US and NATO escalation of conflict with Russia is leading to war

[Unhappy438]

Oh really, according to the left the only thing stopping Putin from invading Ukraine is the threat from the USA.... but "None of this has anything to do with the president of USA."

Are you even serious man?

What threat from the USA? They arent going to go to war with Russia, only a complete looney toon would get into a nuclear war over Ukraine. So then there is only the threat of sanctions.

So really the question is are you serious or just Biden derangement effecting your judgement?

 

[WollieVerstege]

How certain are you about this.
Is it not perhaps merely your (personal) opinion?

Actually the opinion of someone, an international law expert, I know who has worked in the legal office of the UN for over 15 years.

How can something be "technically illegal" but "justified"?
If something is "justified", it is then by definition "legal", is it not?

Murder is always illegal. There is no country on earth where the law legally allows you to commit murder.
However, I am allowed to commit murder to defend myself, my property or a third party. In some countries police officers have the right to murder a terrorist before that person threatens any person or property. Those then becomes the exceptions under which murder is justified, but it is still not legal.
It is a very complex legal argument.

 

[SoldierMan]

What threat from the USA? They arent going to go to war with Russia, only a complete looney toon would get into a nuclear war over Ukraine. So then there is only the threat of sanctions.

So really the question is are you serious or just Biden derangement effecting your judgement?

Ah, for once you aren't falling hook, line and sinker for the leftist talking heads propaganda and repeating their talking points verbatim. Impressive Unhappy.

 

[WollieVerstege]

Fair enough you have the problem of something being declared illegal by the UN but no actual consequences...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_2334

That is the problem, you have a legal system but no police or judiciary to actually enforce those laws. Essentially it is a popularity contest, and if you can convince (bribe) other countries you were right and the other side was wrong, then you are right and they are wrong.
As the saying goes: History is written by the victor.

 

[Ponderer]

Actually the opinion of someone, an international law expert, I know who has worked in the legal office of the UN for over 15 years.

Murder is always illegal. There is no country on earth where the law legally allows you to commit murder.
However, I am allowed to commit murder to defend myself, my property or a third party. In some countries police officers have the right to murder a terrorist before that person threatens any person or property. Those then becomes the exceptions under which murder is justified, but it is still not legal.
It is a very complex legal argument.

If something is "justified", it is then by definition "legal", is it not?

 

[Ponderer]

That is the problem, you have a legal system but no police or judiciary to actually enforce those laws. Essentially it is a popularity contest, and if you can convince (bribe) other countries you were right and the other side was wrong, then you are right and they are wrong.
As the saying goes: History is written by the victor.

So the UN is a farce?

 

[Unhappy438]

Ah, for once you aren't falling hook, line and sinker for the leftist talking heads propaganda and repeating their talking points verbatim. Impressive Unhappy.

Ahaha, you shouldnt assume too much about me Mr Soldier.

I posted this article a while ago in this thread, which i think is a pretty good summary of the situation.

Moscow’s Compellence Strategy - Foreign Policy Research Institute

How ambitious are Russia's foreign policy objectives, and how much force does Moscow believe it must employ to achieve them? Moscow has submitted various

www.fpri.org

 

[WollieVerstege]

If something is "justified", it is then by definition "legal", is it not?

Nope, that is not how the law works.
Something is illegal if there is a law prohibiting it.
If there is no law prohibiting it, then it is legal.

"Justified" means that you are exempt from being prosecuted for the crime, it does not mean that the crime itself spontaneously becomes legal.

So the UN is a farce?

Essentially yes, although I think it has more to do with the 5 permanent, veto wielding, members of the SC that is undermining the UN.

 

[Ponderer]

Nope, that is not how the law works.
Something is illegal if there is a law prohibiting it.
If there is no law prohibiting it, then it is legal.

If there is no law that prohibits you from killing someone in self defense, is it then not legal to do so?

"Justified" means that you are exempt from being prosecuted for the crime, it does not mean that the crime itself spontaneously becomes legal.

I understand what an exception to a rule is.
My point is that a legal exception is (by definition) legal, and therefore (by definition) not illegal, and therefore (by definition) not a crime.

