Eh, dunno. In my book the Finns fought the Soviet Army to a stalemate twice, in 1940 and 1944. If the Sovs could have taken Finland, they would have. They decided a re-match wasn’t worth it.

You may be right about Ukraine being different and the Russians not giving up on another go. As you suggested above, however, it will take them a while to re-build. And they’ll be facing an even harder nut.

One of the victims of the postwar communist-dominated Finnish secret police (Valpo) was legendary soldier Larry Thorne, born Lauri Allan Törni in Viipuri in 1919 (then part of Finnish Karelia, now part of Leningrad Oblast in Russia). Thorne served with the Finnish Army, the Waffen SS, the Wehrmacht, and the U.S. Army Special Forces. He was killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam in 1965.

Thorne’s unit was so effective against the Soviets in the Continuation War that they put a bounty on his head. He was arrested by the Valpo after the war and tried for treason for having served with the Wehrmacht after the Moscow Armistice of September 1944. He escaped from Finland and made his way to the United States via South America, jumping ship and swimming to shore in Mobile Bay. He was eventually granted a residence permit by an act of Congress (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-67/pdf/STATUTE-67-PgA60.pdf) and enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1954.

There were apparently a lot of Finns and Baltic emigres in the U.S. Army after WWII–sort of an American foreign legion. I worked with an Estonian American in Germany in the 1980s. His parents fled Estonia ahead of the Red Army in September 1944 and wound up in Sweden, where he was born. They emigrated to the States in the mid-1950s and settled in suburban New Jersey, right across the river from NYC. According to my former colleague, the Estonian emigre kids were big into Scouting. Many of them joined the U.S. Army and wound up in the Special Forces. My former colleague was sitting with a bunch of his buddies in a NYC bar when they were approached by some locals who recognized that they were speaking Estonian. “Hey, youse guys are Estonians!” How did they know? Army service.

Again, to echo neo, glad that you are back again.

Turtler:

Always good to see you.

Ditto – tho it’s better when my name isn’t at the top of one of his posts. 😉 Reading his most excellent input, instead of trying to “debate” it, is quite a learning experience for me.

I never kept up with the ‘January 2022, 2021, 2014, 2008, and 1992’ mentioned. Did get the ‘you don’t get to the point of accepting 9/1939 levels of evil if you do not accept 1938, 1937, 1936, and 1931 levels of evil without adequate counter.’

Noticed stuff like Euromaidan or the Maidan Uprising, but they quickly merged with other stuff like Orange Revolution and disappeared from thoughts. Georgia was barely a blip, but one that would keep popping back up in my thoughts—occasionally. Crimea ‘n others not even a blip. All basically written off and/or forgotten as standard Russian happenings.

Then came 2022. Russia gathering on Ukraine’s border with them. Talk about they will or will not invade. Then on 2/24/22 they actually invaded (reinvaded would be the term I later used) – long military convoys heading deep into Ukraine. Didn’t even know Kyiv was the capital of Ukraine. Figured it would soon be over for the Ukrainians, and started waiting for the Fat Lady to sing.

Then news of long military convoys being bogged down—perking my attention. Then news of these long military convoys having their military vehicles picked off. *HEY!* I thought—forget the Fat Lady because these ole’ Boys are gonna fight!?! Then their President, whom I had never heard of, gets quoted saying:

The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.

That was it for me…I was a strong supporter of Ukraine from those early times on. Can’t stand a bully.

Have also been paying steady attention to Moldova…not enough to understand what could be done, but wish more was being done…

Richard Aubrey: a Pyrrhic victory. If the deal is what we think it’s going to be (and that remains to be seen), Putin will have gained approximately 20% of Ukraine’s pre-war territory at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Russian dead and wounded, a degraded and depleted Russian military, a crippled economy, an even worse demographic situation (and it was already very bad before the war), the collateral loss of an important client state in the Middle East, the prospect of a mutually beneficial trade relationship between Ukraine and a resurgent United States, and a bigger (Finland and Sweden), stronger (more defense spending by the Europeans), and more vigilant NATO. He has also exposed Russia’s weakness to his “allies”, especially China.

Agreed on the whole, though how vigilant NATO may be is reliant a fair bit on how divided it turns out to be.

We have pointed to parallels between the war in Ukraine and the Soviet-Finnish wars of 1939-1940 (the Winter War) and 1941-1944 (the Continuation War). The Soviet Union gained some of Finland’s pre-war territory (the Karelian Isthmus) but got badly bloodied in the process and never showed any desire to repeat the experience.

