Ukraine

[tagh]

Agreed about China, but not about the CIA and US bad hypothesis. The Russians have planned their emergence as universal trouble makers for some time but it took a while for them to rebuild their armed forces and then, well, lets try them out on… Georgia, Ukraine and boompsydaisy, any else wanna a dose? Oh, ‘supporting’ Serbia next.

[niemeyjt]

Serbia (or Yugoslavia to be more precise) was never in the Warsaw Pact and is now an EU accession country - and several other countries formally in Yugoslavia have gone further an joined - so I am not sure what, if anything, Russia is hoping to achieve there - and to be honest I was not aware of anything.

Georgia and Ukraine - as discussed pretty accurately in the previous video. It is worth noting they kept out of the recent spat between Armenia and Azerbaijan (more than Turkey did!).

As for the US - I don't want to put words into your mouth - what don't you think is bad about the USA in the scenarios I quoted?

[exile]

There is plenty of opportunity to create mischief in the Balkans with sizable minorities in many of the states. the most obvious being Bosnia-Herzegovina with both Serb and Croat minorities.

Whether Russia would participate is an open question. They certainly have historic links to Serbs.

The fact that Yugoslavia was never part of the Warsaw pact does not stop them creating problems as a means of poking the West in the ribs.

[Blaze]

The fact that Yugoslavia was never part of the Warsaw pact does not stop them creating problems as a means of poking the West in the ribs.

If they're not careful, they could end up losing the freedom they have now ....

[tagh]

The Serbs are already agitating from what I understand and being Orthodox(?) will naturally look to their coreligionists for support.
As to the Americans, clumsy, yes muddleheaded, yes but they have tried as they did in Iraq, though their analysis did not give enough weight to the Sunni Shia rivalry nor to the Iranians backing the latter. As for pulling out of Afghanistan, both Trump and Biden got it so wrong.

[tagh]

This article is behind a paywall but it gives a taste. Putain is doing much more than just trying to neutralize the states on this frontier:

https://www.lefigaro.fr/international/a ... e-20220225

[Blaze]

@tagh The Americans don't seem to take into account different cultures .... Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... they'll never learn.
Strange from a country that's such a melting pot ...

[niemeyjt]

@tagh The Americans don't seem to take into account different cultures .... Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan ... they'll never learn.
Strange from a country that's such a melting pot ...

And they think their brand of democracy is what everyone needs imposing on them.

Strange from a country that was rated a "flawed democracy" in the 2021 Economist Democracy Index . . .

[tagh]

Is there any democratic system which is not flawed?

[niemeyjt]

Switzerland is pretty good.