The agreement made with the Soviet Union was that if they allowed the reunification of German, a country that had incited two wars and invasions of the Soviet Union, then the United States would not expand the NATO military organization to the east and threaten the Soviets. The United States has repeatedly violated that agreement once it…
The agreement made with the Soviet Union was that if they allowed the reunification of German, a country that had incited two wars and invasions of the Soviet Union, then the United States would not expand the NATO military organization to the east and threaten the Soviets. The United States has repeatedly violated that agreement once it got the reunification, it sought to sell new military weapons to the new NATO members who are forced to convert to new ones made by American, British, and French firms.
A Lend Lease by FDR was a way to get the Soviets to do all the fighting while Americans stayed at home, much as with the firsth World War. The end result was 20 million people dead in the Soviet Union as compared to less than half a million Americans. The Soviet armies fought against 80 German divisions as compared to fewer than 20 divisions with the allies armies. The Soviets crushed the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Korea and accomlished more in the first 3 weeks with their invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 (requested by FDR) than the U.S. military accomplished in 4 years of fighting for its former colonies in the Pacific.
Imagine the response if Putin established military bases in Mexico and Cuba and Venezuela and supplied them with missles systems as the U.S. has done across Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. launched illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and devasted the countries and caused the deaths of millions of civilians but that is different?
FDR was presiding over about the same percentage of fascist sympathizers as Biden is today. This schism seems to be in American DNA. Surely the Soviets had their own motives. Patton thought so. I think a quibble may be made with invasion of Afghanistan. As for Iraq, I think an argument can be made that "the U.S.", in terms of the citizenry, aren't guilty of that. Remember the truly mass mass marches, in despite of grossly bogus propaganda that caused hysteria among the (go back to) same percentage of innate fascist sympathizers, and the pandering media. (Hans Blix U.N. arms inspection report was "buried" low on far inside page of San Francisco Chronicle, with front page filled with LeBron James, then just a teenager from Ohio.) This is a "response" I can't resist, but when shall we take pity on Ukraine, now; today? None of the past gives Putin the right, no matter who didn't have the right to whatever back into the mists of time!
That's correct. After the Soviet Union collapsed, its former satellites legitimately became sovereign nations free to choose their own alliances and destinies without paying homage to the biggest bully on the block. Accept the reality of the present rather than the fantasies of the past. Sadly for poor Mr. Putin, most of them chose NATO over his tin-pot dictatorship. Go figure.
Read Cinfessions of An Economic Hitman for an accurate understanding of how the U.S. empire works. Without a Union the Soviet republics ( as well as Russia itself which in desperation under Yeltzin took Goldman Sachs top managers literally into the Kremlin to oversee neoliberal privatization schemes) were weak and susceptible to grifter mobs that cut deals with the US for NATO incursion. They were bought while Russia was on its knees. Putin had to rebuild Russia after its plunder by capitalists under alcoholic Yeltzin. Yet all we hear in our Wall St. owned media is that NATO saved the 15 republics from the threat of Russia. BTW Crimea voted to join Russia as soon as the U.S. backed fascist coup in Ukraine occurred. Not one shot was fired. Crimea just chose to leave Ukraine and it’s ties to the US.
I read that, and also Perkin's sequel, "The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman." These are both must-reads for people to understand the truly evil nature of America's earlier tactics of underhanded empire-building using economic weapons, via the NSA. Those spooks along with the cooperation of the CIA were tasked to rape third-world countries for their raw resources as payment on hopeless sovereign debt, which operatives like John Perkins enticed them into. Their already impoverished taxpayers had to pay back the loans until they no longer could, which resulted in the forfeiture of their resources as payment, which served to enrich American financial interests and expand our economic and military sphere of influence. Does that about sum it up?
Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" is another essential piece of history that exposes the wickedness of American hegemony.
Learn the hard lessons and move forward. The US certainly has much to atone for, but our history of imperialism and Russia's even longer history, as horrible as they both are, should not be used nowadays as a cudgel to rationalize or excuse Putin's unprovoked attack on another sovereign nation. We should not let the past dictate the future or the actions that are the correct ones to implement today. To do so is to propagate Russian propaganda. Don't be a sucker like the Republican politicos sucking up to Trump -- and therefore to Putin.
