I hate how “anti-war” has been hijacked by these people to mean, let imperialist countries invade whoever they want with no consequences. (in the case of tankies, any imperialist country that isn’t in NATO).
If Russia stops fighting there would be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting there would be no Ukraine.
At this stage, since they have fought so well, I’d guess there would just be a much smaller, much weaker Ukraine.
We will likely see this happen now Trump is president. He is too egotistical to not take revenge on them for not playing along with his quid pro quo back in 2019.
The Ukrainian flags in republican yards never meant a thing… They sold Ukraine out at the polls.
This guy floating up to the sky when US State Department says that gravity is real
… and the WMD’s will be found any day now in Iraq General Powell.
I can’t find an earlier source. And it’s not accurate:
Boris Johnson Pressured Zelenskyy to Ditch Peace Talks With Russia: Ukrainian Paper
In the weeks ahead of Johnson’s April 9 visit, high-level diplomatic talks held in Belarus and Turkey had failed to yield a diplomatic breakthrough, though reports in mid-March indicated that Russian and Ukrainian delegations “made significant progress” toward a 15-point peace deal that would involve Ukraine renouncing its NATO ambitions in exchange for the withdrawal of Moscow’s troops.
That includes only battlefield context. Truth is Russia will at the very best economically and politically fall into a 3rd world country level the moment it loses the war. More probably dissolve into smaller states = there would be no Russia as we know it today anymore.
Good. After what they’ve done, they don’t deserve to exist as a nation anymore.
I don’t understand how other communists can defend Russia at this point. It feels to me like most of them forget that Russia is no longer a communist country.
They’re capitalists. Putin is often using christo-fascist tactics. He’s also pushing for Russian imperialism in very capitalistic ways. Also, Russia was 100 percent the agitators here.
Just because it challenges US worldwide hegemony doesn’t automatically make it good, boys.
Tankies might as well be called CINOs — communists in name only. Their defining feature is reverence towards authoritarian leaders. They revere Putin and Xi as “strong” leaders and completely ignore how little their regimes have in common with the socialist workers paradise Marx envisioned.
My favorite is when they argue that China has billionaires and private property and a stock market because Marx said you have to go through capitalism to get to communism. Which… doesn’t somehow also apply to the West?
What makes you say they don’t think it applies to the West? I don’t follow your logic there.
It’s like their version of STOP RESISTING.
My Mom said Russia had to attack Ukraine, because they were trying to join NATO. I asked why she thinks Ukraine was trying to join NATO. I’m still digging for a bedrock of logic.
Part of the problem with game theory and finding a “bedrock of logic” is that game theoretical analysis is often recursive. It’s not a stack of prepositions and conclusions; it’s often a loop. Sort of like a resonance structure. I’ve got my gun aimed at you because your gun is aimed at me because my gun is aimed at you … recursively forever.
My understanding is that the US/NATO and the USSR/Russia, ie the two sides of the Cold War, have maintained a sense of peace and security by maintaining a buffer between the two sides. A buffer of distance, which is relevant because it relates to the time it takes nuclear weapons to travel from one adversarial territory to the other.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was basically caused because Cuba was too close to the USA for nuclear missiles to be stored in a way that the balance of MAD could be maintained.
The public declaration (by Kamala Harris, incidentally) that Ukraine would join NATO is a violation of a promise made by Reagan that NATO would not extend to the border of Russia.
It’s similar to the USSR’s attempt to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, in the sense that it’s simply too close.
That’s my understanding of the motivation behind Russia’s invasion. I’m quite new to all this though.
So it’s less like “Stop resisting!” and more like “Drop the gun!”
My suspicion is that MAD overall is diminishing in its power to stabilize the world militarily, as a result of new military technologies coming into play (space-based weapons, drones, AI, hypersonic missiles, iron dome scenarios) as well as more and more nuclear powers coming online, and the increasing probability of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of non-state actors.
And finally there’s China’s overall rise toward the role of hegemonic power.
The Cold War basically organized itself (and hence organized the influences that minimized military action) around two major powers. Now there’s a third major power that’s rapidly accelerating toward becoming the major power. It’s changing all the equations that balanced out in the 1970s, 80s, etc.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was basically caused because Cuba was too close to the USA for nuclear missiles to be stored in a way that the balance of MAD could be maintained.
The so-called Cuban Missile Crisis was caused by Kennedy moving nuclear missiles into Turkey, within striking range of the USSR. It never would have happened if Kennedy hadn’t decided to start swinging his dick around.
Distance is really not much of a factor any more, and hasn’t been for a long time. Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg can already be reached by submarine launched cruise missiles in less than 15 minutes (conservative estimate). And let’s face it, with MAD being a thing, any kind of nuclear strike is likely to escalate into all-out nuclear annihilation, anyway. This makes any attempt at overwhelming the opponent a losing proposition. So in that sense nothing has changed since, oh, the mid-1970s?
