Should the UK Invoke Article 5 After Chemical Weapon Attack?

[Kuntantee]

From "USA is the only superpower" to "Russia has leverage over the president of the United States". Times change indeed. Tho, if history has shown us anything, as powers tend to normalize, wars break out.

[Skroe]

From "USA is the only superpower" to "Russia has leverage over the president of the United States". Times change indeed. Tho, if history has shown us anything, as powers tend to normalize, wars break out.

The US is the only superpower. Unlike other countries though, namely Russia, our power is not centralized. It's highly distributed. America's depth is what makes it powerful. Our President, even the best and strongest globally, are only ever an instrument of that power.

That is why American power endured the 20th century and will endure into the depths of time. There is no single point of failure.

Russia however certainly hamstringed that power with a compromised President in hock to it, bringing one of America's worst nightmares to live. Our system's natural corrective and autoimmune system are processing that, but regardless of anything historic in nature, in 2 to 6 years, we get a new President. One that will only be able to run as unflinchingly hostile to Russia.

I can't overstate how significant a shift that is. Clinton ran his foreign policy in part, on cooperation with Russia. As did Bush. Obama, wanting to walk into some ridiculous post-modern era, accelerated that, to the point of even considering unilateral nuclear cuts to make his point.

But now though? Democrats are enormously hostile to Russia. Republicans are enormously hostile to Russia by in large. The American public is hugely hostile to Russia. All of which means that the next set of candidates in 2018, 2024 and beyond will only be able to run, win and govern on a Cold War level anti-Russia platform. If they don't, it'll raise question about what, like Trump, does Russia have on them.

To say this is a strategic disaster for Russia isn't far enough. Absent Trump, Russia faces an economy ten time its size with over twice it's population and far more economically advanced, that regards it as the enemy of the people of the free world and will be looking to rip it limb from limb in creative ways. God help them. Seriously. Because nobody else will.

Personally I'm pleased. I've been saying this stuff about Russia since 2009. I was once all in when it came to American-Russian cooperation. 15 years ago I believed Russia should eventually join NATO, and that the US and Russia should partner up against China. Now though? America's long term strategic priority must be readying ourselves for the great geopolitical struggle with China, but it's short and medium term priority must be to bring misery and pain to Russia every way we can, for as long as needed to bring them back to where they belong: utter ruin.

They are our enemy, and we should treat them as such. America should not throw the first punch, but it should throw the last and biggest.

[Shalcker]

Now though? America's long term strategic priority must be readying ourselves for the great geopolitical struggle with China, but it's short and medium term priority must be to bring misery and pain to Russia every way we can, for as long as needed to bring them back to where they belong: utter ruin.

Which would be self-defeating even if you would succeed; because it would be China picking up those vast resources, not Europe.

Good thing for everyone you will not. Competition being more "even" is better for the world; Chinese total domination is unlikely to be any better then US total domination.

[Deleted]

Which would be self-defeating even if you would succeed; because it would be China picking up those vast resources, not Europe.

Good thing for everyone you will not. Competition being more "even" is better for the world; Chinese total domination is unlikely to be any better then US total domination.

Like I said before, he lives in RTS games version of reality.

[Ulmita]

Interesting article from thenationalinterest. Some simple and raw logic.

A Russian Perspective on the Skripal Attack

The confrontation between Russian and British media, diplomats and politicians, caused by an attempt by unknown persons to poison a former GRU colonel, has been gaining momentum for two weeks. The former Russian colonel, a British intelligence agent, and his daughter were both poisoned near a local pizzeria in the small town of Salisbury.


Without even waiting for a full investigation of the incident, Foreign Minister Boris Johnson announced that Russia was the culprit. Next, Prime Minister Theresa May presented an ultimatum to Russia. But when the Russian authorities politely hinted to the British that they first needed to figure out themselves what happened and then turn to Russia for help in this matter, May ordered the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats allegedly engaged in intelligence activities in the United Kingdom and vowed to freeze high-level political and diplomatic contacts.


