One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
Irrespective of the merits of the Trump insurrection exclusion point the US's democratic system is creaking pretty alarmingly. Something like 25%-50% do not believe elections are conducted fairly, and the ability to legally challenge processes and decisions is becoming expected rather than a right to exercise when there are problems, and the willingness of legislators to place their thumb on the scales with gerrymandering or state level election rules seems to be increasing, as well as potential willingness to just ignore an outcome.
The key actors there are very much Trumpists, but that in itself causes a reaction among opponents which is injurious to democracy.
No, the USA is not about to collapse, and honestly their system has held up remarkably well considering all the travails of the last 250 years, but its also in a much worse state than I think many of them like to admit.
It has the potential to: 1) Trump loses the election despite the best efforts of GOP officials and armed miltias. We know what comes next - a full scale insurrection. 2) Trump wins the election and tells America all the things he will do on day 1 of assuming dictatorial powers. Full-blown constitutional crisis as officials from the Joint Chiefs down say they won't obey, whilst others denounce these "traitors" and demand their arrest. After noon EST on 20th January 2025, all hell breaks loose.
The only ways to prevent this are for the crazies to calm down, or for Trump to be excluded from the GE.
And exactly how far do you go to exclude Trump?
If this latest dodgy legal nonsense is stymied by SCOTUS (as I believe it will be), then what?
I am reasonably surprised that somebody hasn't tried to kill him yet.
Likewise
If this courtroom wankery fails, then I reckon someone will have a pop
He spends a lot of time cheating on the golf course where a hypothetical sniper has a lot of flags to help estimate wind speed.
Nah, he could just hide in a bunker.
OGH's bet on Haley would be a fair way to being all green though.
Well, as you putt it like that..... I shouldn't encourage you.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
There may well only be two intellectually coherent positions on Ukraine, but there is only one realpolitik position: do something in between.
"A citizen's right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution.[1] It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system.
Laws and regulations governing jury selection and conviction/acquittal requirements vary from state to state (and are not available in courts of American Samoa), but the fundamental right itself is mentioned five times in the Constitution: Once in the original text (Article III, Section 2) and four times in the Bill of Rights (in the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh Amendments)."
If you care about the future of right-wing politics, you would be better served spending your talents to confront and defeat Trump within the right-wing community, rather than Googling ways to use the US Constitution to get him off so that he might be free to undermine it still further.
I don't think American rightwing politics pivots on the opinions of a humble flint-knapper on an obscure UK politics blog
I am simply pointing out constitutional facts, as I see them; and plenty of centrists and lefty Americans agree with me: this legal chicanery is misguided and dangerous
You are right but I do not think the American right would need this as a precedent before launching their own dodgy lawsuits if they thought it might help. See for instance, 2020.
Well yes. Both sides are advancing further into madness
The Dems need to draw a breath, realise that Trump is eminently beatable, democratically - without all this iffy legal stuff which is liable to backfire - then get on and beat him
To borrow from David Allen Green's article:
What good is defeating Trump in a general elections – and being seen to defeat him by a sizeable votes – if the legitimacy of those elections is denied?
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
counterfactual: Boris (or Truss) weren't removed when they were.
For Boris, the sitting prime minister would have been suspended by the house of commons leading to a recall petition and a more chaotic change of leadership.
For Truss, the economy properly crashes leading to a VoNC in the government which passes marginally.
in either case (pick your own possible scenario if they didn't get kicked out) I would argue that the polls now would be worse for the Tories than they currently are.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
counterfactual: Boris (or Truss) weren't removed when they were.
For Boris, the sitting prime minister would have been suspended by the house of commons leading to a recall petition and a more chaotic change of leadership.
For Truss, the economy properly crashes leading to a VoNC in the government which passes marginally.
in either case (pick your own possible scenario if they didn't get kicked out) I would argue that the polls now would be worse for the Tories than they currently are.
I think there is a case the Tories would be polling better than now had they stuck with Boris. Mostly on the basis that I think the Boris-Truss-Sunak switcharoo was as lot more fundamentally damaging to their reputation and core support than I think they realised.
However, I also think we cannot assume they would have remained at around where they were when Boris was ousted, because the whole reason behind his ousting was that he personally kept getting the party and government into damaging situations, and there's little reason to believe that would not have continued. That he was unable to prevent his ousting also argues against the idea that Boris's inherent political skills are so much better than he would definitely have been able to restore confidence and support significantly, since clearly he had lost a lot of his mojo, hence losing his position.
So ultimately the disruption caused and the inability of Sunak to lead a recovery means they may be worse off now, but probably not as worse off as Boris fans would like to imagine, since they tend to do so on the basis things would be frozen in time or he would have seen a recovery.
Nah
The more he got away with, the more he would have tried, until eventually an even bigger whopper would have brought the whole sorry story to an end
"A citizen's right to a trial by jury is a central feature of the United States Constitution.[1] It is considered a fundamental principle of the American legal system.
Laws and regulations governing jury selection and conviction/acquittal requirements vary from state to state (and are not available in courts of American Samoa), but the fundamental right itself is mentioned five times in the Constitution: Once in the original text (Article III, Section 2) and four times in the Bill of Rights (in the Fifth, the Sixth, and the Seventh Amendments)."
If you care about the future of right-wing politics, you would be better served spending your talents to confront and defeat Trump within the right-wing community, rather than Googling ways to use the US Constitution to get him off so that he might be free to undermine it still further.
I don't think American rightwing politics pivots on the opinions of a humble flint-knapper on an obscure UK politics blog
I am simply pointing out constitutional facts, as I see them; and plenty of centrists and lefty Americans agree with me: this legal chicanery is misguided and dangerous
You are right but I do not think the American right would need this as a precedent before launching their own dodgy lawsuits if they thought it might help. See for instance, 2020.
Well yes. Both sides are advancing further into madness
The Dems need to draw a breath, realise that Trump is eminently beatable, democratically - without all this iffy legal stuff which is liable to backfire - then get on and beat him
To borrow from David Allen Green's article:
What good is defeating Trump in a general elections – and being seen to defeat him by a sizeable votes – if the legitimacy of those elections is denied?
Exactly. How can you stand in a presidential election if you don't accept that elections are how presidents are chosen?
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
Irrespective of the merits of the Trump insurrection exclusion point the US's democratic system is creaking pretty alarmingly. Something like 25%-50% do not believe elections are conducted fairly, and the ability to legally challenge processes and decisions is becoming expected rather than a right to exercise when there are problems, and the willingness of legislators to place their thumb on the scales with gerrymandering or state level election rules seems to be increasing, as well as potential willingness to just ignore an outcome.
The key actors there are very much Trumpists, but that in itself causes a reaction among opponents which is injurious to democracy.
No, the USA is not about to collapse, and honestly their system has held up remarkably well considering all the travails of the last 250 years, but its also in a much worse state than I think many of them like to admit.
It has the potential to: 1) Trump loses the election despite the best efforts of GOP officials and armed miltias. We know what comes next - a full scale insurrection. 2) Trump wins the election and tells America all the things he will do on day 1 of assuming dictatorial powers. Full-blown constitutional crisis as officials from the Joint Chiefs down say they won't obey, whilst others denounce these "traitors" and demand their arrest. After noon EST on 20th January 2025, all hell breaks loose.
The only ways to prevent this are for the crazies to calm down, or for Trump to be excluded from the GE.
And exactly how far do you go to exclude Trump?
If this latest dodgy legal nonsense is stymied by SCOTUS (as I believe it will be), then what?
I am reasonably surprised that somebody hasn't tried to kill him yet.
Likewise
If this courtroom wankery fails, then I reckon someone will have a pop
He spends a lot of time cheating on the golf course where a hypothetical sniper has a lot of flags to help estimate wind speed.
Nah, he could just hide in a bunker.
OGH's bet on Haley would be a fair way to being all green though.
Well, as you putt it like that..... I shouldn't encourage you.
No, but I wood do it anyway so I shouldn't worry too much.
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
Irrespective of the merits of the Trump insurrection exclusion point the US's democratic system is creaking pretty alarmingly. Something like 25%-50% do not believe elections are conducted fairly, and the ability to legally challenge processes and decisions is becoming expected rather than a right to exercise when there are problems, and the willingness of legislators to place their thumb on the scales with gerrymandering or state level election rules seems to be increasing, as well as potential willingness to just ignore an outcome.
