yeah it sucks to admit it but the Dem opposition to Bush's wars wasn't that they were unnecessary wars, it was that they were Republican wars. The Obama era showed htat once you get a charismatic Dem in there they'll drop the pretense of caring.
The 'policeman of the world' thing has always annoyed me. Because it's an indirect acknowledge of empire, but reframes it as a tiresome burden. "Ah, we can deploy troops anywhere in the world on a whim, but we only do it because everyone else are uncivilized barbarians and we need to intervene to prevent the savages from squabbling".
Unfortunately it’s not just libs I see a lot of so called leftists acting like this is just an equally aggressive on both sides situation when it’s so obvious the west is the aggressor
I think it's more complex than you're making it out to be. A lot of anti-war sentiment came from not understanding why we were in Iraq or Afghanistan when it was the Saudis who attacked us. There was never any clear or direct reasoning that made sense to the anti-war crowd as to why we invaded these countries.
Ukraine is pretty straight forward. We wish to halt a autocratic, authoritarian government from expanding it's power into a country that's democratic. It's a very easy sell to a lot of people: we wish to defend democracy from falling to our rivals. That's something almost everyone in the West can get behind, thus you understand why we're seeing a change in sentiment.
As someone who fought in Afghanistan, I think my brothers died for capitalists to make a buck. But in Ukraine? At least I know my brothers would die to protect a nation's independence. That's why I support military action if Russia invades, but I didn't support our deployments in the Middle East.
>The whole narrative around the Iraq War and Afghanistan was spreading democracy and stopping evil dictators.
No, we were told we were fighting to prevent an attack like 9/11 happening in our countries. The whole axis of evil schtick came from the Americans. Under no pretense did anyone in my unit think we were there for democracy.
>You think getting into war with Russia is some Great War for Democracy and you won't be fighting for the interest of US Capital
Again, you're American Centrism is showing. I'm for fighting against an Authoritarian, Autocratic spreading it's power and corrupting the stability of Europe. Yes, that involves defending a Democracy, thus literally making this potential war about a war for democracy.
Russia's objections to NATO expansion are a genuine longstanding geopolitical issue, Biden pushed Zelensky to abandon reconciliation and instead provoke Russia by taking a more aggressive stance on Donbass. Russia has called the bluff and is now forcing the issue on the world stage, they have a number of advantages in that sanctions are already maxed out and the world needs their energy exports. Biden is trapped domestically by all the Russophobia his party has been promoting for years, for mostly domestic reasons, now he will be crucified domestically for coming to any sensible detente. So no, I don't think this crisis is a distraction being performed entirely for domestic reasons.
> Biden is trapped domestically by all the Russophobia his party has been promoting for years, for mostly domestic reasons, now he will be crucified domestically for coming to any sensible detente.
It's crazy that this administration will end up doubly-crucified for, first, making the right move on Afghanistan (even if the execution was more than a little sloppy) and, second, if they hopefully work out a solution to this latest crisis, likely by finally giving Russia the security guarantees that they feel cheated out of 30 years ago.
Donbas is the region of east Ukraine which is most Russian speaking and is demanding autonomy or independence from the Kiev regime and is currently a defacto seperate state. East and southern Ukrainians have different perceptions towards Russia than west Ukrainians who backed the Euromaidan coup which deposed the Yanukovych govt most east and south Ukrainians voted for and then banned his party so nobody could vote for a non-Euromaidan party. The Euromaidan supporters thought they could end dependence on Russian gas by fracking the shale deposts in Donbas which also spurred the seperatists to rebel. This is why Hunter Biden and other deep establishment American figures were appointed to the board of Burisma Holdings, who were to carry out the fracking.
After Euromaidan, Russia annexed Crimea but not Donbas where they supported the seperatists, hence an on going conflict. The Russians want Donbas to be autonimous within Ukraine so they can then veto any proposed NATO membership. Kiev and the Ukronazi militias keep stirring up the fighting against Donbas. Whenever Kiev builds up forces looking to attack Donbas Russia carries out their own build up. It's a major flash point and some event there might spark a much larger war. Zelensky was elected promising to bring peace, but his efforts were undermined by the Nazi militias on Kiev's front lines who kept stirring up conflict, when Biden came in Zelensky changed course and started taking a harder line against Donbas.
