So take the territory Ukraine has been shelling for nearly a decade and leave their supply lines and support infrastructure untouched? What’s your plan here, move the entire Russian army into the Donbas and wait to be bombed off the map?
You always have the "Don't Do War" option. The invasion was an entirely unforced error on their part.
You’re right, invading the Donbas in 2014 and starting to commit ethnic cleansing was an unforced error on Ukraine’s part. Russia meanwhile took nearly a decade to respond to the war started by its neighbor.
What’s your plan here, move the entire Russian army into the Donbas and wait to be bombed off the map?
No. Move the ethnic Russian civilians out of the Donbas and onto Russian soil, so they're out of range of Ukranian artillery.
Russia meanwhile took nearly a decade to respond
By doing the exact same unforced error at several orders of magnitude higher death toll. We went from the Ukrainians killing people by the dozen to Russians killing populations by the thousand. This did nothing to improve the situation of the civilians in the Donbas. And two years after the conflict started, we're left with hundreds of thousands dead for... what?
What has the Russian invasion actually accomplished? You can't even claim it got rid of the fascists. Azov and its ilk are as prolific as ever. The Donbas is a giant kill zone. The Russian government is less stable than its ever been. The western half of Ukraine is a giant black market for surplus arms between fascist groups. The Scandinavian states are lining up to join NATO, while the rest of Europe is gearing up for a third World War. Ethnic Russians are increasingly the subject of a global hate campaign.
What did the invasion accomplish? Show me one thing that was actually improved by this reckless and foolish decision.
Bro this ain't a small collection of villages we're talking about, the maps can distort the reality, Donbass is a massive heavily populated region, millions of people and a multitude of large cities, there's no other way to slice it, it would've been a self-inflicted ethnic cleansing lmao
And should they have done the same for Crimea? There is no escaping the confrontation, it was set the minute the fascists pulled the coup
Those were people trying to escape. If ethnic Russians wanted to leave the Donbass, they could have done so already, or at least asked for it. Forcing them to leave against their will isn't the same thing.
Turning the Russian army to the purpose of evacuating and providing relief to Donbas refugees to facilitate a smooth exit would have been an infinitely better use of Russian money and manpower than launching a suicide mission across the border.
Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared. The economy of border towns would have surged. Half of North Africa wouldn't be facing a famine due to destruction of arable land. Russian and Belarusian borders would have been well-fortified, rather than juggling the egos of a bunch of rebellious mercenaries. And we wouldn't be debating how many mines and cluster bombs to scatter across the Eastern European interior, to plague generations to come.
what happens to those that don't want to leave their homes
They presumably get hit by Ukrainian shells, which is a thing I assumed they would want to avoid.
Do they deserve to be cleansed by the Nazis or something?
No. But then neither does some poor dipshit in Kiev deserve to get hit by Russian artillery. Nobody deserves this shit. And cranking up the volume of artillery fired does not spare anyone. Burying more mines and dropping more cluster bombs does not spare anyone. Nothing the Russians did in the invasion spared anyone.
So basically you prefer inaction in the face of ethnic cleansing. So if Hitler hadn't invaded the Soviet Union, you think the Soviet Union should have just sat there forever never doing anything about him? Millions of lives would have been saved after all.
There's only one way to deal with Nazis, and it's not by giving them what they want.
What about in 1936 after those fascist paramilitaries were incorporated into the German army and then sent in to occupy the Rhineland? What would be your opinion in 1936 if the Rhineland had fought back instead of letting itself be occupied by Nazis? A lot of deaths could have been avoided if the Franco-Soviet treaty was enforced in 1936 or if the French and Russian backed Minsk 2 ceasefire had been enforced by the UN.
really stretching the metaphor here, but in your scenario its not just saying the rhineland should do self-defense, it's endorsing the French invading wurrtemburg & annexing the rhineland as well
The metaphor is indeed too stretched. I'll just say that I would have endorsed the French invading Nazi Germany in 1936 and indeed annexing any and all parts of it in order to bring peace to Europe. This is 1936 so I think the US was still supporting Nazi Germany at this point, if Germany had unlimited support from the US then the concept of a limited war against the Nazis would have been folly.