The key actors there are very much Trumpists, but that in itself causes a reaction among opponents which is injurious to democracy.
No, the USA is not about to collapse, and honestly their system has held up remarkably well considering all the travails of the last 250 years, but its also in a much worse state than I think many of them like to admit.
It has the potential to: 1) Trump loses the election despite the best efforts of GOP officials and armed miltias. We know what comes next - a full scale insurrection. 2) Trump wins the election and tells America all the things he will do on day 1 of assuming dictatorial powers. Full-blown constitutional crisis as officials from the Joint Chiefs down say they won't obey, whilst others denounce these "traitors" and demand their arrest. After noon EST on 20th January 2025, all hell breaks loose.
The only ways to prevent this are for the crazies to calm down, or for Trump to be excluded from the GE.
And exactly how far do you go to exclude Trump?
If this latest dodgy legal nonsense is stymied by SCOTUS (as I believe it will be), then what?
What do I have to do with it? Trump is ineligible. If the SC rules otherwise they are rewriting the 14th - which is their right to do so.
You keep describing this as "dodgy legal nonsense". It is the Constitution of the United States of America. Why is it nonsense when being used as intended to bar insurrectionists, but not nonsense when being used as never conceived to justify why AR15s and other assault weapons should be freely available?
I fully expect Trump to be on the ballot. Whether you think invoking the constitution is smart politically for the Dems or not (and it isn't), the Constitution remains there. It doesn't care who Trump is or how many support him. It just states the conditions which govern who can be a candidate.
It is, of course, not “the Dems” that are doing this. It’s not the Biden administration; it’s not the DNC. It is a number of individual actors and pressure groups who have brought legal cases, some who support the Democrats, but also some who support the Republicans (including one (no hope) Republican Presidential candidate).
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
I know Arnie isn't eligible but why is AOC not eligible?
Wiki said she was 34
You have to be 35 to actually take office. But she can stand for President as long as she will be able to assume office in January 2025 - which she will.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
I think we can offer more support to Ukraine without triggering nuclear war. But we cannot sit back and allow Putin to win, he has unfinished territorial business elsewhere in Eastern Europe and appeasement doesn't work. He must be stopped here.
It took them a fucking year to take Bakhmut which is a town the size of Stafford with only slightly less incest. They can't take Kharkov which is 20km from the border. How much more stopped do you need them to be?
There are no long term advantages for Russia if they consolidate all their gains, and thus no disadvantages for others if they do?
It's curious though, because it would seem from this comment you think their victories have been largely pyhrric and not worth much or much to worry about, but I'm sure you had been very dismissive of the concept previously.
I think in the end Russia will retain most if not all of what they currently hold, at least for this generation.
I think Dura is right, and the "send enough hardware to keep the war going" strategy is pretty cynical, since it tolerates any amount of human horror in the front lines at zero human cost to us. Weakening the Russian military makes some realpolitik sense but it's not a sufficient war aim to justify interminable war. We are supporting a maximalist Ukrainian "every square inch of our soil" approach without actually intervening enough to make it feasible. It would be better to say that we absolutely guarantee Kyiv and the western provinces, if necessary with NATO troops, but will not indefinitely fund and arm an ineffective attempt to take Crimea and Donbas. Arguably, Zelensky - not historically a supernationalist - needs that in order to tell his more extreme supporters that refusing any kind of cease-fire is not a viable strategy.
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
You keep describing this as "dodgy legal nonsense"...
The trick to understanding the UK is that rich people think the law is an irrelevance that does not apply to them, and that they are correct in that thought.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
Very much a curates egg, as he had some strange affinities in recent years, but has made some exceptional work over the years on Cambodia, East Timor, and on the dark side of Australia.
I often don't agree with him, but his writings and documentaries are well worth watching.
...If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous...
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
I think we can offer more support to Ukraine without triggering nuclear war. But we cannot sit back and allow Putin to win, he has unfinished territorial business elsewhere in Eastern Europe and appeasement doesn't work. He must be stopped here.
It took them a fucking year to take Bakhmut which is a town the size of Stafford with only slightly less incest. They can't take Kharkov which is 20km from the border. How much more stopped do you need them to be?
There are no long term advantages for Russia if they consolidate all their gains, and thus no disadvantages for others if they do?
It's curious though, because it would seem from this comment you think their victories have been largely pyhrric and not worth much or much to worry about, but I'm sure you had been very dismissive of the concept previously.
I think in the end Russia will retain most if not all of what they currently hold, at least for this generation.
I think Dura is right, and the "send enough hardware to keep the war going" strategy is pretty cynical, since it tolerates any amount of human horror in the front lines at zero human cost to us. Weakening the Russian military makes some realpolitik sense but it's not a sufficient war aim to justify interminable war. We are supporting a maximalist Ukrainian "every square inch of our soil" approach without actually intervening enough to make it feasible. It would be better to say that we absolutely guarantee Kyiv and the western provinces, if necessary with NATO troops, but will not indefinitely fund and arm an ineffective attempt to take Crimea and Donbas. Arguably, Zelensky - not historically a supernationalist - needs that in order to tell his more extreme supporters that refusing any kind of cease-fire is not a viable strategy.
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
Your answer seems to deny the Ukrainians their agency. It is up to the Ukrainians what human cost they wish to pay, not us.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
No one who can afford not to is interested in buying Russian kit now.
We are probably turning a profit on increased sales to Middle Eastern potentiate and dictators as a result.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect?...
Always a good question and one I forgot to ask. Thank you.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
events over the last 50 years or so will have had more impact on people and how they vote than has done in the past.
if you think about it those people who will be voting for the first time at the next election will barely be old enough to remember the 'election that never was'.
those people in their 20s, 30s and 40s won't remember the winter for discontent but will remember the Tories falling apart in the 90's, a 'generally' stable time under Tony Blair and Tories causing Brexit which they generally voted against.
People over the age of 50 will remember the winter of discontent and still hold it against Labour.
What parties do to overcome these obstacles is important. between 1994-97 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did a lot of work on proving that they could be trusted with the economy. between 2005 and 2010 Cameron did a lot to prove that the tories weren't fixated on europe (didn't last long though). since the last election SKS has done a lot to get rid of the antisemitism and to also prove to people that they, again, can be trusted with the economy.
in order to get back into government again the tories need to spend time proving that they are not a mess (and are not fixated on brexit). but in order to do that they need to want to do so.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
No one who can afford not to is interested in buying Russian kit now.
We are probably turning a profit on increased sales to Middle Eastern potentiate and dictators as a result.
My instinctual reaction was to shout: "China!" but it seems that China's arms exports have actually been decreasing a little over the last five years. Perhaps because of quality and workmanship concerns, and perhaps because China's been stockpiling for geopolitical reasons.
It'll be interesting to see if this turns around post-2022.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It may not be quite so skewed by age at the next election. The crosstabs still show a Tory lead in the over 65's, but nowhere near the previous support.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
And of course it's a mix of the two, with caveats to both.
Older people tend right, but some of the things that tip people that way - like home ownership and retirement security - aren't working like they used to.
And there are cohort effects - especially during the formative political years of later youth and early adulthood - that take a long time to work through the generations.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
It'll be a bit of both but some cohorts will lean more one way and others will lean more the other. if you lived through the 70's you're more likely to lean tory. if you lived through the 80's and 90s you're more likely to lean the other way. I suspect Brexit is going to swing this cohort of new voters towards labour more than other events
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
All of which argues for a speedy SC ruling on the matter.
You can’t just wish away laws, particularly those encoded in the Constitution (not a few would argue the Second Amendment is equally insane, for example).
This really is a key point. The law is stupid sometimes, but it's the law. It has to be changed, not ignored. If various states are interpreting the 14th Amendment in a particular way and it is wrong, or even if it is correct but people think that is a bad thing, there's only one body that can swiftly decide it and, effectively, change what the law means and requires if they think that is appropriate.
I think we can all agree that the SCOTUS needs to rule very soon, and I am pretty certain which way it will go
I think I agree with Leon here. We are so used to democracy that we take it for granted, but if up to half the US population thinks that their preferred candidate has been barred from standing by the assessment of judges of his behaviour, a significant number will be disillusioned with the system altogether, and that's a very bad thing. It would narrow the difference from Russia, where anyone seriously critical of Putin is prevented on flimsy grounds from standing at all. The fact that most of us here think Trump is dangerous and nuts shouldn't blind us to the fact that a large chunk of the electorate would like to vote for him.
