The Russians are Coming, the Russians are...oh, they're here...

A few points about Russia's revised security doctrine.

1) Putin may be bluffing, but the scary thing is that a) he may use battlefield or 'tactical nuclear weapons', and b) there would be no response in kind from anyone else with nuclear weapons, which might encourage their wider use, eg China, India, Pakistan, NATO.

2) Nuclear Deterrence has been a so-far durable component of the international law of armed conflict, though it has been put under strain by Israel's refusal to sign the Non-Proliferation Pact, while the logic of deterrence in the context of the Middle East suggests Iran must have a nuclear capability to deter an attack from Israel, which is also part of the Saudi Arabian defence argument.

3) Putin lists the conventional weapons that could be used for an attack inside Russia as the casus belli for the use of Nuclear Weapons as weapons of defence, but this would demolish the already fragile concept of 'Proportionality', weakened by Israel's retaliations against HAMAS and Hizbollah which are not, and never have been proportionate, though no State should be basing their defence policy on what Israel does, given that Israel's defence policy is a proven failure -citizens of Israel are no more secure now than they were at any time since 1948.

4) Putin does not offer international, or even regional talks to clarify Russia's new security policy in an effort to establish both a dialogue, for example with China, India and NATO, whereas in the past tensions were dialled down, by Nixon with the various SALT treaties, and since the 1990s when States, such as South Africa and Ukraine, agreed to decommission their nuclear arsenals. China and India may actually approve this if it means they can 'go it alone' though one wonders if this makes the world a more dangerous place. International Law has always been more of a moral and 'juristic' system, rather than the norm. The UN Charter has been the foundation of international law since it was founded, but has always been undermined by self-defence claims which have failed to deal with States that violate it.
Thus, the acquisition of territory by force is illegal in international law, but clearly this has not deterred Israel from acquiring territory by force, in 1948 and 1967, nor has it deterred Russia from its attempt to acquire territory by force in Ukraine, and so on.

5) Lastly, it was the breakdown of the Concert system of Diplomacy that enabled the Empires to go war in 1914, and the weakening of the League of Nations after it that enabled Germany to, initially, to run riot in Europe before brute force ended that experiment.
The political rhetoric of dangerous men such as Xi, Putin, Modi and Trump when realised in military policy can only mean war, just as Netanyahu and HAMAS rejected peace in 1993 and have dedicated themselves to the slaughter of men, women and children; the displacement of millions, the destruction of their homes, their hospitals and schools, their mosques and their churches, their playgrounds and cinemas, and the most basic infrastructure.

With nobody there to say No to Putin, who is going to stop him? Or should the rest of the world just say, go ahead, take Ukraine, take the Baltic States, take Poland, and so on -or make them vassal states of the last Christian Empire. Etc.

The madder it sounds, the more it might be made real.

Vladimir Putin warns west he will consider using nuclear weapons | Vladimir Putin | The Guardian

Do not risk calling Putin's bluff...
Do Not Risk Calling Putin’s Bluff | The Libertarian Institute

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Originally Posted by Ben

Do not risk calling Putin's bluff...
Do Not Risk Calling Putin’s Bluff | The Libertarian Institute

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Was this written in Moscow before being emailed to the Libertarian institute? Putin's Special Military Operation was not supposed to last more than a couple of weeks or months at best. Instead the 'operation' revealed a clapped out military with a dysfunctional leadership -how many Generals has Putin had to replace? Russia thinks it can throw men into the field, but has had to recruit soldiers from Asia to help because apart from the Russians of fighting age who left for Georgia and Armenia and other places, the pool of fighting men inside Russia is dwindling.

The bigger question, and the one the West/NATO cannot verify, is the 'battle readiness' of Russia's nuclear arsenal. Given the wretched state of its conventional armaments, who knows if the Tactical Nuclear Missiles ordered to attack targets in Ukraine can even be wheeled out of their silos -and work? If the conventional weaponry is anything to go by, Putin himself might think he holds the Nuclear Ace, while on the ground the Generals know so many bits and pieces were sold in the Yeltsin years when Russians were impoverished, the truth is too bad to tell the Boss.