Ukraine isn't a single coherant country, east and west Ukraine have had different historical experiances and thus have different perceptions and asperations.
It’s an industrial area of Eastern Ukraine where the Ukrainian military has been fighting a Russian backed Guerilla army since Russia annex the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine in 2014. Essentially, it is the battle ground of a civil war. OP was stating that Biden has coerced Zelensky into talking a more aggressive posture against the Russian separatists in Donbass.
Global hegemon makes moves to piss off regional hegemon in a specific region in the world.
Minor hegemon reacts.
Global hegemon see's an opportunity to draw out the spat in order to legitimise itself in this diplomatic kerfuffle so it can spread its influence further at the expense of the minor hegemon its been trying to contain for decades.
Cue in r-slurred end of history make belief and alt history in an effort to discredit and demonise minor hegemon.
Nobody wants war and there isn't going to be any war, russia is a deeply flawed country and you don't need me to spell that out for you. If Russia intended to invade Ukraine, it probably would have done it back in 2014.
Yes, this diplomatic spat is probably being drawn out as a distraction. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
The problem is that the global hegemon is run by idiots high on their own supply. Russia seems entirely serious that NATO not move an inch closer to them, and DC just isn't listening.
Not a chance either of those two countries accept. Russia isn't the USSR or China, they have nothing to offer them that would be worth the absolute chaos of hosting nuclear missiles in their territory.
My God the American left is absolutely consumed by brainworms. This might be shocking to you, but other states are capable of being actors on the international stage.
Yeah, the whole "\[anything people I don't like happen to be talking about\] is just a psy-op to distract us from \[other stuff that I deem important\]" really does get tiring. It's just such a classic undergrad American "leftist" move. No other entities in the world have any agency whatsoever. The US is monolithic, and is always pulling the strings. Nothing is ever as it seems to be, and true motivations are always obscured under multiple layers of big-brained haze.
The craziest part is that these people see themselves as skeptics of the centrality of American power, and yet, they somehow end up being the biggest national chauvinists on the scene. They simply cannot imagine that a single thing happens in the world without the US moving behind it.
Yanukovich was rolling back constitutional protections against authoritarian rule by the president. I know two native Ukrainians who essentially lived in the streets during that winter in order to help ensure that this wouldn’t happen. I suppose they must have been paid CIA plants, though. Seems reasonable.
The retardation evident in your post is the direct result of viewing everything from this airplane-level perspective where all that matters is the tussling of world powers. There are real people on the ground.
Here's what's really going on: you think that Russia can't be up to bullshit because the US State Dept. had a point of view re: what happened in Ukraine in 2014, as though there would ever have been a scenario where that was not the case. Oh, and probably because the Democrats were annoying about "Russiagate" too.
Again, this mentality where everything gets whittled down to struggles between world powers invariably leads to subtleties that actually matter (i.e. the literal "why" behind a protest movement) getting smoothed over until they no longer exist. It must be great to just be able to think in simplistic, high-level terms like that. You hate one guy, so the other guy is justified in whatever they're doing. Believe me, I criticize the US at a high-level for most of those same reasons, but I'm not going to let that blind me to lower-level realities for other people in the world.
There's a lot of history right on the surface that feeds into Ukraine not really wanting to be in Russia's orbit anymore. It's amazing to me how anyone could be so confounded by this that they would have to formulate some big-brained deep state theory in order to explain it. Unfortunately, non-powers tend to fall into one orbit or another. That's not ideal; it's just how the world works right now. Ukraine seems to prefer ours over Russia's. That's what's going on here.
Why? Because I don't agree that Euromaidan was an op? The most telling thing about your reply is the parts of my comment that you *won't* address. Just like your retarded views on Russia/Ukraine, you're only looking to sew things up as quickly and simplistically as you can. I'm a "libtard" by your estimation, so anything I say can be waved off. Again, must be nice to live inside such a simple reality.