A pragmatic reason for hoping it doesn't get to SCOTUS before the election is that if they rule in his favo(u)r it will give his candidacy a significant boost. "The Supreme Court says he's OK, what's your problem?" will be the take of supporters, even if the ruling is on narrow legal grounds.
So what are you supposed to do if you're a judge hearing a challenge to his eligibility, just make up a spurious reason to throw it out?
There is something utterly batshit about all of this. Trump is ineligible. He doesn't need a criminal conviction because it isn't a criminal penalty. He simply cannot take the office of President.
I get the argument of "let the voters decide". But the voters can't decide on Arnold Schwarzenegger - he's ineligible. He may be the preferred candidate but *he's ineligible*. Democracy only works within the framework created to support it.
Either you support the constitution or you don't. You can't use textural and "what did the founders" arguments to support the 2nd Amendment, then say "to hell with textural and founders" to ignore the 14th Amendment.
Well you can. If you have no interest in the things you claim to have an interest in. And that is the reality. The GOP have decided to overturn the republic they claim to be defending.
This chap, a former MAGA Republican turned virulent anti-Trumper, was vocally opposed to the cases to take Trump off the ballot, even just for primaries, because people should vote for who they choose and it would only make him more popular, but I think he makes the point well at 7 that really no option is is going to go 'well' here.
1. The Constitution matters. Someone who engaged in insurrection cannot be President every bit as much as someone who isn’t at least 35 yrs old.
2. I believe Trump engaged in insurrection, but what I believe doesn’t matter. Each state, or Congress, or ultimately the federal court system makes that determination.
3. Each state runs their elections & determines who qualifies for the ballot. Maine & Colorado had the authority to do what they did.
4. Trump has the right to appeal. He’s entitled to due process.
5. I’d rather kick Trump’s ass at the ballot box than kick him off the ballot, but if the courts determine he’s not eligible, so be it. We are a nation of laws. The courts (ultimately SCOTUS) will decide this issue. And we all must accept that decision.
6. Yes, this is unprecedented. Well, what Trump did in 2020 was fucking unprecedented too.
7. Yes, kicking Trump off the ballot might tear this country apart. But so might convicting Trump of a crime. So what. Does that mean we don’t hold him accountable for crimes he committed? No. We can’t do that. Because in this country no one is above the law.
I can understand why you wouldn't want a seditious traitor to be President, though it's a rather odd stipulation given that the Constitution (though not the 14th Amendment) was written by seditious traitors.
But why on earth shouldn't a 34-year-old, or for that matter an 18-year-old, be President if he gets the support of enough eligible voters? One of our greatest Prime Minsters was only 24 when he assumed office.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
I think we can offer more support to Ukraine without triggering nuclear war. But we cannot sit back and allow Putin to win, he has unfinished territorial business elsewhere in Eastern Europe and appeasement doesn't work. He must be stopped here.
It took them a fucking year to take Bakhmut which is a town the size of Stafford with only slightly less incest. They can't take Kharkov which is 20km from the border. How much more stopped do you need them to be?
There are no long term advantages for Russia if they consolidate all their gains, and thus no disadvantages for others if they do?
It's curious though, because it would seem from this comment you think their victories have been largely pyhrric and not worth much or much to worry about, but I'm sure you had been very dismissive of the concept previously.
I think in the end Russia will retain most if not all of what they currently hold, at least for this generation.
(snip)
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
You keep on saying this Nick, but if there is a ceasefire, why do you trust Russia? Haven't their actions over the last twenty years shown that they are absolutely untrustworthy when it comes to geopolitics?
And as for giving Donbass and Crimea to Russia: how many other people are you willing to hand over to them? The Baltic states? Moldova? Romania?
Also note that Russia's *minimal* claims are for vast tranches of land they haven't actually occupied. As one example, when you say 'the Donbass', do you mean the areas of it Russia currently controls, or do you expect Ukrainians to cede territory to whatever borders Russia sees fit? For instance, Odessa or Kharkiv?
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
All of which argues for a speedy SC ruling on the matter.
You can’t just wish away laws, particularly those encoded in the Constitution (not a few would argue the Second Amendment is equally insane, for example).
This really is a key point. The law is stupid sometimes, but it's the law. It has to be changed, not ignored. If various states are interpreting the 14th Amendment in a particular way and it is wrong, or even if it is correct but people think that is a bad thing, there's only one body that can swiftly decide it and, effectively, change what the law means and requires if they think that is appropriate.
I think we can all agree that the SCOTUS needs to rule very soon, and I am pretty certain which way it will go
I think I agree with Leon here. We are so used to democracy that we take it for granted, but if up to half the US population thinks that their preferred candidate has been barred from standing by the assessment of judges of his behaviour, a significant number will be disillusioned with the system altogether, and that's a very bad thing. It would narrow the difference from Russia, where anyone seriously critical of Putin is prevented on flimsy grounds from standing at all. The fact that most of us here think Trump is dangerous and nuts shouldn't blind us to the fact that a large chunk of the electorate would like to vote for him.
A pragmatic reason for hoping it doesn't get to SCOTUS before the election is that if they rule in his favo(u)r it will give his candidacy a significant boost. "The Supreme Court says he's OK, what's your problem?" will be the take of supporters, even if the ruling is on narrow legal grounds.
So what are you supposed to do if you're a judge hearing a challenge to his eligibility, just make up a spurious reason to throw it out?
There is something utterly batshit about all of this. Trump is ineligible. He doesn't need a criminal conviction because it isn't a criminal penalty. He simply cannot take the office of President.
I get the argument of "let the voters decide". But the voters can't decide on Arnold Schwarzenegger - he's ineligible. He may be the preferred candidate but *he's ineligible*. Democracy only works within the framework created to support it.
Either you support the constitution or you don't. You can't use textural and "what did the founders" arguments to support the 2nd Amendment, then say "to hell with textural and founders" to ignore the 14th Amendment.
Well you can. If you have no interest in the things you claim to have an interest in. And that is the reality. The GOP have decided to overturn the republic they claim to be defending.
This chap, a former MAGA Republican turned virulent anti-Trumper, was vocally opposed to the cases to take Trump off the ballot, even just for primaries, because people should vote for who they choose and it would only make him more popular, but I think he makes the point well at 7 that really no option is is going to go 'well' here.
1. The Constitution matters. Someone who engaged in insurrection cannot be President every bit as much as someone who isn’t at least 35 yrs old.
2. I believe Trump engaged in insurrection, but what I believe doesn’t matter. Each state, or Congress, or ultimately the federal court system makes that determination.
3. Each state runs their elections & determines who qualifies for the ballot. Maine & Colorado had the authority to do what they did.
4. Trump has the right to appeal. He’s entitled to due process.
5. I’d rather kick Trump’s ass at the ballot box than kick him off the ballot, but if the courts determine he’s not eligible, so be it. We are a nation of laws. The courts (ultimately SCOTUS) will decide this issue. And we all must accept that decision.
6. Yes, this is unprecedented. Well, what Trump did in 2020 was fucking unprecedented too.
7. Yes, kicking Trump off the ballot might tear this country apart. But so might convicting Trump of a crime. So what. Does that mean we don’t hold him accountable for crimes he committed? No. We can’t do that. Because in this country no one is above the law.
I can understand why you wouldn't want a seditious traitor to be President, though it's a rather odd stipulation given that the Constitution (though not the 14th Amendment) was written by seditious traitors.
But why on earth shouldn't a 34-year-old, or for that matter an 18-year-old, be President if he gets the support of enough eligible voters? One of our greatest Prime Minsters was only 24 when he assumed office.
The US Constitution isn't a very sensible document in many ways. Don't believe the hype.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
When the last-generation Western kit is proving to be better than current-generation Russian kit, you can be sure that anyone with the money and connections wants the new Western kit in future.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
And one of the bigger ironies is that investing in Ukraine’s defence is largely benefiting manufacturers in the US and Europe. It’s supporting jobs here. We should be all in for Ukraine. Russia has shown itself to be a paper tiger. Don’t give it the space to regroup.
