Comment by roenxi
2 years ago
> I think there is little hope of normalizing relations with Russia
After 9/11, the US maintained productive relations with the Saudis. They're actively supporting Israel through the Gaza business. They have a long history of propping up dictators and thrashing countries for hard-to-articulate reasons (I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now. As can be seen in this very announcement (suddenly international deals are being handled in Yuan), the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together. That seems wildly stupid to me and personally I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder. The US should have sought a quick peace in Ukraine and normalised relations immediately.
The US sought a quick peace in Ukraine, they even asked Russia to not invade even before Russia started their invasion. You can't get much quicker than before the events have taken place. It didn't work because Russia isn't interested in peace, but that's not the US' fault.
Is there a source to this statement?
We were all there, the US and UK were warning about the invasion for a long time before it happened. The Russians and their useful idiots in the West laughed, of course they would never invade! Then the invasion actually did happen and now magically history has been rewritten and it was the US that somehow caused it in the first place.
Only problem: I do have a memory and I can remember 2 years ago. So yes very clearly Russia started this war all by themselves despite the US trying to dissuade them from doing so.
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What exactly does seeking a "quick peace" solution look like in an aggressor without casus belli invading a sovereign nation?
Giving in to all their demands, of course. And then giving in to all their new demands five to ten years later when they try it again, and again, and again.
"Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
> Giving in to all their demands, of course.
That can't be my position, I don't know what all Russia's demands were. But offering to draw NATO's sphere of influence back out of Ukraine seems like an obvious carrot that should have been offered. Maybe some guarantees to reign in any US interference in Ukraine's politics. Not supplying endless arms and materiel. That would have dramatically reduced all killing and destruction we've seen since 2023.
The comparisons I'm going to draw are Iraq and Afghanistan. Although Russia was probably going to be a lot more careful as occupiers given that this is happening on their border. Eg, not supporting the drug trade so much and hopefully being a bit more serious about rebuilding.
> "Anti-war" people always seem to have a curious blind spot when it comes to the countries that actually start wars.
Who are you talking about there? The US? UK? NATO? Iran? African Nations? That is a wide net.
I'll answer for them - forcing Ukraine to capitulate.
>(I still don't get exactly what the point of Afghanistan or Iraq was, even accepting the blunt "oil" that is sometimes given out).
Are you serious? At least on the Afghanistan one? The war in Afghanistan began because the Taliban refused to extradite Osama Bin Laden (and several other terrorist, but Osama was the biggest one), it's pretty straightforward.
What country was Osama bin Laden found in?
What does where Osama was killed a decade later have to do with where he was operating out of in 2001?
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It's amazing that some people think this is a valid retort when Abbottabad, Pakistan is a 5 hour drive from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and of course it's safer to hide in the country that US doesn't have access to compared to the 10 year search they've been doing in Afghanistan.
I'm sure you're saying that from a place of honesty, but you clearly aren't speking for the people who actually make these decisions:
1. When the US actually wanted to get Bin Laden in a country that wouldn't extradite him, they sent a special ops team to Pakistan. They violated Pakistan's sovereignty a little bit and then everyone moved on. So the idea that they needed to launch a full invasion of Afghanistan is just silly and the people who sent the army knew that. They had to have had ulterior motives, or sending the military was so incompetent there would have been a very public purge of the US military leadership.
2. If we're saying the US military is a magic button to override the legal system in another country (which, fair enough, it is) then what is the issue with what Russia is doing? Their interests in Ukraine are more legitimate than the US not feeling like negotiating or due process for Bin Laden & friends. Of course if the US had spent a bit more time doing things legally, the planners would have had time to point out that a full scale invasion was counterproductive, and I think it is less obvious that Russia would have found something similar; I don't see how they could have dealt with what the US state department seems to be doing without an army. But hey, I'm not a diplomatic corps, maybe they could have come up with something.
And if I look at the wiki article [0], we see "The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks". Maybe 2-5 years of negotiating and some actual evidence would have been justified? The US must have had evidence against al-Q, because otherwise they couldn't have known who was responsible. if they'd negotiated to send him to Pakistan where the SEAL team is comfortable operating then they could have short circuited a lot of death, wasted time and wasted money.
