Australia - you're standing in it
I read an article a couple months back, but can’t seem to find, by a foreign policy think tank or online magazine or something, basically boasting about how the US spent the post 2014 period building and training the Ukraine military precisely for the purpose of going to war with Russia.
And the article was basically making fun of people who were surprised at how effective the Ukrainian resistance has been and were thinking that it had something to do with the “fighting spirit” of the Ukrainian army.
The article then went on to say that this is also precisely what the US is doing in Taiwan: building a military to go to war with China. It said that the extra challenge in Taiwan however was that large chunks of the Taiwanese military, governments and population etc don’t actually want to go to war with China, so they needed some not so gentle reeducation and persuasion.
Anyway, there’s endless articles detailing all this.
There is currently US warships only 10s of miles off the Chinese coast getting into altercations with the Chinese navy.
And the US is engaging in an unprecedented military buildup and creation of military alliances and blocs, including getting NATO involved and remilitarising Japan, in the western pacific, and we in Australia are right in the thick of it.
How is it not the case that the US intentionally manufactured the war in Ukraine and is doing the same in Taiwan and the western pacific more generally?
How is it not pure aggression and provocation by the US?
It’s like watching a train crash in ultra slow motion but that can’t be prevented.
$$$
When you fund the railroad, provide the trains, supply and train the drivers…
- you can then try create and control the ideal crash scenario.
Then you can try control the rescue, recovery and rebuild ;)
- nothing at all like a colonial conglomeration…
It’s for our freedom and security ;)
There’s a PLA-Navy vessel in the Kiel canal right now gsco. There’s routinely PLA-N vessels within Australia’s EEZ. And there’s PLA-N and coast guard vessels harassing, water-cannoning and, in some cases, ramming Vietnamese, Malaysian and Filipino fishing and hydrocarbon vessels in their own EEZs. I guess the US is responsible for that too?
The US built the Ukrainian Army ‘from 2014’ to go to war with Russia….? What happened in 2014 again?
And wasn’t Ukraine supposed to fold like a wet newspaper when confronted with Russian military might? But didn’t. That’s got far more to do with Ukrainian political and social will than it does to do with equipment and training.
Ukrainians are invested in Ukraine. Weird.
Stu, just finished the chapter on Australia in Tim Marshall’s new book. It summarises Australia’s strategic circumstances well, but spends too long on history and not enough on the implications of the geographic challenges on Australia’s economy, entirely neglects the relationship with SE Asian nations and ASEAN, and somewhat simplifies Australia’s defence options. But still a good read. It’s quite similar in outlook to the recently published Defence Strategic Review.
I'm not sure how you can defend it all etarip
Defend what, exactly, gsco?
I’m not sure how you can defend Putin’s war in Ukraine, or Xi’s creeping expansionism in the South China Sea, but there we are.
This is old ground. Re Ukraine: If (yes, if) what you posit about this all being a US confection is correct, then how and why the hell did Putin walk into the ‘trap’ that was set for him?
I am critical of a lot of US foreign policy decisions. I disagreed with the geostrategic rationale and the legal basis for the Iraq invasion. At the time too, which was quite a big thing in the ADF.
I’ve been critical of US-led strategy (actually, absence of…) in Afghanistan.
I question many of the US approaches in Asia. But I can do that without closing my eyes to the actions and intentions of the CCP.
Ask yourself why so many other countries are turning away from China, and despite reluctance to be drawn into a competitive ‘side’ against the PRC are still doing so. These are all countries with their own independent foreign policies. Yet they’re still doing so.
Alongside the military build up in the Ukraine since 2014 there has been a massive push to psychologically prepare the people for the war via building a much stronger Ukrainian identity and anti Russia viewpoint. This has geopolitical origins/sponsors as well. There would have been a basis to work from among certain sectors of the population who had past grievances.
It has not been a spontaneous burst of nationalism and demonisation of Russia that was unnurtured.
All the tools of mass propaganda and spooks sponsored groups would have been at work for years to create the "fighting spirit". Military equipment without large numbers of trained men with the carefully fostered “fighting spirit” would have been useless. Putin's biggest mistake was underestimating the mind shift that had occurred within the Ukraine population over the past 8 years.
Also, don't forget in a heavily militarist culture with Asov inspiration, "Fighting Spirit" comes in part from fear - not just of the opposition in front but also from some pretty scary "prodding" from behind.
For whose sons, fathers, uncles, friends, brothers and husbands are now lying dead in the ground or maimed for life, who served as the carefully groomed sacrificial pawns, on the grand geopolitical chess board, "fighting spirit" has no glory.
