As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
[Post Soviet States 4] Just like old times
JusticeforPluto
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Here is a map of the area we are talking about. Originally I included all of the former Warsaw pact, but frankly most talk about the nations that joined the EU went on in the EU thread. So now we get to talk about the former USSR, see here:
Key for the numbered states.
Spoiler
So, why talk about this area? As I said before, it seems that Russian is on the rise (although this does not mean they are predestined to be a superpower once more, they face many challenges). After the fall of the Soviet Union, I think many leaders in the West believed Russia could be marginalized and ignored. Capitalism would take hold, and perhaps they would join Europe in a sense. However, this seems to not be the case any more.
So whats new since I wrote the last OP in...2014? Dang.
Well, Russia is still supporting rebels in Eastern Ukraine. And are now massing troops along the border, creating lots of things for us all to discuss. Yay?
Azerbaijan won a war against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, taking back a lot of land that all parties agreed was Azerbaijani (but held by Armenians as a negotiating point) and a lot of Nagorno-Karabakh. Whats left is now patrolled by Russia peacekeepers.
Kazakhstan experienced some unrest briefly at the start of the year, but things seemed to have died down, or at least the coverage of it.
Anyways, this is the place to talk about how the various nations that used to make up the USSR are getting along.
Key for the numbered states.
1. Armenia; 2. Azerbaijan; 3. Belarus; 4. Estonia;
5. Georgia; 6. Kazakhstan; 7. Kyrgyzstan; 8. Latvia;
9. Lithuania; 10. Moldova; 11. Russia; 12. Tajikistan;
13. Turkmenistan; 14. Ukraine; 15. Uzbekistan
and here:5. Georgia; 6. Kazakhstan; 7. Kyrgyzstan; 8. Latvia;
9. Lithuania; 10. Moldova; 11. Russia; 12. Tajikistan;
13. Turkmenistan; 14. Ukraine; 15. Uzbekistan
Spoiler
So, why talk about this area? As I said before, it seems that Russian is on the rise (although this does not mean they are predestined to be a superpower once more, they face many challenges). After the fall of the Soviet Union, I think many leaders in the West believed Russia could be marginalized and ignored. Capitalism would take hold, and perhaps they would join Europe in a sense. However, this seems to not be the case any more.
So whats new since I wrote the last OP in...2014? Dang.
Well, Russia is still supporting rebels in Eastern Ukraine. And are now massing troops along the border, creating lots of things for us all to discuss. Yay?
Azerbaijan won a war against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, taking back a lot of land that all parties agreed was Azerbaijani (but held by Armenians as a negotiating point) and a lot of Nagorno-Karabakh. Whats left is now patrolled by Russia peacekeepers.
Kazakhstan experienced some unrest briefly at the start of the year, but things seemed to have died down, or at least the coverage of it.
Anyways, this is the place to talk about how the various nations that used to make up the USSR are getting along.
0
Posts
And another recent article highlighting how the growth of Ukranian neo-Nazi ideaology has led to massacres in western countries:
https://sports.yahoo.com/biden-ignoring-key-tool-combat-093000877.html
If the Ukranian neo-Nazis, who are currently being armed with heavy weapons, succeed in their stated goal of establishing a Nazi state in Ukraine, I wonder if the US will push for regime change?
Russia's economy is whatever Putin says it is, at this point. But seriously, Russia has been strengthening its ties with China in a BIG way. Their economy could safely transition over to China and the far east. Vladivostok is now a warm water port. There are numerous heavy railways and oil pipelines going between Moscow, Northern China, and Vladivostok. Global warming has opened up Siberia in ways that were inconceivable in decades past.
Russia doesn't need Europe anymore. They can trade with the east.
Yes. They do care. And Germany finally saying they were going to cut it off is probably the thing that brought Russia to the table.
Basically zero chance. Sevastopol is too important to russian interests in the region for them to risk losing it a second time.
“It’s like when you come to church and you feel something in your heart”
Ah. The warm fuzzies of Nazi fellowship
I think I need to wretch.
We know it's a distraction from the reality that Russia is continuing to build up forces to invade Ukraine. This is the issue at hand. This is what the thread has been focused on. Discussion has moved on from the Azovs.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I suppose I should have phrased that more clearly as being a viable movement within or desired by the Crimean populace rather than the broader “can this be achieved without setting off the Kremlin”. Yeah I would agree there would be something of a fit thrown about Russia losing Sevastopol again.