This incident fits well into the framework of Russian-British relations over the past decades, when one after another, for obscure reasons, fugitive Russian businessmen and former agents of the Russian special services have died in England. In all cases, without hard evidence, the British authorities assigned the blame to the Russian authorities and Russian president Vladimir Putin. So the current actions of the British authorities will likely find a sympathetic response both from the British public and allies on both sides of the Atlantic, as the Western media seek to portray Russia and its leadership as dastardly villains from whom it is possible to expect any criminal acts not only in Russia, but in any other country.


Lacking essential facts to draw unambiguous conclusions about who tried to poison the Skripals and why, I am also free to build my own version of what transpired. In this case, unlike the British authorities, who refused to even name a motive for the crime, I will try to answer the question of who might be interested in committing it. The idea that Russia’s special services were involved is simply not credible to me. First, Skripal was not on the run. The Russian authorities exchanged him for their own spies, arrested in the United States. Second, he posed no threat and did not know anything more than what he had already given to the British before his arrest. Otherwise, he would not have been released, but replaced by someone else in the spy swap.


Third, being in England, he was of course under the supervision of the British special services, and if he had engaged in any activities threatening to Russia, for which the Russian special services would have decided to eliminate him, the British special services would immediately announce the motive of the Russian side, to give this version at least some credibility. Fourth, both Putin and the Russian secret service had the least interest of all parties involved in poisoning the old retired double-agent and his daughter and causing a deep crisis in Moscow-London relations, and more broadly, Moscow-West relations. The United States and other NATO allies have already supported May’s unfounded charges against Russia. Such a move by Russia makes even less sense on the eve of its presidential elections and a couple of months before the start of the soccer World Cup in Moscow.

Fifth, Western media has repeatedly said that without Putin’s order in Russia, even insects dare not fly. This means that Putin would have had to personally order Skripal’s killing. Yet while Western media routinely criticize Putin for many things, they always say that he is very clever. Why then would he take such a foolish step?

Thus, one must ask who benefited from the poisoning and quite possible death of Skripal and his daughter? I’m not a supporter of conspiracy theories, but I can build my own version of what is transpiring, based on the broader and deeper context of the events. I will leave out the version that is quite popular in the Russian media, which is that the British special services did it to divert the attention of English society from all the negative consequences associated with Brexit and the scandal that erupted in one of England’s cities, where an organized criminal network exploited hundreds of children in the sex trade.


Another explanation of this event looks more credible to me. In the West, but especially in England and the United States, media and political circles have been feverishly demonizing Putin and Russia for many years. These countries have taken the course of regime change in Russia and specifically want to replace Putin. Unable to intervene successfully into Russia’s domestic politics or the electoral process through their networks in Russia—since most of the agents of foreign influence are either already cleared out or under the close custody of Russian special services—the Anglo-American special services decided to conduct this operation to discredit Russia and Putin and cast a shadow on Russian elections and the legitimacy of Putin’s re-election.

England was chosen not by accident. In this country the ground was prepared in advance, and the world attention is assured to pronounce both Russia and the Russian authorities as evil. Only in such a case can one not bother with versions and clues and not even think that it would be impossible to commit such a crime in a public place in a small town. A long time ago, in the early years of the Soviet Union, there was talk about revolutionary justice, and it was argued that things were legal and just if they were in the interest of the working class. This principle has long been employed by our partners in the West. A couple of weeks ago, James Woolsey, a former CIA director, appeared on Laura Ingraham’s program on Fox News. When Ingraham asked him whether American intelligence agencies intervened in the elections of other countries, he candidly replied yes, and listed a number of cases. He justified this by saying that it was important to understand that U.S. and Western special services interfere in those elections with good motives and solely to pursue noble goals.


To further demonize both Russia and Putin on the eve of the presidential elections in Russia is nothing but a “noble goal,” according to Western special services.


Andranik Migranyan is a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, an academic institution run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.


Image: Reuters

Source: http://nationalinterest.org/feature/...l-attack-24978

I mean he is pointing the obvious here: Russia would not benefit from doing such a thing, especially now.
UK rushed to blame Russia in such a hurry which is bluntaly obvious that they are bull crapping the rest of the world.

