chrysler

>> Literally today ; talking about 'running out of money and raising the debt ceiling' - but zero acknowledgement of the ~250 BILLION dollars we have thus far sent to Ukraine

A lot of that money exists only on paper. Take a warehouse full of air defense missiles manufactured in 2000, with a cost of $3m per missile and a shelf life of 25 years. If you give 200 of them to Ukraine to defend its citizens from Russian terror attacks, then on paper that costs $600m. If you use "replacement value" as cost and new missiles cost $6m (because they're better), you can inflate their value to $1.2bn. If you do nothing and let them expire, they'll be worthless in 2 years and you'll just write that $600m or $1.2bn off. In either case, accounting reports lots of money spent, but no real money actually changes hands. That money was already spent decades ago and you aren't saving anything by withholding missiles. By giving air defense missiles to Ukraine instead of letting them sit in a warehouse until they become obsolete, you at least do something useful with them.

>> So no agreements had previously been made then?

Not according to direct participants like the foreign minister of the USSR. https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...

Moreover, NATO and Russia signed a treaty greenlighting NATO enlargement before any official talks with former Warsaw Pact countries started, so whatever was allegedly said or heard prior to that is irrelevant anyway.

>> I'm not supporting Russia's actions here

You are, whether you recognize it or not. Your contrarian take is a made up narrative to justify the war. Makes you feel smarter than the rest while advancing Russian interests and blaming victims for crimes against them.

Nice move of goalposts from "better than ever" to "pre-war", that is, Covid-riddled era with low demand.

The hard facts are that federal revenue is down -22% while expenditure is up +26% and Russia is running a 30% deficit.

>> while Russia is better than ever.

In same fairytale, that may be so. In the real world, oil and gas revenue is 40% of Russia's federal budget and down -52% YoY as of April, so that's more than -20% from oil and gas alone gone before taking collapse of other exports and explosion of military expenditure into account. At this rate, we'll see a replay of 1998 soon.

>> Even left-wing Guardian admits as much

I don't put much value into what the Guardian write on topics like these. Joining a major international organization is a huge undertaking that involves thousands of people from many institutions over many years. Countries that joined NATO or tried to (Ukraine, Georgia) have a long paper trail of adopted laws, policy documents, parliamentary discussions and other bureaucratic artifacts. Show me Russia's trail.

For example, here's Polish timeline:

  * 31 March 1991. Warsaw Pact dissolved.
  * 11 March 1992. NATO secretary general visits Poland and says that the door to NATO is open.
  * 10 April 1992. Polish defense minister and chief of staff attend NATO Military Committee meeting for the first time.
  * 1 September 1993. Polish president sends a letter to NATO stating that NATO membership was a top priority of Polish foreign policy.
  * 10 January 1994. NATO summit in Brussels. NATO proposes partnership in exercises, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.
  * 12 January 1994. Polish president meets with Clinton in Prague and accepts the offer.
  * 2 February 1994. Polish prime minister signs partnership framework at NATO HQ in Brussels.
  * 12 September 1994. First joint exercises.
  * 26 January 1996. NATO invites Poland to individual dialogue with NATO.
  * 8 February 1996. Polish ministers of defense and foreign affairs send a latter to NATO accepting the invitation.
  * 4 April 1996. Poland presents a vision for cooperation with NATO.
  * 7 May 1996. The start of one-on-one meetings between NATO and Poland within the individual dialogue framework.
  * 8 July 1997. NATO invites Poland into the organization.
  * 16 September 1997. Offical accession talks begin. 
  * 14 November 1997. Polish foreign minister accepts the invitation.
  * 16 December 1997. Polish foreign minister signs the official accession protocols.
  * 28 December 1997. Polish ambassador attends a meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council for the first time.
  * 2 February 1998. Canada becomes the first NATO member to ratify Poland's accession protocols.
  * 17 December 1998. Polish defense minister attends a meeting of NATO defense ministers for the first time.
  * 29 January 1999. NATO secretary general sends a formal NATO invitation to Poland.
  * 17 February 1999. Polish parliament ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.
  * 12 March 1999. Poland becomes NATO member and the official ceremony is held.

And this is only a very superficial overview. Every major step was preceded by tons of discussions, minutes from meetings, transcripts from debates. If you printed it all out, you'd need a dump truck to move all those documents.

What's Russia's timeline? What policy papers were adopted, what agreements signed towards becoming a NATO member?

>> That has been claimed often but proven wrong by the cable leaks.

NATO allegedly assured Soviet leadership in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastwards. Multiple Soviet participants of those meetings have denied that. When the hoax first appeared, Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze gave a lengthy interview, in which he not only denies those claims, but points out that they are anachronistic and don't fit the timeline of events. In 1990, Soviet leadership didn't forsee collapse of Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself. According to him, the possible NATO status of countries like Poland was never discussed, not with NATO, not within Warsaw Pact, not within the Communist Party circles in Moscow. That was totally out of the question and beyond comprehension, there was no need to seek any assurances.