Just look at Lindsey Graham's creepy delight in it all and you will see who you they are really fighting for - some evil people safe in their comfy homes across the sea
Which military are using blocking forces behind their own troops again? NKVD tactics reprised.
How about defining ‘Putin’s biggest mistake’ not as ‘underestimating Ukrainian fighting spirit’ but of conducting a full-scale ground invasion of a sovereign neighbour and assuming that it will submit to your control?
Both sides do it I expect. But this and a better understanding of how wars usually come about makes the term "fighting spirit" make me feel a little sick inside when I read it.
Glorification of heroism and medals are part of the system to get the men to jump out of the trenches and to fight the battles and die on behalf of those making money and getting reflected glory safe in their homes. Reading about WWI and WWII is not the same now I know more about how they came about and who funded Hitler.
Again, this is all old ground.
I think Afghanistan is a counterpoint to your argument fwiw. 15 years of direct and massive US and Western involvement in trying to get the Afghan people to identify with a political-centric national identity. Trillions of dollars, from local to national government. Equipment, training, doctrine, yet the Afghan security forces hadn’t bought into it enough to fight. Not out of love for the opposition. But out of enough apathy toward the system they were protecting.
But, your contention is that Ukrainian identity, which actually predates Muscovia and Russia, was not strong enough without clandestine US prodding?
It’s a difficult contrast to reconcile.
The other issue is that of ‘arming’ the Ukrainians. The west provided very few major capability platforms to the Ukrainians after 2014, and virtually none prior. What was provided were infantry weapons and anti-armour. The big ticket items like vehicles, tanks, air defence and long range artillery (and no planes either…at the moment) have all come since the Russian invasion. What was provided was a lot of training and organisation, modernising the Ukrainian military away from the soviet model that it had inherited. That model put it at a massive disadvantage against Russian forces, as they were fighting symmetrically - which meant that they were always going to lose in a attritional contest.
I wrote a long post last year on why Russia’s initial invasion failed. It almost didn’t. If they’d taken Kyiv it would have likely achieved its aims. But to achieve that, Russia had to fight in a way that it wasn’t very well prepared to do. It was entirely reliant on Ukrainian capitulation. And when it failed to achieve that outcome it was stuck with an attritional battle, on exterior lines, with long lines of communication against an injured, but largely intact, adversary fighting on home soil. Again, massive own goal for Putin.
I think there’s a difference between national resilience and identity and tactical ‘fighting spirit’.
What’s overlooked in a lot of the Western media is the Ukrainian sacrifice in WW2, fighting the Nazis, and how the co-opting of the Great Patriotic War by the Russians has actually galvanised Ukrainian identity. Another own goal. Similarly, the Russian missile and drone attacks on civilian population centres is actually having the opposite effect to that which is (probably) intended. It’s hardening Ukrainian resolve, not reducing it. Just like the German attacks on British cities in the Blitz or the Allied bombing campaigns against Germany failed.
Putin’s invasion, regardless of the pathos of insecurity or his views on NATO, has been an absolute geostrategic blunder.
etarip wrote:Defend what, exactly, gsco?
I’m not sure how you can defend Putin’s war in Ukraine, or Xi’s creeping expansionism in the South China Sea, but there we are.
This is old ground. Re Ukraine: If (yes, if) what you posit about this all being a US confection is correct, then how and why the hell did Putin walk into the ‘trap’ that was set for him?
Defend preparing to start WWIII.
I'm not defending Putins war, I'm criticising the US's role in it:
Putin didn't "walk into a trap". He has tried to nip in the bud the growing trap before it was too late and got too big. And he spent quite a few years warning the world that he would too, before he actually did it, to give the US a chance to stop, yet the US just kept upping the ante. (Just like China is warning now with Taiwan, and yet the US is just continuing to up the ante.)
Either way though it shouldn't have happened and seemed easy to prevent.
Seems that the Cold War never actually ended.
etarip wrote:I question many of the US approaches in Asia. But I can do that without closing my eyes to the actions and intentions of the CCP.
Ask yourself why so many other countries are turning away from China, and despite reluctance to be drawn into a competitive ‘side’ against the PRC are still doing so. These are all countries with their own independent foreign policies. Yet they’re still doing so.
What exactly is China's intentions? Are you sure you even know, particularly from within the Anglosphere echo chamber and narrative control?
The majority of countries on this planet are turning towards China. It's largely only the West, and particularly the Anglosphere, that's turning away. And even then, Western countries like France etc want to dissent.
Actually the French case is very interesting. There is quite a different narrative in (English translations of) French authored histories of China compared to US authored histories.
