billbindc

I would strongly suggest going back and reading the best informed people circa late April of the first year of the war. I think you will find that the White House did a pretty credible job from what what known/expected then.

The Luttvak/Kissinger comparison is entirely apt. They are both courtiers who specialize(d) in telling elites what they want to hear under a veneer of respectability and a scrim of intellectual verbiage.

A brief Kissinger anecdote: At 28, Kissinger started a magazine called Confluence at Harvard in part to bring in Weimar Era folks like Hannah Arendt, Neibuhr, etc for both academic reasons and because he wanted the cachet he could accrue from collecting resistants to Nazism. He then realized that these folks weren't going to do much to get him into the corridors of power so he hit on the now common idea of cultivating the image of a maverick, willing to buck the establishment. So he ran an article by Ernst von Salomon...Strasserite, one time member of Organisation Consul and critic of de-Nazification. As he later said “if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern." Don't buy any of the hagiography of Kissinger. He was all about proximity to power and utterly callous to anyone and everyone.

Don't regret Kissinger's passing. He was of the realist school and did not hesitate to endorse a breakup of Ukraine and it's consignment into a Russian sphere of influence. He only changed his tune when it became untenable in the face of the unified disgust of the foreign policy establishment in DC. Being Henry Kissinger in the end was a business and Kissinger Associates takes money from everybody. I would also disagree that US intelligence agencies are being passive at all but that's not something we will understand fully for a decade or more. We do know right now that Putin certainly wouldn't agree with that depiction.

I have made no comments denigrating Ukrainian war weariness or his local knowledge. I respect his experience there and honor it...nor would I attempt to talk down to him about it despite the fact that it has in fact been pretty heavily reported here. That's obviously not enough to pretend expertise. But let's be honest...Zeleban did not confine himself to that and made a whole variety of tendentious observations about American politics, NATO, etc that wouldn't have been out of place on Russia Today. I don't think it's shameful to point that out nor am I ashamed to. That said, I'll leave it alone. I think everyone's made their point.

The DC trial happens in March.

Oh my God! Well, why do people located thousands of kilometers from my country think...

Had a drink with a DC lawyer and we discussed this at length. It's pretty clear that outside of two Justices, the SC simply will not allow a President to commute his own sentence or pardon himself because it's about as fundamental to jurisprudence as it gets that one cannot judge one's own case. If it's a state level case, the SC might say that he cannot be held in a state penitentiary while he is in office. In a Federal prison, Trump would start ordering people to release him and right away you have a Constitutional crisis. We then had six more drinks.

It's a matter of public record what the Russians have done and what they planned to do when they won. Also...you do remember your numerous posts above claiming expertise on American military power, public opinion and politics?

You are correct. Trump can certainly run from jail. But commuting or pardoning himself likely doesn't get past the Supreme Court so it would be an unprecedented mess. Just like last time.

I started out with that approach but he's gone way past talking about Ukrainian internal conditions and options right into the kinds of things that Russian agitprop churns out. Saying things like "What would be the difference if Ukraine capitulated by the end of the year?" is frankly defeatist and disingenuous at best considering what we know Russian plans are if it wins. And his descriptions of American politics, intentions and capabilities also track quite well with Russian propaganda intended to drive down support to defend Ukraine. I don't know if he's a troll, a Russian propagandist or someone who has been inadvertently convinced by Russia propaganda and I don't really care. We should call it what it is.

NATO has something around 2.4 million on active duty and another 2.9 million or so on reserve....*without* the United States. That doesn't include another 800k plus paramilitaries. Manpower would not be an issue.

This. It’s like listening to Solovyov trying to sound reasonable.

So...something much worse.

You are talking about the much greater likelihood that Ukraine gets a substantial increase in aid this year from the US so flippantly that I can't but believe that you are either a bot or something much worse.

Again, your ignorance is showing. The fight over aid to Ukraine isn't pro-Russian. It's an internal political fight. The new Speaker...who voted against it months ago is now saying "We can't allow Putin to prevail in Ukraine". Why? Because he's in a position of more responsibility and has to take it seriously. You really, seriously don't know what you are talking about.

Again, totally misguided. Americans who go to the White House can't help but notice the statue of Rochambeau in Lafayette Park. They are taught about who made the Battle of Yorktown possible in school. French is the second most commonly taught language in public schools. You don't know us at all.

Um...no? Russia is in the news constantly and has been my entire life. Russia has a *9%* favorability rating the poll I mentioned above. Helping Ukraine is pretty much the most salient bipartisan point of agreement among regular Americans. You have a cartoonish perspective on America that more than anything else resembles the folks on Russia Today.

France is the third most popular country in the United States at 83% (Gallup) favorability. So...yes, they would.

Correct. In other words, that America can stick with a diversionary war for at least 15 years after emotions have cooled is not exactly an argument that the US can't apply itself.

No. Americans will go to fight and die in order to defend our obvious, compelling interests. It's not a hard sell in a country that has spent the last 75 years plus thinking about the implications of a Russian takeover of Europe.

Your fundamental error is there in equating Vietnam or Afghanistan to a Russian attack on NATO. Neither war was in any real way a fight to defend vital American or European interests. NATO is the ne plus ultra of American interests that we have been willing to go nuclear to defend since 1946 or thereabouts. Both were also mostly counter insurgency fights with unfriendly populations. Let's not for moment pretend either of those conditions pertain here.

I don't have an optimistic or pessimistic view of NATO. I have a factual view that NATO has far greater technical capabilities, better trained and larger armies and economic might that Russia cannot hope to match. Russia has its hand full fighting a country with a patchwork logistical net, mixed equipment and 1/3 the population...but enormous motivation. Russia violating Article 5 will provide that in bucketloads to the Finns, Poles, Rumanian, US, etc. As to the accession of Finland and Sweden into NATO, neither was much interested until the AustroHungarians invaded Serbia...excuse me...until Russia invaded Ukraine and one got in almost immediately and the other is already integrated to the point that they would be alongside fighting from the get....adding something like a million NATO forces to any showdown?

This sounds like an Austro-Hungarian general, blotto on pálinka, planning world domination. And no, the US isn't afraid of Moscow. It's been made clear that the nukes are off the table for anything short of an actual invasion of Russia proper and the bloody incompetence of the Russian armed forces wouldn't let them take on Finland, much less the armed combination of all of NATO. It would be messy but decisively short.