This is giving them entirely too much credit. The Soviets were geared up for a world war that they largely intended to start, and Finland was on the chopping block. The experiences in the wars were hard and savage (especially for Leningrad), and it cost them a great deal, but they fully intended to go after Finland if they needed to and made plans to that effect. IT’s just that after 1944 they thought they would be able to seize control of the country more or less peacefully by using occupation troops, a puppet Finnish Communist secret police (the “Red” Vapo), and so on similar to what would happen in Hungary later on. It nearly worked, until it didn’t and by then Finland had to remain deferential to Soviet influence, hence censorship and Kekkonen running a quasi-democracy quasi-dictatorship in which he openly cited Soviet Interference as a positive thing and a reason to keep him in power.

Some nuts aren’t worth cracking, even in the Russian Way of War.

Mercifully yes, issue is how they are evaluated.

My guess–and it is just a guess–is that that’s what we’ll see with Ukraine.

I wish I were so sure. But Ukraine is so integral to Russian ultranationalist, Duginist “Eurasianist”, and Neo-Soviet ideologies that I really don’t see them entirely giving up on it even if they wanted to.

Always good to see you.

It’s sad when I actually agree with much of what you have to say and am angered in many of the places you do, and *THEN* you spoil much of it by asserting how you are now “anti-American” and fucking up. You want to speak of hypocrisy as a Fleming? Let’s. But you probably won’t like how this will boil down.

Ps. About me. I’m Flemish and have been following your blog from 2004/05 on until somewhere in 2022. I even commented from time to time. I stopped following just because of how people I previously admired were making an 9/1939 level of evil acceptable ( I kept reading Streiff of Red State but even he has gone mainly silent on Ukraine since the elections).

I’m sorry, but at the risk of saying this: would you kindly explain what you were doing were you around the times of January 2022, 2021, 2014, 2008, and 1992?

And what you were demanding your legal authorities and their allies were?

Because it’s amusing how you single out “Americans” for this when that is staggering hypocrisy in its own right, and while hypocrisy can be the alimony vice pays to virtue it’s worth remembering that the US rarely acted alone (and when it WAS, it was demonized for unilateralism).

I think my record here speaks for itself. I am among the strongest of the Ukraine hawks on this blog. I am supportive of Trump and his cabinet, even now, but I am not going to pretend he can do no wrong or that this is right. I have challenged and condemned Kremlin apologia and other talking points time and again, and elsewhere I even was trusted with moderatorship over a Steam hub literally titled “Slava Ukraini.” If you wish to claim that I have not done enough, that MAY be fair but I have done far more than most here.

And I would be willing to gamble I have done far more than you (I certainly could be wrong there, but still).

Which is why I ask you how many years of misrule, how many imprisoned American dissidents, and how many abrogations of the US Constitution were we supposed to accept on behalf of Ukraine? I have made my stance clear from the start. I even say grudgingly nice things about Bandera because – as awful as he was – he was by far the lesser evil of WWII. But I am an American patriot, and I will place America’s freedom first in much the same way I expect Ukrainians would theirs.

In any case, you don’t get to the point of accepting 9/1939 levels of evil if you do not accept 1938, 1937, 1936, and 1931 levels of evil without adequate counter. Which is exactly what has happened. Though frankly given the evil and sickness present in much of the world from the US, Europe, and elsewhere such as the mass rapes, murders, and others in places like Southport with the complicit horrors of the supposedly democratically elected and constitutional governments, even many of the evils that happened on those years pale even in spite of the prodigious efforts of people such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Jiang, and so forth.

And the EU and European members of NATO have at least as much fault in that as the US and Trump.

But don’t believe me!

I never could have dreamed before 2022 that it would be a sustainable minority of republicans who would act like Putler’s quislings and now Trump himself.

Spare me the faux moralization. Your casual and grotesque abuse of the term Quisling robs it of the weight it has. Trump is no Quisling, and at worst he has been an appeaser (sadly one of SEVERAL *AND BY ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NO SANE OR HONEST MEASURE THE WORST*).

As for “never could have dreamed before 2022 that it would be a sustainable minority of republicans who would act like?” I had to deal with the fact that a small but self perpetuating number on both sides were deeply beholden to at a minimum appeasement of the likes of the Kremlin and even worse.

Note I say BOTH SIDES as well as others.

Because this is something you might have understood if you paid attention, and even this Soros Rag Front Group on Ukraine understood:

https://euromaidanpress.com/2024/11/03/reuters-new-german-leftist-bsw-party-threatens-pro-ukraine-stance-in-eastern-state-coalitions/

https://euromaidanpress.com/2015/01/27/greek-left-wing-syriza-forms-a-coalition-with-the-pro-kremlin-far-right/

Among others.

https://x.com/almostjingo/status/1584646059245961217

I’ve known about the presence of these fuckers for YEARS. Indeed, going on two decades in many cases.

