Burnwinter an invasion may not have been inevitable but Putin has just seen regular messages that the west don't have any will to resist. A negotiation in 2014 would equally not have led in my view too this being over. The best approach that the west could take but whether it has the stomach which I doubt is too freeze Russia out of any economic dealings with the west, keep sanctions on them even if a peace is concluded with the message that this is what a war such as this costs. There should be no normalisation with them from an economic sense so they have no ability to be restrengthening after. It's the only language Putin understands.

      awooga83 A negotiation in 2014 would equally not have led in my view too this being over.

      I agree. And equally it won't be over after any negotiation that happens now either.

      It may naively look like Russia, but the strategic winner from the last decade in Ukraine is the United States. Russia's had to fight a bloody war, lose all international standing and lose its European markets. The EU has had to lose its ties to Russia and get humiliated. And Ukraine's been fucked by all sides.

      Meanwhile the United States has a functional onshore gas industry, and has cut the EU halfway off from a great power rival ... and now it's come back round with a different hat on to extract a few hundred billion for doing the favour, while calling itself a peacemaker.

        JazzG hope that's some fake text-to-video nonsense...

            Coombs thought the same but apparently it's real.

            These people need their heads examined.

              Pepe LeFrits no surprises that there are so many lies thrown out. Yet it doesn't seem to filter to anyone who idolises this idiot. Meanwhile Musk showing what a coward he is after talking so much rubbish online now he isn't actually firing anybody and it's all recommendation. This whole thing is a total shit show. Does anyone still believe this is being done properly.

              https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/elon-musk-republicans-federal-workers-firings

                Should be flagged for removal because it dropped an atomic bomb, but that's not the debate I guess.

                Fash all riled up about DEE: diversity, equity and explosion.

                JazzG can't decide what's worse between this and Gavin newsom yucking it up with Charlie Kirk on a podcast. but at the end of the day, people vote governments out rather than vote governments in. if the GOP screw up enough, and there's still functional elections, the milquetoast dems will find their way back.

                  Gurgen that its the Atlantic is the first red flag. Go ahead, Gurgs. Defeat the Russians.

                  If they aren't going to be defeated, whether they can be is academic.

                    I'd challenge anyone, anyone at all to read Elliot Cohen's curriculum vitae and then rely on his optimistic judgements about the prospects of war.

                    I wouldn't risk my wallet, let alone my life, in a war based on Cohen's recommendations.

                      Burnwinter was about to say I don't know the other guy but Eliot Cohen cosigning your position should give you pause. Would go a step further and say I'd bet my wallet and life on the opposite of anything this guy's ever said.

                      But maybe @Gurgen thinks the Iraq War was "just and moral" or that the US should invade Iran next as this guy proposed.

                          jones did they say Iraq war was just and moral? Is he referring to the false motivation for the war or the estimated half a million dead?

                              Gurgen Some reading for you folks who believe the almighty Russian empire cannot be defeated and hence must be given land every time it invades another country.

                              Interesting.

                                Cohen co-founded PNAC (those who know wish they didn't). He's a belligerent loony who's been in harness pulling on the wagon of post-9/11 "manifest destiny" since it started rolling. And a close fellow traveller of the aforementioned Victoria Nuland, for what it's worth.

                                Just another cadre in this gang of extreme neoconservative imperialist hawks, all of whom hate Trump intensely for threatening their racket without that making them in any way human. And all these nutcases have advocated for every misbegotten military adventure of the United States since Gulf I.

                                Claudius he was one of the biggest proponents before and after the war so both, if it was up to him American soldiers would be in virtually every Arab country there is.

                                Founder of PNAC, one of the biggest warmongerers on earth and overall the biggest piece of shit imaginable.

                                  The enemy of my enemy is just some guy's enemy.