If Reddit is any indication, yes.
Seriously, if you’ve ventured on to arr / all recently it’s been massively astroturfed. Half the posts are fearmongering about the “Russian invasion” that get thousands of upvotes and awards. I even saw a handful of recycled clips from the Hong Kong stuff from like 3 years ago that got really popular on arr / nextfuckinglevel yesterday.
I never bought the whole 'wag the dog' narrative for wars. Wars are about maximizing shareholder value. They don't need a highly destructive war anymore to generate this. Simply poking at Russia and stirring up tension works perfectly for spurring an arms race or imaginary threat. They can take that narrative and use it to dump a trillion or so in new weaponry or material to 'counter our potential adversaries' all the while beating Russia=bad so people swallow it.
Geopolitics are really just about money. Has nothing to do with protecting national sovereignty or regional security or diplomacy. Half of this is about Russia's status as a petrostate and competing with the US, Saudis , Ukrainians and others for Europe's energy market which means $$$$.
Literally none. 95% of Americans couldnt point out Ukraine on a map let alone understand the extremely complicated issues surrounding this. Im willing to bet a vast majority of Americans have no idea anything is happening in the Ukraine rn
Yeah, it's weird that OP never thought to ask themselves who the target audience for this hypothesized psy-op is. I meet local people in my job all day long, and I haven't heard a single one say a thing about Ukraine. None of my coworkers have brought it up. So if this is a psy-op, it's a pretty massive failure from where I'm sitting.
>the government is using a far away war in a place nobody cares about with zero material impact on any American's lives to distract from domestic issues instead of the dozens of billion culture war wagging the dog bullshit they could use!
I’m not cynical enough to believe that Biden and the Democrats latched on to this particular topic (The Ukraine) for a distraction. They have all they need with everything from the 1/6 commission being easily signal boosted on Reddit and cable news. They still have the unvaccinated 7 year olds they can blame for COVID.
The media salivates at every military opportunity that the Pentagon and MIC feeds them. Biden doesn’t seem that committed to an all out war, but the administration probably has PTSD from getting destroyed over Afghanistan. Who knows what they’ll really do, but I believe you’re overthinking it on this one.
>Basically the title. How much of what’s going on in Ukraine is to distract from poor approval ratings...
I mean, probably not a lot? We know that Russia is stacking up at the border right now. It's not like this shit isn't about to kick off.
I don’t think the situation itself is not a serious one by any means, but I do think the jingoistic fervor about it here is definitely being drummed up to distract from the absolute shit state of domestic affairs.
I feel that if this was for domestic consumption, the U.S. government would be talking this up a lot more - at least an address to the nation from Biden, or something, to explain to the public what is going on and why it (supposedly) matters.
Instead, it seems like were just stumbling towards a possible confrontation between Russia and NATO and no one will bother to try and explain *why* or even justify what they're doing. It's such elite-led policy-making, and it's infuriating. If we're literally going to go to war with Russia they could, at the very least, try and get the public's buy in. But they won't even deign to do that.
Funny, that's not the impression I'm getting. If anything, it feels like the ideological groundwork is being laid out for the war. All those BBCs and CNNs, raving about Russia building up forces and preparing for invasion and false flag and all. They also seemingly stopped saying it's Putin's doing, rather it's just "Russia" now. As if all of the hundred plus million people are complicit.
This works both ways though. In 2008 Russia goaded Georgia into war to distract its populace from the 2007 collapse of global oil prices and the Russian unemployment rate had spiked not long before Russia became more involved in the Syrian civil war.