You once posted an article about a WW2 photograph of a bunch of women having a day out, women working in the administration of a extermination camp. As far as I’m concerned america can now photoshop itself into that picture. I never was anti-American. I now am.

OH FUCK OFF. YOU AND YOUR COUNTRY ALMOST CERTAINLY ARE MORE WORTHY OF BEING POSTED INTO THAT PHOTO THAN EVEN TRUMP IS.

I do not say that lightly, but I do say it. Especially since the US Took pains to lessen ties to Russia, and indeed it was largely the Democrats like the previous Biden Admin that reached out to Kremlin sidepieces such as PSUV run Venezuela.

Anyway, what happened in – to cite just one example – 2008?

Well, the Kremlin took advantage of Georgia’s involvement in fighting in Iraq to provoke a war through proxy goons in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, attacking on such a level that the Georgians (under an admittedly mercurial and hot blooded and arrogant politician like Saakashvilli) would HAVE to respond with military force or lose all credibility at a time when he lacked the best an most modern of the already outmatched and outnumbered Georgian military. Which Putin responded with positioning troops there to quickly crush it.

In spite of efforts by that Cowboy Dubya Bush to bring Georgian troops home to Georgia posthaste and even sending American troops in to create a tripwire around Tbilisi, the Kremlin defeated, humiliated, and victimized Georgia in a few days, in effect spreading what happened and spreading ethnic cleansing further. Now, what did the Free World do? And in particular the European Union and governments that you are represented in such as Belgium and the Netherlands?

THIS ABSOLUTE SHIT.

In the Mission’s view, it was Georgia which triggered off the war when it attacked Tskhinvali (in South Ossetia) with heavy artillery on the night of 7 to 8 August 2008…” – Heidi Tagliavini, then-Swiss Ambassador and Mission Head.

https://www.ceiig.ch/Report.html

“Conveniently” ignored by the EU and its ilk – including by you – is that Tagliavini had grotesque and troubling conflicts of interest due to ties to the Russian Federation, and while they look positively banal compared to several others that we have covered here like MacGregor and the Duran Dicks, they were ultimately far more damning.

Also telling is that she would go on to help chair the “Trilateral Commission” in Ukraine and was one of the midwives behind the Minsk Farce forced upon Ukraine largely due to Western and especially European appeasement.

https://johnschindller.livejournal.com/13372.html

To make matters worse, the 2008 elections turfed in Obama, who blamed Bush for ruining relations with Putin and ran on an expressly pro-appeasement platform that emphasized closer coordination with the likes of Germany, France, and other major EU heavyweights. He won that election, as did most of the major parties involved. The infamous “Reset Button” with Clinton and Obama and Lavrov is more famous, but it was ultimately a trailing effect of what happened earlier.

In Georgia the message was received loud and clear: Do not expect any major European or NATO power to stick their necks out for you and be rewarded. Do not expect an impartial assessment and punishment for the aggressor. Do not expect your blood sacrifice in Afghanistan and Iraq to be rewarded (something I note also was shared by Ukrainians and Moldovans). Which is a major part as to why Saakashvili was turfed out of office in favor of an even more corrupt and authoritarian party expressly advocating appeasement.

And the message was also received in the Kremlin: Moscow had gotten away with murder again and gotten the EU to effectively condone it by vacillation. If there were any justice in the world the Tagliavini Report would be held in even more disdain than the Lytton Report, since while politicized and corrupted and under undue influence to moderate its tone and content to whitewash the aggressor, Lord Lytton and the others AT LEAST MANAGED TO CORRECLTY IDENTIFY THE AGGRESSOR, THE START OF THE WAR, AND WHY THE AGGRESSOR’S STATED CASUS BELLI DID NOT ADD UP.

Now, did you direct a fraction of the fire towards there?

So guess what happened almost exactly half a decade after? Putin- buoyed by victory in Georgia like he had been in Syria and the ongoing frozen peace in Moldova and by the Regionnaire electoral victory (even WITHOUT endemic fraud like what triggered the Orange Revolution) – figured he could drive a hard bargain and demand Yanukovych first cut off any talk of the EU Association Agreement, and then encouraged him to quash the ensuing protests. Which as we know spiraled out of control and led Putin to decide that when confronted with Western “Leadership” such as Obama and Frau Tagliavini, he could roll the dice and send state sponsored terrorists and even entire military units into Ukraine on the flimsiest of pretexts and either not get called on it.

He slightly miscalculated, but only slightly. The Ukrainian military was torn by division but faced with unprovoked attacks on it in barracks driving many previously pro-Russian members to fight, it fought hard. The “International Community” did indeed recognize that the barely disguised Russian military personnel and state sponsored terrorists engaging in fraudulent elections in Crimea were in fact Russian state assets and sanctioned them, but did NOT conclude the almost identical MOs in the Donbas were so.