The two propositions being debated here - letting Trump onto the ballot and (implicitly) pressuring Ukraine into some sort of surrender they don't want to make - are advocated by the site's pet ex-communist and pet wannabe fascist.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
I think we can offer more support to Ukraine without triggering nuclear war. But we cannot sit back and allow Putin to win, he has unfinished territorial business elsewhere in Eastern Europe and appeasement doesn't work. He must be stopped here.
It took them a fucking year to take Bakhmut which is a town the size of Stafford with only slightly less incest. They can't take Kharkov which is 20km from the border. How much more stopped do you need them to be?
There are no long term advantages for Russia if they consolidate all their gains, and thus no disadvantages for others if they do?
It's curious though, because it would seem from this comment you think their victories have been largely pyhrric and not worth much or much to worry about, but I'm sure you had been very dismissive of the concept previously.
I think in the end Russia will retain most if not all of what they currently hold, at least for this generation.
I think Dura is right, and the "send enough hardware to keep the war going" strategy is pretty cynical, since it tolerates any amount of human horror in the front lines at zero human cost to us. Weakening the Russian military makes some realpolitik sense but it's not a sufficient war aim to justify interminable war. We are supporting a maximalist Ukrainian "every square inch of our soil" approach without actually intervening enough to make it feasible. It would be better to say that we absolutely guarantee Kyiv and the western provinces, if necessary with NATO troops, but will not indefinitely fund and arm an ineffective attempt to take Crimea and Donbas. Arguably, Zelensky - not historically a supernationalist - needs that in order to tell his more extreme supporters that refusing any kind of cease-fire is not a viable strategy.
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
So basically a few years during which Russia can rearm before starting its aggression again...
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
No one who can afford not to is interested in buying Russian kit now.
We are probably turning a profit on increased sales to Middle Eastern potentiate and dictators as a result.
I'm not sure how much the UK is selling to the Middle East off the back of the Ukraine conflict. South Korea, which hasn't played much of a role, has been doing exceptionally well in that respect over the last year or so.
There will certainly be a lot more money spent on air defence over the next few years.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
No one who can afford not to is interested in buying Russian kit now.
We are probably turning a profit on increased sales to Middle Eastern potentiate and dictators as a result.
My instinctual reaction was to shout: "China!" but it seems that China's arms exports have actually been decreasing a little over the last five years. Perhaps because of quality and workmanship concerns, and perhaps because China's been stockpiling for geopolitical reasons.
It'll be interesting to see if this turns around post-2022.
China's sales of transport equipment to Russia have gone up dramatically.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I know very little about America, aside from the fact that it seems a political mess from this side of the pond.
But yesterday I listened to an In Our Time on the Federalist Papers; something I'd heard about in passing, but not really gone into any depth about. The program gave the impression that some of the ambiguities and problems with the constitution were deliberately put in to try to get it passed by the thirteen states.
The US constitution and its history is stuff I should probably read up a little more on. Does anyone have any suggestions (aside from the constitution itself, obvs.)?
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I fear the only 'end to the war' that you would find satisfactory is total capitulation to Putin's fascism, wherever he wants to extend it.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
That 1997 graph can't be right. Labour wouldn't have won if it were so.
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
I know Arnie isn't eligible but why is AOC not eligible?
She's 34. You have to be 35 or older.
She'll be 35 by the inauguration.
I'm assuming given they mentioned Arnie as well that the poster thinks AOC as a Puerto Rican isn't a 'natural born citizen.'
As it happens, however, she is (even Fox News accepts that) because any Puerto Rican born after 1899 is treated as a natural born US citizen.
I do hope she never becomes President or close to it though. She's not as bad as Trump (would be quite hard!) but she still has a distasteful 'if the voters don't agree with me the voters are wrong and must be ignored' which I don't think would serve the US in good stead.
You assume 100% wrongly
I was using her as an example of someone who - without getting into the technicalities of it - failed the age criteria, in the way that Arnie fails the natural born citizen criteria.
Well, in that case we were both 100% wrong, because as I've pointed out, she doesn't fail the age criteria.
Indeed. My “research” consisted of
1. Think of a young politician who @Leon might have heard of 2. Check her age on wiki
It was intended as an example, not a detailed argument
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
We should support initiatives to end the war. It is better to achieve an end to the war through a negotiated peace than merely through exhaustion. There is no contradiction between supporting Ukraine's ability to fight, while supporting the search for peace.
How did we achieve a long-term peace in Northern Ireland? We maintained robust security operations, while negotiating.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
It'll be a bit of both but some cohorts will lean more one way and others will lean more the other. if you lived through the 70's you're more likely to lean tory. if you lived through the 80's and 90s you're more likely to lean the other way. I suspect Brexit is going to swing this cohort of new voters towards labour more than other events
I suspect Brexit will be a millstone around the Tories' neck for many years to come. Particularly with the generation who had it enacted upon them when they didn't get a say.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
When the last-generation Western kit is proving to be better than current-generation Russian kit, you can be sure that anyone with the money and connections wants the new Western kit in future.
The UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles have proved very effective and seem to have been responsible for several of the Russian ship losses, the latest being the Novocherkassk last week. What is interesting is that they seem much harder to intercept than other types of missiles used by either side.
I know very little about America, aside from the fact that it seems a political mess from this side of the pond.
But yesterday I listened to an In Our Time on the Federalist Papers; something I'd heard about in passing, but not really gone into any depth about. The program gave the impression that some of the ambiguities and problems with the constitution were deliberately put in to try to get it passed by the thirteen states.
The US constitution and its history is stuff I should probably read up a little more on. Does anyone have any suggestions (aside from the constitution itself, obvs.)?
That was a good episode. A lot of the Constitution was, yes, compromise text, particularly over the issue of slavery.
"In Our Time: The Federalist Papers". Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the essays written in 1787/8 by some of the authors of the US Constitution which offer insight into the interpretation of the Constitution. BBC, 51 mins, see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r7sv
I know very little about America, aside from the fact that it seems a political mess from this side of the pond.
But yesterday I listened to an In Our Time on the Federalist Papers; something I'd heard about in passing, but not really gone into any depth about. The program gave the impression that some of the ambiguities and problems with the constitution were deliberately put in to try to get it passed by the thirteen states.
The US constitution and its history is stuff I should probably read up a little more on. Does anyone have any suggestions (aside from the constitution itself, obvs.)?
If you want to go deep into the weeds, this is a very good book, which deals with the history, politics and law at the time it was originally ratified.
The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution Michael J. Klarman
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
When the last-generation Western kit is proving to be better than current-generation Russian kit, you can be sure that anyone with the money and connections wants the new Western kit in future.
The UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles have proved very effective and seem to have been responsible for several of the Russian ship losses, the latest being the Novocherkassk last week. What is interesting is that they seem much harder to intercept than other types of missiles used by either side.
Our stuff has a good rep in Ukraine: Starstreak, Storm Shadow, Challenger, CVRTs have all performed well both absolutely and when compared to others.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
It's not an oligarch turf war - it's a dictatorship against a democracy. And apathy about the invasion (not SMO) is not self-interested at all - all it will do is to ensure that the next time we stand up against a tyrant, we'll have fewer if any allies to help us.
Another concern I have is, even if Trump is tossed from the ballot or loses the primaries or loses in the election, will that still make any difference to him and the utter loons who are driving him on? They genuinely don't seem to grasp the basic principles involved. They just think Trump is and should be President for Life regardless.
I am starting to think this will actually only come to an ending when he dies. And even though he is old and clearly not well, that could be a long way off yet.
For the most part, the 'loons' know perfectly well what a crook and charlatan he is, but he is the only major public figure who regular sticks it to the Libtards, so they don't care what he is.
Yes, and that is why Trump (and Johnson too) retain their support. Everyone knows they are lying scoundrels, but some are happy with that provided they bash their enemies.
It’s quite simple. For various reasons, some voters want to smash the government and watch the world burn.
Right wing media and social media keeps telling them stories about a corrupt elite/EU/immigrants/woke/(insert algorithmic preferred scapegoat here) damaging their life chances and robbing their families future.
For these voters electing Trump or Boris is a rational choice. Who better to burn it all down than an agent of chaos.
