I'd have taken the March pre-2022 deal rejecting NATO alignment in a heartbeat. In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
NATO isnt powerful enough/motivated enough to help Ukraine fight off Russia despite pledging unlimited support in March 2022 (now proven to be a hollow lie).
There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
I'd have taken that too, with security guarantees. Otherwise what do you do when Russia comes back for another bite of the pie? That's why they want to join NATO.
Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion. Diplomacy which was categorically refused for terrible reasons.
Hey, if you want to fight and die on behalf of your Western empire then Ukraine will be only too happy to have you and every Ukrainian of fighting age about to be thrown on to the front lines will be only too happy to trade places.
But, I get it - it's easy to treat little things like honest diplomacy and other countries' security concerns with complete disregard when you're not the one being thrown on to the front lines to die as a result of it. Only Ukrainians are forced to do that.
>Repeating Putin's talking points probably isn't going to convince anybody
Putin's a terrible human being and so are his supporters but he's not all that different to his western imperialist counterparts and the supporters of their narratives - people like you.
> Yeah, they invaded twice and in each case a little diplomacy would have been sufficient to roll back the invasion.
That's just a stalling tactic. The very people who built Russian diplomacy and personally mentored figures like the current foreign minister Lavrov have commented that Russia's offers have never been serious, pointing to details such as the fact that the people leading the negotiations are low-level functionaries without any authority to negotiate anything. You don't send errand boys if you're serious about negotiations.
Diplomacy is always a murky world but in this case there is one and clear stand out example where what you said is true. It was announced that Minsk 2 was purely meant as a stalling tactic to allow re-armament.
Unfortunately for your little theory it was Ukraine and Angela Merkel who admitted this and not Russia.
This was made even more painfully obvious just before that day in Feb 2022 when Russia demanded Ukraine adhere to this multilateral (i.e. also agreed by Europe) agreement theyd already agreed to and Ukraine just point blank refused, preferring to fight.
Russian diplomacy follows a Clausewitzian model (i.e. that you're better off in tbe long run if you are up front about your intentions), unlike the western model where one day you announce talks with the Iranians pledging good faith in your negotiations and the next day you launch a surprise bombing raid, hoping this means you got 'em good.
These are just stale deflections. Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation. This becomes especially apparent when compared to how former great rivals like France and Germany, the UK and Spain, or Sweden and Denmark now conduct their relations with one another.
When you put Russia against this, it's abundantly clear how hopelessly outdated present-day Russian diplomacy is; it has much more in common with the distant past than with the modern day.
>Russian diplomacy is indeed stuck in Clausewitzian times: diplomacy is seen as an extension of military strategy and not as a tool for building durable cooperation.
Except that is what they are doing with BRICs with the entire rest of the world. It's only the American-led western hegemonic bloc they're clashing with - exclusively puppets and military junior partners of the United States like France, Germany, the UK, Spain, Sweden, Finland and Denmark.
Outside of this hegemonic military/economic bloc nobody has sanctioned Russia, which is why the effect of the sanctions we levied ended up being so pathetic. At the same time there is a huge appetite for joining the BRICs because the rest of the world is that fucking sick of us.
>When you put Russia against this
"This" is an empire in decline. The west is already following the same path as the USSR in the 1980s (dutch disease, massive industrial decline, fast incoming military overspend), except tailed off with more tacit and explicit support for genocide as a cherry on top. We're the best.
> In fact, even as the deals Russia offered got steadily worse they were always calibrated to be a better alternative than continuing to fight and lose.
They were always calibrated to be refused and there is a reason for that: NATO expansion is a red herring that Russia wants to use as an excuse for the invasion.
> There was nothing logical about Ukraine's decision to reject neutrality and to try and set itself up as a NATO military bulwark along Russia's most vulnerable border.
Ukraine has been neutral, and in fact quite friendly to Russia, both according to its Constitution and popular polls, up until the point Russia annexed a piece of its land and invaded another piece in 2014. By doing that Russia has shown that no promise of neutrality can save Ukraine from its tanks. I am surprised that some people are still talking about neutrality in good faith in 2025.