And when faced with the prospect of the war pushing Europe and others to take a harder line, decided to try and force a “peace” that did not solve the matter at Minsk, with the laughable pretext that the Russian dictatorship was a neutral arbiter and the troops fighting in it (often with identifiable dog tags and names) were “merely” local separatists. And to add insult to injury, Obama and the Democrats helped cut off lethal aid to Ukraine to try and force Ukraine to abide by the terms (which Trump restored, which I imagine you will overlook). What might have been a military response to defend Ukraine in 2014 wasn’t as the “International Community” failed AGAIN.

And I could go on.

But to what credit I will give Obama, he was one of several Presidents that demanded like Trump did that Europe’s NATO members meet their 2% “recommended” military spending, and generally got very little respect for it. Likewise, Trump pointed out how irresponsible it was to become dependent on Russian gas just because it was convenient and because Herr Schroeder wanted to get his deals. He was mocked, much like you had a parade of demonization for the US in general regarding Iraq and Afghanistan (where I note in the former there was widespread refusal to acknowledge the depths of Saddam’s sponsorship of terrorism and violation of the Gulf War Ceasefire resolution and STILL Is in Europe and elsewhere, because fuck if we have Iraqi documents tying Saddam’s intelligence to one of OBL’s main money men and we have the Philippines having to Persona Non Grata a bunch of Saddam’s embassies due to their habit of hiding freaking ABU SAYYAF in them).

(And by the way this is and was one of my bigger grievances with Trump and the isolationist wings of the US and elsewhere in general. But one reason that happened is because of how politically impossible it became to make a public, concerted defense of things like Iraq and Afghanistan due to the media mess).

There was a German chancellor in WW1 who said something that treaties are nothing but a piece of paper.

Actually that was Chancellor Bethmann-Hollwegg, and

A: He was specifically referring to the Treaty of London in 1839, not treaties as a whole. And when you compare the Treaty of London in 1839 with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 the parallels are even more striking.

https://scottmanning.com/content/treaty-of-london-1839/

https://policymemos.hks.harvard.edu/files/policymemos/files/2-23-22_ukraine-the_budapest_memo.pdf?m=1645824948

Suffice it to say the Kanzler gave far more credence to other treaties such as those between Germany and Austria-Hungary, and even more to unspoken (and probably illegal even for the time) agreements.

B: Sadly, Bethmann-Hollwegg turned out to be a MODERATE by the standards of WWI German Militarists. Which is a major reason why in spite of being one of the major political and diplomatic architects of the First World War, prime author of the September Programme, and guilty of numerous sins for his Kaiser he was ultimately turfed out; because he was deemed “too soft”, too pessimistic, and too conciliatory.

It got quit the negative reaction.

In a backdrop of the fact that Austria-Hungary had already declared a war of aggression (and ultimately extermination) on Serbia and Germany then declared wars of aggression on Russia and France before invading Luxembourg and Belgium. So it was a lot easier to condemn German arrogance and perfidy when you were already at war with Germany or (in the case of Britain) weeks at most away from joining the war anyway.

But I imagine had Wilhelm II and Prinz Philipp von Eulenberg and Bethmann-Hollwegg had the wisdom to position themselves as friends, not give comically unhinged and two faced interviews to foreign newspapers, and spent less money on a White Elephant Grand Battle Fleet and more on foreign attaches, lobbyists, and trade deals to cut deals in Moscow and London, and had the wisdom to try to conjure up an excuse to strike at Belgium or Serbia in calmer times, they might have had better reactions.

Or at a minimum wouldn’t have primarily been opposed by people who they had already declared war on. Ironically the ultimate failure of the Central Powers diplomatically and their stigmatization came not because of some vaunted International Community or altruistic adherence to treaties but because of their own horrible PR and public glorification of “frightfulness” and public anger in neutral countries of their threats and outright attacks.

And even then, scarcely a generation later, the son of Albert the Great resisted in his constitutional role as commander in chief but then refused to continue fighting on or evacuate and went on to live in a gilded cage as quasi-collaborator, while many of his inner circle like Henri de Man (who had fought in the trenches of WWI) outright went the whole way into shilling for the Nazis. And they were HARDLY the only ones.

This isn’t convenient for the “Good Defense of Belgium in WWI, Bad Trump for Ukraine” narrative. But then reality usually is.

Well, Ukraine for example had a 2004 treaty with ruSSia about the frontiers.

Among many others, like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

Where I note that it was agreed by not merely the US and Russia but also Ukraine and the UK. And yet how many actually went for there>

Putler just tore that up in 2014 and further in 2022/09 (which means that any new treaty with ruSSia isn’t worth the paper it is written on).

