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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.
2024 US Election
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.
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.
The enemy of my enemy is just some guy's enemy.
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jones Deveselu has 3 RIM-161 systems, you cannot use it to attack man, you could modify in theory but it would take time, it would be a hack basically and, there are only 3 of them, and even if modified it is not effective at all used in attack. Nobody was attacking russia with them lol, it's also used for ships and maybe if modified for planes. So for defending.
people are just being paranoid when they're concerned about ballistic missile defences at every border to a nuclear superpower?
this is an amazing sentence when talking about Russia being the one scared, my fucking god man.
Yea, people will get ballistic missile defences if you are neighboring russia lol. as if you do not, you die, see Cecenia twice, Ucraina twice, Georgia three times, Transnistria, Dagestan, Finland, Poland in 53, Baltic states in 56, HUngary in 56, Albania in 61, Czechoslovakia in 68, the Sino-Soviet conflict in 69, Abkhazia in 93, Tajikistan in 97.
Nice list, and I am ignoring Mali where they are fighting for 4 years now, and Burkina Faso where Russia is fighting for one year. And Siria where they stayed for 14 years? And Afganistan for over 10 years.
God damn fucking NATO forcing countries next to russia to get arms, for no reason what so ever.
Now a days, countries are independent and sovereign, and they can do what they want. Nobody is forcing anyone to join NATO or UE or BRICS and whatever else there is.
No man what are you saying? Sovereign countries? It’s Russia who decides which organisations neighbouring countries get to join. We have to let them invade if that advice is not followed, they’re too powerful and mighty and have never lost a war. And after that invasion we have to give them lots of land! Rewarding war is the only way to peace after all. It’s a tried and tested recipe that’s worked really well throughout history.
What course of action and outcome are you arguing for?
To me the most hopeful and least destructive outcome would be a diplomatically managed de-escalation (with all the ongoing dangers and risks that entails, and an effective frozen conflict) and a negotiated peace with territorial concessions to Putin, which would probably include Crimea and the Donbas. I don't think I've said anything different for a long time.
Here is how that Payson and Cohen piece ends:
Ukraine is not on the verge of collapse, and it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is losing the attritional war, which makes the Trump administration’s decisions particularly shortsighted and tragic. Ukraine has plenty of cards, even if Trump and Vance cannot see them. If America’s leaders could only bring themselves to put pressure on Russia comparable to what they put on Ukraine, they could help Ukraine achieve something much more like a win.
I get that my views mean I'm a Russian mouthpiece or a Chamberlain-esque surrender monkey or whatever. But in the camp that wants this war to keep going I don't get what the criteria are for supporting a negotiated peace.
What does "something much more like a win" actually mean?
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HomeSteak "it's used for defending" wasn't a viable excuse during the cold war when even the US agreed to sign the ABM treaty prohibiting the development of more ABMs like the RIM-161. "You cannot use it to attack man" those missile shields were in all likelihood the weapon that brought humanity the closest to extinction ffs.
"Syria for 14 years, Burkina Faso or Mali" you're just throwing out anything at this point. If you really believe countries are independent and sovereign and can do what they want I don't think there's much common ground to find, we'll have to agree to disagree mate.
Burnwinter it means more dead Russians and destroyed Russian tanks at the cost of however many Ukrainians needed and left standing, the article is explicitly saying "Smaller powers can, through the intelligent application of attrition, succeed in advancing their own goals."
Wild that this has become an acceptable thing to say in polite society - talking about the Tolly here not the shithole that is the Atlantic or the US.
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Burnwinter I think what you fail to understand for about 20 pages now is that no-one wants to keep the war going. You want to end the war in favour of Russia, because you believe there is no other way. Others want to end the war in favour of Europe. That's what the disagreement is about. Stop with this disingenuous I'm a peace activist bullshit - which by the way is an identical point of view both at the extreme right and extreme left in this conflict, another thing they have in common. Absolutely everyone here wants a peace agreement and an end to war. The disagreement is about what that means.
I think we also need to stop pretending that any one of us knows who is ultimately capable of doing what on the battlefield and that there are certainties about the outcomes being reached. Wars are extremely unpredictable and even people close to the action are very often completely wrong in their assessments. I don't know for use that Ukraine can achieve a positive outcome but you also don't know for sure that it can't.
Gurgen Stop with this disingenuous I'm a peace activist bullshit - which by the way is an identical point of view both at the extreme right and extreme left in this conflict
Asked already, but spare me the personal attacks. The distortions—Russian mouthpiece, faker, etc—are childish and way off the mark.
What about the question I asked? Are you able to say what would be enough of a change in the current position to permit you, personally to endorse a negotiation for peace?
Some possibilities you might or might not agree with. Russian forces expelled from Crimea and the Donbas. Regime change in Russia. 100,000 more Russian casualties and 5,000 more Russian tanks blown up, some kind of aggregate "attrition". French nuclear weapons staged in Poland and pointed at Moscow. Polls saying Ukrainians want to negotiate. A popular vote in Ukraine to negotiate.