Link to the interview: https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...

Before Eastern Europe started negotiating entry, NATO and Russia signed a treaty in which they agreed to respect the right of other countries to forge alliances how they prefer. That was in May 1997. Former Warsaw Pact countries were invited into NATO in July 1997 and official negotiations began in September.

So even if such assurance existed, Russia and NATO agreed in that 1997 to the opposite before any Warsaw Pact country started official negotiations with NATO.

>> This is just a generic ad-hominem. If you have substantial rebuttals, I'm eager to hear them.

There are many ways he manipulates facts into his narrative, but I'll give you one very clear and non-political example how he misleads his audience. He shows a map of Russian share in European gas consumption at 8:48 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=525) and says that Eastern Europe is heavily dependant on Russian gas. It shows countries like Finland at 100%. While it is true that all of Finland's gas comes from Russia, natural gas makes up only 2% of all fuels consumed in Finland. This is not by chance, but by official government policy, which keeps Russian gas consumption low in order not to give Russians a way to extort Finland as could happen if Finland depended on Russian gas to a great degree. Other countries in Eastern Europe have pursued the same policy and have low share of gas in overall consumption, even if all of it comes from Russia.

Or if you want another example, then at 6:10 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=370), Mearsheimer shows a map of Ukraine divided into red and yellow depicting Ukrainian and Russian language areas, saying how Ukraine is linguistically (and not only) "a badly divided country". That's extremely misleading. Ukraine is a bilingual country, where Ukrainian language is dominant in western part of the country and Russian language is in the eastern part, but there is no divide, because most people speak both languages and they inhabit a shared cultural space instead of living in parallel societies that don't mix due to language barriers. Here's a great map illustrating that, pay attention to vertical bars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map12_b.png Purple bars represent penetration of Ukrainian language and blue bars Russian language.

In regions like Kharkiv, only 10% of the population speaks only one language, evenly either only Russian or only Ukranian, so there's no reason to paint it as Russian. Out of 20 people, 18 speak both languages, 1 speaks only Ukranian, and 1 only Russian. Does this look like a "deep divide" to you?

>> After the collapse of the USSR, Russia repeatedly tried to join NATO.

That never happened. You will no find no trace of that in State Duma transcripts, policy papers or any other contemporary source. I can show you a long trail of adopted laws and doctrines for countries that eventually joined NATO (or failed in their bid), but nothing of this sort exists for Russia. It's a hoax invented to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

>> instead moved the NATO ever closer to Russia‘s border, ignoring its security needs and breaking old promises

The start of NATO expansion talks were preceded by a treaty between NATO and Russia declaring the respect for third countries freely choosing their allies. The narrative that NATO promised never to accept Eastern Europe (and broke that promise) was invented much later and conflicts with personal accounts and written agreements from that time.

>> Prominent establishment people like John Mearsheimer

His infamous lecture that presents a totally warped view of the world is the single most damaging piece of propaganda related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If that's what you're basing your views on, then it's no surprise that you are totally off the mark.

>> Some of us are actually old enough to have been adults when the Soviet Union fell and to have lived through that period of time.

So am I, and I remember very well how this hoax appeared out of nowhere in late 2000s.

But as Shevardnadze points out, a suggestion of such talks in 1990 is anachronistic, because at the time, fall of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR was beyond comprehension and not discussed. According to him and other direct participants, the quotes that have been taken out of context to "prove" this hoax were in fact limited to German reunification.

Eastern Europe getting into NATO and under "American nuclear umbrella" wasn't a serious topic until mid-1990s, first such ideas were floated in 1992-1993 timeframe and initially thought to be very far-fetched, because Russian forces were still in former Eastern bloc countries. The last Russian forces left Poland only in September 1993. Actual negotiations for the first countries started in July 1997 and were preceded by a treaty in May 1997 between NATO and Russia affirming the respect towards third countries freely choosing their alliances.

To put it bluntly, the hoax doesn't fit the timeline of events.

>> If Russia or China built up Mexico or Canada's military with arms and training and they were hostile to us, I think we would be a little concerned.

What do you think we should do about Russian nuclear missiles set up in the middle of Europe, in Kaliningrad enclave (1), while its official state media is calling to nuke London (2) and everyone up to Putin himself (3) are making nuclear threats?

(1) https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/files/2016/1...

(2) https://twitter.com/Biz_Ukraine_Mag/status/16248569347959480...

(3) https://www.businessinsider.com/putin-threatens-worst-ever-c...

>> One interview with the dead Gorbachev is a source, but assurances were given by Western leaders to other people in Russia as well which are documented.

To whom, documented where? Gorbachev's foreign minister Shevardnadze also gave a lengthy interview denying all those claims when the narrative first surfaced. https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-e...

As he points out, NATO membership of Warsaw Pact countries and even then-occupied parts of the USSR (Baltics) was beyond comprehension. There were no such discussions inside the Soviet leadership, within Warsaw Pact, nor with NATO, because they couldn't have imagined that Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist in a very short time.