Look -Begin vowed to destroy the PLO in Lebanon, and failed. Netanyahu thinks he will destroy HAMAS and Hizbollah, and will fail at both. Putin thinks he can annex the Ukraine as part of his vision of a Christian, Russian Empire and a Euro-Asian trading bloc, and he will fail -are 30 million Ukrainians going to wake up one day soon and be Russians? Israel may have defeated the Arabs in 1967 and extended their sovereignty over the West Bank -how has that evolved since then? Maybe ask 2 million Palestinians, or ask 30 million Ukrainians what they want.

Libertarians really are morons. First decide all Govt is wrong, then try to figure out what happens next and whistle a happy tune. Pathetic.

Why Should We Fight Wars for Ukraine and Israel?
Why Should We Fight Wars for Ukraine and Israel? - Antiwar.com

Although it is too early to say what the Trump Presidency will do with the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, this article speculates on what we know so far.

What is striking is that all of the proposed concessions are made by Ukraine. The US might increase arms to Ukraine if Putin shows no interest in ending the war, but there does not appear to be any attempt to reverse any of Russia's territorial gains, even though all of them are illegal. In any peace treaty, both sides concede something, maybe even a lot. But in the proposals seen so far, it looks to me like the Trump team is the one conceding -to Putin.

During the Cold War, one aim was for one side to make the other pay heavily for transgressions of the status quo. By not forcing any concessions from Russia, Trump is giving Putin a free pass. Something just ain't right here.

I am not sure Ukraine will get NATO membership, but if it does not, how will Ukraine be capable of self-defence against a Russian President who doesn't think Ukraine should be independent of Russia? I don't think Trump has a coherent plan, so this grim war I think will rumble on for some time yet.

Trump's plan for Ukraine comes into focus: Territorial concessions but NATO off the table

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Originally Posted by Stavros

What is striking is that all of the proposed concessions are made by Ukraine. The US might increase arms to Ukraine if Putin shows no interest in ending the war, but there does not appear to be any attempt to reverse any of Russia's territorial gains, even though all of them are illegal. In any peace treaty, both sides concede something, maybe even a lot. But in the proposals seen so far, it looks to me like the Trump team is the one conceding -to Putin.

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Sounds like another previous agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_Agreement

No doubt Putin's 'concession' will be some kind of promise not to try to take the rest of Ukraine, but will that be worth any more than Hitler's word?

We shouldn't be surprised given that Trump has generally tended to blame Ukraine for the war rather than Russia. Territorial concessions and Ukrainian neutrality were what Putin was demanding before the invasion, so the obvious implication is that he was in the right to demand these things.

Fair points, to which one adds Trump's previous form with Ukraine. Does not look good, unless there is an unexpected event in Russia -?

Plus it is claimed that it is Tucker Carlson advising Trump. And he is off to Moscow again to be duped by Lavrov. No good can come of this.

James Carville Claims Tucker Carlson Is Behind Trump’s Wild Cabinet Picks: ‘One Person Is Driving This’

Tucker Carlson Returns To Moscow To Interview A Member Of Putin's Inner Circle

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Plus it is claimed that it is Tucker Carlson advising Trump. And he is off to Moscow again to be duped by Lavrov. No good can come of this.

James Carville Claims Tucker Carlson Is Behind Trump’s Wild Cabinet Picks: ‘One Person Is Driving This’

Tucker Carlson Returns To Moscow To Interview A Member Of Putin's Inner Circle

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Well, this is still biden's weak assed fault. Putin (& iran & the chicoms, etc. ) all sniffed out biden's total hapless weakness and took whatever advantage they thought they could get out of it. The chicoms are apparently the smartest because they haven't been caught up in ground fighting, but they are still the most dangerous.

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Originally Posted by Paladin

Well, this is still biden's weak assed fault. Putin (& iran & the chicoms, etc. ) all sniffed out biden's total hapless weakness and took whatever advantage they thought they could get out of it. The chicoms are apparently the smartest because they haven't been caught up in ground fighting, but they are still the most dangerous.

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Can someone translate this into English? It makes no sense to me.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Can someone translate this into English? It makes no sense to me.

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To put in your own words, you are just showcasing your ignorance.

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Originally Posted by Paladin

To put in your own words, you are just showcasing your ignorance.

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Indeed I am ignorant, of your patois.

That's because you live on the wrong side of the pond!