The right need to defeat Trump, Boris and Farage. They created them
Well the Tories removed Boris, not that it helped them electorally.
How can you know?
The fact the Tories are polling worse now than when Boris resigned and polled even worse than now when Truss resigned
If the election is in the autumn I expect you will look back of the polling now and think what might have been...
Remember your typical Tory vote is dying at a faster rate than any other party simply because they are older and mainly retired....
IIUC the number of people entering the population of "old people" thru aging is bigger than the number of people leaving the population of "old people" thru death. So the number of olds is going up, not down. This will be the case for a few years yet until it reverses.
OTOH the average age of those willing to vote Tory despite all is also going up AIUI ...
A lot of what happens next depends on this.
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
It is an age effect or a cohort effect? It’s a question asked in many epidemiological studies. Indeed, you just have to wait to see what happens next!
It'll be a bit of both but some cohorts will lean more one way and others will lean more the other. if you lived through the 70's you're more likely to lean tory. if you lived through the 80's and 90s you're more likely to lean the other way. I suspect Brexit is going to swing this cohort of new voters towards labour more than other events
I suspect Brexit will be a millstone around the Tories' neck for many years to come. Particularly with the generation who had it enacted upon them when they didn't get a say.
it will for the cohort of voters who remember 2016 and its aftermath. but by the end of the decade new voters will have little or no memory of Brexit happening.
by then Labour will have had the opportunity to mess things up and to push the next cohort away from them.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
When the last-generation Western kit is proving to be better than current-generation Russian kit, you can be sure that anyone with the money and connections wants the new Western kit in future.
The UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles have proved very effective and seem to have been responsible for several of the Russian ship losses, the latest being the Novocherkassk last week. What is interesting is that they seem much harder to intercept than other types of missiles used by either side.
Our stuff has a good rep in Ukraine: Starstreak, Storm Shadow, Challenger have all performed well both absolutely and when compared to others.
And NLAWs.
The problem is we just don't have enough of any of them.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
As Zelenskyy famously said at the start of the war: "“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”
As long as that remains their position we have a moral and strategic interest in providing that ammunition. The only people with the right to pause this war are the Ukrainians themselves.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
I think we can offer more support to Ukraine without triggering nuclear war. But we cannot sit back and allow Putin to win, he has unfinished territorial business elsewhere in Eastern Europe and appeasement doesn't work. He must be stopped here.
It took them a fucking year to take Bakhmut which is a town the size of Stafford with only slightly less incest. They can't take Kharkov which is 20km from the border. How much more stopped do you need them to be?
There are no long term advantages for Russia if they consolidate all their gains, and thus no disadvantages for others if they do?
It's curious though, because it would seem from this comment you think their victories have been largely pyhrric and not worth much or much to worry about, but I'm sure you had been very dismissive of the concept previously.
I think in the end Russia will retain most if not all of what they currently hold, at least for this generation.
I think Dura is right, and the "send enough hardware to keep the war going" strategy is pretty cynical, since it tolerates any amount of human horror in the front lines at zero human cost to us. Weakening the Russian military makes some realpolitik sense but it's not a sufficient war aim to justify interminable war. We are supporting a maximalist Ukrainian "every square inch of our soil" approach without actually intervening enough to make it feasible. It would be better to say that we absolutely guarantee Kyiv and the western provinces, if necessary with NATO troops, but will not indefinitely fund and arm an ineffective attempt to take Crimea and Donbas. Arguably, Zelensky - not historically a supernationalist - needs that in order to tell his more extreme supporters that refusing any kind of cease-fire is not a viable strategy.
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
It’s kinda a sweet - but very naive - how you still trust Putin’s Russia. He’s a malign actor and has been for 20+ years
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I fear the only 'end to the war' that you would find satisfactory is total capitulation to Putin's fascism, wherever he wants to extend it.
The aim should be to contain the Russian regime and avoid nuclear escalation, not to rush in to World War 3 because any alternative is 'capitulation to fascism'.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
We should support initiatives to end the war. It is better to achieve an end to the war through a negotiated peace than merely through exhaustion. There is no contradiction between supporting Ukraine's ability to fight, while supporting the search for peace.
How did we achieve a long-term peace in Northern Ireland? We maintained robust security operations, while negotiating.
Only works when both sides are willing to negotiate on good faith
I know very little about America, aside from the fact that it seems a political mess from this side of the pond.
But yesterday I listened to an In Our Time on the Federalist Papers; something I'd heard about in passing, but not really gone into any depth about. The program gave the impression that some of the ambiguities and problems with the constitution were deliberately put in to try to get it passed by the thirteen states.
The US constitution and its history is stuff I should probably read up a little more on. Does anyone have any suggestions (aside from the constitution itself, obvs.)?
If you want to go deep into the weeds, this is a very good book, which deals with the history, politics and law at the time it was originally ratified.
The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution Michael J. Klarman
"Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen: This book provides a detailed account of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, offering insights into the debates and compromises that shaped the document.
"The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison" by James Madison and Edward J. Larson: This book presents a narrative history based on James Madison's notes, giving you a firsthand perspective on the drafting of the Constitution.
"Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution" by Richard Beeman: Beeman explores the lives and personalities of the delegates involved in the Constitutional Convention, shedding light on the human aspect of this historic event.
"The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Joseph J. Ellis: While not solely focused on the Constitution, this book by Ellis examines the years leading up to its drafting, highlighting the key figures and events that paved the way for its creation.
"Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788" by Pauline Maier: Maier's work explores the ratification process, examining the debates and discussions that took place across the thirteen states as they considered adopting the new Constitution.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I fear the only 'end to the war' that you would find satisfactory is total capitulation to Putin's fascism, wherever he wants to extend it.
The aim should be to contain the Russian regime and avoid nuclear escalation, not to rush in to World War 3 because any alternative is 'capitulation to fascism'.
How does your approach of capitulation contain the Russian regime? If anything, it emboldens Russia's expansionism, because they know we will give in to what they want.
Your approach makes WW3 *more* likely, not less, as it means we have less power, and they have more power, once they finally cross a red line that we cannot tolerate. And we will have fewer friends.
We should have acted much more strongly back in 2014. We did not, and you have not learnt that lesson.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
There are only two intellectually coherent positions on the SMO: all in or all out.
If the west wants Ukraine to win then go all in and wear the risks. This is the Death Cult option favoured by some on here wherein we turn our faces to the glow of the thermonuclear firestorm wearing the beatific smiles of the righteous.
The all out option is self-interested apathy in which we ponder what the fuck an oligarch turf war in a particularly unlovely corner of Eastern Europe has got to do with us. This position is occasionally clad in the motley of principled pacifism for purposes of presentation.
The current median policy position, which the west embraces, of just enough of everything to keep Ukraine in the game without any articulation of a strategic goal is a recipe for years of endless carnage.
Keeping Ukraine in the game is a much better policy than removing them from it.
From a purely “realist” viewpoint, grinding up the Russian army and navy makes excellent sense.
Indeed from a cynical financial perspective it is the best value out of our defence budget. Russia is defanged, its equipment and command structures shown to be inadequate. What fighting capacity Russia has remaining is bogged down in an intractable morass that at some point will break it, as did Aghanistan.
We should fund the Ukranians as long as they want to fight.
Plus the capabilities of western made kit are proven in combat, so easier to win export orders from Middle Eastern despots and dictators.
When the last-generation Western kit is proving to be better than current-generation Russian kit, you can be sure that anyone with the money and connections wants the new Western kit in future.
The UK Storm Shadow cruise missiles have proved very effective and seem to have been responsible for several of the Russian ship losses, the latest being the Novocherkassk last week. What is interesting is that they seem much harder to intercept than other types of missiles used by either side.
Our stuff has a good rep in Ukraine: Starstreak, Storm Shadow, Challenger have all performed well both absolutely and when compared to others.
And NLAWs.
The problem is we just don't have enough of any of them.
Lessons should be learnt. But won't be.
The NLAWs were critical in the first phase of the war and seem to have played a major role in stopping the Russian attack on Kyiv. They are not mentioned so much these days when all the focus has changed to drones. But yes, subject to the risk of obsoletism one of the essential lessons of Ukraine is that we need more kit and much, much more ammunition.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I fear the only 'end to the war' that you would find satisfactory is total capitulation to Putin's fascism, wherever he wants to extend it.