It has been a blunder as executed. If he had done nothing, I used to picture a long term stand off at the border with persistent trouble and strife and massive fortifications built over time but no war as an outcome.
Very undesirable for Russia but not totally an existential threat. But was that really the reality?
But once I understood the potential to "neuter" Russia by making the Black Sea a US/NATO controlled sea by retaking Crimea along with Sevastopol, I came to think the temptation for the US to take that opportunity with Ukraine leadership as the willing proxy would be too great to pass up long term. Russia would have had this foremost in all their strategic deliberations. Doing nothing was not an option.
There is a significant element of inevitability in geopolitics of conflict at some point where the realist view is that unless you are winning and active you are losing. The chess pieces can't sit idle, or you lose.
Plus, of course, there are billions to be made for many in the conflict and the rebuilding. Business has never been better for some.
Alternatively, an un militarised neutral Ukraine could have frozen the chess pieces for a long time.
Back to the here and now. For a while there last year I think the US/NATO saw the conflict as a chance to grasp the nettle and speed up the capture of the Crimea and the Black Sea. Predicted economic collapse was the Big Bertha weapon they were sure would work. Western magic weapons, NATO standard training and the proxy fighting spirit would do the rest.
But that hope from economic and conventional warfare is fading for the proxy masters in a war of attrition unless they do something radical in scale and risk - risky to the whole planet (but in the media, they are winning or "shaping the battlefield" when they lose, left right and centre).
Endless escalation on both side leads to ... escalation, not peace. Who would trust a NATO treaty to hold for long? So we have an MMA fight with infinite rounds till we have a knockout?
Why would an independent Ukraine represent persistent border strife with Russia any more than any of Russia’s other neighbours?
When you say ‘capture of Crimea and the Black Sea’, wouldn’t that just return Ukraine to its 1991 boundaries, as agreed during the breakup of the USSR. I don’t really follow the logic that Putin gets to arbitrarily change those borders because he disagrees with the actions of his predecessors.
“But that hope from economic and conventional warfare is fading for the proxy masters in a war of attrition unless they do something radical in scale and risk”
What makes you say that? What exactly are you suggesting is escalatory and risky? Not letting Russia keep the spoils of war?
Like, threatening the use of nuclear weapons? Let me check the notes…. Which is the only belligerent in that conflict that has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons? Actually, which is the only one that HAS nuclear weapons? Which is the only party to the conflict that has used cruise missiles and ballistic missiles against population centres?
Anyway, I think it’s probably too early to write off the capacity of the Ukrainians to reclaim a significant proportion of occupied territory in their upcoming offensive.
Almost definitely not Crimea, but they probably don’t need to physically occupy it if they can control the land supply routes and interdict the Kerch bridge. They can also control the water supply to Crimea with a relatively small advance.
They will want leverage for negotiations.
Also watching the internal dimensions within Russia and see how they affect Putin’s calculations.
Border strife
2014 to 2022 non stop near border strife in ethnic Russian Donbas. Similar stuff might well continue.
Sevastopol
Not justifying past actions but as of today, if the Ukraine controlled Crimea and Sevastopol again i don't think they would lease the port to Russia to host their Navy as was the case previously. NATO would move in and end, or totally control Black Sea use by Russia. That reality now dramatically ups the stakes for Russia. Previously prior to 2014 the threat was there but more unclear and the steady shifts in the tea leaves to greater risk would have been pondered endlessly by Russia.
Escalation
Is a game for two.
Nuclear posturing
Again, a game for two. I have heard a macho US general last year on video talk about turning Crimea into a sheet of glass any time they chose with a sense of relish.
The best time for peace was way back or 2021 or March 2022. Downhill slide from there.
What happens next seems just about to happen. No predictions from me.
Both sides way underestimated the costs and consequences of their moves.
Who was behind the ‘border strife’ in Donbas from 2014 to 2022 ya reckon? Do you seriously believe that it was a spontaneous display of violent Russian-ethnic nationalism? Almost without a precedent?
I don’t think you’re wrong about Ukraine ever leasing Sevastopol to the Russians again. But, again, can you blame them? Why does Russia have an inalienable right to Black Sea access? Seriously…? Why? They ceded Crimea to Ukraine in 1991.
They still have Azov Sea access. Maybe if they negotiate in good faith with the Ukrainians they’d have those rights to transit Kerch strait as well. They still have to transit the Bosporus to access the Med, and rights are protected by international law. Like every other state seems to do. They manage it fine in the Baltics, some tensions aside.