Gurgen I think we also need to stop pretending that any one of us knows who is ultimately capable of doing what on the battlefield and that there are certainties about the outcomes being reached. Wars are extremely unpredictable and even people close to the action are very often completely wrong in their assessments.
You're dead right. For starters, every imperial war waged in my adult life hasn't panned out anything like we were told. It's the most predictable aspect of war, that we get lied to about what is going to happen and why.
That's why we should question war and its pretexts more sharply than we do almost anything.
The IDF has been in Gaza to destroy Hamas, of course. Surely none could doubt it? Well in October 2023, western commentators broadly endorsed Operation Iron Swords as a moral necessity. Now tens of thousands of Palestinian children have been gunned, shelled or bulldozed to death, and the land grab is on.
Well, blow me down. It's a real surprise but at the time, old mate Eliot Cohen supported all that. And he used the same language and the same analogical reasoning for Israelis and Ukrainians (the "civilized nations") on the one hand, and Russians and Palestinians (the "barbarians") on the other.
Leaves a bit of a bad taste, doesn't it?
Gurgen I don't know for use that Ukraine can achieve a positive outcome but you also don't know for sure that it can't.
Yes, we definitely don't know whether Ukraine can or can't achieve some unspecified outcome.
jones Fuck these wars.
Burnwinter "Americans have fought barbarians in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan."
Have to give it to him, he's nothing if not consistent. Special place in hell for people like him.
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Burnwinter Did I ever say I am against peace negotiations? I am in favour of peace negotiations right now. The whole point is that there are no peace negotiations and what the US is proposing is not a peace negotiation. Your question - "what would be enough of a change in the current position to permit you, personally to endorse a negotiation for peace" - is something you should be asking Putin not me. Because it's the Russians who are not and have not ever been interested in peace, as this entire conflict shows.
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Gurgen Did I ever say I am against peace negotiations?
Okay, sure. I'll take this at face value.
Yes, you did.
You've worked hard to rationalise the prolongation of this war. You've done it for years.
Yesterday you endorsed two neocons who claimed dubiously in the Atlantic "if only the United States would support the war effort, because it's being won".
Within the past week you called opposition to ongoing war "appeasement" and speculated about NATO military action against Putin analogous to the Allied campaign to remove Hitler.
You've described peace negotiations involving territorial concessions along the lines of Minsk 2 (paraphrasing) as folly that "rewards Putin with land" in your past few posts.
You use similar formulae often. Suggesting a peace on any vaguely realistic basis is the symptom of a recidivist, online poser, an ignoramus, an extremist, someone dogmatically anti-west, a Russian dupe, or whatever else is handy.
As far as the underpinnings of the conflict go it's very, very simple. Russia is pure historical evil and has "never had allies, only enemies and vassals". Any peace negotiated with Putin will immediately fail due to treachery. And importantly, "the west is better".
Even in your last post, you imply hopes for peace are futile because Putin would never enter into it. Well you might be right about that, and today you might be more right than you would have been a year ago, when you were saying the same things.
But you can't claim you've been open to testing it.
To add to this, for a good extended period you said that any call for an end to the war given its horrifying human costs was no more than a cowardly denial of Ukrainian political will.
That's your record, give or take. Did you ever say you were against peace negotiations?
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Most of your post is factually incorrect but I'm a bit tired so I'll just respond to a few points:
I didn't call opposition to ongoing war appeasement, I called giving away land for peace appeasement. That's simply what it is. You never gave me that example where this worked. It hasn't worked in 200,000 years of human history and never will;
agreeing things with these guys has been tested, numerous times, also in the context of this very conflict. And the agreements have been violated every time;
the underpinnings of the conflict are indeed very simple. Good that you finally get it. By the way, there isn't a single Russian who doesn't know or think the West is better. That's why their children all live and go to school in the West, when they can afford it.
Gurgen I didn't call opposition to ongoing war appeasement, I called giving away land for peace appeasement. That's simply what it is. You never gave me that example where this worked. It hasn't worked in 200,000 years of human history and never will;
What does "worked" mean? If you mean stopped expansionist imperialism, fine. You could argue it hasn't worked in that sense. But ceding territory to an enemy after losing in combat has, historically, marked the end of just about every discrete war in human history. This means the end of combat operations, shelling, destruction of heritage and infrastructure, and the mass killing, torture, and rape of civilians and military personnel alike. These are more important goals than maintaining ephemeral political boundaries or labels on maps.
If you cannot secure the military, financial or political capacity to deter an invasion, it's likely you've already lost. Playing out the war is so archaic at this point in human history. If NATO wanted to, they would have matched and exceeded Russian military presence on the Ukrainian borders. They didn't. They wanted a drawn-out conflict for their war-mongering corporate benefactors and Ukrainian leadership played their part perfectly.
The losers are the dead, the wounded, the tortured and disenfranchised - they are resistance fighters who have been lied to, children whose futures are stolen, and families torn apart. Ukraine isn't worth all that, because a nation-state is unequivocally not equivalent with its people. Why fight for a bunch of corporate leeches? For arms dealers and energy executives? For venture capitalists and the political elite? Basically, why fight for JD fucking Vance, just so he can insult you on global television? It doesn't make any sense.