Tell me something I *DIDN’T* know, and haven’t known since at least 2008.

I would think that a full restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 frontiers would be a sine quo non before there was even talk ‘peace deals’, but no now it seems that the USA is of the same mind as Putler and company regarding treaties and international law and just common human decency.

Oh how quaint.

Five words:

2015. Minsk. Minsk. OSCE. Steinmeier.

Funny how you do not mention these things.

I have grave issues with Trump and how his staff have handled this. Which makes it even MORE GALLING when you realize that *This is FAR FROM THE WORST HANDLING OF THE ISSUE BY WESTERN LEADERS OR EVEN BY A US PRESIDENT.*

You may not LIKE to acknowledge that FACT because it is easier to blame the USA rather than look in the mirror (as I have tried to do both, hence my criticism of Trump and others). But that does not make it any less true. The US has spent almost my entire life openly at war following 9/11, as have many of its allies. For that it has been heartily condemned for reasons both just and unjust, while many elsewhere especially in Europe rode high on peace dividends and shunned talks of taking a hard line against criminality in the Kremlin.

I think Trump’s response in this case is wrong, but I can understand why. Not just because at home the US has faced a terrifying, anti-constitutional series of crimes justified by a great big lie of “Russia Collusion” that saw American Citizens illegally detained and kept in conditions worse than we kept the architects of 9/11, but also because of how the Dems would go from mocking any attempt to stand against the major totalitarians or terrorists to using them as a scare chord to justify usurpations at home.

And ultimately it is folly to invest in countries that will not invest in their own cause. Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics have. But that does not apply to a distressing amount of Europe and the Free World.

PS: You blather about the USA being “of the same mind” with Putin, but have you protested to demand measures against the regimes that ACTUALLY ARE OF THE SAME MIND AS PUTIN? That your home government STOP TRADING WITH CASTROTIE CUBA (AS IT ALMOST CERTAINLY IS)? That it refuse to do business with Venezuela?

I have not done that much in the grand scale of things. But I absolutely have done more than most, as paltry as that may be. How many of your fellow Flemish can say the same, or the political sewer in Brussels?

Much is made of the ‘will of the people’ in Crimea (*) but nothing of it in the occupied/annexed oblasts, nothing of the will of the ‘will of the people’ of the occupied oblasts yet in every one there is (or was until 2014) an Ukrainian majority with only local ruSSian majorities mainly in Donetsk and Luhansk. Another thing the Putler appeasers have no problem with.

Agreed, though I’d also note that “Russian” does not necessarily mean loyalty to the invader. A great many “Russians” on those census info fight on Ukraine’s side (and indeed they were behind most of the defenders of places like Mariupol and still are in places like greater Avdiivka), to say nothing of the exiles and defectors and guerillas.

(Which is also why I see little value in using “RuSSian” as a blanket term for the entire nationality and ethnicity).

Which is where we get to one of the things that actually enrages me the most of what you wrote, my friend Phil.

Ukraine is fighting for its existence but can’t ‘defeat’ ruSSia. Well, it was Ukraine and international support which was opposing ruSSia though, alas and to the “world’s” shame, Ukraine alone doing the fighting.

I could swap out Ukraine for Georgia and send this back in time to 2008 or so and have literally no differences.

Ukraine didn’t need to completely reconquer its territory, ruSSia should be forced to give it up in the end

And Putin and his ilk should die in agony, and the dead claimed by the war should rise again and go back to live. And someone should resurrect Prigozhin so that he may be killed by sledgehammer as he murdered so many others.

But what SHOULD be is different from what IS or CAN be.

(the Germans still occupied Denmark when surrendering. I believe they are gone by now (/s)).

Flensburg called.

Well, until a backstabber proposing a ‘peace deal’ implies surrendering territory (and you but to look at the map to what a strategic disaster surrendering those 4 annexed oblasts means). Rewarding the murderer for making the effort so to speak.

Again, I could shift this back to 2022 and post it unchanged, and back to 2015 and post it almost unchanged.

Trump has something to say about the evil of Hamas. I do agree with him.

Agreed there.

But ruSSia invaded Ukraine with no justification at all, caused the death of tens of thousands Ukrainians, lied all the time, uses his own troops and ‘loaned’ one as cattle, committed war crimes & committed ethnic cleansing and that means nothing to Trump and company?

It meant even less to Biden and Obama when they engaged in their “Reset”, and especially all of the scumsuckers behind Minsk I and II (hosted in the capital of Putin’s Soviet Relic ally in a “Union State”). Trump at least decided to reopen lethal aid after it was shut down as part of his attempt to rouse the EU and NATO to act.

And how much did that get him?

The hypocrisy is sickening.

Yes, yes it is. And it is one of many grounds I chew on Trump for.

