this post was submitted on 31 May 2023
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... who was an ambassador for 1 1/2 years and had no political functions before and after. He is a real estate guy, film producer and horse race aficionado. So no real source.
A proxy war by definition has both parties non active and letting others fight for them. So this is no proxy war from the Russian side, they are bleeding heavily. NATO on the other side is perhaps not very upset that Ukrainian blood stops the expansionist dreams of Russia with NATO gear. But I think most of them would have preferred if Russia had respected the Budapest Memorandum.
Not sure what your point here is, pretty much all western politicians have these sorts of backgrounds.
It's a proxy war by NATO against Russia, and yes this war is costing Russia lives. However, it's becoming clear that this war is starting to cost the west quite a bit as well. The economy in Europe is suffering quite a bit right now, and the cost of living continues to climb which is leading to a lot of political unrest.
Russia tried Ukraine and the west to respect the Minsk agreements for nearly a decade. Now western leaders openly admit that they never intended to, and this was all a ploy to arm Ukraine for the coming conflict.
And of course, RAND published a whole study on extending Russia where it suggests precisely the kind of conflict that we're seeing https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
Furthermore, plenty of western experts have been warning about NATO expansion for decades. Here's what Chomsky has to say on the issue recently:
https://truthout.org/articles/us-approach-to-ukraine-and-russia-has-left-the-domain-of-rational-discourse/
https://truthout.org/articles/noam-chomsky-us-military-escalation-against-russia-would-have-no-victors/
50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion back in 1997:
George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia" back in 1998.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"
Even Gorbachev warned about this. All these experts were marginalized, silenced, and ignored. Yet, now people are trying to rewrite history and pretend that Russia attacked Ukraine out of the blue and completely unprovoked.
Interesting statement of fact. Let's check it.
A list of 10 not so influential western politicians. Ok, you said "pretty much all", I am waiting for at least 20. I'll give you Trump and Sunak.
My point: Your source was an ambassador in an unproblematic nice to live in country, just as a thank you from his President. The work was done by the 1st Attaché. No politician, no influence. Crap as a source.
It's a war by Russia against Ukraine, where Ukraine gets help from NATO and other countries. And of course it's costly, but you are getting off course. Which seems to be systemic to your argumentation.
Either you don't know your history or you want to go off the topic again. Budapest is not Minsk, and both treaties are not the same.
In the Budapest Memorandum Russia guaranteed to honour the then existing borders of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. In exchange these nations gave their part of the nuclear arsenal of the USSR to Russia.
Russia broke that treaty 20 years later with the invasion of Crimea. The Minsk Protocol was trying to calm down the tensions resulting from that breach of contract. Nowhere in the Minsk Protocol is a clause that forbids Ukraine to arm. Which cluses were broken by NATO or Ukraine? The text is online.
I'll ignore the rest about NATO and warnings and so on. You are just flooding the zone because you want to distract from the fact that you are defending the invasion of an independent country by Russia.
Not really sure what those backgrounds are supposed to signify in this context. The original point, in case you missed it, was that a former high level US official openly stated that this is a proxy war.
That's not how this works, what he says obviously carries weight given his status, and most importantly what he said is the truth. If you're trying to claim that the former US ambassador doesn't know what he's talking about, then surely academics such as John Mearsheimer and Noam Chomsky do. They happen to agree with him.
That's a false narrative and I've provided you lots of sources explaining why in detail. Please spend the time to educate yourself on the subject.
Perhaps you're not aware of what the Minsk agreements are?
Very convenient of you to forget that prior to annexation of Crimea, the west sponsored a coup against a democratically elected government in Ukraine after which point a civil war started.
The part where Ukraine was committing war crimes against the civilian population of Donbas which western outlets such as CNN openly reported on https://twitter.com/paulius60/status/1611148483859255296
Ah yes, you'll ignore all the history and the context for the war. That's how we know that you're not actually arguing in good faith here. Also, I'm not defending anything here. What I'm doing is explaining why the war happened and the role NATO played in creating the situation that led to the conflict.
Even when this was true - this would have been a inner Ukrainian affair.
Is this in your eyes a justification for breaking the Budapest Memorandum and invading another country?
NATO running a coup in a country is not an inner Ukrainian affair.
As you are flooding and evading, I'll try to break this down a bit....
You are again diverting and misleading.
I wrote:
You deleted the content of the Budapest Memorandum from my quote.
Did Russia honour the Budapest Memorandum?
I'm doing no such thing.
Russia honoured the Budapest Memorandum right up to the point when NATO ran a coup in Ukraine in 2014 which caused a civil war. I wonder why you would ignore this important context...
So an invasion and annexation of parts of another country is justified, when there is a coup? (There wasn't, btw. )
There was and it's a well documented fact. Meanwhile, the invasion was modelled on the precedent set by NATO invading Yugoslavia. NATO recognized independence of the breakaway regions and had them invite NATO for assistance. Russia did exactly the same thing in Donbas.
You could not find a more reputable source? Greyzone author, really?
And it is news to me, that NATO troops were in Yugoslavia. Got a source for that? Or again a lie by you as the background of western politicians?
You could not come up with a better counter argument than ad hominem I see. And just how ignorant are you? https://shape.nato.int/ongoingoperations/nato-mission-in-kosovo-kfor-
Ad hominem? Not really. I contest his neutrality. It’s a partisan publication.
You wrote about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the NATO invasion. What has KFOR to do with that?
You're using ad hominem to dismiss the content of the article. KFOR is the NATO force that is currently occupying Serbia that is left over from the NATO invasion of Yugoslavia. Are you seriously so ignorant that you do not know about the NATO invasion of Yugoslavia?
There was no NATO invasion of Yugoslavia. There was a very controversial aerial intervention by NATO after ethnic cleansing by Serbian troops in Kosovo. But that is not an invasion. After that there was a UN peace keeping campaign and administration.
please stop spreading misinformation here https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/01/the-exoneration-of-milosevic-the-ictys-surprise-ruling/
Your source is about a judgement about the involvement of Milosevic in the war crimes in Bosnia. In case you don’t know, there is a difference between Bosnia and Kosovo.
The original judgment was the justification for the NATO invasion.
Which invasion?
The one you keep denying happened.
Give me one source about a NATO invasion, it must have been all over the news. In case you don’t know, an invasion is defined by troops on the ground. When were NATO troops in Yugoslavia before KFOR?
It's pretty hilarious how you keep digging yourself in here. NATO attacked Yugoslavia, including civilian infrastructure, for 78 days. That's an invasion, and the fact that it was done from the air doesn't change this fact. One has to be completely intellectually bankrupt to try to pretend otherwise.
Invasion : an act of invading especially : incursion of an army for conquest or plunder
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/invasion
Newspeak on your side?
You are grasping for straws. I mentioned the bombing and I was on the streets against it.
People reading this thread will know who's grasping at straws here.
Have you already asked Merriam-Webster to change the definition?
I love how you just cherry picked a definition and now pretend it's the sole one. Here's one from Britanica for you: the act of entering a place in an attempt to take control of it. You keep on digging though.
That is how it works. He has no political weight, he was a trophy ambassador. And your Mearsheimer and Chomsky are, let's say, "controversly" discussed.
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