cmarshall

Which is why the Indians are buying Russian oil now then?

War reparations? From the Russians? You do have a vivid imagination. Who is going to occupy the Russian Federation and force them to pay reparations?

Oil is fungible. Someone will always buy Russian oil like the Indians are doing now. The US despite its efforts was never able to shutdown Iran's oil exports.

I'll take that bet.

The Russian Federation has neither the economic nor the military might to match Stalin's in 1945. Putin knows this. But frankly I don't worry about the Russians attacking yet another country. The rogue nation much more likely to do so is the US, cf. Panama, Grenada, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq (twice), and with eyes on Iran.

So, maybe the Russians will get tired of occupying Ukraine twenty years from now?

Same thing happened when the Finns defeated the Red Army in 1939. Subsequently, the Soviets corrected their deficiencies with the result that they still hold the Karelian Peninsula today.

According to the Hollywood version of the news. To the more sober-minded of us the notion that you are winning when you have a 150,000 strong armed force occupying your country is ridiculous.

Absolutely it does. And this is another direct result of the stupid and callous confrontation with Russia that the US has created with its unrelenting expansion of NATO. The main threat to the US is not from Russia, with its economy smaller than Texas, but from China whose economy has been larger than the US's since 2010 on a purchasing power parity basis. The US ought to have been making an ally of Russia against China, but instead has now pushed them into the Chinese camp since there is no where else for them to go. Smart think, US strategists!

It's called a sphere of influence. During the Cold War the US and the USSR acknowledged each other's spheres of influence and mostly avoided confrontations in those zones. When they failed to respect the opponent's sphere of influence such as in Cuba in 1962 all hell broker loose nearly resulting in a nuclear exchange. But then after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the triumphant US decided unilaterally that it had no such similar obligation to respect any sphere of influence of the Russian Federation. The current ongoing destruction of Ukraine is the direct result of the Americans' hubris.

So, you missed the point about how the US's supplying arms to Ukraine against the Russians already puts them in the Western alliance?

One avoids confronting a nuclear power not out of respect, but out of the most justified fear imaginable. If the Ukrainians and the US manage to push Putin into a corner he will use his nukes. Ukraine cannot win. They should realize this, distance themselves from the US, and work out whatever accommodation with Putin that they can. If not the Western media will cheer the Ukrainian heroism until there is nothing left but rubble.

There may indeed be downsides for Russia, but nothing that is going to prevent them from achieving their goal of destroying Ukraine.

You are confusing the world you wish with the world you have. In some abstract sense Ukraine ought to be able to align itself with the West if it wishes to, but the simple reality, as Putin is now demonstrating unambiguously, is that it can't, because Putin won't let them. And the West is not going to stop him. So, the Ukrainians' choice is Rubble or Russian; nothing else is possible. Beyond the Holodomor the Ukrainians bore the brunt of WWII. That still doesn't mean that somehow they are now in a position to defeat the invading Russian army of 150,000 troops. That is not going to happen. The destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan by the Americans disqualifies them from calling Putin a war criminal.

What I think is that Putin, as he has warned repeatedly, cannot and will not tolerate a neighboring state going over to the NATO/EU side of the enemy. So, he will destroy it. That is his goal and is an effective warning to other similar states belonging to the Russian sphere of influence. With respect to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have a truly impressive ability to ignore the obvious. When Colin Powell was lying through his teeth to the UN that Iraq had WMD even though the UN inspector reported that they had no such program and that Iraq had participated in 9/11 even though the Baathists and Al Queda were on opposite sides, I, like lots of other people, knew then that none of it was true. And then after they invaded it turned out that there never was any evidence to support any of the American lies. Seems to qualify as a conspiracy to me. And most of the $8 trillion cost of those wars went to the military and defense contractors like Halliburton, VP Cheney's old company that made $40 billion out of the war, much of which came from non-competitive contracts. But please continue to bury your head in the sand. You'll remain a proud American.

It's quite plausible that Putin's goal is limited to the destruction of Ukraine, which he will certainly achieve. He will annex some parts of Ukraine and leave the rest in rubble. Mission accomplished. In Afghanistan and Iraq I think the US's goals were actually limited to transferring 8$ trillion to the American military industrial complex, which was a stunning success.

And your point is that therefore Ukraine will now somehow be able to drive 150,000 Russians troops from its territory?

Because it goes without saying there is not interest but self-interest?

Mostly individual taxpayers since the share of the federal budge paid by corporate taxes has been declining for decades. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/corp-taxes-and-federal-budget/

I am guessing you don't know how much the US government subsidizes the heroic private enterprises to whom we owe so much.

So, let's make an experiment to test our competing theories of Putin's popularity and its effect on his longevity. When the Russian people or the military or the oligarchs overthrow Putin, you win. Until then, I win.

Sure, like the internet, for instance. Oh wait, that was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration. Or the GPS app in your cell phone. Oh wait, the GPS was created and is maintained by the military at taxpayer expense for which device makers like Garmin, etc. pay nothing. The development of touch-screen technology was funded by the European CERN as was the first browser. And on and on. Thank god for free enterprise.

What you and the others looking for a Hollywood ending have failed to notice is that returning Ukraine to Russian control as it has been for eighty of the last one hundred years has absolutely no security implications for the US.

Your memory serves you poorly. There is no significant opposition to Putin in Russia.

Here's the opinion of former US Ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock on the current Ukraine crisis: Was this crisis predictable? Absolutely. NATO expansion was the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. In 1997, when the question of adding more NATO members arose, I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement: “I consider the administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.” Indeed, our nuclear arsenals were capable of ending the possibility of civilization on Earth. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/02/15/the-origins-of-the-ukraine-crisis-and-how-conflict-can-be-avoided/