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Originally Posted by fred41

I would think any negotiations would start off with - what amount of Ukrainian territory would be ceded for guaranteed NATO coverage of the rest. That’s the starting line. There is no way to say how it should end after that, because it comes down to willing negotiations. However, this war can’t go on forever…no matter how much equipment, armaments or global commitments one side has over the other…someone’s going to simply run out of soldiers…period. So it has to start with a cease fire for negotiations. The negotiations are “the plan”.

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How about we discuss this here, rather than divert the Middle East thread.

The big questions are, can Putin be trusted and how credible will any NATO guarantees be, given the views previously expressed by Trump and many of his offsiders about Ukraine and NATO?
The basic contradiction here is that the people putting up this plan are the same people who have been questioning whether it's in the US interest to continue to assist Ukraine.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/29/e...ntl/index.html

We are being asked to believe simultaneously that the US can't keep arming Ukraine now, but it will be prepared go to war with Russia in future if Putin does not stick to the agreement. Does that sound credible?

Maybe there are no good alternatives, but as Groucho Marx might have said, I'm not sure I would want to make any agreement with Putin that he would be prepared to accept.

PS: negotiations can't really be the plan because you can't have negotiations without some bottom line for what you would be prepared to accept or reject.

Further to this, the basic requirement for successful negotiation is to convince the other party that you will walk away if the deal is not satisfactory. You can't beat down the price if you've already signalled that you are keen to buy. Will Trump be prepared to walk away when he's already bragged about ending the war on day one? I fear that Putin will be able to play him like a violin because he knows that Trump needs to have his triumph.

Good CNN article you posted. Unfortunately, it sounds like Kellogg isn’t even interested in offering a potential NATO inclusion anymore. Without that, it’s tough to see what the Ukrainians can agree to. I got nothing. It seems like the Ukrainians will be handed a shit sandwich. They can’t fight forever, if they can’t replace their manpower. No country is going to supply them with a version of N.Korean meat puppets. I think, early on this war, everyone’s plan was simply to hope for Putin to die. There doesn’t even seem to be a glimmer of hope for that to happen , on the horizon any time soon.

I'm not sure even Putin's death would solve the problem, because his successor will probably be another belligerent Russian nationalist. It's too deeply ingrained as the regime's ideology now, and the Russian people have been conditioned by many years of anti-Western propaganda. Barring some obvious huge setback, it will be almost impossible for any Russian leader to change course as Gobrachev did in the 1980s.

The problem is that Putin (or his successor) knows that the West doesn't want to commit it's own military against him, and it's reluctant to bear the costs of resisting him for more than 2-3 years. He can continue to play his game of undermining neighbouring countries and picking them off one by one. It's obvious that his goal to to recreate the old Soviet bloc and install Russia-friendly regimes in these countries.

1 Putin can't be trusted, that's known.

2. We Can keep arming Ukraine, but where that that got us - Nowhere.

3. I don't think NATO would admit Ukraine - at least not at this time, so the only real hope is that the US & NATO could force putin to back off. The US under Trump can, but I'm not sure about the rest of NATO.

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Originally Posted by Paladin

The US under Trump can, but I'm not sure about the rest of NATO.

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That would be the same Trump who has:
1. Consistently deferred to Putin, praised him and taken his side over the past 8 years. Has Trump ever criticised Putin over anything?
2. Generally blamed everyone but Putin for this war.
3. Criticised assistance to Ukraine and had his cronies block it for several months last year.
4. Recently criticised the relaxation of restrictions allowing Ukraine to strike deeper within Russia.
5. Accepted Putin's word over his own intelligence agencies on election interference.

Are you really blind to all of this?

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Originally Posted by Paladin

2. We Can keep arming Ukraine, but where that that got us - Nowhere.

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Obviously this is not true. It has prevented Russia from over-running the country, which is a pretty big deal.

So far, so predictable. The master deal-maker is conceding to Putin even before negotiations start, and it looks like Ukraine won't even be involved but will be presented with a fait accompli, just like Czechoslovakia in 1938.
https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...er-nato-allies

The Munich Agreement is not the only historical analogy that comes to mind. This is looking a bit like Hitler and Stalin's partition of Poland, with Trump demanding half of Ukraine's resource revenues. And for what - reparations for 'starting the war'?
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a...an-for-ukraine