The aim should be to contain the Russian regime and avoid nuclear escalation, not to rush in to World War 3 because any alternative is 'capitulation to fascism'.
How does your approach of capitulation contain the Russian regime? If anything, it emboldens Russia's expansionism, because they know we will give in to what they want.
Your approach makes WW3 *more* likely, not less, as it means we have less power, and they have more power, once they finally cross a red line that we cannot tolerate. And we will have fewer friends.
We should have acted much more strongly back in 2014. We did not, and you have not learnt that lesson.
If you re-read the thread I am not arguing for 'capitulation', this is a conclusion you have jumped to. It is a variation of Dura's third option - namely that we keep backing Ukraine but with the aim of moving towards a more defensive stance that effectively freezes the conflict. I have got a dim view of Russia and I don think that any 'negotiation' with it is possible. There probably then needs to be a massive defensive line across Europe, the Iron Curtain mark 2.
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
Communists struggle to accept that the events of 1989-91 actually happened, and that their Communist states are now corrupt capitalist war-mongering oligarchies little different to Tsarist Russia. So they pretend that they are still the workers states that they imagined they always were.
The British hard left has been Pro-Russian for a century, its a hard thing to move on from.
IMV it's much more complex than that. I think it's fair to say that @NickPalmer is no longer a Communist, yet when Putin started his fascistic, imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine, Nick immediately started blaming us - the west - for the attacks. He said we should not 'poke' Russia into invading Ukraine. He repeated the 'Ukrainian Nazi' rubbish, and also the 'no eastwards NATO expansion' b/s.
Then you get the likes of @Dura_Ace - who seems to dislike everyone - who is all too keen to fall back into Ukrainians-are-lesser-Russians rhetoric that could come straight off Telegram.
And this is a real problem: Ukraine is the victim in this, and has done f-all to 'deserve' the beating Russia is giving it. Putin has full agency, and trying to blame 'us' for his evil is tantamount to excusing that evil.
In this, as is often the case, the far left and far right find common cause.
And correspondingly centre left and centre right have found common ground in supporting self determination and the right of Ukraine to decide its own future. This is another driver on realignment of the electorate - not dissimilar to how the culture war approach has been pushed by the right as a wedge to split social liberals and conservatives. Interesting times.
In terms of Ukraine, the problem as I see it, is that the west is likely to tire of spending endless amounts of money on ammunition and tech which get rapidly depleted and the enthusiasm for the war does not extend to going to actually send people to fight and die in a trench conflict. This is what Putin is saying and he will probably turn out to be correct. In the end it may not be all that useful to think of these conflicts in terms of 'right and wrong' because often the 'right' side lose. Looking for ways of avoiding these conflicts, or bringing them to an end in some way isn't 'victim blaming' it is just being realistic.
In translation, give Putin what he wants, because you can’t defeat him.
It isn't a realist view to seek to avoid conflict when the conflict is already happening. Halting fighting by encouraging stalemate or surrender is not avoiding that conflict. In fact it freezes it and makes aggressors realise it works so more will try it.
The question is whether letting it happen and doing nothing is best, regrettably or otherwise.
In 2014 the answer for the world was yes. 2022 showed that was a big mistake. Now in 2024 people are deciding to give 2014 a try again.
No it's not easy, Russia is in this for the long haul and are not pushovers, and The West cannot bankroll forever.
But an immediate halt to fighting is not without cost either.
The suggestion is not for an 'immediate halt' to the fighting, it is to try and bring the situation to a conclusion, probably in some kind of freeze as has been said before, without compromising the ability of Ukraine to defend itself going forward. In hindsight it would probably have been better to do that in the aftermath of the previous military successes. The problem is the mindset that 'we must do this because it is right'. This applies amongst the people who advocate it as long as it is abstract amounts of money, it disappears at the point where they actually need to go and die, or send their children to go and die, which of course they will find reasons not to do.
Incidentally I had a (presumably paid) facebook ad from a charity that claimed to be linked to the UN stating that the refugee convention allowed people to flee Ukraine where they had lost their home and faced persecution. From what exactly? The Zelensky regime? The Russians are laughing at us.
You may not be advocating an immediate halt. Many do, directly or by proposing options which lead to it by compromising defence.
I think that what I am suggesting is probably the policy we are trying to enact although whenever this is specifically aired in public it gets shouted down as appeasement and selling Ukraine out. A lot of posters on here just repeat propoganda about 'beating Russia back', in the same way as they repeat 'woke' talking points, whether they are aware of it or not.
I think it's an incorrect calculation, for two reasons.
Russia doesn't want a deal, as they've made pretty clear - or rather they do, but the deal is that we give up and they don't. Any 'freeze' in current circumstances just leaves us with the same problem.
And secondly, the Russian invasion can be beaten, at a cost which is likely to be less than that of trying to maintain some sort of 'frozen' conflict.
If you do not mind, I'll add some more:
3) Russia has shown its territorial and power ambitions go much further than just Ukraine. Over the last two decades, we have folded every time, and Russia then picks a new fight - and each time, it gets riskier for us.
4) It will encourage other countries with territorial ambitions to perform similar adventures, knowing that the 'west' will not do much to stop them - and they can calculate the costs of the few actions we do make, such as sanctions, in advance. There *will* come a time when those territorial ambitions come into conflict with us, and at that point the cost of that conflict will be much, much greater.
5) Russia is untrustworthy. It lies repeatedly, and those lies are repeated, even on here. Take (1) as an example. How can we trust them that any frozen conflict will remain frozen?
Then there are a load of other issues, such as self-determination and simple right and wrong.
I doubt that any of you would join up to go in to WW1 style trench warfare in Ukraine or send your family to do it, or send our own regular troops there to die. That is what the war is at the moment and Ukraine has run out of men. So what you are actually saying is that we should throw everything in to a technical escalation of the conflict through supplying trillions of pounds worth of planes, missiles, bombs etc to try and give the Ukrainians an advantage. But then we encounter the 'Russia has a nuclear bomb' problem once again and it goes around in circles forever like this.
The strategic problem is that there is no broad appetite in the west for the current situation to carry on indefinitely, it is a destabilising situation, whereas for Putin the opposite is true, the current iteration of the war is a stabilising thing, it can run on and on forever.
I agree with the assessment of the strategic problem you present about the lack of broad appetite in the West and accordingly that this is a thonry geopolitical issue to realistically confront, but are we really still at the stage where going 'Bwah, you wouldn't go die in a Ukrainian trench yourself!' is seen as some kind of great argument?
The point is that it is easy for people to virtue signal about things like this when the personal stakes are non-existent. I think this point is always valid in wars. My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
So, isn’t the right thing to do to listen to those who do have a personal stake in the matter? The Ukrainians in the trenches want us to send them arms.
Inevitably so - but this is again appealing to notions of 'right vs wrong', useful for wartime propaganda but not for finding an end to the war.
I fear the only 'end to the war' that you would find satisfactory is total capitulation to Putin's fascism, wherever he wants to extend it.
The aim should be to contain the Russian regime and avoid nuclear escalation, not to rush in to World War 3 because any alternative is 'capitulation to fascism'.
How does your approach of capitulation contain the Russian regime? If anything, it emboldens Russia's expansionism, because they know we will give in to what they want.
Your approach makes WW3 *more* likely, not less, as it means we have less power, and they have more power, once they finally cross a red line that we cannot tolerate. And we will have fewer friends.
We should have acted much more strongly back in 2014. We did not, and you have not learnt that lesson.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but to use a tired old cliche "we are where we are".
How does this end? A ceasefire of some sort brokered by someone allowing both sides to rebuild and recover for round 2 in x years? Putin's death or ousting and a replacement with someone prepared to negotiate? Zelenskyy's death or ousting and a replacement with someone prepared to negotiate?
The West could decide to stop supporting Ukraine and that's a big risk with a Trump election victory in November? It seems less plausible China, Iran or North Korea will suddenly stop supporting Russia? I think Xi made a monumental blunder - he could have played the peacemaker, brokered a deal and won a lot of new friends but he just threw his lot in with Putin, another example of short-sighted leadership.
