fact that a Russian move on Ukraine was inevitable regardless of whether we helped Ukraine defend itself or not. I would say the decision to provide lethal aid to Ukraine was on the right side of history. If anyone wants to argue that if Trump had not done that, Russia might not have felt it needed to invade, then I’ll have that argument. But I’ll need a good explanation for the leaked Russian plans for the conquests of Moldova and Belarus in that argument.

The list of stupid, thoughtless things Trump did is pretty long, but so is Biden’s list. And unlike Trump’s, Biden’s list continues today, because Trump is no longer President (thank God). My point remains that I would rather see Putin defeated, regardless of who gets credit or blame. So, yes, I get annoyed at the introductions of petty domestic politics by either side when we sit on the precipice of world war.

 

Credit where credit is due, I did fail to mention Trump shutting down Nordstream 2. Nevertheless, I prefer the method Ukraine employed to Trump’s.

 

A good question for an alternative history novel, but not one either of us could realistically predict today. But I don’t want to cop out and not give you an answer. If we’re talking about in the period between January 2021 and February 2022, then I would guess more just because I don’t think Trump was as concerned as Biden about “provoking” Russia with the deliveries and he probably would not have had the same suspensions of deliveries that Biden had until late fall 2021, when it began to become undeniable that Russia was massing on the Ukrainian border. But that’s just an assessment of personalities, not meant to necessarily reflect better on Trump. What would have happened after the invasion began is even more difficult to predict, except that I can predict to a certainty that Carlson, MTG, Boebert, and Gaetz would be the most radical interventionists in the U.S., calling for Putin’s head on a platter at all costs. Another factor we are not going to understand for years is how much the Afghanistan debacle caused Putin to speed up his timeline. We know he did, but are we talking months or years? Like I said, interesting subject matter for a novel where Trump wins the 2020 election, but it doesn’t do a lot to help Ukraine right now. Biden is President. It doesn’t matter what we think Trump woulda done. Win, lose, or draw, this is Biden’s war. And even if you could definitively prove that Trump would have lost this war faster than Biden, that will not relieve Biden from any responsibility.

 

Of course, it was simplistic. And I wholly acknowledge that President Obama did not do nothing when Russia executed its limited invasion of Ukraine in 2014. But that’s why I highlighted lethal aid and gave the two highest examples (that I know of; there might be even better examples that I don’t know of yet) that have proven most effective when war broke out. When Trump is wrong (often enough), he’s wrong. But, unfortunately, when he’s right, he’s right. And he happened to be right about providing Ukraine with lethal aid and not worrying about “provoking” Russia. They were coming anyway. We know that now. We were right to make that coming as painful as possible.

 

Of course, Trump would have been foolish to have American special ops take out that pipeline. It’s better the way it played out. Both approaches were superior to the Biden approach.

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

Interesting that you don’t find that it reflects better on Trump. It certainly does, which is why the hypothetical you answered above would probably never have happened in the first place, because Putin feared Trump more than he did Obama and Biden. We know Mattis as DS didn’t end well, but the man did hire Jim Mattis as his DS, which sent a message to the rest of the world in of itself.

Regarding Afghanistan, to be fair, I’d say it hastened it by months, given Putin’s age. But the point still stands, the debacle in Afghanistan hastened the timeline and confirmed for Putin that Biden is an empty suit.

 

Biden followed through with Trump's Afghan withdrawal plan, except he slowed it by several weeks. Trump had removed the large portion of US military presence by the start of Biden's term. At that point it was lose, lose for Biden. Imagine Putin's absolute surprise, if he believed Biden an empty suit, when the US has proved key to Ukraine busting Russia's military chops.

 

I plan on laughing after they do it, not before.

 

Biden slowed it by 4 months, not a few weeks, which gave the Taliban more time to attack Afghan government security forces and break their will. Had nothing to do with the number of troops left when he came into office. If that was an issue, Biden could have easily called up more troops to ensure an orderly withdrawal. He did rush more troops into Kabul at the very end, but it was way too late after the capitulation had already begun. He screwed it up.

 

In my opinion, the only way that Trump keeps Putin out of Ukraine is if Putin thinks that Trump will persuade Congress to pull out of NATO, which would likely cause the alliance to fracture and disband. And Putin would only stay out long enough to be sure that NATO would not re-form itself in a hurry. Trump might do something rash when the fighting broke out, such as involve U.S. troops on the ground, or in an air war that drags us into a ground war. Or he might let his hero Putin steamroll over Ukraine. The Ukraine War was going to happen sooner or later; it was on Putin's "to-do" list. The timing was only dependent on what he thought was the most favorable circumstances.

Biden handled it just about right--the problem was that Putin could not foresee how much modern technology we would put in Ukraine's hands, or recognize how outdated his own military technology and training really were, not to mention how determined Ukraine was to remain free.

 

Ukraine claims that Russia is losing 400 troops a day not in Bahkmut, but in Avdiivka and Mariinka. Prisoners of war are complaining that their drunken commanders sent them into war without enough training by rounding them up in the middle of the night at gunpoint.

Official: Russia faces ‘colossal losses’ Avdiivka and Marinka in Donetsk Oblast

 

That’s a political narrative not supported by facts. Yes, Trump, like the two Presidents before him, wanted a neat, clean way out of Afghanistan. His peace plan with the Taliban, excluding GIRoA from the discussion, merits fair criticism. But would Trump have continued the withdrawal after it was apparent that the Taliban was not going to hold to its end? No way of knowing for sure, but I don’t think so. His actions in Syria* suggest he would have reversed course in Afghanistan if for no other reason than to avoid having an embarrassing strategic defeat hung on him. To be fair, I also think Obama and Hillary Clinton, had she won, would likewise have reversed course to prevent what happened under identical circumstances. I happen to know there was a contingency plan in place in case of Taliban perfidy (I was in position to be part of it in Kuwait in August 2021). The same contingency plan built under Trump still existed in 2021 under Biden. I would read the classified CENTCOM traffic in horror in my office in June and July of 2021 as the generals begged Washington to give the order for its implementation and chewed on static in response. Then I would go back to my quarters and watch the news where Jen Psaki et al were smoothly telling the American people everything was fine, GIRoA has everything it needs, just a few alarmists out there who don’t understand that GIRoA has an air force and the Taliban doesn’t, no way is this like Saigon in ‘75, etc.

* Trump wanted out of Syria even worse than he wanted out of Afghanistan. He ordered it in early 2020 against the advice of nearly his entire National Security team. Secretary Mattis resigned primarily over this (but I don’t doubt he was also just sick of Trump’s BS). Our forces in Syria executed the pullout smartly and almost immediately disastrous results followed. Trump (without ever admitting he was wrong, of course) ordered the troops back in. Lots of people, mostly Kurds, killed in the intervening period as a result, but on the whole the only long-term consequence was Russia also occupying part of the former American zone. Today that area is know as the QDZ and both sides have to awkwardly coordinate their patrols to keep from shooting on each other (I’ll bet that’s even more awkward today than when I was there before the invasion of Ukraine).