Angus has a couple of short posts re: Ukraine over at his blog.
Perennial commenters can cool their fingers: he has blocked comments, to avoid the inevitable anonymous flame war that will ensue, to a metaphysical certainty.
Rabid knuckleheads (you know who you are) can expect similar treatment here.
We link both posts, because he's batting 1.000 on both of them. A+.
Go. Read. Absorb.
What does Ukraine get out of this:
Shafted.
Fucked over.
Devastated and permanently crippled economically and demographically.
Hung out to dry.
A shred of their former existence.
If Russia decides to call a pause, which is by no means certain, nor even likely.
What does Russia get out of this:
Exposed as a paper tiger.
Hundreds of thousands of dead.
Half their ground combat power destroyed, which will take decades to replace.
A century as a diplomatic pariah.
Proof that crime pays.
The knowledge that they can get away with this the next time they're bulked up.
A third of the former Ukraine.
What does the U.S. get out of this:
Peace with dishonor.
Identified worldwide as a buddy-fucker nation who will throw anyone under the bus if it's expedient, diplomatic assurances be damned.
Watching nuclear proliferation become a growth industry worldwide, especially among the nations who really shouldn't ever get one. But we can't unring that bell. You will see this material again.
There's also little reason for Russia to stop now, and it's unlikely either the US or Ukraine will ever swap any minerals out of the ground for cash until - if ever - the war knocks off.
Trump has zero leverage over Russia now, and Putin has every reason to laugh at any "deal" we suggest.
This is what happens when checkers players play geopolitical chess.
They're all about now, and not so much about the next five things that today doesn't just make possible, it makes inevitable.
POTUS' new callsign should be Shaft.
And not in a Richard Roundtree/Samuel Jackson way.
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| Well-played, President Chamberlain. The last time someone pulled off a diplomatic coup like this, Czechoslovakia found out they didn't really need the Sudetenland. And that worked out so well down the line, for everyone. |
The argument is that our security assurances to Ukraine were all a PR stunt, with fake provisions and promises.
Okay, it was all a sham.
But you can't have your cake, and eat it too.
Fake agreements have consequences, and Clintonian word-parsing doersn't unring the bell that the U.S. is underlining, in Ukrainian blood, that we're a buddy-fucker nation, with no intention of following through on any promises we make. You can't say to any number of other nations now, "Oh we were just funning around with those Russian puppets in Ukraine, but our assurances to you are totally different, and you can count on us when SHTF. No, really, we mean it!"
Nobody anywhere on the planet would buy that any more than they'd sell the family cow for Magic Beans.
All you're doing is saying Trump's just following through on the lies of Slick Willy, and the failure to act of Obozo. That's a helluva way to make what we're doing okay. It's an option, sure, but generally, you don't double down on bullshit and ineptitude to prove you're doing right by the country.
And if you do, you're saying we're bullshit and lame, and proud of it.
That has consequences.
And BTW, we didn't get Ukraine to hand over their nukes for nothing but a song and dance. We PAID them to do so, on the strength of those bullshit fake promises, and we even hid the fact, because we didn't want to be on the hook to have to pay Belarus for doing the same thing.
And FTR, when you pay someone to do something, and promise you'll do something in return, and then don't do what you promised, that's called perpetrating a fraud. The fact that you promised it with your fingers crossed doesn't undo the fraudulence.
Using the defense later that "we were just being lying crooks" isn't going to cut any ice with other nations whom we expect to honor their agreements with us, with a straight face.
Countries, like people, only get the reputation they deserve.
Ours is as lying backstabbers, and flying that flag proudly is something we're going to pay more for in the long run than whatever it would cost to keep sending military equipment to Ukraine now, for the short-term, with or without a deal for minerals we'll never see.
When Ukraine delivers nothing, because Vlad isn't going to let that happen either, Ukraine is perfectly justified in saying "Hey, we're liars too; you should be familiar with that concept, since it's how you've always dealt with us."
And every other nation has wised up as well. Some will make appropriate preparations, knowing the US isn't going to be there when it counts.
And some of them are going to take Trump at his behavior, not his word, and drift into Russia's sphere of influence even more.
Well-played, President Chamberlain. This is paying dividends on dividends, and will continue to bite us in the ass worldwide for decades to centuries. We elected Trump, and we're getting Clinton and Obozo as a bonus.
Best wishes selling that to the American electorate in 2028. "Vote for the non-Clinton party with extra Clinton filling! Good luck telling us apart!" That'll play in Peoria.
Which, BTW, is why public opinion of Trump's behavior on this point is running heavily against him. Lincoln's comments about not fooling all of the people all of the time are proving extraordinarily resilient, regardless of political affiliation.
Now, if someone wants to argue that our mendacity - however justified currently - isn't going to have major consequences, both at home and abroad, I wish them the best of luck with that argument. My argument all along is that doing the wrong thing - which is now official policy, and maybe always was - is going to be hugely worse than doing the right thing. Turns out DOGE isn't the only government entity showing what lying fuck-ups the US government is. POTUS has decided to illustrate the point as well.
I still maintain that the hardest wounds to heal are cleat marks one makes in their own junk.
Proving that probably shouldn't be official US policy, but here we are.