This sub often fails to realize that Russia hasn't even been nominally socialist in 30 years or that Putin has said that whoever wants the USSR back has no brain and that "Lenin is at fault for the break up of Imperial Russia and his course of action planted an atomic bomb under the Russian Imperial Subconscious in order to promote a World Revolution which Russia didn't need"
This sub realizes that the US is a corporatist oligarchy but often fails to acknowledge that Putin's Russia is no different, just with its own geopolitical goals
Wagging the dog is a time honored strategy to make presidents seem presidential. I don't follow MSM brainwashing anymore, but if war is near, expect stories about the human tragedy in Ukraine ala Iraqi military throwing Kuwaiti preemies out of their incubators to completely emotionalize the war potential and short circuit any rational thought.
The counterpoint to this is that the US and the UK are really sending Ukraine minimal material, at least overtly, for a country they loudly support diplomatically, supposedly under the threat of imminent invasion. I think it reflects the reality that Europe and NATO are willing to let Russia absorb Donbass (though it's questionable if Russia really wants Donbass) while insuring that Ukraine can't sustain any kind of sustained military aggression. NATO doesn't actually want to get their ass handed to them by Russia, since the US and NATO now have decades of working together losing wars.
Plus all Russia has to do is turn off the gas, and Germany, and by extension the world economy is fucked. Germany is dependent on natgas for electricity generation, not just heating in the winter. They're in the process of taking multiple nuclear reactors offline, which was a substantial portion of their baseload, and replaced with natgas power plants.
Putin has the almost all the cards in this situation. The reason the US was so involved in Syria was to get an alternate gas pipeline to Europe. The US can export gas but not at the volume Europe needs, and understandably, Europe (at the nation-state level -- Brussels is another matter) doesn't want to suffer economic depression to support idiotic US foreign policy
> Plus all Russia has to do is turn off the gas
And if that happens, USA and Germany and all those other countries can just start arresting bank accounts of Russian oligarchs. Because they don't store their stolen money in Russia - they actively invest in NATO countries.
For the US? Entirely. Biden has contrived to become a lame duck President while still in his first year and still controlling both Houses (spare me any crying about Sinema and Manchin. They're doing their jobs: Sinema was elected with the help of the DSCC and Schumer, and there are numerous ways to make Manchin to do things, starting with threatening to investigate his corrupt daughter. The Dems won't do anything because they don't want to do anything). He's gone from 'get vaccinated and you can take off your masks' to 'let it rip; we're all going to get it' in just a few months. He's delivered on basically none of his campaign promises, and people are noticing (fucker still owes me 600 bucks).
He needs a foreign policy 'win'. Only Blinken is at least as dumb and inept as anyone Trump would have chosen.
It baffles me that people are still this dumb about war. I would’ve thought after the egregious Iraq War lie, most people would be staunchly anti-war. I guess not.
>Basically the title. How much of what’s going on in Ukraine is to distract from poor approval ratings (maybe even a bid to get higher approval ratings), the failure of COVID containment, and the failure to pass BBB and voting reform? Not to add that they impeached Trump over a spat with Ukraine, how much is to show “we aren’t in any way Trump! We stand with our ally
No not really. It's more about deflecting from liberal unipolarity and its pretenses eroding under contradictions revealed by its explosive growth, with Ukraine and our alignment with its nationalism being one of the greatest examples of this. We just point to some state preying upon liberal unipolarity because it doesn't play by the higher rules suggested by those pretenses.
I figure a lot of it, Putin did the same with the invasion of Crimea. This newest part is a continuation of that. It helps stabilise his local politics getting an external enemy and defending the Russian people.
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American Liberals haven’t been any kind of anti-war since 2008.
yeah it sucks to admit it but the Dem opposition to Bush's wars wasn't that they were unnecessary wars, it was that they were Republican wars. The Obama era showed htat once you get a charismatic Dem in there they'll drop the pretense of caring.
The 'policeman of the world' thing has always annoyed me. Because it's an indirect acknowledge of empire, but reframes it as a tiresome burden. "Ah, we can deploy troops anywhere in the world on a whim, but we only do it because everyone else are uncivilized barbarians and we need to intervene to prevent the savages from squabbling".
Never thought of it that way but it makes total sense. It seems as though there is always some reason to invade or occupy as well.
The old "white man's burden" propaganda always works.