[Deja Thoris]

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but lists a bunch of them. You lost me. The rest of that article is plausible designed to allow us to swallow the bullshit later without gagging

[Shalcker]

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but lists a bunch of them. You lost me. The rest of that article is plausible designed to allow us to swallow the bullshit later without gagging

There is no real way to describe why for Russia or anyone else would kill him without "conspiracy theory".

There are simply no known motives that would be clearly applicable to Skripal himself. And since we cannot use Skripal, motive has to be something not related to him - and there are way too many of those in current international climate.

[Ulmita]

I'm not one for conspiracy theories but lists a bunch of them. You lost me. The rest of that article is plausible designed to allow us to swallow the bullshit later without gagging

Sorry but isn't what UK is doing right now based purely on conspiracy theories? There are 0 evidence and 0 willingness to involve international investigation teams, or even handle out samples of the chemical

[Skroe]

Like I said before, he lives in RTS games version of reality.

No. It's you living in a delusional version of reality.
This is the way the world works.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-u...-idUSKBN1F81TR





http://thehill.com/policy/defense/36...fense-strategy


https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...=.8f573dec696e






You shouldn't be worried about me. You should be worried about our Secretary of Defense, who just put Russia and China above Al Qaeda and ISIS on the defense-threat hierarchy. Welcome to the new normal. In the years since Crimea, the world changed. America's posture is changing.

Shift with it or continue to be obsolete. What you laughably refer to "RTS games version of reality", is actually just reality... the way the world always has been, except for a few brief episodes.

- - - Updated - - -

Which would be self-defeating even if you would succeed; because it would be China picking up those vast resources, not Europe.

Good thing for everyone you will not. Competition being more "even" is better for the world; Chinese total domination is unlikely to be any better then US total domination.

The United States should and will take our chances. We absolutely are going after you, per our defense planning.

This has moved from "my opinion" into "policy of the United States", because my opinion dovetails with the political majority and consensus in this country.

And competition isn't becoming more even between the US and Russia. Don't get me started on those laughable superweapons of doom your dictator dumped on his hapless "electorate".

The Geopolitical situation is that the gap between the US and China is and will continue to Erode, but the gap between those two and everybody else is increasing in size, as the remainder of the BRICS falter, Europe convulses with internal matters and Russia decline continues. This is what the transition from a unipolar to a bipolar-ish world looks like. The century's chief geopolitical competition is between the US and China. Whatever Russia is in 20 or 30 years, if it exists in a recognizable form at all, it'll be a bit player to that drama.

In fact, it's concerns will be not America, but continued EU expansion / integration removing more of the Russian near-abroad from its suzerainty and China looking at the Russian Far East like an all you can eat bbq.

[Shalcker]

The United States should and will take our chances. We absolutely are going after you, per our defense planning.

As do we, per our defence planning. That's how deterrence worked for decades, there is little new about it.

This has moved from "my opinion" into "policy of the United States", because my opinion dovetails with the political majority and consensus in this country.

Because you support whatever "your group" supports right now, consistency or self-reflection be damned.

The Geopolitical situation is that the gap between the US and China is and will continue to Erode, but the gap between those two and everybody else is increasing in size, as the remainder of the BRICS falter, Europe convulses with internal matters and Russia decline continues. This is what the transition from a unipolar to a bipolar-ish world looks like. The century's chief geopolitical competition is between the US and China. Whatever Russia is in 20 or 30 years, if it exists in a recognizable form at all, it'll be a bit player to that drama.

You're saying it like US itself is not "convulsing with internal matters"... this entire forum is filled with those convulsions of dying power.

In fact, it's concerns will be not America, but continued EU expansion / integration removing more of the Russian near-abroad from its suzerainty and China looking at the Russian Far East like an all you can eat bbq.

Or Russian and Chinese bases encircling Europe from Africa and Middle East.

[Deleted]

Lol skroe "new normal" oh so the f22 was meant for targeting al qaida n now got new mission?

Don't compare yourself with any administration, US does competition, not ur rush into ww3 complete a RTS campaign n discover there's no 'load saved game' option when things go haywire. While u know more than hubcap, ur posts are no less nuts.