It's an anachronistic hoax that doesn't fit into the timeline of events.

Virtually everything you write is a lie that present-day Russian government media bombards its population with in a desperate attempt to justify why their military leaves behind a trail of childrens' bodies, poured over with gasoline and lit aflame to hide the horrendous crimes in a mirror image of how Nazi Germany behaved in Ukraine.

You are not offering some nuanced alternative view, but reurgitating known proven lies.

Here is one example:

>> If NATO didn't insist on expanding after the fall of the Soviet Union (as promised by James Baker and others)

Prominent members of Soviet leadership have explicitly denied that such subject ever came up. Nor did Russian representatives ever mention anything like it when most of Eastern Europe joined NATO in late 1990s and early 2000s.

This conspiracy theory emerged in late 2000s, when Russia took a turn towards revanchism and declared a war on the western world at Munich security conference. When the conspiracy theory first appeared, it prompted interviews with people such as the Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze, who denied that the subject of Eastern Europe in NATO ever came up.

Spiegel asked it from multiple angles, but all they got was a solid "No":

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: In February 1990, Germany's foreign minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, assured you that "NATO will not expand to the east," and that states like Poland and Hungary could never be part of the military alliance. Because the conversion had revolved mainly around East Germany, Genscher even became more explicit, saying that: "As far as the non-expansion of NATO is concerned, this also applies in general." According to reports, you replied that you believed everything he said. So why didn't you get this commitment from NATO on paper?

>> Shevardnadze: Times have changed. At the time we couldn't believe that the Warsaw Pact could be dissolved. It was beyond our realm of comprehension. None of the participating countries had doubts about the Warsaw Pact. And the three Baltic states, which are now part of NATO, were still part of the Soviet Union then. Eventually, we agreed that a united Germany could be part of NATO under certain conditions. For example, a national army limited to 370,000 members and Germany waives the right to nuclear weapons. An expansion of NATO beyond Germany's borders was out of the question.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the end of March 1990, Genscher and the then US Secretary of State James Baker, talked about the fact that there was interest among "central European states" about getting into NATO. You knew nothing of this?

>> Shevardnadze: This is the first I've heard of it.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Did you have a conversation with your colleagues in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary about a possible eastward expansion of NATO in the spring of 1990?

>> Shevardnadze: No, that was never discussed in my presence.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: The German documents give the impression that Moscow counted on the dissolution of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. Did you really think that would happen?

>> Shevardnadze: That may have been discussed after I resigned from the ministry of foreign affairs in December 1990. However during my time in office it was not.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the eastward expansion of NATO ever discussed in the inner circles of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1990?

>> Shevardnadze: The question never came up.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, the eastward expansion happened a few years later. Did you feel, at the time, that the German diplomats deceived you?

>> Shevardnadze: No. When I was the minister of foreign affairs in the Soviet Union, NATO's expansion beyond the German borders never came up for negotiation. To this day I don't see anything terrible in NATO's expansion.

>> SPIEGEL ONLINE: At the conference in Ottawa on German unity in February 1990, you had five telephone conversations with Gorbachev. Did you discuss a possible NATO enlargement -- beyond the GDR?

>> Shevardnadze: No. We only had German reunification on the agenda, nothing else.

The point is whether Russia could extort countries (eg: prevent from sending military aid to Ukraine) or not. While a little over half of all gas in Germany came from Russia, Germany was among countries with the highest proportion of gas in total fuel consumption.

In comparison, countries like Finland indeed got virtually all their gas from Russia, but that was only a few percent of total fuel consumption and couldn't be used to extort them.

Rosy IMF forecasts and "Russian economy is doing fine" articles are based on official Russian stats that are literally made up. Western analysts are unable to fathom that some guy could just type figures into Excel and present them as official numbers. That everything is a lie without any shame or without any anchoring to truth, even if remotely. No, sir. We're standing next to an open reactor, but it's 3.6 roentgen because the party says so.

This is nothing new for Russia. No reliable stats (contemporary nor reconstructions) exist for the USSR either, because they were fudged so hard at that no-one knows the truth anymore. How many tons of milk were produced in 1970? Individual farms fudged their production numbers, districts did too, as did states and the central ministry in Moscow to fill quotas and announce hitting 5-year-plan targets in 3 years and earn bonuses.

In 2023, the goal is to show that sanctions don't work at all and damage the west more than they do Russia, so please remove the sanctions.

>> I can see that you expect Russians to be better people than Germans or Americans

More Germans opposed Nazism than Russians oppose Putinism.

"It has been estimated that during the course of World War II 800,000 Germans were arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities. It has also been estimated that between 15,000 and 77,000 of the Germans were executed by the Nazis."

Nothing comparable exists in Russia. You like Putin more than Germans liked Hitler.

This cynical take ignores that in free societies, such efforts are far less effective than in closed societies with no free media and no tradition of civic participation and civil disobedience. COVID showed that very well.

Unknown Soldier.