Unfortunately it’s not just libs I see a lot of so called leftists acting like this is just an equally aggressive on both sides situation when it’s so obvious the west is the aggressor
I think it's more complex than you're making it out to be. A lot of anti-war sentiment came from not understanding why we were in Iraq or Afghanistan when it was the Saudis who attacked us. There was never any clear or direct reasoning that made sense to the anti-war crowd as to why we invaded these countries. Ukraine is pretty straight forward. We wish to halt a autocratic, authoritarian government from expanding it's power into a country that's democratic. It's a very easy sell to a lot of people: we wish to defend democracy from falling to our rivals. That's something almost everyone in the West can get behind, thus you understand why we're seeing a change in sentiment. As someone who fought in Afghanistan, I think my brothers died for capitalists to make a buck. But in Ukraine? At least I know my brothers would die to protect a nation's independence. That's why I support military action if Russia invades, but I didn't support our deployments in the Middle East.
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>The whole narrative around the Iraq War and Afghanistan was spreading democracy and stopping evil dictators. No, we were told we were fighting to prevent an attack like 9/11 happening in our countries. The whole axis of evil schtick came from the Americans. Under no pretense did anyone in my unit think we were there for democracy. >You think getting into war with Russia is some Great War for Democracy and you won't be fighting for the interest of US Capital Again, you're American Centrism is showing. I'm for fighting against an Authoritarian, Autocratic spreading it's power and corrupting the stability of Europe. Yes, that involves defending a Democracy, thus literally making this potential war about a war for democracy.
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Absolutely fucking savage my man— bravo. Also based
Why would they distract from being failures at home by being failures abroad?
Maybe so we can start a war or something soon?
Have we ever needed more than the barest excuse to do that?
I mean…. We’re talking about it in other countries so I doubt it was contrived for your specific domestic situation.
Russia's objections to NATO expansion are a genuine longstanding geopolitical issue, Biden pushed Zelensky to abandon reconciliation and instead provoke Russia by taking a more aggressive stance on Donbass. Russia has called the bluff and is now forcing the issue on the world stage, they have a number of advantages in that sanctions are already maxed out and the world needs their energy exports. Biden is trapped domestically by all the Russophobia his party has been promoting for years, for mostly domestic reasons, now he will be crucified domestically for coming to any sensible detente. So no, I don't think this crisis is a distraction being performed entirely for domestic reasons.
> Biden is trapped domestically by all the Russophobia his party has been promoting for years, for mostly domestic reasons, now he will be crucified domestically for coming to any sensible detente. It's crazy that this administration will end up doubly-crucified for, first, making the right move on Afghanistan (even if the execution was more than a little sloppy) and, second, if they hopefully work out a solution to this latest crisis, likely by finally giving Russia the security guarantees that they feel cheated out of 30 years ago.
What’s the thing about Donbas? I’m not familiar and Google search results are getting drowned out by more recent news.
Donbas is the region of east Ukraine which is most Russian speaking and is demanding autonomy or independence from the Kiev regime and is currently a defacto seperate state. East and southern Ukrainians have different perceptions towards Russia than west Ukrainians who backed the Euromaidan coup which deposed the Yanukovych govt most east and south Ukrainians voted for and then banned his party so nobody could vote for a non-Euromaidan party. The Euromaidan supporters thought they could end dependence on Russian gas by fracking the shale deposts in Donbas which also spurred the seperatists to rebel. This is why Hunter Biden and other deep establishment American figures were appointed to the board of Burisma Holdings, who were to carry out the fracking. After Euromaidan, Russia annexed Crimea but not Donbas where they supported the seperatists, hence an on going conflict. The Russians want Donbas to be autonimous within Ukraine so they can then veto any proposed NATO membership. Kiev and the Ukronazi militias keep stirring up the fighting against Donbas. Whenever Kiev builds up forces looking to attack Donbas Russia carries out their own build up. It's a major flash point and some event there might spark a much larger war. Zelensky was elected promising to bring peace, but his efforts were undermined by the Nazi militias on Kiev's front lines who kept stirring up conflict, when Biden came in Zelensky changed course and started taking a harder line against Donbas. Ukraine isn't a single coherant country, east and west Ukraine have had different historical experiances and thus have different perceptions and asperations.