Essentially yes, although I think it has more to do with the 5 permanent, veto wielding, members of the SC that is undermining the UN.

So you agree that the UN is a complete/absolute/total farce?

 

[WollieVerstege]

If there is no law that prohibits you from killing someone in self defense, is it then not legal to do so?

I understand what an exception to a rule is.
My point is that a legal exception is (by definition) legal, and therefore (by definition) not illegal, and therefore (by definition) not a crime.

So you agree that the UN is a complete/absolute/total farce?

Well if you want to argue from a layman's understanding I guess you could argue it that way. That is however not how the actual law works in real life. I mean a lawyer would fall off their chair laughing at an explanation like that.

The purpose of the UN is to act as arbiter and mediator and in some instance to coordinate international efforts. So not totally useless. The problem is really when the top 5 go at each other that the UN loses relevance.

 

[Grant]

like all politicians, Putin lies, although in this instance it very much seems like US & NATO are talking up the potential for an invasion much more than there is an actual threat, they are of course also politicians that cannot be trusted

anyone still believe there was no US boots on the ground in Syria?

How many Russian boots vs US boots?

 

[Nicodeamus]

Why the US and NATO want war with Russia


Like the disastrous US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the road to war with Russia is paved with lies. The military build-up in Eastern Europe is being justified with media-hyped claims that an invasion of Ukraine is imminent, which even the Ukrainian government has questioned. This has been supplemented by warnings, without any factual basis, that Russia is planning to stage a “false flag” operation. If such an operation takes place, one can be certain that its authors will be in Washington, not Moscow.

The latest lie is the claim, manufactured by the British government, that Russia aims to forcibly install a puppet regime in Ukraine—precisely what Washington, Berlin and the NATO alliance did in 2014, backing a far-right putsch that seized power in Kiev. This lie has already exploded in London’s face. The man identified as the putative leader of a Russian puppet regime in Ukraine, businessman and former parliamentarian Yevhen Murayev, is in fact banned from Russia, which has seized his assets.

The biggest lie of all is that the US and NATO are engaged in a defense of “democracy” and against “foreign aggression.” The Ukrainian government and state apparatus is riddled with neo-Nazi paramilitary forces who played a central role in the 2014 putsch. This includes the Svoboda party, which the European Parliament had formally condemned for its “racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic views,” and the neo-Nazi Right Sector militia and Azov Battalion.

Why the US and NATO want war with Russia

The ruling classes in the United States and Europe confront a series of intractable economic, social and political crises, all of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. They are turning to war in a desperate attempt to find a way out.

www.wsws.org

 

[Nicodeamus]

No, Putin isn’t threatening Ukraine because Biden withdrew from Afghanistan

Hawkish pundits like the NY Times’ Bret Stephens will say anything to keep the United States engaged in forever wars.

Europe appears headed for a catastrophic war, with reports of U.S. civilians leaving Ukraine and Russian troops arriving from the Far East. Although most people might imagine a complex mix of causes, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens demurs. The culprit is Afghanistan: “The current Ukraine crisis is as much the child of Biden’s Afghanistan debacle as the last Ukraine crisis was the child of Obama’s Syria debacle.”

Illusions die hard among proponents of an enduring American imperium. After the Soviet Union’s collapse, Washington’s hawkish foreign policy establishment, so memorably, and more recently, named “the Blob,” imagined a glorious new world dominated by the United States. “What we say goes,” declared President George H.W. Bush in 1991, shortly before the United States last won a war quickly and cleanly.

Alas, history has a way of embarrassing hubris. Despite his imperial mien when addressing the world, Bush ingloriously lost reelection. His successor, Bill Clinton, continued to act as global hegemon, pushing to reconstruct the Balkans, a project seemingly headed toward collapse, and speed NATO expansion, which even many Blob members realize has left Russia on the brink of war with Ukraine.

 

[Dave]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1485697543661051907

 

[Dave]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1485721627115626501

 

[Dave]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/23/russia-ukraine-sanctions-export-controls/

The Biden administration is threatening to use a novel export control to damage strategic Russian industries, from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace, if Moscow invades Ukraine, administration officials say.