You must really think Ukrainians are but Untermenschen.

Then by logic so must every signatory of Minsk I and II, in a similar way to the “intermediaries” behind the “ceasefires” in Georgia and Moldova. Which really isn’t that much different from the truth I reckon.

If Trump and company criticises the Europeans that they haven’t done enough I agree with them as an European. For instance,I see no reason whatsoever that European countries couldn’t intervene directly within Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders from the beginning. Imagine if the Ukrainians had had air support in their 2023 offensive.

On that much we agree there.

Unfortunately the issue wasn’t so much that European and other allied countries couldn’t intervene directly, but *DIDN’T*. For various reasons.

But if Trump makes that ‘deal’ with Putler and works with Putler as if nothing criminal happened or was unacceptable (in fact, becomes a kind of partner with North Korea via Putler) then as far as I’m concerned he is worse then Hamas since a traitor is always worse the more so if agree with much he is doing because he defiles it.

THEN BY YOUR OWN ADMISSION THE GREAT MAJORITY OF EUROPE’S LEADERS AND EVEN PEOPLE *ARE* OR AT LEAST *HAVE BEEN* SUCH “TRAITORS” AND WORSE THAN HAMAS, PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY AGREED TO OR EVEN HELPED FORCE THROUGH PRECISELY SUCH DEALS, AND USUALLY WITHOUT EVEN A FRACTION OF THE JUSTIFICATION WITH WHICH TRUMP HAS.

And again, I say this as someone who *OPPOSES* Trump on this.

But no, even this would not make Trump a “Traitor.” Which is doubtless why we have to hear echoes of the Russia Collusion or Putin Puppet narrative to try and claim it. Trump first and foremost owes allegiance to the United States of America and its Constitution. AS MUCH AS I WOULD PREFER OTHERWISE, that takes precedence over outright alliances, let alone Budapest.

And apparently your political class agrees, given how they have acted.

I don’t have to like that and neither do you. But it does show what it is.

Moreover, Trump at least has the justification that the PRC and demographic collapse are a greater threat, that the Russia Scare Card was used to help collapse American constitutionalism at home, and that a world war benefits just about nobody.

What’s the excuse of people – and I use that term lightly – like Mutti Merkel and Frau Tagliavini?

Not because it attacks Trump or the US or me, actually. Though I have plenty of reason to be angry. But because your strawman is ACTUALLY LESS GROTESQUE THAN WHAT WAS *ALLOWED* TO HAPPEN AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS BEFORE TRUMP ENTERED POLITICS.

So there is a home invasion and the invader finds a woman and rapes and abuses her. Then the ‘authority’ arrives and says he will make a deal which will make both parties unhappy but there will be peace. The deal? Well, the invader gets to keep the house and his crimes will be wiped of the slate but alas for him he will have to let the woman go. The woman is free (and what’s the slut complaining about).

Oh sweet PhilD, you naïve babe, *I CAN ONLY IMAGINE WHAT SOME COUNTRIES WOULD GIVE TO BE ABLE TO UPGRADE TO THAT!!!*

Because the norm for “deals” with the Kremlin has been even worse than that.

The invader and rapist gets his crimes ignored, gets possession of the house, gets the gratification of having “Struggle Snuggled” the victim, and has The Authority declare that *not only is the Victim not Free to Go, she must remain within a certain proximity to the victimizer and the house that was formerly owned by them, must not seek police protection, and must pay back the vicitmizer.*

Sounds fucked up, right? Well it is. Who would actually do that?

Well, uh… just ask Moldova and Georgia. As horrible as the violent ethnic cleansing and murders in Transnistria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia would be, as humiliating as being victim blamed and defeated alone by the neighborhood thug is, they can’t even get away. Precisely because NATO does not permit nations to begin to join with existing territorial disputes (which is understandable all things considered), and the EU looks askance too in spite of not being a military.

Meaning that Georgia and Moldova can’t get the help they need to win, can’t break even, and can’t even cut their losses and leave the game. Is there any question why the government in Georgia now is called “Georgian Dream” and one of their primary party platforms is appeasement of the Kremlin?

I will not say Trump and Hesgeth’s “proposal” for Ukraine is better, indeed I criticized it viciously here. But the sad, sick fact of the matter is?

IT’S A HELL OF A LOT CLOSER TO THE NORM WHEN DEALING WITH KREMLIN BULLYING THAN WE WOULD WANT TO ADMIT.

And usually without a fraction of the pressures or justifications.

(*) According to the 2001 census ‘russians’ were a 58.5% majority. Now its overwhelmingly russian only. Genocide pays.