One of the notable things in the judgments to date is that none of the courts have had any difficulty in concluding that Trump is guilty of insurrection. Even the first instance court in Colorado concluded that but decided, slightly bizarrely, that the 14th Amendment did not apply to the President on the basis he is not an officer. The reasoning on that in both the appeal court and the decision from Maine looks quite compelling to me and I would be very surprised if Trump could prevail on that basis, even although he has been convicted of nothing yet.
That leaves him trying the argument that what he did did not amount to insurrection. The problem with that, as the Maine decision points out most clearly, is that this was not just a riot but a riot intended to interfere with Congress's certification of the results of the Presidential election and, at least temporarily, it succeeded in that purpose. If that is not an insurrection what is? The answer may be taking up arms against the United States in an organised way resulting in civil war. That is what this amendment was supposed to be for, after all. But the case law since does not seem to be favourable to Trump.
Call me old fashioned, but doesn’t English common law, and common sense, require that someone be convicted by a jury before the authorities go around barring people from office? If they can do that, why not just sling him in jail? Who needs trials anyway?
Here’s an idea. HAVE THE ELECTION. Let the American people decide
Explicitly not in this case.
There are lots of hurdles to qualify to stand for US President.
Is it wrong that AOC isn’t eligible? Is it wrong that Arnie isn’t eligible?
Similarly the 14th amendment disqualifies anyone who has engaged in insurrection from standing for office. It’s not a criminal sanction.
Common sense says you need a conviction. Honestly this isn’t hard. It’s Trump driving people mad
The left and the anti-Trump right is contorting itself into obscene positions to try and exclude him from the ballot; I understand the motivation but this course seems perilously amoral and probably illegal and I’m sure SCOTUS will - rightly - shut it down
Because who’s next? What if the Alabama Supreme Court doesn’t like the look of a democratic contender? Strike him/her off the ballot? Why not?
Democratic government is a rules-based system of governance in which those who participate are expected to accept its rules and not use extra-democratic means such as violence to overthrow the system itself, or to support or encourage others in doing so. It is entirely reasonable to bar someone who has demonstrated a disregard for this principle from participation.
Well, yes. But who decides when and where someone has "demonstrated a disregard for this process" - ie, supported insurrection?
It has to be a jury. That is the most basic principle of English common law. Trump has not been convicted by a jury of insurrection, therefore this is all a load of wanky and very dodgy legal sophistry dedicated to getting Trump off the ballot because the Left doesn't like him - it was a Democrat Supreme Court in Colorado which struck him down, likewise Maine
This way leads to madness, and civil war. Because - I say again - what is to stop a Republican Supreme Court in Idaho or Wyoming from deciding that they don't like the cut of some Democrat's jib, so he/she must be struck off the ballot in the same way? They won't need a criminal conviction by a jury to do that, just a hunch, and a bunch of senators that don't like said Democrat
It's fucking insane
Irrespective of the merits of the Trump insurrection exclusion point the US's democratic system is creaking pretty alarmingly. Something like 25%-50% do not believe elections are conducted fairly, and the ability to legally challenge processes and decisions is becoming expected rather than a right to exercise when there are problems, and the willingness of legislators to place their thumb on the scales with gerrymandering or state level election rules seems to be increasing, as well as potential willingness to just ignore an outcome.
The key actors there are very much Trumpists, but that in itself causes a reaction among opponents which is injurious to democracy.
No, the USA is not about to collapse, and honestly their system has held up remarkably well considering all the travails of the last 250 years, but its also in a much worse state than I think many of them like to admit.
It has the potential to: 1) Trump loses the election despite the best efforts of GOP officials and armed miltias. We know what comes next - a full scale insurrection. 2) Trump wins the election and tells America all the things he will do on day 1 of assuming dictatorial powers. Full-blown constitutional crisis as officials from the Joint Chiefs down say they won't obey, whilst others denounce these "traitors" and demand their arrest. After noon EST on 20th January 2025, all hell breaks loose.
The only ways to prevent this are for the crazies to calm down, or for Trump to be excluded from the GE.
And exactly how far do you go to exclude Trump?
If this latest dodgy legal nonsense is stymied by SCOTUS (as I believe it will be), then what?
What do I have to do with it? Trump is ineligible. If the SC rules otherwise they are rewriting the 14th - which is their right to do so.
You keep describing this as "dodgy legal nonsense". It is the Constitution of the United States of America. Why is it nonsense when being used as intended to bar insurrectionists, but not nonsense when being used as never conceived to justify why AR15s and other assault weapons should be freely available?
I fully expect Trump to be on the ballot. Whether you think invoking the constitution is smart politically for the Dems or not (and it isn't), the Constitution remains there. It doesn't care who Trump is or how many support him. It just states the conditions which govern who can be a candidate.
And as I’ve shown you, there are plenty of people - experts - non Trumpites - who think the US Constitution is far from clear on this “insurrection without trial” jigggery-pokery. So it will be left to SCOTUS to decide
It may turn out these Democrat legal maneuvers are stupid, dangerous AND illegal. Not ideal
On the latter point - how is petitioning a court "illegal".
On the substantive point, I have read quite a bit of stuff from either side - its fascinating to see 160 year old cases being cited.
On "insurrection without trial" there is no debate. No trial or conviction is required. You can describe that as "jiggery-pokery" but if you tret the Constitution as the GOP do it is clear what both the text and the authors say about it.
I agree with you that the legal proceedings are dangerous. But so is not proceeding. Set aside the candidate and the politics and step all the way back. Principles.
Does the will of a mob overturn the rule of law? Or the law itself? Or the constitution that creates the framework for laws?
Discard the word mob is that offends you. "A mass of people". Call them patriots if you like. Can a large number of patriots act to overturn the constitution and laws and the rule of law because they want something?
Can a politician expect to escape laws because they are a politician? Whatever happened to "all men are created equal?"
There's so much to be said about that. Mostly, that he concentrates on blaming us, and not Venezuela for threatening a smaller sovereign nation. And the far left's screeching of 'Exxon!' is hilarious given the reason Venezuela is doing this is... oil.
In fact, he seems to indicate he things Essequibo is Venezuela's.
Too often, as we see over Ukraine, Guyana and elsewhere, the left's agenda is not about right or wrong, or morality; it is about supporting those who are against us.
(That is not to say the far right don't have similar blindspots...)
It’s bizarre that the governments of Russia, Venezuela, China etc. should still have admirers, among people who should know much better.
They have paid propagandists. Not sure I would call them 'admirers'.
Speaking of which, no trolls recently (well, apart from the somewhat subtler ones).
We've scared them off.
This isn't Facebook. This is the north face of the Eiger for trolls.
No, it’s the Ukraine/Republic of China border, for trolls.
As the gale rages outside, there’s no Sunday Rawnsley this week as I guess he’s on break. But he did leave this commentary for a Guardian 2024 predictions round robin:
Spring or autumn is the choice facing the Tory leader. Anyone who claims to be certain what he will do is either a fool or a fibber, because he doesn’t know himself. Like any politician in his dire circumstances, he’s trying to keep his options open and his opponents guessing.
I forecast an autumn contest for two main reasons. There’s a better chance that the Bank of England will have started to cut interest rates by then. For many voters, reductions in inflation and borrowing costs will make a bigger difference to their quality of life than any tax cuts. My second reason… is the psychology of beleaguered incumbents who fear the verdict of the electorate. Leaders who aren’t confident of winning almost invariably delay the moment of reckoning in the hope that something will turn up to save them.
Meanwhile we can all nibble on a Sunday Hardman:
So even if the tax cuts they’ve been agitating for over the past year do turn up in March, Tory MPs are anxious about the budget kicking things off. “Let’s hope this starting gun doesn’t have duds like the party conference and the king’s speech,” says one junior minister
Sunak’s more recent refrain is “finish the job”: something he said repeatedly in his press conference about the Rwanda policy. Some of his aides think “finish the job” would be better in May when there is still a chance that things could get worse, than in autumn when the job looks so messy that voters might conclude it’s worth abandoning.
Half of the [Tory] party is already thinking about the leadership election after a polling day defeat, and will be campaigning more vigorously for their pitch to take over the party in that “election recovery” period than they will be for their current chief. Many will want to make pronouncements during the campaign so that they can say “I told you so” afterwards. Many of their colleagues will amplify those pronouncements.