Then there is the argument that Russia doesn’t want a long shared border with NATO. Guess what, their aggression has caused Finland and Sweden to join NATO, which has only added to their shared border with NATO. That they already had with Poland and the Baltic states (there is no treaty nor official document prohibiting NATO expansion).
And finally, how hard is it to understand that NATO is a defensive alliance? It is neither politically geared to nor militarily capable of mounting a conquest of Russia. The fact that so many of Russia’s neighbors are eager to join the alliance should be a pretty strong hint as to why it needs to exist in the first place. It is Russia that cannot be trusted, not NATO. And you can’t make your neighbor “drop the gun” in their own house. The Ukrainians were stupid enough already to return their nuclear arsenal to Russia in return for explicit security guarantees. What a mistake that was.
Don’t even get me started on how China is criminally underrated as a manifest threat to world peace…
I don’t even know what they (western tankies) get from this. Average dumbass Russian only cares about his ass, and the pretended “glory”. There is no “Conservative brotherhood which spans across the ocean”. They don’t speak your language, they don’t have the same problem, and they hate YOU with passion, because on average, they are racist and dumb.
So my only hypothesis is that tankies think (??) that by going “contrarian” they show how smart they are, and that “did the research” lol.
No, it’s because “America bad”. There’s a lot of reasons to hate America, and the drip feeding of munitions to Ukraine is one of them. I think we should have been sending everything from the start with the only restriction being no hitting civilian targets. A million 155 shells a week. Tomahawks. Predator drones. Hell, even F-15s. I agree, end the war, but end it in a Ukrainian victory with their borders restored.
It’s even worse than that. It’s “America bad, therefore Russia good.” As if there has to be some sort of cosmic balance.
There was never any chance of Ukrainian victory. Russia is not that weak and everyone knew it from the start.
But arming ukrainians and sending them to die weakens Russia, so the US likes that. It’s all a game, and none of it was ever in the interest of Ukraine nor its people.
Russia has a long and proud history of losing to "smaller, weaker " countries. Russo Japanese war, WW1, Polish Soviet war of 1919, the winter war, Afghanistan, Chechen war until they paid homage to the Kadyrovs. there’s no reason to think there was never a chance at Ukrainian victory. Russia fumbles the bag plenty. But I get it. America bad so Russia stonk and good.
Yet 3 years later Russia still has not completed its objectives, took its eye off Syria, and needs troops & ammo from North Korea.
Tankies entire world view is formed around hating the US.
They will glorify terrible regimes that literally commit genocides and straight up murder thousands of innocents just because that regime is in opposition to US influence.
They use left wing language, but they do not care about leftist issues. They do not care about disabled people getting focibly euthanised, about anyone who dares critique the regime being forcibly silenced, about minorities being genocided (unless the US or NATO does it), that their “socialist states” literally have billionaires while others starve. They think it’s all US propaganda. (Alternatively, they’ll admit part of it and say it’s for the greater good).
A much simpler way of putting that second picture is: " . . . but that doesn’t mean you have to support another empire."
I’m not a tankie, but I probably am what everyone in this thread is calling a “tankie”, so here’s my answer:
Yes, it is extremely bad that Russia invaded Ukraine. The ideal scenario would have been Ukraine quickly repelling the invasion when it happened. But we don’t live in magic fantasy world where everyone gets what they deserve. We live in the real world, where Ukraine cannot possibly defeat Russia in a war. The option which saves the most Ukrainian lives is a negotiated peace, with Russia getting much more of what they want than we would like.
All that is achieved by pouring more weapons into Ukraine is prolonging the meatgrinder for years, wiping out an entire generation of Ukrainians and risking a global nuclear war.
Remember that the original Canadian intent of the UN Peacekeepers was that they would forcibly create and enforce peace.
It was the USSR and the USA that objected to the concept.
Similarly if most countries have a mutual defence pact, no one country will be able to invade another without being at war with literally the whole world.
I’m afraid that mutual defense isn’t as iron clad as you think. If Article 5 of NATO ever gets triggered you’ll get a masterclass on weaseling out of obligations. It’s ironic because Ukraine may already be receiving the kind of support a full NATO member is entitled to.
Unfortunately with Trump the US will try to weasel their way out. Europe knows too well what happens.
It only works if you actually commit to it.
But imagine the implications if a country did not commit to it (bar an obvious one like Hungary or Turkey). They’ll likely get sanctioned, probably will have trouble entering any useful alliances for the next decade or so because no one trusts them anymore.
Ireland has peacekeepers between Israel and Lebanon right now. They wouldn’t be there if “create peace” was one of the missions.
Peace must exist, however briefly, and then the peacekeepers place themselves in harm’s way to keep the peace.
Extend the mission to militarily “create peace” and suddenly you are just NATO/USA. How can either side trust a peace that was enforced upon them and not call it a defeat, whose borders are disputed for eternity? Every nationalist who wants to stir sentiment can just say “look what the British/Americans/UN imposed on us”. Outside forces drawing borders is pretty much the cause of 90% of warfare, civil and otherwise, for the last 80 years.