The administration may also decide to apply the control more broadly in a way that would potentially deprive Russian citizens of some smartphones, tablets and video game consoles, said the officials.

Such moves would expand the reach of U.S. sanctions beyond financial targets to the deployment of a weapon used only once before — to nearly cripple the Chinese tech giant Huawei.

The weapon, known as the foreign direct product rule, contributed to Huawei suffering its first-ever annual revenue drop, a stunning collapse of nearly 30 percent last year.

The attraction of using the foreign direct product rule derives from the fact that virtually anything electronic these days includes semiconductors, the tiny components on which all modern technology depends, from smartphones to jets to quantum computers — and that there is hardly a semiconductor on the planet that is not made with U.S. tools or designed with U.S. software. And the administration could try to force companies in other countries to stop exporting these types of goods to Russia through this rule.

“This is a slow strangulation by the U.S. government,” Dan Wang, a Shanghai-based technology analyst with research firm Gavekal Dragonomics, said of Huawei. The rule cut the firm’s supply of needed microchips, which were made outside the United States but with U.S. software or tools.

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

How many Russian boots vs US boots?

in what universe does it matter?

The Syrian government officially invited Russia
The USA invaded Syria

 

[Cray]

Why the US and NATO want war with Russia

The ruling classes in the United States and Europe confront a series of intractable economic, social and political crises, all of which have been exacerbated by the pandemic. They are turning to war in a desperate attempt to find a way out.

www.wsws.org

Gotta love it when people make claims about NATO "extending its borders" when those extensions have come from new member nations voluntarily joining it... Why doesn't Russia revive the Warsaw pact and get nations to join that, or are they afraid no one else will join if they can't compel nations like in the old days?

 

[IndigoIdentity]

It is revanchism, using minorities as justification.

Have to disagree here, how can they be guilty of making "allegations" that this is the case when it is actually the case. Who exactly do you think those separatists are? Do you have any idea what is left of their land, infrastructure and possessions? Let alone the loss of human lives, etc.

According to the Wikipedia the definition of revanchism: "the political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country"

Your statement to me seems to be mixed up because you're saying that this is an allegation which is being used by Russia to reverse territorial disputes, I am saying that Ukraine has threatened the Russian minority that does actually exist and they continue to do it to this day so how is that an allegation? Russia has on many occasions stated that their intention is not a war with Ukraine, in my mind it has much more to do with NATO moving closer to their border, something that they have been strongly against since the time of the Soviet Union / cold war.

 

[thestaggy]

Have to disagree here, how can they be guilty of making "allegations" that this is the case when it is actually the case. Who exactly do you think those separatists are? Do you have any idea what is left of their land, infrastructure and possessions? Let alone the loss of human lives, etc.

According to the Wikipedia the definition of revanchism: "the political manifestation of the will to reverse territorial losses incurred by a country"

Your statement to me seems to be mixed up because you're saying that this is an allegation which is being used by Russia to reverse territorial disputes, I am saying that Ukraine has threatened the Russian minority that does actually exist and they continue to do it to this day so how is that an allegation? Russia has on many occasions stated that their intention is not a war with Ukraine, in my mind it has much more to do with NATO moving closer to their border, something that they have been strongly against since the time of the Soviet Union / cold war.

"It was a disintegration of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union," Putin said of the 1991 breakup, in comments aired on Sunday as part of a documentary film called "Russia. New History", the RIA state news agency reported.

"We turned into a completely different country. And what had been built up over 1,000 years was largely lost," said Putin, saying 25 million Russian people in newly independent countries suddenly found themselves cut off from Russia, part of what he called "a major humanitarian tragedy".

Putin rues Soviet collapse as demise of 'historical Russia'

President Vladimir Putin has lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago as the demise of what he called "historical Russia" and said the economic crisis that followed was so bad he was forced to moonlight as a taxi driver.

www.reuters.com

Putin laments the lost borders of ''historical Russia'' as well as the millions of Russians ''cut off'' from Russia.

South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Crimea and the Donbas. Russia is slowly trying to claw back the borders of ''historical Russia''.