Sunak will have to embrace a noisy, ill-disciplined campaign as there is little chance of him getting anything else. He has seen the virtues of this to some extent, concluding after his party held Uxbridge in the autumn that niche campaigns on local issues could allow the Conservatives to stem losses in other areas too. But he will probably get frustrated by the sense that while he is working relentlessly, his party won’t be beavering away in the same way.
But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
It’s kinda a sweet - but very naive - how you still trust Putin’s Russia. He’s a malign actor and has been for 20+ years
I keep saying this: the Russians are brutal realists. Words are simply mouth exercises intended to distract or mislead an enemy. Treaties are observed until they are not. They are not stupid and the West should stop being stupid in turn.
Comments
I shouldn't encourage you.
What good is defeating Trump in a general elections – and being seen to defeat him by a sizeable votes – if the legitimacy of those elections is denied?
My point, with added words
We know that the voting intention:age graph is much much much steeper now than it used to be.
(Conservatives got a higher share of young people in 1997, when they lost than in 2019, when they won). I've shared this chart of charts before;
What's not clear is what characterises current Conservative voters. If it's old people in general, that's not so bad; replenishment will happen. If it's the boomer generation and their distinctive obsessions and unwillingness to leave the stage, then the Conservative party is in very very deep trouble.
But the only way I can think of to tell the difference is to see what happens next.
The more he got away with, the more he would have tried, until eventually an even bigger whopper would have brought the whole sorry story to an end
It's of course possible that Russia wouldn't accept a cease-fire, in which case piling in more support to Ukraine and talking aloud about a NATO troops option is right until Russia sees sense. But our objective should be a cease-fire with Kyiv and the west securely guaranteed, not a total victory at any cost.
I often don't agree with him, but his writings and documentaries are well worth watching.
My own starting point is to think about how to contain Russia. Going 'all in' as many people on here would like to do has a high risk of backfiring, both in terms of escalation of the conflict, and also in terms of domestic political reaction.
We are probably turning a profit on increased sales to Middle Eastern potentiate and dictators as a result.
if you think about it those people who will be voting for the first time at the next election will barely be old enough to remember the 'election that never was'.
those people in their 20s, 30s and 40s won't remember the winter for discontent but will remember the Tories falling apart in the 90's, a 'generally' stable time under Tony Blair and Tories causing Brexit which they generally voted against.
People over the age of 50 will remember the winter of discontent and still hold it against Labour.
What parties do to overcome these obstacles is important. between 1994-97 Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did a lot of work on proving that they could be trusted with the economy. between 2005 and 2010 Cameron did a lot to prove that the tories weren't fixated on europe (didn't last long though). since the last election SKS has done a lot to get rid of the antisemitism and to also prove to people that they, again, can be trusted with the economy.
in order to get back into government again the tories need to spend time proving that they are not a mess (and are not fixated on brexit). but in order to do that they need to want to do so.
It'll be interesting to see if this turns around post-2022.
Older people tend right, but some of the things that tip people that way - like home ownership and retirement security - aren't working like they used to.
And there are cohort effects - especially during the formative political years of later youth and early adulthood - that take a long time to work through the generations.
But why on earth shouldn't a 34-year-old, or for that matter an 18-year-old, be President if he gets the support of enough eligible voters? One of our greatest Prime Minsters was only 24 when he assumed office.
And as for giving Donbass and Crimea to Russia: how many other people are you willing to hand over to them? The Baltic states? Moldova? Romania?
Also note that Russia's *minimal* claims are for vast tranches of land they haven't actually occupied. As one example, when you say 'the Donbass', do you mean the areas of it Russia currently controls, or do you expect Ukrainians to cede territory to whatever borders Russia sees fit? For instance, Odessa or Kharkiv?
Which is hardly encouraging.
South Korea, which hasn't played much of a role, has been doing exceptionally well in that respect over the last year or so.
There will certainly be a lot more money spent on air defence over the next few years.
Dominic Cummings will have “absolutely nothing to do with any government that I am privileged to lead” said Sunak when auditioning for the job.
https://twitter.com/MrHarryCole/status/1741420839684223246
Labour wouldn't have won if it were so.
1. Think of a young politician who @Leon might have heard of
2. Check her age on wiki
It was intended as an example, not a detailed argument
How did we achieve a long-term peace in Northern Ireland? We maintained robust security operations, while negotiating.
Particularly with the generation who had it enacted upon them when they didn't get a say.
The Framers' Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution
Michael J. Klarman
@SeaShantyIrish2 probably can suggest several other ones.
He is neither leading nor privileged to do so.
So he wasn't wrong.
Reckless, Feckless Rishi ...
And, frankly, we won't deserve any.
by then Labour will have had the opportunity to mess things up and to push the next cohort away from them.
The problem is we just don't have enough of any of them.
Lessons should be learnt. But won't be.
As long as that remains their position we have a moral and strategic interest in providing that ammunition. The only people with the right to pause this war are the Ukrainians themselves.
"Miracle at Philadelphia" by Catherine Drinker Bowen: This book provides a detailed account of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, offering insights into the debates and compromises that shaped the document.
"The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison" by James Madison and Edward J. Larson: This book presents a narrative history based on James Madison's notes, giving you a firsthand perspective on the drafting of the Constitution.
"Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution" by Richard Beeman: Beeman explores the lives and personalities of the delegates involved in the Constitutional Convention, shedding light on the human aspect of this historic event.
"The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789" by Joseph J. Ellis: While not solely focused on the Constitution, this book by Ellis examines the years leading up to its drafting, highlighting the key figures and events that paved the way for its creation.
"Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788" by Pauline Maier: Maier's work explores the ratification process, examining the debates and discussions that took place across the thirteen states as they considered adopting the new Constitution.
Your approach makes WW3 *more* likely, not less, as it means we have less power, and they have more power, once they finally cross a red line that we cannot tolerate. And we will have fewer friends.
We should have acted much more strongly back in 2014. We did not, and you have not learnt that lesson.
NEW THREAD
How does this end? A ceasefire of some sort brokered by someone allowing both sides to rebuild and recover for round 2 in x years? Putin's death or ousting and a replacement with someone prepared to negotiate? Zelenskyy's death or ousting and a replacement with someone prepared to negotiate?
The West could decide to stop supporting Ukraine and that's a big risk with a Trump election victory in November? It seems less plausible China, Iran or North Korea will suddenly stop supporting Russia? I think Xi made a monumental blunder - he could have played the peacemaker, brokered a deal and won a lot of new friends but he just threw his lot in with Putin, another example of short-sighted leadership.
Spring or autumn is the choice facing the Tory leader. Anyone who claims to be certain what he will do is either a fool or a fibber, because he doesn’t know himself. Like any politician in his dire circumstances, he’s trying to keep his options open and his opponents guessing.
I forecast an autumn contest for two main reasons. There’s a better chance that the Bank of England will have started to cut interest rates by then. For many voters, reductions in inflation and borrowing costs will make a bigger difference to their quality of life than any tax cuts. My second reason… is the psychology of beleaguered incumbents who fear the verdict of the electorate. Leaders who aren’t confident of winning almost invariably delay the moment of reckoning in the hope that something will turn up to save them.
Meanwhile we can all nibble on a Sunday Hardman:
So even if the tax cuts they’ve been agitating for over the past year do turn up in March, Tory MPs are anxious about the budget kicking things off. “Let’s hope this starting gun doesn’t have duds like the party conference and the king’s speech,” says one junior minister
Sunak’s more recent refrain is “finish the job”: something he said repeatedly in his press conference about the Rwanda policy. Some of his aides think “finish the job” would be better in May when there is still a chance that things could get worse, than in autumn when the job looks so messy that voters might conclude it’s worth abandoning.
Half of the [Tory] party is already thinking about the leadership election after a polling day defeat, and will be campaigning more vigorously for their pitch to take over the party in that “election recovery” period than they will be for their current chief. Many will want to make pronouncements during the campaign so that they can say “I told you so” afterwards. Many of their colleagues will amplify those pronouncements.
Sunak will have to embrace a noisy, ill-disciplined campaign as there is little chance of him getting anything else. He has seen the virtues of this to some extent, concluding after his party held Uxbridge in the autumn that niche campaigns on local issues could allow the Conservatives to stem losses in other areas too. But he will probably get frustrated by the sense that while he is working relentlessly, his party won’t be beavering away in the same way.