The agreement made with the Soviet Union was that if they allowed the reunification of German, a country that had incited two wars and invasions of the Soviet Union, then the United States would not expand the NATO military organization to the east and threaten the Soviets. The United States has repeatedly violated that agreement once it got the reunification, it sought to sell new military weapons to the new NATO members who are forced to convert to new ones made by American, British, and French firms.
A Lend Lease by FDR was a way to get the Soviets to do all the fighting while Americans stayed at home, much as with the firsth World War. The end result was 20 million people dead in the Soviet Union as compared to less than half a million Americans. The Soviet armies fought against 80 German divisions as compared to fewer than 20 divisions with the allies armies. The Soviets crushed the Japanese armies in Manchuria and Korea and accomlished more in the first 3 weeks with their invasion of Manchuria in August 1945 (requested by FDR) than the U.S. military accomplished in 4 years of fighting for its former colonies in the Pacific.
Imagine the response if Putin established military bases in Mexico and Cuba and Venezuela and supplied them with missles systems as the U.S. has done across Europe and the Middle East. The U.S. launched illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and devasted the countries and caused the deaths of millions of civilians but that is different?
FDR was presiding over about the same percentage of fascist sympathizers as Biden is today. This schism seems to be in American DNA. Surely the Soviets had their own motives. Patton thought so. I think a quibble may be made with invasion of Afghanistan. As for Iraq, I think an argument can be made that "the U.S.", in terms of the citizenry, aren't guilty of that. Remember the truly mass mass marches, in despite of grossly bogus propaganda that caused hysteria among the (go back to) same percentage of innate fascist sympathizers, and the pandering media. (Hans Blix U.N. arms inspection report was "buried" low on far inside page of San Francisco Chronicle, with front page filled with LeBron James, then just a teenager from Ohio.) This is a "response" I can't resist, but when shall we take pity on Ukraine, now; today? None of the past gives Putin the right, no matter who didn't have the right to whatever back into the mists of time!
That's correct. After the Soviet Union collapsed, its former satellites legitimately became sovereign nations free to choose their own alliances and destinies without paying homage to the biggest bully on the block. Accept the reality of the present rather than the fantasies of the past. Sadly for poor Mr. Putin, most of them chose NATO over his tin-pot dictatorship. Go figure.
Read Cinfessions of An Economic Hitman for an accurate understanding of how the U.S. empire works. Without a Union the Soviet republics ( as well as Russia itself which in desperation under Yeltzin took Goldman Sachs top managers literally into the Kremlin to oversee neoliberal privatization schemes) were weak and susceptible to grifter mobs that cut deals with the US for NATO incursion. They were bought while Russia was on its knees. Putin had to rebuild Russia after its plunder by capitalists under alcoholic Yeltzin. Yet all we hear in our Wall St. owned media is that NATO saved the 15 republics from the threat of Russia. BTW Crimea voted to join Russia as soon as the U.S. backed fascist coup in Ukraine occurred. Not one shot was fired. Crimea just chose to leave Ukraine and it’s ties to the US.
I read that, and also Perkin's sequel, "The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman." These are both must-reads for people to understand the truly evil nature of America's earlier tactics of underhanded empire-building using economic weapons, via the NSA. Those spooks along with the cooperation of the CIA were tasked to rape third-world countries for their raw resources as payment on hopeless sovereign debt, which operatives like John Perkins enticed them into. Their already impoverished taxpayers had to pay back the loans until they no longer could, which resulted in the forfeiture of their resources as payment, which served to enrich American financial interests and expand our economic and military sphere of influence. Does that about sum it up?
Smedley Butler's "War is a Racket" is another essential piece of history that exposes the wickedness of American hegemony.
Learn the hard lessons and move forward. The US certainly has much to atone for, but our history of imperialism and Russia's even longer history, as horrible as they both are, should not be used nowadays as a cudgel to rationalize or excuse Putin's unprovoked attack on another sovereign nation. We should not let the past dictate the future or the actions that are the correct ones to implement today. To do so is to propagate Russian propaganda. Don't be a sucker like the Republican politicos sucking up to Trump -- and therefore to Putin.
I dunno, kinda sounds like Russian propaganda...