Jersey Girl wrote: ↑Tue Mar 15, 2022 12:12 am
Question: Why are we issuing a warning to China when we and the rest of NATO are supplying Ukraine?
That doesn't seem right to me though I am sure I'm not seeing what is obvious to the more politically savvy posters here.
You mention elsewhere you were reading up on Stalingrad. I suggest instead switching to the Spanish Civil War. The ideologies in play are different. In 1936 it was Communism v. Nationalism in a proxy fight between Germany and Russia where both sides tested and developed their militaries against one another that proved particularly helpful to Germany when they invaded Poland three years later. Putin even frames this war as a continuation of that conflict, justifying the special military operation as a fight against Nazis. He'll use tactical nukes at some point because, hey, Nazis! Now, we are seeing authoritarianism v. western liberal democracy in a proxy war. Zelensky has been masterful on the stage in recognizing he is the embodiment of more than his country, but all that the west represents and which Putin directly opposes. And China...the next domino in this is Taiwan.
It isn't a case where the free world is backing Ukraine so if China wants to undermine sanctions against Russia and back them it is just tit-for-tat, doing the same thing we are doing. It's a statement saying, "You break sanctions, you flip your card today that you are a player in this ideological fight on the side of authoritarianism against Western Liberal Democracy". And pretenses are over. China will probably do it anyway. But they'll be sneakier about it, soft sell it, try to make it seem like they are the rational humanitarians seeking to ease the suffering of common Russians. They will likely get away with it, too, if they can take credit for keeping it from going nuclear which, again, is looking likely as far as Putin being likely to use a tactical nuke to break a stalemate. But even then, it's taking sides in the big picture ideological conflict of our time. Sucks that we've been swinging back and forth between teams the last six years, too,...but that's a different thread subject. It's no coincidence that Tulsi Gabbard (a Bernie Democrat) is shining up the shitball that is Russian propaganda along with the idiots at Fox. This isn't aligned with the two traditional ideological political sides in the US, but rather a force that has made massive, almost total inroads on the right and is gaining ground on the left, while those in the middle aren't sure who is on whose side. This is very much our war, too. Anyone who thinks that this would be better under Trump forgot that we watched this happen in Syria already. Russians bombing cities and deploying weapons that cause mass casualties against civilians, either directly or in proxy, has been the norm from Russia for years now. Syrians are almost certainly left feeling like the world is barely waking up to something they are too late to benefit from and the US walked away from a confrontation with Russian violence and aggression under Trump once, then again against the Kurds with Turkey playing the Russian role. Obama didn't do a great job, then, and honestly VP Biden was on the wrong side of that period in history, too. We've failed collectively for a while in the name of trying to stop being the policeman of the world. The issue is we also stopped being the ideological beacon at the same time.
Anyway, I'm more expectant for Zelensky's speech this Wednesday than I have been for a political speech by an American politician in a long while. Ajax has his civil war. He just doesn't realize these wars are global in the age of globalism and he's confused about which side he is supposed to be supporting. To be fair, it's pretty distant as all 21st century wars tend to be but, yet, it's not. It's not.