Remind us why a purely defensive alliance lead by a country on the othrr side of a planet needs to be closer and closer to the borders of the country against which that alliance was created?
Because small countries of Europe that don't want to be invaded by Russia seek to join the alliance that was specifically created to prevent such eventuality for its members.
That's why of the 4 wars it has taken part in in the last 30 years, 4 have been wars of aggression while 0 have been defensive (article 5 was invoked for 9/11 but occupying afghanistan wasnt a defensive move it was an imperial move).
It's a dog eat dog world out there for sure but sometimes the 14 year old boy isnt safer joining the crips for protection from the bloods. Sometimes he's just sacrificed as a pawn in a wider turf war as the crips' promises of protection ring hollow.
It neither needs nor wants to be closer, and the long-standing rejection of Ukraine's membership application is a testament to that. Yet every neighbor of Russia is desperate to join it to secure themselves against yet another expansionist dictatorship in Russia.
> Would you just roll over and let Russia invade your country?
Apparently, many Ukrainian men would. Or maybe they'd seen it like a mere change in upper management, initially. Otherwise the Ukrainian government would not have felt it necessary to forbid them from leaving the country or to press/force them into military service.
(And, frankly, the people affected are the only ones whose opinion should matter in this situation.)
> Bleeding to repel the Russian invasion, you mean
It's always easy to spill other people's statistical blood from the other side of the planet.
Honestly, even without a financial incentive, I've thought about getting a dashcam to record the fuckheads "rolling coal" in my city and reporting them. Some behavior is so anti social that yes, it should be reported.
Why not go into the rough neighborhoods and report the people who are threatening the lives and health of people? You can even join the police force if you wish to work effectively against anti social behaviour.
I would guess the folks having their lives and property threatened are already reporting that, if they think the police will help them. If they won't, I'm not sure how me adding to the reports is going to help.
If you follow that train of thought to it's logical conclusion, government should have no power at all, since any government power could be used for bad.
There are multiple facets to this question. Would I want law enforcement to catch, for example, every murderer? Yes I would. On the other hand, we have in the US things like the fourth amendment prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure.
If these laws are used to sidestep prohibitions on what government is not allowed to do, i'd say they are a bad thing. If they are used to enforce bad laws, we need to get rid of the bad laws. If they are used to help enforce laws we all agree are good, that seems like a good thing.
Why wouldn't the governor solicit bids for energy, and let the companies that actually build and run generation capacity decide the cheapest way to do that? Having the governor choose seems weird to me.
Technology neutrality is fairly important. The role of the government should be in controlling the requirements which has a collective/social cost, like emissions, grid stability and price variability (as those are things that voters will demand from the government, as has been demonstrated in EU during the energy crisis). As long any company is willing to provide similar services under similar requirements, what technology they choose to use may be better determined by market forces rather than political choices.
What they should not do however is to simply look at potential generation capacity and have that be the only important criteria. Voters has clearly demonstrated that they will vote for politicians that can promise stable grid and stable pricing, rather than having those being controlled by the market.
The market is famously terrible at pricing in externalities and accounting for long-term needs. I think if you used the government to force bidders to account for those, you'd just end up in the same place.
You might, or you might not. You might end up with tidal or wave, or wind+batteries, or something else. Tying yourself to something that's going to take decades and almost certainly include big cost overruns seems like a terrible idea.
Not an unreasonable choice if externalities such as carbon (and mining, etc. in the case of nuclear) are taken into account. And suppose you price carbon in, how do you actually produce a real carbon sink at the assumed cost and scale if nat gas wins the bid?
Are you suggesting letting private companies whose entire purpose is to make the most amount of profit for their shareholders to be the ones that decide what is best for the people of the state?
NYPA does build and run generation capacity, it's just the state owned utility. Besides, this is a policy and strategy push instead of a lowest-bidder ask.
Solar and wind are cheapest when installed in ideal locations with ideal parts.
Gas is a bit more expensive than the ideal green model, but cheaper on average. It also can be built anywhere on a comparatively small land parcel, and can provide easily scalable energy 24/7/365.
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