Now that Finland has joined NATO, the Gulf of Finland is effectively entirely controlled by NATO. But there’s no invasion of Finland on the cards.
Finally, Sevastopol is not and never was Russia’s only access to the Black Sea. It has 400km of coast in the Krasnodar region - south of the Kerch strait, and where Putin’s Black Sea residence is. If you add the Georgian coastline, a Russian-leaning nation, this more than doubles.
The Sevastopol / NATO argument is moot. Look at a map. It just doesn’t stack up.
Another example of the better economic managers in govt.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/05/audit-finds-morri...
#bettermoneymanagers
etarip wrote:The Sevastopol / NATO argument is moot. Look at a map. It just doesn’t stack up.
This is where my perspective on Sevastopol came from:
quote from Zelenski in the video "Everything began with Crimea and everything will end with Crimea"
A tough ask to retake it but something that would have major consequences.
You gotta wonder why stokes keeps backing these donkeys. It’s a classic headline, first time BL gets to tell his side of the story and then later says he was robbed of his chance to be found innocent . ( or words to that effect ) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/05/bruce-lehrmann-tv-...
The song says money can’t buy love, but it can buy just about anything else-
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-07/pga-tour-agrees-to-merge-with-sau...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-07/bodhi-risby-jones-returning-to-au...
More absolute shitfuckery from Morrison and his band of corrupt muppets...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/07/morrison-governme...
andy-mac wrote:More absolute shitfuckery from Morrison and his band of corrupt muppets...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/07/morrison-governme...
Surely an investigation into the various churches and organisations that Scumo gifted grants to is warranted. Still waiting for the findings on the former nsw premier , why the silence ?
etarip wrote: "Why does Russia have an inalienable right to Black Sea access? Seriously…?"
Did I ever say they has such a right or even imply that? No, I did not. I just pointed out that Russia would view control of the Black Sea as critical to its future and this affects all their decisions and the US/NATO would also understand this and see control of the Black Sea as a potentially powerful means of containing and even breaking Russia up - an often-stated goal. Both sides may well act accordingly pursuing geopolitical goals with deadly seriousness ahead of any theoretical rules based order and trample over various historic rights in the process. Who would succeed is the issue to consider and watch unfold.
Might over right has been part of human history forever. The US is a big fan of it and has used shock and awe many times with disregard to borders.
So who blew the dam? I’m pretty sure most of Swellnet crew will simply blame the US.
I blame Elo.
frog wrote:I blame Elo.
A Tesla with faulty autopilot?
Oops misread Elo as Elon. My bad.
Distraction by Elo from his Tubgate judging scandal problems was what came to mind.
frog wrote:Distraction by Elo from his Tubgate judging scandal problems was what came to mind.
Reckon you're on to something. However, always happy to blame Indo's best mate for anything as well.
Dam whodunnit
In the middle of this video is a balanced discussion of respective benefits either way:
Crimea's water supply is now at risk - worth noting given earlier Crimea discussion.
My estimation, 60/40 one side did it and the other did not - gutsy call I know. Tactics in the next week will show the answer.
hey sheepdog, you in here? I'm probably gonna surf in your neck of the woods on Monday. If you wanna have a lunchtime beer, Stu might be so kind as to pass on an email address.
Come on Dutton, keep pushing for a proper investigation into the alleged rape in parliament house... Who knew what and when in govt, why office cleaned immediately etc etc... Cannot see it blowing up in your face in same manner as BRS defamation claim....
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-08/albanese-questioned-on-involvemen...
Wilhelm Scream wrote:#Toowoomba
He that cannot be named.....
Guilty AF alright! Got some gall suing for defamation after the collapse of the case.
What happened to the other Staffer that said BL also Raped her...?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-20/second-alleged-rape-victim-comes-...
Geez the plot thickens....
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/08/leaked-brittany-h...
Brittany paid out 3 mill for what...
https://twitter.com/BenFordhamLive/status/1665644628190674945
Reckon Brittany would have started talking to her defamation lawyers???
BL happy to take a soft interview but declined taking stand in court where BH had to and be cross examined. Case mistrial, but yeah not found guilty, but not innocent either.
Wonder what weather is like in Toowoomba?
Who and why are supporting BL???
1. “Reynolds later industrially cleaned the scene of the crime, called her staff member “a lying cow” & surreptitiously provided key information to attorney for defendant during Lehrmann's trial.”
— Ray Wilton 💧 (@raywilton4) May 21, 2023
https://t.co/wt657lktDf
Yep...
https://m.
Thank you for this
Jeezus Lidia's on Fire
Pauline Fuckoff ...
The "I can't believe it's not politics" thread.