Sadly the figures are still better than in elsewhere like South Ossetia and East Prigorodny. So expect this to get worse, much worse. I certainly do, and it’s one reason why I have been so scathing of Trump and co here. But I’ve also been scathing of the left and others here (even if I do not focus as much condemnation of them as I do on the Kremlin and its ilk)

My record has been quite clear and consistent for years and I can prove it. I condemn this proposal now for reasons similar to why I condemned Minsk and the 2008 Results. I am not perfect, far from it, indeed my willingness to accept such evil as a balance to trying to save my country’s homefront is a profound indictment of me. But I at least will not pretend that this is a chimera, that Trump is worse than Hamas and is a Quisling, and that this is somehow New.

PS: Funny you mention quislings, because Vidkun Quisling’s actual story is fascinating and horrifying, especially since he started out as a renowned humanitarian and man of science who faced the horrors of the Soviet Regime and post-WWI and early Bolshevik famine firsthand, working carefully with spies and diplomats under the gun to try and save lives, for which he was recognized by both a British medal and a lengthy file from the “Chekists.” He saw how the weakness of the Allies and other “International Community” members would not stomp out the Bolsheviks when they were weak and so returned to public laudation and internal brokenness, knowing that if the Bolsheviks got their way there would be another war they would start.

And as time went on – I am not sure when – he concluded that the only possible answer to the Bolshevik threat was to become a Fascist goon, and ultimately he became so twisted that by 1940 he concluded the best way to save his country of Norway from totalitarian socialist invasion was to abet the totalitarian National Socialists to overthrow his country in a coup, sending thousands of people to their deaths in his quest for grandiosity at the expense of his peoples’ constitution.

I do not write to whitewash Quisling or to apologize for him. If what he did can even be theoretically apologized for, he undeniably did not do so. He lacked even the half-sincere and incomplete remorse of scum like Hans Frank, arrogantly and inexcusably declaring to the last that he was Innocent. I dread to imagine what has become of his soul, such as it was.

However, I write to make a very clear point: Trump is far from the first Western Leader or American President to not do what was needed in the face of evil. He isn’t even the worst by a long shot. And how many marched in defense of – say – South Vietnam when it fell, unlovely and unloved government that it was and being tied to Americans anyway, under the argument that it was still better than the “romantic” revolutionary alternative?

I have called my politicians to voice my objections. I have written in depth here to oppose the Kremlin. I raise funds and argue while straitjacketed by life and health concerns. I have not done enough, not even close, but I have done more than most. How much have you done PhilD? How much do you figure your fellow Flemings have?

Reserve horses is a good idea. But feeding the ones you have, not to mention the ones hauling wagons, is enough of a problem if you can’t pasture them in somebody else’s standing grain. So that’s what you do. You do know what a “forage cap”? They were just stopping calling the casual baseball cap for the troops that in the Sixties. And a “forage pack”. It’s a light basket, quite deep, with shoulder straps. Can carry a good many types of provisions including fodder.
There’s no provision for paying for the stuff.

Turtler.
Russia’s invasions of others do not subtract from the cultural fear of invasions from others.

Agreed, but vice versa as well. I feel a lot of people have heard about Russia being invaded or conquered and the horrible trauma that entailed, but not as much that the very term Russia originates from the naval traders, raiders, and invaders that came to rule over the land as a foreign (if assimilating) ruling class and their audacity. Both are part of the Russian story, and the Russian character.

The former hit and hurt somebody else, which is different from getting run over yourself. It’s not even-up.

We can also say the same about the inverse, and in any case these things tended to stick around in the government and military doctrine and ultimately the culture a lot. And while it may not “even-up” it certainly seems.

Napoleon was referring to the Spanish campaigns.

Ah, that makes sense. Though that fits somewhat more given how Spain tended to lack the kind of prosperous mid level villages/towns/cities in a similar way to how Eastern Europe does, and for similar reasons (warfare, raiding, and scorched Earth).

The Germans were having their problems, since the further you go, the more resources you need to move the stuff further. And the longer it takes.
It wasn’t until fully mechanized armies that pasturing your horses–cavalry, artillery, officers’ and staff, in the locals’ standing crops stopped. And most German WW II transport was trains to the rail head and then horse drawn.

Agreed. And I’d honestly be willing to argue that pasturing in the locals’ has never entirely stopped. And even advanced Western militaries tend to billet or requisition local buildings.

One advantage of potatoes was that it was extremely difficult to use them out of the fields for fodder. Horses won’t dig for them and having the troops do it is not productive.

To some degree, though having a bunch of engineers there helped.

But, with all the comforts of twentieth century logistics, the Russian civilians in occupied territory had a very hard time. I was only speaking of supplies….

