Ukraine

[french frank]

ON FURTHER EDIT: And, unobservant as usual, I missed a blue button on a grey (Ring Menu) bar) aboove the post at the top of the page - "Post Reply" [/I]

And, also as usual, I couldn't see how to copy HD's post into Anomalies where I proposed to answer it There are a lot of adminstrative tools that aren't where they were (or anywhere that I can see), but otherwise, the more I use it, the more the site seems as easy as it used to be. I'll copy and paste HD's query into Anomalies and say a bit more there. Visually, I find the new layout clear and unfussy, albeit that a few actions remain elusive.

Back on topic, thank you HD for that new link. Will investigate later.

[Cockney Sparrow]

The way my browser (firefox) and this forum is set up (by and for me), I get the latest post at the top of the page.
For me, at the very bottom of that page is a box with "Write something" and that is the place to post in reply.

I'm not sure what I do to get that at the top of the page (as the latest) - possibly refresh the page (F5 for us us Windows wallahs). (On Edit - yes, Refresh brings it to the top of the page, in order as the latest).

ON FURTHER EDIT: And, unobservant as usual, I missed a blue button on a grey (Ring Menu) bar) aboove the post at the top of the page - "Post Reply"

[HighlandDougie]

Interesting take from a US expert - in conversation with Sir Lawrence

https://samf.substack.com/p/an-interview-with-mike-kofman?r=w1xt&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

P.S. Being a bit thick, can anyone explain to me how to navigate to the latest set of posts if one wants to add a new post, other than by endlessly clicking the forward arrow?

[french frank]

Thanks, Petrushka. Your post crossed with my edit.

[Petrushka]

No, he wasn't offered membership. I can't remember the name of the grouping/status to which Russia belonged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO%E2%80%93Russia_relations

[french frank]

BTW I wasn't aware that Putin had been offered membership of NATO - only "collaboration" - but I could be wrong.

No, he wasn't offered membership. I can't remember the name of the grouping/status to which Russia belonged.

Ah, the Partnership for Peace, followed by the NATO–Russia Founding Act.

[Serial_Apologist]

The west surely is responsible for creating an environment in Russia in which someone like Putin has managed to do what he's done - also people like Tony Blair up until quite recently were still advocating working with him as an ally - Putin's Useful Centrist IDIOTS - YouTube - I've posted this link before but it's again relevant, and I entreat people to check out the whole chapter/book - that is, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine - Russia's Shock Therapy: Neoliberalizing Russia | Shortform Books

Thanks for those reminders, JK.

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, 'firmly in secondary position' was not intended as a quantifiable percentage



I think what you're describing is a sin of omission rather than of commission and might better be thought of, with hindsight, as a lost opportunity. Is allowing former Soviet bloc countries to join NATO ('expansion') or the EU "outside interference"? That would require acceptance of the Russian view that such countries are indisputably part of Russia's 'sphere of influence' and encroachment is therefore an aggressive act.

Meanwhile, Zelensky's choice of Defence Minister in Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, reminds us of the way the Crimean Tatars were treated by the Soviet Union, especially in light of Russia's accusations of 'genocide' of Russians in the Donbas.

It would seen that Putin's vision includes rehabilitating anyone who has played a major role in the history of his country. BTW I wasn't aware that Putin had been offered membership of NATO - only "collaboration" - but I could be wrong.

[Joseph K]

The west surely is responsible for creating an environment in Russia in which someone like Putin has managed to do what he's done - also people like Tony Blair up until quite recently were still advocating working with him as an ally - Putin's Useful Centrist IDIOTS - YouTube - I've posted this link before but it's again relevant, and I entreat people to check out the whole chapter/book - that is, Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine - Russia's Shock Therapy: Neoliberalizing Russia | Shortform Books

[french frank]

Not 100% firmly -

Well, 'firmly in secondary position' was not intended as a quantifiable percentage

the West could have offered what one might call ancillary assistance which could not subsequently be labelled "outside interference". [...] Western technological help and advice, which would have kept large-scale Russian production publicly owned, would I suggest have been there for the taking in three ways: firstly sending in ecologists and sustainable tech engineers to clean up polluted lakes, rivers and contaminated soils by sustainable means, which actually do exist; secondly by providing advisers not wedded to privatisation as a precondition of success, viz support; and thirdly - on the strength of the aforementioned - offering the help of NGOs tasked with promoting all-in grass-roots involvement and decision-making in workplace and neighbourhood planning.

I think what you're describing is a sin of omission rather than of commission and might better be thought of, with hindsight, as a lost opportunity. Is allowing former Soviet bloc countries to join NATO ('expansion') or the EU "outside interference"? That would require acceptance of the Russian view that such countries are indisputably part of Russia's 'sphere of influence' and encroachment is therefore an aggressive act.

Meanwhile, Zelensky's choice of Defence Minister in Rustem Umerov, a Crimean Tatar, reminds us of the way the Crimean Tatars were treated by the Soviet Union, especially in light of Russia's accusations of 'genocide' of Russians in the Donbas.