[Merlaine]

Being from the UK, I have learned time and time again that the news media here cannot be trusted. Nor can the Westminster Government. To me, it makes no sense at all that Russia would be behind the assassination with nerve gas that can be traced back to having originated in Russia. If they were really going to do it, why do it in such an obvious way when a car accident, a home fire, even a random mugging/shooting would have brought much less suspicion down on them?

One very respected independent blogger in the UK is Craig Murray - his blog makes a lot of very good points worth considering:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-to-judgement/

[Slant]

Which would be self-defeating even if you would succeed; because it would be China picking up those vast resources, not Europe.

Good thing for everyone you will not. Competition being more "even" is better for the world; Chinese total domination is unlikely to be any better then US total domination.

What resources? Eastern Siberia? Let them have it. The core of Russia is neither Chinese nor European. It's Russian. Nobody will "pick up the pieces". They're still an independent nation and will always be independent. China does not have the resources to control a country the size of Russia. And Europe has finally learned its lesson and won't touch Russia with a 10 foot pole. The only ones that can save Russia are Russians. But they need to finally learn that they do have a voice and oppression is not the natural state of things.

- - - Updated - - -

Being from the UK, I have learned time and time again that the news media here cannot be trusted. Nor can the Westminster Government. To me, it makes no sense at all that Russia would be behind the assassination with nerve gas that can be traced back to having originated in Russia. If they were really going to do it, why do it in such an obvious way when a car accident, a home fire, even a random mugging/shooting would have brought much less suspicion down on them?

One very respected independent blogger in the UK is Craig Murray - his blog makes a lot of very good points worth considering:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archi...-to-judgement/

Two things: 1. Russia doesn't give a fuck what you think. The more confused you are, the better. 2. Propaganda doesn't care about the truth. They'll keep denying it, because they can. They would keep denying it if you had a photograph of Putin force feeding acid down someone's throat. At some point, the denial becomes so ridiculous that normal people like you ask valid questions like "Why do it in such an obvious way" and that alone discredits the notion that they could've done it. So yes, why do it in such an obvious way? Because they can, because it's stupid and because Russia actually doesn't give a shit if you know it's them. What are you going to do about it, invade Russia? Really? They know Europe won't budge if it doesn't have to. We're like that oversized kid in school aware of his brutish strength trying not to hurt anyone.

[Deleted]

Notice Slant ignores the timing

[Shalcker]

What resources? Eastern Siberia? Let them have it. The core of Russia is neither Chinese nor European. It's Russian. Nobody will "pick up the pieces". They're still an independent nation and will always be independent. China does not have the resources to control a country the size of Russia. And Europe has finally learned its lesson and won't touch Russia with a 10 foot pole. The only ones that can save Russia are Russians. But they need to finally learn that they do have a voice and oppression is not the natural state of things.

Conversely, the only ones who can destroy Russia are Russians. Not Americans or Europeans. Thinking that sanctions can bring "utter ruin" is delusional.

And yes, it is time for Europe and US to finally learn that Russia does have a voice and their oppression is not the natural state of things.

[Skroe]

Lol skroe "new normal" oh so the f22 was meant for targeting al qaida n now got new mission?

No the US was meant for the Soviet Union, and arrived a decade after it died. It's pretty funny you mention the F-22, because it's a technological dinosaur compared to the F-35. A year ago Congress ordered the Air Force to examine restarting F-22 production. The Air Force's answer: after study, they could do it, but they'd want to massively upgrade it (basically an F-35 in an F-22 costume), and it would be better to build an all new sixth generation fighter, which is exactly what they've ended up doing instead.

But to answer your question directly, no the build up looks more like adding a 3rd Destroyer and 3rd Attack submarine to the annual shopping list, accelerating carrier production, accelerating the B-21 Raider Stealth bomber program, modernizing Army artillery and tanks, and most importantly, training troops to fight against mechanized enemy forces and not terrorists / insurgents.

This is also because much of the 1980s/1990s era militar you're familiar with needs retirement/replacement in coming years. For example, the oldest Los Angeles class attack submarines (1980s) must be retired at a rate of 1-2 per year and need to be replaced.

