BeechBaby wrote:
.Meanwhile Bashar is back with the Arab League.
Yup. Opportunism over memory and concience. Politics…
Peter wrote:
But Ukraine will need to be properly armed in the long run because military containment of Russia is the only option.
Not only Ukraine. Europe itself will have to wake up to the challenge that they can’t always relay on the big brother from the west to help.
Peter wrote:
The US will always support Ukraine because there is no other option.
I suppose it depends who is in charge. With Trump nobody knows… yet I somehow refuse to believe at this stage that he will be re-elected, but heavens weren’t most of us wrong before. More wrong than right in recent years.
Emir wrote:
There’s no such thing as left wing in USA
Unfortunately there is a pretty rabid left wing which has not done the Democrats much good in recent years. Sanders to start with and people like him, the left wing variant of the Tea Party of the right. But then again, what to call left and right always depends on where you define what center is. Our American friends would define that point very differently than we do, mainly because their ultra-left is still significantly less extreme than some of ours here. But saying there is no left is pretty similar to some Americans claiming that Europe is a socialist society.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Unfortunately there is a pretty rabid left wing which has not done the Democrats much good in recent years.
Thank you @Mooney_Driver. I did not rise to the bait.
Well let’s draw a line as these pompous fools meet at the G7. We have
Russia – Ukraine
NATO – Russia
China – Taiwan
India-Pakistan, with Afghanistan sitting on the borders.
The whole Middle East
The whole of North Africa
North Korea
Pacifist Japan now turning to threats on its borders.
The global Ceasers are doing a mighty fine job in keeping it all together, war that is. and all the while a few are making fortunes from it all. As poverty rises globally.
Nothing ever really changes
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Looks like Biden changed his mind
There are no other options. Obviously much more goes on behind the curtains than what comes out in the media, but as long as this war doesn’t end (and there is no end in sight as far as I know), then Ukraine will need more weapons, and more fundamental weapons, like fighters. This also involves lots of training and a whole infrastructure of stuff is needed, on every level. Thus, the only thing that Ukraine is supplying is essentially pilots. The line for western military intervention is at that stage more academic than real. Military vise it would be much better to send NATO forces instead.
I mean, sending fighters sometime in the near future seems necessary for the Ukrainians to continue fighting. But sending fighters doesn’t really solve anything, yet it crosses a line that isn’t necessarily much worse than sending NATO forces and get this over with. But who knows, maybe Putin soon decides it’s time to end this “exercise” ? 
I guess China is watching VERY carefully what Russia is getting away with. Particularly China, which looks like they are really gearing up to move on SE Asia.
China is a different thing. They have much more to lose via sanctions.
People say it would hit the West hard to stop buying Chinese stuff, but how many €1 t-shirts and stretch leggings do people need? And do we need Amazon to sell mostly chinese stuff? Re-shoring manufacturing (which I’ve been doing in my business for last ~10 years) would be a very good thing.
China is not stupid and they know this, so they won’t do anything crazy. Especially as they can see that Russia is getting away with precisely nothing. The China situation is very different; their population can travel freely so China has no basic security issues (as with Russia, nobody wants to invade it, but China is openly aware of that) and no real need for expansion.
We are seeing history being made. Like post-1945 shaped the next 70+ years, we are now seeing the next load.
Peter wrote:
And do we need Amazon to sell mostly chinese stuff?
Amazon is one factor, they can go elsewhere. Ali and Wish are the others however, and they are almost 100% Chinese stuff.
People go for cheapo things, no matter what and no matter where it’s coming from. But much more importantly, the West also depends on way too many things from China as we saw during Covid, when the transport ways were disrupted. So would they really sanction China to the point where it would hurt the Western industries? You can get gas from elsewhere, but chips and electronics, surgical equipment e.t.c. is a different story.
Peter wrote:
China is not stupid and they know this, so they won’t do anything crazy. Especially as they can see that Russia is getting away with precisely nothing.
Precisely. Even though with just about what Russia will get away with can’t be assessed until the conflict is over. The worst bit would be a “deal” like the US did with the Taliban which caused the effort of 20 years of war to be nullified in a few days.
Peter wrote:
Like post-1945 shaped the next 70+ years, we are now seeing the next load.
I just hope we won’t need the pre-1945 equivalent to get there.
Amazon is > 90% chinese. And ~0% russian. A key difference in the size of the lever one has
The reason we have the trouble with the russkies is because they export almost no finished products, most of what they sell are raw materials or energy (which have value only to the extent that some 3rd World country hasn’t got them for less money), and anything else of value they might have has either been stolen or soon will be.
Anyone who has doubts about the near-total mediocrity at almost every level in that country only needs to follow the war…
Countries with functioning trade relationships (like China) are a lot more careful. Let’s face it – that was why the EU was pushed by De Gaulle: to stop another war in Europe
Unfortunately there is a pretty rabid left wing which has not done the Democrats much good in recent years. Sanders to start with and people like him, the left wing variant of the Tea Party of the right.
What’s exactly wrong with his standpoints?
The points of view on US politics expressed here are entirely European, and with rare exception have little to do with the form or function of American government, or the views of the US electorate.