[Serial_Apologist]

Your [1], [2] and [3] (my numbering) seem to me to place western responsibility for the current war firmly in a secondary position. Since 2000 when Putin first became president he has manipulated the system to put Medvedev briefly in as his puppet, only to resume the presidency and organise a referendum to allow him to continue beyond the then constitutional limit of two terms. From a Russia edging its way cautiously towards democracy, it was he who slammed the door, eliminating (by incarderation or assassination) political rivals and critics, gagging the free press and replacing it with a state propaganda machine and replacing the diplomats with state propaganda parrots. And yes, 'a defining national mythology based on an idea of inherent destiny' is exactly what he has inculcated in the population.

When such a regime stays within its own borders its existence might be tolerated. But this one hasn't done that.

Not 100% firmly - the West could have offered what one might call ancillary assistance which could not subsequently be labelled "outside interference". For a start, public ownership was not the main problem for Russia, but the way it was managed, namely in the top-down way in which large-scale industrialisation and its state planning had been imposed without grass roots involvement ever since Stalin's time. This was not helped by adopting a macho posture of keeping up with the West on armaments production further consolidating bureaucratic rule. Western technological help and advice, which would have kept large-scale Russian production publicly owned, would I suggest have been there for the taking in three ways: firstly sending in ecologists and sustainable tech engineers to clean up polluted lakes, rivers and contaminated soils by sustainable means, which actually do exist; secondly by providing advisers not wedded to privatisation as a precondition of success, viz support; and thirdly - on the strength of the aforementioned - offering the help of NGOs tasked with promoting all-in grass-roots involvement and decision-making in workplace and neighbourhood planning. There is (or used to be) the Institute for Worker's Control in this country. Bottom-up democracy, extended beyond the limited remit of periodic elections, had always been the main benchmark of socialism, going back through Trotsky and Lenin to Marx and further back to the Levellers - what better could the Western bourgeoisie do than send them off to cause trouble elsewhere! - as had happened in the 1960s when thousands of students took time out to live in Cuba and help build a worker's state there? The dismembered USSR no longer posed any threat by that stage, real or confected, after all!

[french frank]

It's all extremely complex ...[1] the previously occupied lands, where a spirit of national and personal freedom and independence had never been extinguished and people had had greater access to western media and advertising ...[2] The mindset required to set national renaissance in motion ... would be absent in both the masses and leadership, hence [3] Putin's and his henchpersons' need to cobble together a defining national mythology based on an idea of inherent destiny, like all fascist ideologies before, helped by the Orthodox church.

Your [1], [2] and [3] (my numbering) seem to me to place western responsibility for the current war firmly in a secondary position. Since 2000 when Putin first became president he has manipulated the system to put Medvedev briefly in as his puppet, only to resume the presidency and organise a referendum to allow him to continue beyond the then constitutional limit of two terms. From a Russia edging its way cautiously towards democracy, it was he who slammed the door, eliminating (by incarderation or assassination) political rivals and critics, gagging the free press and replacing it with a state propaganda machine and replacing the diplomats with state propaganda parrots. And yes, 'a defining national mythology based on an idea of inherent destiny' is exactly what he has inculcated in the population.

When such a regime stays within its own borders its existence might be tolerated. But this one hasn't done that.

[Serial_Apologist]

Is the West not embodied in NATO (Trump notwithstanding)? Following the Gorbachev regime, and Putin's own apparent willingness to consider rapprochement, what changed Putin's mind?

It's all extremely complex, and I can't confess to having grasped the complete measure of it all, but from what I understand about the way in which Communism was dismantled in Russia, along with the rest of the E Bloc, while there were to be distinguishing differences of approach, the aim was to sell off the under-invested state industries to carefully selected bidders - Joe Bloggs wasn't permitted to submit his £1 for buying up the entire Polish steel industry for instance - and run them in accordance with western viability criteria. The West (if you will) was keenly interested in the previously occupied lands, where a spirit of national and personal freedom and independence had never been extinguished and people had had greater access to western media and advertising, than in Russia, hosting a population exhausted and demotivated by decades longer of domination and demoralisation. There, in the absence of western concerns (which strategically were more worried about combatting Islamic extremism) the alternative was seen to lie in the re-creation of a domestic capitalist class; however the only people with the financial clout and any organisational experience were the party elite who were to become Putin's oligarchs, and their privileged compliant state bureaucrats. The mindset required to set national renaissance in motion, let alone address the deep eco damage inflicted by decades of hurried unconsidered industrial expansion would be absent in both the masses and leadership, hence Putin's and his henchpersons' need to cobble together a defining national mythology based on an idea of inherent destiny, like all fascist ideologies before, helped by the Orthodox church.

[french frank]

The trouble is, by any definition today, in what does "the West" now consist in joint interest political terms? When Putin effectively assumed permanent power, that question had not yet arisen.

Is the West not embodied in NATO (Trump notwithstanding)? Following the Gorbachev regime, and Putin's own apparent willingness to consider rapprochement, what changed Putin's mind?

[Serial_Apologist]

A plausible analysis. Though viewing it on a more personal, individual level, was it that once Putin had arrived in power and was unwilling to leave, his increasingly authoritarian regime where all dissent must be suppressed (the assassinations began in 2003) made any kind of rapprochement between the Russian state and the west impossible?

The trouble is, by any definition today, in what does "the West" now consist in joint interest political terms? When Putin effectively assumed permanent power, that question had not yet arisen.