Comment by mopsi

5 hours ago

  > Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?

When it stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a paid job for a foreign government to spread as much malicious FUD as possible.

The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.

Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.

Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.

No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.

  • What kind of "peace" would that be? Russia is not interested in peace, or do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?

    The peace of Ukraine being neutral? Ukraine was officially neutral in 2014 (law from 2010, pushed by Russia), and see how that went.

    So again, what kind of peace are you talking about?

    Edit: Let me make the problem very clear:

    - Ukraine wants a peace deal where Russia can't invaded again. After their experience with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the want hard security guarantees, not just Russian words on a piece of paper.

    - Russia wants a peace deal where Ukraine's army is limited, and that doesn't allow foreign troops in Ukraine. Something else is unacceptable for them. In other words, a peace deal that is the perfect setup to invade again.

    So again, what kind of peace deal are you talking about?