https://twitter.com/Okapuer/status/1016948925939400704
I love him. I really do.
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https://twitter.com/Okapuer/status/1016948925939400704
I love him. I really do.
What's he saying there?
Corbz was right when he said we should hire Trump for the Brexit negotiations. Actually I said it myself the day before he did, so I expect he reads AWIMB. :nod:
Ok, he didn't exactly say that before some pedant points it out but not far off.
Encircling Russia? :hehe:
Can you think of a single reason why the former countires of the Warsaw Pact and the Baltic States might be nervous enough of the cuddly Russian bear to wish to join a strong military alliance? Just one reason?
I'll give you a clue. 45 years of brutal Russian occupation. Howzat?
NATO did its job during the cold war. It helped keep the main peace in a multi-polar world, and perhaps should have disbanded with the USSR. Since then NATO has been an aggressive tool of the USA.
Russia doesn't need more territory, it needs peace and good relations. You mentioned allies - it now has a strong alliance with China and is a key player in the BRI and SCO projects, and is the only power with good relations with all the countries in the middle east - including Israel, KSA, Syria and Iran.
Trump is portrayed as a lunatic but might yet be a peacemaker. He wants to get on with Russia and China, and wants peace in Korea. The place he might not want peace though is Iran.
To go back to the original point - he also wants to sell his more expensive LNG to Germany, who would prefer to buy cheaper energy from Russia.
I think it's a trifle disingenuous of you to ignore the fact that Putin's popularity has to no small extent lain in his revival of Russian nationalism and that that has entailed a highly aggressive and domineering approach over those former Russian states that became independent at the end of the Cold War. Russia may not 'need' more territory, but it does regard its former republics as effectively satellite states that it is entitled to control and bully. When it becomes clear that the states themselves have other ideas, Putin has never been slow to threaten and/or use his military to force them into obeisance. Given that (and Russia's history of aggression to - for instance - Poland and Ukraine), is it really a surprise that Russia's neighbours should seek security in an alliance with NATO?
History makes it clear that the notion of Russia being an innocent victim encroached upon by the West is nonsense. A large part of Russia's history is one of aggression towards and colonisation of its immediate western neighbours and that history is inevitably going to inform modern attitudes.
If Russia needs peace and good relations; why does the mouthpiece of the Putin state (RT) continually bombard the Russian people with anti-Russian, western conspiracy theories which seem to have little truth behind them?
And even if you do believe that there is truth behind them, if you really want peace and good relations why tell everyone in Russia about them thereby tainting their view of the people that want good relations with?
What Russia wants or needs means nothing. What Putin wants or needs means everything. And peace and good relations do him little good as what he really wants is an enemy against whom he can protect the Russian people. Whether it exists or not.
Everyone apologise for torture and oppression under the right circumstances. Consider the immediate post war period from Russia's point of view. The war was no picnic for them.....
**** the Germans and **** leaving a bloody great big gap of **** all between you and them.
Admittedly, you would think they might cool off over the next 20-30 years but then the Cold War was in full swing until Rocky IV came along and solved it.
You people will never understand Russia.
Really? THis coming from a country whose population, even today, are unable to celebrate a football win without singing songs about German bombers?
Soviet Union deaths from WW2- 20 million plus
British deaths from WW2- circa 450,000
We like to parade ourselves as the sole defenders against Hitler's aggression when most of the war was fought elsewhere at far greater cost to others.
I did accept they could have calmed down earlier but madness? If so, largely justifiable madness.
I think we tend to parade ourselves as the sole defenders against Hitler' aggression because for the crucial year between June 1940 and June 1941 (during which your Russki chums were engaged in a badly misjudged and morally indefensible non-aggression pact with Germany) we and our Commonwealth and Empire were.
Hope this helps.
That was tactical, anything but misjudged and no more morally indefensible than our attempts to appease the lunatic for the three years before he unleashed hell.
You are also conveniently ignoring the Soviet Union's repeated attempts to communicate with Britain in the months leading up to that pact and Britain's reluctance to enter into conversation (let alone alliance) with a bunch of commies. One could describe that as pretty ill judged but wepresent it as our own period of particular heroism. what we actually did was sit defending our island while our commonwealth and empire forces crumbled, including losing Singapore andaround 80,000 troops to about 300 Japanese soldiers on bicycles.
They set up home ion Raffles, b. In ****ing Raffles!
You think the pact wasn't misjudged on Russia's part? Despite the fact that it resulted in Germany damn near taking Moscow and killing 20 million Russians? Wow.
And I hardly think Britain's attempt to avoid war - morally dubious as it was - can be compared with Russia's cynical and murderous carving up of Poland.
And yes, we did have some issues with the idea of entering into any sort of alliance with a murderous and demonstrably untrustworthy regime that was busy slaughtering its citizens and was clearly ideologically opposed to everything we stood for.
Meanwhile, your representation of the war in the Far East is pretty ludicrous given that the 14th Army under Slim repeatedly battered and ultimately defeated the Japanese subsequent to the Fall of Singapore, including handing their army their first major defeats of the war at Kohima and Imphal.
Stalin delayed awar he wasn't prepared for in order to fight onetwo years later that he was barely prepared for. Did we not carve up Czechoslovakia to avoid war with Germany? Why is it ok for us to do so despite it affecting millions of people somewhere else but morally reprehensible when Stalin does it?
As far as the Far East is concerned, yes, the tide eventually turned. But not in the period you were talking about. Following US involvement, of course.
As for refusing to ally ourselves with untrustworthy commies....errrr, isnt that exactly what we ended up doing anyway, as Stalin dealt Hitler a fatal wound on the Eastern front. The initial refusal to talk to them might appear slightly misjudged given that victory ultimately relied on striking Germany from both sides simultaneously.
Certainly Stalin knew there would eventually be war with Germany. However, he was totally unprepared and in denial in 1941 - so much so that he refused to believe his own intelligence services when they told him Germany was going to attack - even after they'd actually invaded, in fact. He had lost six million troops by early 1942 - that is not my idea of 'barely prepared' and, if it was as a result of calculation, I'd say those calculations had been pretty flawed, wouldn't you?
The tide turned in the Far East in part because we were out there rather than 'sitting, defending our island' as you suggested.
We didn't occupy Czechoslovakia and start murdering people as far as I'm aware, p, so that comparison doesn't work.
We allied with Russia because we had a common enemy - no other reason. And of course, as soon as the common enemy disappeared, Stalin showed that we had been right not to trust him before the war by immediately reverting to type, grabbing the whole of Eastern Europe and trying to seize Berlin.
Peter went to Kiev Comprehensive
:-(
It is hardly an earth shattering discovery to suggest that the war may have been going rather well for Germanyand Japan for the first couple of years, is it? Or that the entry of the Soviet Union and USA played some part in turning the tide?
Yeah, its all Tony Benn's fault :)