I know you didn't say anything about the Russian invasion, but this is sort of my angle here - the actions in Afghanistan show that this sort of thing is a bit of a non-event as far as international politics goes. It is only a big deal because the US is making it one.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#War_on_terror
No, the taliban did not refuse to do that - Bush refused to take him
* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/14/afghanistan.te...
* https://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=80482&page=1
In those links, the Taliban wasn't offering to hand Bin Laden over to the US, they were offering to hand him over to a third country that would never hand him over to the US. We can argue about whether Bush should have agreed to that offer, but it's a far cry from "refusing to take him":
> Afghanistan's deputy prime minister, Haji Abdul Kabir, told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
> "If the Taliban is given evidence that Osama bin Laden is involved" and the bombing campaign stopped, "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country", Mr Kabir added.
> But it would have to be a state that would never "come under pressure from the United States", he said.
From the first link:
> In Jalalabad, deputy prime minister Haji Abdul Kabir - the third most powerful figure in the ruling Taliban regime - told reporters that the Taliban would require evidence that Bin Laden was behind the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, but added: "we would be ready to hand him over to a third country".
> The offer came a day after the Taliban's supreme leader rebuffed Bush's "second chance" for the Islamic militia to surrender Bin Laden to the US.
> Mullah Mohammed Omar said there was no move to "hand anyone over".
That was a highly-conditional offer, that I suspect the U.S. administration felt was designed to give the Taliban and bin Laden breathing room to escape/hide/whatever their next move would have been.
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We have nothing to gain by normalizing relations with Russia. They have nothing that we want and they can't be trusted to negotiate in good faith anyway. So it's back to containment: Cold War 2. As such we should take every opportunity short of direct conflict to disrupt, undermine, disrespect, and humiliate the Putin regime. In a few decades the Russian empire will undergo another internal collapse or civil war, and then more of their outer territories can be stripped away.
> They have nothing that we want
Sure they do - a big border with the US's main geopolitical rival, China. The US anti-China strategy relies on making it difficult for China to secure resources in the event of a war - blocking sea routes, destabilising western paths that could be used, southern countries being a bit leery of China's military.
They're majorly screwing themselves over by encouraging cooperation through the northern border and giving Russia every incentive to establish what overland trade routes it can. The NATO response to Ukraine seems a bit panicked - they're acting like they suddenly realised they aren't as competitive and secure as they thought. Building up a Russia-China-Iran axis under those conditions is an unforced error that is not clever. If the US had been more reasonable about Ukraine, we could be talking about how China is hemmed in from all angles. Instead the north and west look like they might be opening up to them.
Combine that with the US getting literally nothing out of the Ukraine war except an opportunity to blow up resources that they really needed at home (and reopening old wounds with people who didn't need to be enemies I suppose), and the situation is a bit of a baffler. I can explain it with corruption, I can explain it with stupidity, but I'm struggling to find a "here is how the US comes out ahead" perspective.
I can only guess at what Iran and the Houthi are thinking, but it is interesting that after watching NATO's performance in Ukraine the Middle East immediately starts to flare up. Might be a coincidence but that isn't saying great things about NATO's reputation. I dunno, it might be fine. We'll see.
This is a genuinely interesting take despite me disagreeing with the analysis.
<< I don't see why relations with Russia aren't normalised now.
At the end of the day, people like when the day follows is the same as the previous one. This allows people to plan ahead, live life and so on. It allows business to run uninterrupted. Russia was upending existing post-ww2 order. It was initially doing it slowly. Slowly enough that no one in the west cared to do anything. Obama famously sought a 'reset' with Russia at the time.
Even in Ukraine, it was not until after Crimea that there was even an appetite and realization that it won't magically stop.
<< the US appears hell-bent on taking Russia and China then welding them together.
This is probably one of the few spots where we are kinda close, but US already made BRICS a reality with current sanctions regime making it even more relevant. The decisions being made now are a big gamble and I would like to hope that those are made consciously with some forethought. That said, remembering 9/11 Afghanistan, it is merely a hope.
<< I think it is a serious foreign policy blunder.
That, sadly, we won't know until it all plays out. Who knows what life will look life 50 years from now?