The fact that it was held at gunpoint hangs an absolutely gigantic massive asterisk on any independence vote, since it is now at this point entirely tainted due to the imperialistic meddling of a regional power.
Russia gets to back off, without being subjected to crippling sanctions. Moscow doesn't get a say in Ukraine's foreign policy anymore.
- John Stuart Mill
So your acceptable negotiation end point is that Russia just stops or we start starving civilians? Seems like basically just setting diplomatic efforts up to fail. I mean that's not even really diplomacy.
Its on topic.
Having your country taken over and your countryfolk made subjects of a foreign invader is violence.
I'm sorry, was this in response to me?
I mean
It is a country with at least 144 million souls within its borders and covers a mass of the planet spanning from Eastern Europe to the eastern edge of Asia, with a shitton of nukes in its care
It’s not gonna be a particularly great candidate for a graceful State Collapse, is what I’m saying
Russia is not going to explode because they didn't get to invade anyone.
Why is it you people look for any excuse to pin any potential future human suffering on the West.
And the Azov battalion was maybe on topic 3 weeks ago when we were letting you all distract us with fears about Nazis under the bed but the thread has moved on to current events.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
And a reminder too that broad sanctions would only immiserate a populace that hasn’t had any say in their governance for decades, while the kleptocracy at the center of said governance would insulate the ruling class and their oligarch colleagues quite well from the harm inflicted.
Freezing those bastards overseas assets on the other hand…
No, we' don't get to escape the moral consequences of our sanctions policies and how they effect civilians just because their government is awful. This is, hilariously, denying American agency.
I never said it was; I was responding specifically to the “to big to fail” idea
Which like, yeah, you don’t have a state that size collapse without massive destabilization whose effects will be felt for decades to come
It buys time for Putin’s personal hourglass to run out, at the very least.
Like again, what is the alternative here beyond a nightmarish game of warfare chicken?
It means years of Ukraine building up its military as they've continued to do. It means years of interested parties supplying them. Russia would already struggle in conquering Ukraine, or at least some of their officers seem to think so. That situation isn't going to move in Russia's favor just because Ukraine doesn't immediately join NATO. You're making an unjustified assumption.
Yet you treat a harder line against a warmonger as some sort of affront to decency while you treat utterly ridiculous demands by said warmonger as “perfectly workable as an opening bid for negotiation”
The option would be to make it more attractive to not take over Ukraine by making conquest too big a pain in the ass.
It feels more often than not we go to suggesting sanctions because it’s easier to abstract away the violence inflicted on a populace than it is when that violence is inflicted by bullet and bomb
Then you're back to the only acceptable outcome here is that Russia gives up unconditionally. The only way you're going to get that is either a war they lose or crippling sanctions. The calculus in terms of human lives seems pretty clear.
Yes, civilian targeting sanctions are an affront to decency. I feel comfortable with that one. If you find that policy less morally troublesome than NATO joining dates I'm genuinely sorry.
Yes, it is diplomacy. You know what isn’t diplomacy? Putting a gun to someone’s head, then demanding concessions for not pulling the trigger.
- John Stuart Mill
Peter Capaldi’s voice ringing in my head, shouting “Fingers on buzzers…”
That's exactly what you're proposing! You're threatening to destroy their economy, with all the human misery that entails, if they don't stop their aggression against Ukraine. Feel that's justified all you like, but at least don't lie to yourself about what it is!
When only one side is on the gas it’s not chicken, it’s a truck attack.
The solution to truck attacks is to erect barricades, not to remove them.
I know that referencing other people is like your thing but I do not consume whatever media that you do.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/economic-sanctions-too-much-of-a-bad-thing/?amp
But that’s the thing, a building of arms isnt a barricade in your metaphor; it’s another truck.
Maybe you’re not hitting the pedal as fast, but that’s the entire aim: keep coming at me and I’m going to come at you, and it’s going to hurt so you better back down.
There’s no “barricade” here, just the threat that you’ll hurt them more than they were willing to be, that you’ll bleed them more, kill them more, pile up more
Bodies more effectively.
That’s what it means to go to war and threaten war. There’s no clean way out of it, just mountains of the dead
The West is responding.
Don't pretend that we're at fault just because we refuse to just roll over and let Russia have its way.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Bolded the key point there.
- John Stuart Mill