That civilians in territory conquered by the Red Army after they got going had a very hard time is also true but does not “subtract” from the Russian fear, cultural or genetic or whatever, of being invaded, with the follow-on ability to sell an invasion of neighbors more easily than in other circumstances or countries. The buyers may be asking for their money back, eventually, as is possible now. But Putin still hasn’t fallen out of any windows.

I agree it does not subtract from the Russian fear per se, but it does put it in perspective. It also I think points to how well before it became common for outsiders to invade a crucial component of exerting authority and geopolitical strategy in the Rus was exacting tribute (whether from one’s own “core” people or tributaries like the Drevlians), which was used for both the aggrandizement of the ruler and his elite and the public. I think it also speaks to how prior to the conflicts with the Steppes there was relatively little risk of the other side “hitting back”; with Sviatoslav being able to contemplate adventures that seem to us as absurd (and honestly probably were) in large part because he could count on a decently order court.

Marlborough had a pretty small map, compared to idiots going further east, and, as Churchill said, he’d tested his subordinates and was confident he could keep his troops fed and supplied.

Indeed, and the Bavarians still have remarks about his conduct with the harrying.

While all countries are the same size–always fit their pages in the atlas–that’s deceiving. Berlin to Paris is just over half as far as El Paso to New Orleans. Take about eleven hours driving. Different when the Infantry is doing twenty miles a day, heel and toe. Which has been standard for centuries. And so you have to feed the guys for a month before they get there, presuming they don’t have to stop to fight along the way.

Agreed there, and also is one reason why the ability to go by water or by horses (or both) could help. The ability to go a hundred miles in a day was remarkable and terrifying, and it still is today, and it was one reason why logistics out East often looked very different than those out West and would for the most part well into the 1700s, with major effects.

Was said that, in the Plains wars, the US Infantry would catch up with the cavalry in five days, and then pull ahead. Neat as a horse and rider look, that’s not why horses were built. Wears on them.

Indeed, but that’s also why you generally have reserve horses to ride on while leaving the tired horses behind to recover.

Anyway, whatever the details, our experience with not being invaded does not prepare us to grasp the Russian experience and its cultural effects.

Agreed, but understanding both helps.

But, as I say, for the Russians, preparing to repel a Russian invasion looks, in some semi-rational sense, like a threat.

Fair, but I think it is even more rational to conclude that this is less about preparing to rebel an invasion so much as to reassert hegemony and crush unruly people who “should” “rightfully” be tributaries. And while the “invade to prevent invasion/strategic depth” argument is more appealing and what we’d expect the regime to use, it’s worth noting the idea of Russian greatness and empire are also cited, especially domestically.

And I think this is particularly clear from the Kremlin, where whatever other baggage or doctrines they are doing, they picked this fight and act like they are VERY CONFIDENT that they will not be invaded in the intermediate future, and can count on this by things like not reacting much to the Scandinavian expansion of NATO (which admittedly in part is because they don’t have the resources to), diverting forces from as far afield as Kola and Kamchatka to fight in Ukraine due to the absence of trained manpower (which would leave those regions underdefended if the West were preparing to storm ashore).

Whatever Putin gets out of the deal, it will be a victory in the sense of Hanson’s “Russia’s Way of War”.

Honestly I think it might depend. Especially if they cannot make good the losses involved, and they will take at least a couple decades to even have a chance for that.

His reason not to try it again is…lengthy discussions on Neo. That’ll show him.

His reason to not try it again is that he is running critically low on so much, most crucially manpower he can field (whether in the factories or in the field), and also hurting in resources and especially equipment. This gets concealed in part due to how the Russian military outnumbers and generally has more equipment than Ukraine and most other nations 1-1, but they know better than most that this will take quite a lot of time to patch up and occupy.

That doesn’t make it a good idea.

Yeah, I gave the Russians a second chance after Gorbachev ‘n Reagan gave them a way out of their External Expansion MO history. No more tho…

My point is that Europe needs to look so incredibly menacing that even a Russian with all of Russian history at his back might quail at attacking it. But, getting there looks like a threat to Russia so….

Excellent point. Still, Putin has screwed up, and now Europe has a…a…a what, a one-thousandth chance? 😉

This situation is not going to be stable short of Putin and two dozen of his closest advisers being defenestrated by….I have no idea who might think differently.

Yeah, I didn’t pay attention to Russia’s ‘Expansions‘ – barely even notice Crimea, and never paid any attention to their other maneuverings in Ukraine after that even. Russian people have made their bed by supporting Putin, and they can all die as far as I am concerned.

Yes, the Ukrainians have shown us how weak the Russian military was, thanks to Putin’s foolish reinvasion. Just that info alone is worth 10 times more than America, NATO, and the EU have given Ukraine over these almost three years, IMHO.

Russia shouldn’t be given Ukraine or even a hint of a second chance…not even a hint of one.