The net result is this: an increase in requirements. Instead of a 420,000 troop Army under the Obama plan, it is now expanding to 490,000, likely on its way to 580,000 by 2025. Instead of a 310 ship Navy under the Obama plan (real number: 273), it is a 355 ship navy, with 75 attack submarines instead of 49, and 110 large surface combat ships (destroyers) instead of 80. Instead of a 150 bomber requirement, it is now at least 220.

In fact, the Air Force announced last month plans to accelerate the retirement of the B-2 and B-1B to around 2030, in order to make budget room and free up maintainers / the industrial base for the B-21 raider, which will enter service at a rate of 20 per year starting ~2024. The Air Force is looking forward to supporting two bomber families (the B-21 and B52) in a larger overall fleet, than three (as at present) or four.

And of course there are actual next-gen programs, like that F-22 successor or a new tank, that are on the other side of 2030. Those are too distant to really be worth discussing. It's likely that the F-22, which arrived at a weird historic and technological time, will retire achieving little, in contrast to the F-15 and F-16, which have together shot down many Russian-made aircraft. Forum Aerospace dsicussions are always funny, because the F-22 is held up as a technological paragon. It's not. Not any more. It's air frame and engines and software make it the best in the world, at what it does. But it is a mid 1990s era aircraft. The F-35 is far more advanced, which is why he F-22 restart plan would have involved at least 5 years of work basically putting an F-35 inside an F-22 air frame, and creating the "F-22C". Faced between that, and making an all new design, the Air Force has wisely chosen the latter path.

Don't compare yourself with any administration, US does competition, not ur rush into ww3 complete a RTS campaign n discover there's no 'load saved game' option when things go haywire. While u know more than hubcap, ur posts are no less nuts.

Your denial is getting to a new level of adorable.

This is not World War III. This is the start of an ongoing containment and harassment campaign against Russia and Russian expansionism.


This is happening.
Whether you like it or not.
Deal with it.

[Slant]

Conversely, the only ones who can destroy Russia are Russians. Not Americans or Europeans. Thinking that sanctions can bring "utter ruin" is delusional.

And yes, it is time for Europe and US to finally learn that Russia does have a voice and their oppression is not the natural state of things.

You're misreading what I said. You are being dishonest. Russia isn't oppressed by the West. Russians are oppressed by the Russian Government. You're right that we're not going to destroy Russia. Why would we? Russia has a longer history of being part of Europe than being everyone's favourite public enemy, before the communists took over. They can be brought back into the global community as a constructive partner.

Until then, sanction the fuck out of them. If you don't play nice, nobody's playing nice with you. Being part of the global community is not something that can be taken away from you. But you will learn to behave like a decent nation eventually. Until then, it's tightening the screws until you lot stand in queues outside stores again.

I wasn't talking about the voice of Russia, either. I was talking about the Russian people that have a voice. And their opposition candidates get excluded from the so-called democratic purpose with one intent: To silence the masses. That is not the natural state of things.

[Skroe]

As do we, per our defence planning. That's how deterrence worked for decades, there is little new about it.

Oh please. You say many ridiculous things. This is near the top. As we've discussed on countless occasions, if Russia were actually serious about "defense planning" and "deterrence" it would do an enormous number of things differently, mostly things that have little to nothing to do with the actual capabilities of said platforms.

For example... exactly what decade is Russia going to go to an all-Borei deterrence submarine fleet? I'm serious, because your dictator, the War Criminal Vladmir Putin, has been talking about this since I was in high school. What is Russia doing instead? Prolonging the life of the far less capable, noisy, obsolete Delta IIIs and Delta IVs and a single obsolete Typhoon, while talking about a cheaper Borei successor. So let me get this right. There is a somewhat-realistic chance that in the next 10 years, Russia will operate five different types of Ballistic Missile submarines. Do I need to explain to you why that is budgetary and fiscal madness for machines as expensive as a SSBN? By Contrast the US Navy rapidly divested itself of the last of the 41 for Freedoms as the Ohios entered service in the 1990s and mid 2000s. By contrast the US navy 30 year ship building plans sees the Ohios rapidly scrapped starting in 2029 as the Columbia class enters service... because paying for two SSBN classes, much less five, is completely moronic.