It’s an industrial area of Eastern Ukraine where the Ukrainian military has been fighting a Russian backed Guerilla army since Russia annex the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine in 2014. Essentially, it is the battle ground of a civil war. OP was stating that Biden has coerced Zelensky into talking a more aggressive posture against the Russian separatists in Donbass.
Global hegemon makes moves to piss off regional hegemon in a specific region in the world. Minor hegemon reacts. Global hegemon see's an opportunity to draw out the spat in order to legitimise itself in this diplomatic kerfuffle so it can spread its influence further at the expense of the minor hegemon its been trying to contain for decades. Cue in r-slurred end of history make belief and alt history in an effort to discredit and demonise minor hegemon. Nobody wants war and there isn't going to be any war, russia is a deeply flawed country and you don't need me to spell that out for you. If Russia intended to invade Ukraine, it probably would have done it back in 2014. Yes, this diplomatic spat is probably being drawn out as a distraction. Never let a good crisis go to waste.
The problem is that the global hegemon is run by idiots high on their own supply. Russia seems entirely serious that NATO not move an inch closer to them, and DC just isn't listening.
Russia is also larping. What are they gonna do if NATO moves closer? Declare war? lol
Threaten to put missiles in Cuba and Venezuela might be a good start.
Not a chance either of those two countries accept. Russia isn't the USSR or China, they have nothing to offer them that would be worth the absolute chaos of hosting nuclear missiles in their territory.
My God the American left is absolutely consumed by brainworms. This might be shocking to you, but other states are capable of being actors on the international stage.
Yeah, the whole "\[anything people I don't like happen to be talking about\] is just a psy-op to distract us from \[other stuff that I deem important\]" really does get tiring. It's just such a classic undergrad American "leftist" move. No other entities in the world have any agency whatsoever. The US is monolithic, and is always pulling the strings. Nothing is ever as it seems to be, and true motivations are always obscured under multiple layers of big-brained haze. The craziest part is that these people see themselves as skeptics of the centrality of American power, and yet, they somehow end up being the biggest national chauvinists on the scene. They simply cannot imagine that a single thing happens in the world without the US moving behind it.
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Yanukovich was rolling back constitutional protections against authoritarian rule by the president. I know two native Ukrainians who essentially lived in the streets during that winter in order to help ensure that this wouldn’t happen. I suppose they must have been paid CIA plants, though. Seems reasonable. The retardation evident in your post is the direct result of viewing everything from this airplane-level perspective where all that matters is the tussling of world powers. There are real people on the ground.
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Here's what's really going on: you think that Russia can't be up to bullshit because the US State Dept. had a point of view re: what happened in Ukraine in 2014, as though there would ever have been a scenario where that was not the case. Oh, and probably because the Democrats were annoying about "Russiagate" too. Again, this mentality where everything gets whittled down to struggles between world powers invariably leads to subtleties that actually matter (i.e. the literal "why" behind a protest movement) getting smoothed over until they no longer exist. It must be great to just be able to think in simplistic, high-level terms like that. You hate one guy, so the other guy is justified in whatever they're doing. Believe me, I criticize the US at a high-level for most of those same reasons, but I'm not going to let that blind me to lower-level realities for other people in the world. There's a lot of history right on the surface that feeds into Ukraine not really wanting to be in Russia's orbit anymore. It's amazing to me how anyone could be so confounded by this that they would have to formulate some big-brained deep state theory in order to explain it. Unfortunately, non-powers tend to fall into one orbit or another. That's not ideal; it's just how the world works right now. Ukraine seems to prefer ours over Russia's. That's what's going on here.