The Donbas is a lot more like Alsace–Lorraine (or Elsass-Lothringen) but that doesn't quite work out for historical analogies.
Nothing about this bloodbath constitutes "winning". Hundreds of thousands of people are dead. The repeated failed harvests are threatening regional famine. We're looking at economic damage well into the tens of billions, assuming the war were to end tomorrow, and trillions going into the future. Military budgets across the continent are surging, as European leadership is whipped into an anti-Russo panic.
All this so two legions of mercenaries can play artillery tag across the Donbas basin? How is that winning?
People usually die in wars, not sure what you were expecting.
NATO literally does not have the ability to sustain this war. They could get there, if they were not neoliberal hellholes, but they are. Their military industries are build around making overpriced, wildly complex equipment that is sometimes good enough to kill insurgents and not nearly good enough for symmetrical warfare. No amount of money can fix this.
Russia, while also being something of a neolib trash fire, still has enough Soviet infrastructure to produce in months what takes years in other nations, and they will eventually win the conflict. Whether that will be just the Donbass or a full annexation or somewhere in between remains to be seen.
NATO literally does not have the ability to sustain this war.
The Western MIC can keep churning out hardware forever. There is no upper limit to the number of bombs we can manufacture, just the rate.
Russia, while also being something of a neolib trash fire, still has enough Soviet infrastructure to produce in months what takes years in other nations
It doesn't matter, when one bomb can level a city block. We're approaching a point at which there simply will not be anything left worth bombing.
So take the territory Ukraine has been shelling for nearly a decade and leave their supply lines and support infrastructure untouched? What’s your plan here, move the entire Russian army into the Donbas and wait to be bombed off the map?
You’re right, invading the Donbas in 2014 and starting to commit ethnic cleansing was an unforced error on Ukraine’s part. Russia meanwhile took nearly a decade to respond to the war started by its neighbor.
No. Move the ethnic Russian civilians out of the Donbas and onto Russian soil, so they're out of range of Ukranian artillery.
By doing the exact same unforced error at several orders of magnitude higher death toll. We went from the Ukrainians killing people by the dozen to Russians killing populations by the thousand. This did nothing to improve the situation of the civilians in the Donbas. And two years after the conflict started, we're left with hundreds of thousands dead for... what?
What has the Russian invasion actually accomplished? You can't even claim it got rid of the fascists. Azov and its ilk are as prolific as ever. The Donbas is a giant kill zone. The Russian government is less stable than its ever been. The western half of Ukraine is a giant black market for surplus arms between fascist groups. The Scandinavian states are lining up to join NATO, while the rest of Europe is gearing up for a third World War. Ethnic Russians are increasingly the subject of a global hate campaign.
What did the invasion accomplish? Show me one thing that was actually improved by this reckless and foolish decision.
"Just cooperate in Ukraine's ethnic cleansing of the Donbass."
"I have no counterargument, so I'm going to deflect by distorting something you said to make you look bad."
Bro this ain't a small collection of villages we're talking about, the maps can distort the reality, Donbass is a massive heavily populated region, millions of people and a multitude of large cities, there's no other way to slice it, it would've been a self-inflicted ethnic cleansing lmao
And should they have done the same for Crimea? There is no escaping the confrontation, it was set the minute the fascists pulled the coup
I agree with his point, but that's not going to stop me from being a snarky contrarian debatebro when I see a good opening to attack.
Telling the M.S. St. Louis to turn around and go back to Europe, because otherwise we're cooperating with the Nazis.
Those were people trying to escape. If ethnic Russians wanted to leave the Donbass, they could have done so already, or at least asked for it. Forcing them to leave against their will isn't the same thing.
Turning the Russian army to the purpose of evacuating and providing relief to Donbas refugees to facilitate a smooth exit would have been an infinitely better use of Russian money and manpower than launching a suicide mission across the border.
Hundreds of thousands of lives would have been spared. The economy of border towns would have surged. Half of North Africa wouldn't be facing a famine due to destruction of arable land. Russian and Belarusian borders would have been well-fortified, rather than juggling the egos of a bunch of rebellious mercenaries. And we wouldn't be debating how many mines and cluster bombs to scatter across the Eastern European interior, to plague generations to come.