For example... MIRVing up the Sata ICBM (RS-36M). Do I need to explain why this is moronic? Russia-huggers laughably took this as a symbol of Russian strength, because we all know more warheads on fewer missiles is better, right? Uh no. The because under the NewSTART limits, Russia had a cap on the number of warheads, which means the number of warheads they put on the big, static, immobile RS-36 means fewer on submarines or mobile launchers. Which means that the consequence of losing a single RS-36 in a US first strike is far higher. RS-36 has 10 warheads on them. The US by contrast puts only one warhead on it's much smaller, Minuteman III ICBM, because in the event of a Russian strike on the US, it doesn't expect the Minuteman III's to play any kind of big role in a US counter-strike - that would be the heavily MIRV'd Trident II. So why did Russia do this? Because it can't afford nearly as large of a launcher fleet as the US. Those Warheads had to go somewhere. They can't MIRV their submarines anymore - warhead and missile families are incompatible. Their mobile launchers can't be heavily MRV'd and have deep reliability issues.

You call this deterrence? Objectively speaking, is a criminal level of defense incompetence. If Russia was serious about its defense, it would have gone to SSBN, one ICBM, a handful of mutually compatible warheads, at any time in the last 20 years... which is exactly the things the US did. Why? Because deterrence is expensive, spending money on things not likely to be used is necessary but wasteful, and keeping RECURRING costs low must be the priority.

And you see the results. Nuclear weapons make up over twice the size of the Russian defense budget as it does the US. Because Russia can't be make hard choices.

You know, when it was announced last month that the US would rapidly retire the B-1 and B-2 bombers in the late 2020s and early 2030s, as the B-21 enters service at a rate of 20 a year, I couldn't help but think "thank god we don't manage our affairs like Russia's government". Why? Because the B-1 and B-2 would serve along side the B-21 until the end of time, just like Russia's enormous armada of obsolete platforms, becoming progressively more expensive to operate. Divesting of the iconic B-2, certainly hurts the heart of the aerospace enthusiast in me, but the B-21, aka the B-2 done right and modern, makes it superfluous. That is how a well managed strategic defense actually works. The Air Force doing with its bombers, what the Navy does with its submarines (why is it keeping the B-52 then? Cost effectiveness for missions where the B-21 isn't needed).

I still have to make my post about Russia's laughable new arsenal of doom, but Mattis himself basically rolled his eyes at the ridiculousness of what you call Russia's deterrence when those things were announced. Because they're absurd, ridiculous, unworkable weapons that don't change anything.


You know what would have been impressive? If instead rolling out 6 absurd weapons that aren't worth taking seriously, Vladmir Putin announced that Russia would unilaterally cut it's nuclear forces over the next 10 years in order to free up money to, on the other side of 10 years, grow them with a unified industrial base and a unified family of technologies and engineering, to cut overall deterrence costs by half by 2030, and then to use that money to for modernization. That is what Russia should have done in 2003. Objectively speaking, a Russia that does that is a far more dangerous threat than a Russia touting these comical Saturday morning cartoon farce weapons.

Because you support whatever "your group" supports right now, consistency or self-reflection be damned.

I've been talking about this stuff litterally for years, and on these forums pre-dating Ukraine.

Those looking for a closer relationship with Russia have no currency here. Hell, the President of the United States, who wants a closer relationship, can't do more than tweet and not-do things, because he is so much the outlier.

The country has arrived to where I was years ago. I won.

You're saying it like US itself is not "convulsing with internal matters"... this entire forum is filled with those convulsions of dying power.

Oh give me a break. The US has been kicking its own ass since 1776. It's legitimately what we do more than anything else. We're not Russians. We don't seek strong centralized power. We're all about the distributed.

Europeans across the 20th and 21st century had plenty of opinions about how our fractuous political system always illustrated a country coming apart at the seems. Particularly in the early and late 19th century. The European elite always took it as a confirmation of the wisdom of their forms of government... their policies. Meanwhile the US got richer and more powerful, as it is today (versus everybody not named China).