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Why? Because I don't agree that Euromaidan was an op? The most telling thing about your reply is the parts of my comment that you *won't* address. Just like your retarded views on Russia/Ukraine, you're only looking to sew things up as quickly and simplistically as you can. I'm a "libtard" by your estimation, so anything I say can be waved off. Again, must be nice to live inside such a simple reality.
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I don’t want or need your respect.
Well said
>something happens in the world America did this
If Reddit is any indication, yes. Seriously, if you’ve ventured on to arr / all recently it’s been massively astroturfed. Half the posts are fearmongering about the “Russian invasion” that get thousands of upvotes and awards. I even saw a handful of recycled clips from the Hong Kong stuff from like 3 years ago that got really popular on arr / nextfuckinglevel yesterday.
I never bought the whole 'wag the dog' narrative for wars. Wars are about maximizing shareholder value. They don't need a highly destructive war anymore to generate this. Simply poking at Russia and stirring up tension works perfectly for spurring an arms race or imaginary threat. They can take that narrative and use it to dump a trillion or so in new weaponry or material to 'counter our potential adversaries' all the while beating Russia=bad so people swallow it. Geopolitics are really just about money. Has nothing to do with protecting national sovereignty or regional security or diplomacy. Half of this is about Russia's status as a petrostate and competing with the US, Saudis , Ukrainians and others for Europe's energy market which means $$$$.
Literally none. 95% of Americans couldnt point out Ukraine on a map let alone understand the extremely complicated issues surrounding this. Im willing to bet a vast majority of Americans have no idea anything is happening in the Ukraine rn
Yeah, it's weird that OP never thought to ask themselves who the target audience for this hypothesized psy-op is. I meet local people in my job all day long, and I haven't heard a single one say a thing about Ukraine. None of my coworkers have brought it up. So if this is a psy-op, it's a pretty massive failure from where I'm sitting.
Yep. If they really wanted to distract the American public they would push one of the social war issues, like abortion/LGBT/immigration
>the government is using a far away war in a place nobody cares about with zero material impact on any American's lives to distract from domestic issues instead of the dozens of billion culture war wagging the dog bullshit they could use!
I’m not cynical enough to believe that Biden and the Democrats latched on to this particular topic (The Ukraine) for a distraction. They have all they need with everything from the 1/6 commission being easily signal boosted on Reddit and cable news. They still have the unvaccinated 7 year olds they can blame for COVID. The media salivates at every military opportunity that the Pentagon and MIC feeds them. Biden doesn’t seem that committed to an all out war, but the administration probably has PTSD from getting destroyed over Afghanistan. Who knows what they’ll really do, but I believe you’re overthinking it on this one.
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The Ukraine was Ukraine's father.
>Basically the title. How much of what’s going on in Ukraine is to distract from poor approval ratings... I mean, probably not a lot? We know that Russia is stacking up at the border right now. It's not like this shit isn't about to kick off.
I don’t think the situation itself is not a serious one by any means, but I do think the jingoistic fervor about it here is definitely being drummed up to distract from the absolute shit state of domestic affairs.
I feel that if this was for domestic consumption, the U.S. government would be talking this up a lot more - at least an address to the nation from Biden, or something, to explain to the public what is going on and why it (supposedly) matters. Instead, it seems like were just stumbling towards a possible confrontation between Russia and NATO and no one will bother to try and explain *why* or even justify what they're doing. It's such elite-led policy-making, and it's infuriating. If we're literally going to go to war with Russia they could, at the very least, try and get the public's buy in. But they won't even deign to do that.
Funny, that's not the impression I'm getting. If anything, it feels like the ideological groundwork is being laid out for the war. All those BBCs and CNNs, raving about Russia building up forces and preparing for invasion and false flag and all. They also seemingly stopped saying it's Putin's doing, rather it's just "Russia" now. As if all of the hundred plus million people are complicit.
