DAVE LINDORFF: Real Russian Threat--invading or trading with neighbors?
Why would Russia be planning to invade their neighbors when they are investing heavily in trade infrastructure with Europe, which likely would want nothing to do with them if they invaded other countries?
The realpolitik of what's going on with Russia is our government doesn't want to see the economic integration of Eurasia from China to Europe that make the US a regional power without the ability to control and profit from the largest landmass on Earth.
Henry Kissinger, now a Trump advisor, thinks we can break that up by turning Russia against China while Democrats seem to want put Russia in the doghouse (but apparently still demonize China too).
The reality is sanctions, covert action, and even wars don't change the course of history--they just delay or accelerate it.
We fought two wars in the 20th century to keep Germany from being the dominant economic power in Europe and won both.
Today, Germany calls the shots in Europe (albeit as our junior partner for now).
America "lost" the Vietnam War. Today, they make our Nikes for 50 cents an hour.
We can slow down the integration of Eurasia for a few years or even decades, but at what cost to us and them in lives and wealth?
And what will it gain the average American?
At the height of the British Empire, the average Brit was working sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, living in filthy slums.
We are at peak empire right now and how is that helping average Americans?
Most people here know Nazi leader Hermann Goering's quote about how to gin up a war, but fewer know what he prefaced it with:
"Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?"
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.asp
Those who are selling conflict with Russia do not have the best interest of average Americans at heart.
And before someone bothers to call me a Putin or Trump lover, corporate Democrats have agreed with Republicans on far more and far more damaging issues than me from privatizing public education to starting unnecessary wars.
Democrats have one, maybe two elections to get their shit together and be a real opposition party to the Republicans.
Demonizing Russia and anyone who doesn't do the same is a recipe for beating the GOP to the ash heap of history.
What possible advantage could come to Russia from such an action? Even if Russia could succeed in invading Poland and grabbing a piece of that country, or invading one of the Baltic countries that were former Soviets, such an action would make developing trade relations with the rest of Europe impossible, and would force Russia to engage in a costly occupation which it can ill afford.
A cynic or realist might suspect that it is precisely this goal of economic integration of Europe and Asia, with Russia at the center, which lies at the root of US antipathy and hostility towards both Russia and China.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/11/democratic-hysteria-on-russia/
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)would write pieces fellating Vladimir Putin.
P.S. Russia invaded Ukraine and Georgia, two European countries. That's how Russia has always rolled, and will always roll. The bear is as it always has been.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Little Marco likes them or not.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)billh58
(6,635 posts)Lindorff is at best, a Libertarian, and at worst a RWNJ.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)especially in its current homophobic, religion-pushing, insanely economically unequal state. And I resent others telling me I should welcome my new overlord when it's a murdering fuck like Putin, whether he plans to achieve this integration by military means, or by economic force.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)Europe has been buying oil and gas from Russia as long as they've been sucking it out of the ground.
The other sources of oil and gas like our allies in the Middle East aren't exactly the most enlightened either.
I would rather that all countries turn to alternative fuels.
I am not so much pro-integration as observing that it looks like the way things are going, just as my comments about Germany leading Europe aren't a preference but an observation.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)He objects to Ukraine becoming more economically tied to the EU (which was peaceful) with threats about cutting off its gas, and then he militarily takes Crimea, and send soldiers and weapons into eastern Ukraine to lead a rebellion. He did roughly the same with Georgia.
People like Lindorff are just brown-nosing an authoritarian nationalist. The Middle Eastern dictators aren't trying to disrupt EU states like the Baltics. Germany is a liberal democracy. If your attitude is "Putin will inevitably succeed, so there's no point in trying to stop him", it's a nihilistic abdication I want no part of.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)will play out.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)nice place sometime."
yurbud
(39,405 posts)people killed with a huge grain of salt. The heads of our intelligence services (not the foot soldier analysts) have a track record of lying on command.
Our government doesn't have conflicts with other governments because they have cruel, undemocratic leaders.
They do so because it benefits someone calling the shots.
Likewise, other leaders, no matter how evil they personally are, are unlikely to do something openly suicidal, as Putin trying to retake the Baltic and various other schemes he's accused of here, just as Saddam Hussein wouldn't have launched the nukes he didn't have in the first place because it would have been the last thing he ever did.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)Why, unless fellow NATO countries actually warn him against it, would he think that retaking the Baltic states is 'openly suicidal'?
The Baltic states themselves take the threat of Putin seriously.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)Just like a war between the US and North Korea, the US could win, but the country the war is fought on would lose the most lives and wealth.
Not incidentally, some of those looking to extend the American century realized that we did so well economically after World War II because the rest of the major powers in the World had been beaten to a pulp and needed a couple of decades to rebuild.
Those who fancy themselves masters of the universe think another major bloodletting like that would put them back on top.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)"think another major bloodletting like that would put them back on top...."
Hence, the Georgian anschluss, the Crimean annexation and Ukrainian invasion as part of the attempt to put Putin and Moscow on top.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)where our government intervenes more or less at will, especially when we thought the Soviets might be gaining influence.
Crimea was part of Russia until it was transferred to Ukraine by bureaucrats in the Soviet era. Russia has bases there and they held a referendum on rejoining Russia.
I don't approve of all their actions, but it seems like our government's problem with Russia, China, and even Cuba before the thaw was not as much that they were a direct threat to us but that they had their own foreign policy and pursued their own interests even when it conflicted with our business and banking interests.