It should concern you, that the US took the Soviet Union, the most powerful Russia has ever been in its history, to the cleaners, despite internal social and political upheaval that was by far the most severe in our history and dwarfs political disagreements of today. Oh annd yes, the USSR played that up to.

In other words, we're fine. We're better than fine. Internal wrestling sometimes delays our response. But one America chooses to respond, it's very hard to get it to stop. The momentum is that heavy. That's our character.

Or Russian and Chinese bases encircling Europe from Africa and Middle East.

I'm sure Europe is quaking in it's boots about Russia's one base in Syria that it can barely protect from rebels, it's five people in Libya, and China's 20 person contingent to Djibouti.

Give me a break. Russia isn't a great power and can't even sustain combat operations on it's borderlands, and China is about 20 years out from being able to permanently sustain a significant foreign deployed presence.

Which draws us back to this chemical weapon terrorist attack Russia committed. It's another stunt by a regime only able to execute stunts.

[Deleted]

You're misreading what I said. You are being dishonest. Russia isn't oppressed by the West. Russians are oppressed by the Russian Government. You're right that we're not going to destroy Russia. Why would we? Russia has a longer history of being part of Europe than being everyone's favourite public enemy, before the communists took over. They can be brought back into the global community as a constructive partner.

Until then, sanction the fuck out of them. If you don't play nice, nobody's playing nice with you. Being part of the global community is not something that can be taken away from you. But you will learn to behave like a decent nation eventually. Until then, it's tightening the screws until you lot stand in queues outside stores again.

I wasn't talking about the voice of Russia, either. I was talking about the Russian people that have a voice. And their opposition candidates get excluded from the so-called democratic purpose with one intent: To silence the masses. That is not the natural state of things.

sanctions don't really work. Because they rarely hit the elite in meaningful ways. Look at Kim in Korea, hes not exactly getting thinner. The sanctions amount to collective punishment or simply a war crime. I mean look at the ghost ships that get found when people take to the sea in N korea in search of food because they are starving, die, and the boat washes up in Japan. Thats sanctions killing people, but as its indirect we wash our hands of it. Killing the poor and powerless. Sanctions are medieval siege but with a modern PR apparatus sold as humane. Sanctions always hit the wrong target.

[Shalcker]

You're misreading what I said. You are being dishonest. Russia isn't oppressed by the West. Russians are oppressed by the Russian Government.

Both are true. Both oppressions exist. And denying that is dishonest.

There are plenty of reasons why you would want to to do that. Some are reasonable, some aren't, and some are downright counter-productive to stated goals.

And we have plenty of reasons to resist such oppression. No good outcomes have been observed through history from "giving up".

You're right that we're not going to destroy Russia. Why would we? Russia has a longer history of being part of Europe than being everyone's favourite public enemy, before the communists took over. They can be brought back into the global community as a constructive partner.

Russia has long history of being West's favourite punching bag too.

I recently encountered article from freaking 1890 (Google translate) about "protests against treatment of Russian opposition in Siberia" in UK - and it reads like mirror image of stuff written today.

Until then, sanction the fuck out of them. If you don't play nice, nobody's playing nice with you.

Likewise.

Being part of the global community is not something that can be taken away from you. But you will learn to behave like a decent nation eventually. Until then, it's tightening the screws until you lot stand in queues outside stores again.

Except it is literally impossible to achieve from EU side.

We're still at trade proficit with it after several years of sanctions. You buy more from us then we do from you.

I wasn't talking about the voice of Russia, either. I was talking about the Russian people that have a voice. And their opposition candidates get excluded from the so-called democratic purpose with one intent: To silence the masses. That is not the natural state of things.

Except those "excluded" literally refuse to join their fellow opposition, to use this opportunity as their "trusted people" to throw their condemnations of "regime" through Central TV rather then their small and cozy sites and youtube channels. It's them at the head or everything is not worth their participation.

They are shaping up to be more totalitarian then Putin himself, quite a remarkable feat.