Lead me through your thought process, please. Where exactly in these two sentences did I say that this isn’t a proxy war? Because once again, for around the fourth time today: what you claim to have been said, was in fact not said.
Saying “Do you think anyone doesn’t know what a proxy war is?” can be interpreted to mean that this is not a proxy war, and claiming that it is one relies on people not knowing the meaning of the term. Kind of weird that you don’t understand that. However, if you agree that this is a proxy war then the rest of your comment is pure nonsense. Also, hilarious how you brush off the RAND study I linked given the role RAND plays in shaping US foreign policy.
It seems you often interpret things the way you feel, instead of what was actually being said. You just did it again - I never said I agree this is a proxy war. As I said before, whether it is or isn’t is beside the point I‘m trying to make.
Funny how you call out the one thing I haven’t addressed after ignoring my rebuffs several times.
Still, I took a quick look at the RAND study; it’s from 2019, they argue strategies to weaken Russia. After 2014, a move like that from Russia was always a possibility - thinking about this stuff is a thinktanks job. How you get from that to calling it „advocating“, and the claim it is a proxy war, and even think this is actual evidence of anything, is beyond me. There even is an editor’s note attached „because Russian entities and individuals sympathetic to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine have mischaracterized this research“. That is my point.
It seems that you like to play word games instead of speaking plainly then focus conversation on psychoanalyzing people you’re attacking instead of making any actual points in the discussion. If you read the study and missed the part where it says that a war in Ukraine would be a way to weaken Russia then I don’t know what else to say to you. The fact that they had to add a note to distance themselves from what they suggested actually shows the opposite of your point.
Meanwhile, Stoltenberg has now publicly acknowledged that Putin made clear to NATO in a draft treaty before the war that it could avert it if NATO agreed not to keep enlarging. But NATO rejected the offer.
Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.
So, yes it’s a proxy war that was directly caused by NATO expansion. Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. Then people started peddling your simplistic narrative after the war started. Here’s what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.
Yeah, you just make stuff up.
Like what?
Like your whole argument that this isn’t a proxy war between US and Russia.
When/where did I say that?
this you?
Lead me through your thought process, please. Where exactly in these two sentences did I say that this isn’t a proxy war? Because once again, for around the fourth time today: what you claim to have been said, was in fact not said.
Saying “Do you think anyone doesn’t know what a proxy war is?” can be interpreted to mean that this is not a proxy war, and claiming that it is one relies on people not knowing the meaning of the term. Kind of weird that you don’t understand that. However, if you agree that this is a proxy war then the rest of your comment is pure nonsense. Also, hilarious how you brush off the RAND study I linked given the role RAND plays in shaping US foreign policy.
It seems you often interpret things the way you feel, instead of what was actually being said. You just did it again - I never said I agree this is a proxy war. As I said before, whether it is or isn’t is beside the point I‘m trying to make.
Funny how you call out the one thing I haven’t addressed after ignoring my rebuffs several times. Still, I took a quick look at the RAND study; it’s from 2019, they argue strategies to weaken Russia. After 2014, a move like that from Russia was always a possibility - thinking about this stuff is a thinktanks job. How you get from that to calling it „advocating“, and the claim it is a proxy war, and even think this is actual evidence of anything, is beyond me. There even is an editor’s note attached „because Russian entities and individuals sympathetic to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine have mischaracterized this research“. That is my point.
It seems that you like to play word games instead of speaking plainly then focus conversation on psychoanalyzing people you’re attacking instead of making any actual points in the discussion. If you read the study and missed the part where it says that a war in Ukraine would be a way to weaken Russia then I don’t know what else to say to you. The fact that they had to add a note to distance themselves from what they suggested actually shows the opposite of your point.
Meanwhile, Stoltenberg has now publicly acknowledged that Putin made clear to NATO in a draft treaty before the war that it could avert it if NATO agreed not to keep enlarging. But NATO rejected the offer.
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_218172.htm#:~:text=The background was that President,condition for not invade Ukraine
So, yes it’s a proxy war that was directly caused by NATO expansion. Plenty of western experts have been saying this for many decades. Then people started peddling your simplistic narrative after the war started. Here’s what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.