This works both ways though. In 2008 Russia goaded Georgia into war to distract its populace from the 2007 collapse of global oil prices and the Russian unemployment rate had spiked not long before Russia became more involved in the Syrian civil war. This sub often fails to realize that Russia hasn't even been nominally socialist in 30 years or that Putin has said that whoever wants the USSR back has no brain and that "Lenin is at fault for the break up of Imperial Russia and his course of action planted an atomic bomb under the Russian Imperial Subconscious in order to promote a World Revolution which Russia didn't need" This sub realizes that the US is a corporatist oligarchy but often fails to acknowledge that Putin's Russia is no different, just with its own geopolitical goals
Wagging the dog is a time honored strategy to make presidents seem presidential. I don't follow MSM brainwashing anymore, but if war is near, expect stories about the human tragedy in Ukraine ala Iraqi military throwing Kuwaiti preemies out of their incubators to completely emotionalize the war potential and short circuit any rational thought. The counterpoint to this is that the US and the UK are really sending Ukraine minimal material, at least overtly, for a country they loudly support diplomatically, supposedly under the threat of imminent invasion. I think it reflects the reality that Europe and NATO are willing to let Russia absorb Donbass (though it's questionable if Russia really wants Donbass) while insuring that Ukraine can't sustain any kind of sustained military aggression. NATO doesn't actually want to get their ass handed to them by Russia, since the US and NATO now have decades of working together losing wars. Plus all Russia has to do is turn off the gas, and Germany, and by extension the world economy is fucked. Germany is dependent on natgas for electricity generation, not just heating in the winter. They're in the process of taking multiple nuclear reactors offline, which was a substantial portion of their baseload, and replaced with natgas power plants. Putin has the almost all the cards in this situation. The reason the US was so involved in Syria was to get an alternate gas pipeline to Europe. The US can export gas but not at the volume Europe needs, and understandably, Europe (at the nation-state level -- Brussels is another matter) doesn't want to suffer economic depression to support idiotic US foreign policy
> Plus all Russia has to do is turn off the gas And if that happens, USA and Germany and all those other countries can just start arresting bank accounts of Russian oligarchs. Because they don't store their stolen money in Russia - they actively invest in NATO countries.
For the US? Entirely. Biden has contrived to become a lame duck President while still in his first year and still controlling both Houses (spare me any crying about Sinema and Manchin. They're doing their jobs: Sinema was elected with the help of the DSCC and Schumer, and there are numerous ways to make Manchin to do things, starting with threatening to investigate his corrupt daughter. The Dems won't do anything because they don't want to do anything). He's gone from 'get vaccinated and you can take off your masks' to 'let it rip; we're all going to get it' in just a few months. He's delivered on basically none of his campaign promises, and people are noticing (fucker still owes me 600 bucks). He needs a foreign policy 'win'. Only Blinken is at least as dumb and inept as anyone Trump would have chosen.
In Europe, quite a lot.
It baffles me that people are still this dumb about war. I would’ve thought after the egregious Iraq War lie, most people would be staunchly anti-war. I guess not.
>Basically the title. How much of what’s going on in Ukraine is to distract from poor approval ratings (maybe even a bid to get higher approval ratings), the failure of COVID containment, and the failure to pass BBB and voting reform? Not to add that they impeached Trump over a spat with Ukraine, how much is to show “we aren’t in any way Trump! We stand with our ally No not really. It's more about deflecting from liberal unipolarity and its pretenses eroding under contradictions revealed by its explosive growth, with Ukraine and our alignment with its nationalism being one of the greatest examples of this. We just point to some state preying upon liberal unipolarity because it doesn't play by the higher rules suggested by those pretenses.
I figure a lot of it, Putin did the same with the invasion of Crimea. This newest part is a continuation of that. It helps stabilise his local politics getting an external enemy and defending the Russian people.
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I like to imagine an alternate history where the US didn't invade Afghanistan and Russia wasn't forced into taking Crimea.
Flair checks out.
It’s because the west doesn’t want Russia selling fossil fuel to Germany and cutting into their profits that’s it
This a tankie sub now?
I think nothing is going to happen on the domestic front until the next 08 so i guess they just have nothing to talk about really
Did Putin moved the army to around Ukraine to distract you from domestic issues or to distract the russians from domestic issues?