You mean forcibly deporting. Because that's what it would be.
I mean opening the borders and building up refugee housing and civil services on the other side of the border.
Cool, and what happens to those that don't want to leave their homes, as people commonly do? Do they deserve to be cleansed by the Nazis or something?
They presumably get hit by Ukrainian shells, which is a thing I assumed they would want to avoid.
No. But then neither does some poor dipshit in Kiev deserve to get hit by Russian artillery. Nobody deserves this shit. And cranking up the volume of artillery fired does not spare anyone. Burying more mines and dropping more cluster bombs does not spare anyone. Nothing the Russians did in the invasion spared anyone.
So basically you prefer inaction in the face of ethnic cleansing. So if Hitler hadn't invaded the Soviet Union, you think the Soviet Union should have just sat there forever never doing anything about him? Millions of lives would have been saved after all.
There's only one way to deal with Nazis, and it's not by giving them what they want.
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Giving passports to the few people willing to leave their homes is barely action. And for the rest, it's inaction.
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comparing brigades strength fascist paramilitaries to nazi germany is beyond asinine
Nazi Germany started out as brigade strength fascist paramilitaries. Look up the Freikorp, the SA, and the SS.
i think most would call invading Germany in 1932 over it an overreaction
I told him that I had fought in 1936 on the northwest sector of the Madrid front in the French Battalion of the XIth International Brigade. “Oh,” he said, “you were a premature anti-Fascist.” I was taken aback by the expression. How, I wondered, could anyone be a premature anti-Fascist? Could there be anything such as a premature antidote to a poison? A premature antiseptic? A premature antitoxin? A premature anti-racist? If you were not premature, what sort of anti-Fascist were you supposed to be? A punctual anti-Fascist? A timely one?
What about in 1936 after those fascist paramilitaries were incorporated into the German army and then sent in to occupy the Rhineland? What would be your opinion in 1936 if the Rhineland had fought back instead of letting itself be occupied by Nazis? A lot of deaths could have been avoided if the Franco-Soviet treaty was enforced in 1936 or if the French and Russian backed Minsk 2 ceasefire had been enforced by the UN.
really stretching the metaphor here, but in your scenario its not just saying the rhineland should do self-defense, it's endorsing the French invading wurrtemburg & annexing the rhineland as well
The metaphor is indeed too stretched. I'll just say that I would have endorsed the French invading Nazi Germany in 1936 and indeed annexing any and all parts of it in order to bring peace to Europe. This is 1936 so I think the US was still supporting Nazi Germany at this point, if Germany had unlimited support from the US then the concept of a limited war against the Nazis would have been folly.
The Donbas is a lot more like Alsace–Lorraine (or Elsass-Lothringen) but that doesn't quite work out for historical analogies.
Evidently not, they're winning by all metrics except perhaps "not winning fast enough"
Nothing about this bloodbath constitutes "winning". Hundreds of thousands of people are dead. The repeated failed harvests are threatening regional famine. We're looking at economic damage well into the tens of billions, assuming the war were to end tomorrow, and trillions going into the future. Military budgets across the continent are surging, as European leadership is whipped into an anti-Russo panic.
All this so two legions of mercenaries can play artillery tag across the Donbas basin? How is that winning?
People usually die in wars, not sure what you were expecting.
NATO literally does not have the ability to sustain this war. They could get there, if they were not neoliberal hellholes, but they are. Their military industries are build around making overpriced, wildly complex equipment that is sometimes good enough to kill insurgents and not nearly good enough for symmetrical warfare. No amount of money can fix this.
Russia, while also being something of a neolib trash fire, still has enough Soviet infrastructure to produce in months what takes years in other nations, and they will eventually win the conflict. Whether that will be just the Donbass or a full annexation or somewhere in between remains to be seen.
The Western MIC can keep churning out hardware forever. There is no upper limit to the number of bombs we can manufacture, just the rate.
It doesn't matter, when one bomb can level a city block. We're approaching a point at which there simply will not be anything left worth bombing.