Red Mosquito

You're laughing. My crack team of elite concept artists just disintegrated this morning, and you're laughing!

tragabigzanda wrote:Either of you foreign policy experts have any ideas on how Biden should respond?

It doesn't make any difference because he will be called "weak" and "ineffective" for not coddling and kissing Putin's ass like Trump does. Trump is strong.

Biden is certainly weak and ineffectual, but that has little to do with Trump.

tragabigzanda wrote:

Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Either of you foreign policy experts have any ideas on how Biden should respond?

It doesn't make any difference because he will be called "weak" and "ineffective" for not coddling and kissing Putin's ass like Trump does. Trump is strong.

Three potential paths:

1. Stick with sanctions. Be viewed as weak and ineffective. Take a clobbering in the midterms, then then lose everything in '24.

2. Respond with arms support/direct attacks. Shit escalates. Nukes. Gigaton tour postponed yet again.

3. Assassinate. Mickey is scared of a power vacuum, but no one has laid out for me the chain of succession and what the vying factions might be.

Is there an alternative I'm not considering? Bow to China and form a new unholy union against Russia?

People desperately need to familiarize themselves with the always available 4th option: Do nothing.

tragabigzanda wrote:

BurtReynolds wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:

Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Either of you foreign policy experts have any ideas on how Biden should respond?

It doesn't make any difference because he will be called "weak" and "ineffective" for not coddling and kissing Putin's ass like Trump does. Trump is strong.

Three potential paths:

1. Stick with sanctions. Be viewed as weak and ineffective. Take a clobbering in the midterms, then then lose everything in '24.

2. Respond with arms support/direct attacks. Shit escalates. Nukes. Gigaton tour postponed yet again.

3. Assassinate. Mickey is scared of a power vacuum, but no one has laid out for me the chain of succession and what the vying factions might be.

Is there an alternative I'm not considering? Bow to China and form a new unholy union against Russia?

People desperately need to familiarize themselves with the always available 4th option: Do nothing.

Simply an extension of the first option

Only it doesn't have the effect of fucking up a lot of random civilians' lives, and more importantly, my own!

tragabigzanda wrote:

Wendy Carlos's Twin wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:Either of you foreign policy experts have any ideas on how Biden should respond?

It doesn't make any difference because he will be called "weak" and "ineffective" for not coddling and kissing Putin's ass like Trump does. Trump is strong.

Three potential paths:

1. Stick with sanctions. Be viewed as weak and ineffective. Take a clobbering in the midterms, then then lose everything in '24.

2. Respond with arms support/direct attacks. Shit escalates. Nukes. Gigaton tour postponed yet again.

3. Assassinate. Mickey is scared of a power vacuum, but no one has laid out for me the chain of succession and what the vying factions might be.

Is there an alternative I'm not considering? Bow to China and form a new unholy union against Russia?

You think there's anything that can be done to stop this? Lmao.

Less than two pages ago someone asked the question of whether Putin needs anyone else's approval to launch the nukes that maybe end human civilization, and the answer was "we don't know!" so that seems like a good reason to walk back from "let's try to assassinate him," nevermind what the aftermath of an unstable nuclear power that has been under Putin's relatively centralized rule for over two decades might look like--but by all means, you're welcome to continue to advocate for CIA regime change against a famously paranoid leader. It has worked well in the past.

Every crisis or geopolitical event produces an exhaustive number of publicly argued response proposals. 9/11 hadn't even ended yet, and people were debating how our government and military "needed to" respond. It's a mad dash to affect policy, and the sooner you're out of the gate the better the chance you have of making your ideas (and ideals) a part of the broader debate.

One thing that I think is very telling here is how few "what needs to happen next" advocations we've seen.

That no one thinks your "assassinate him!" idea is a particularly good one.

We can hope for regime change from within in Russia, to a better more peaceful government/leader, but without CIA/US involvement in that at all, and certainly without nukes being used by anyone. Best case scenario, to a much different leader, someone like Navalny.

What’s the correlation between Seagal and Russia? I’ve missed something.

Mikhail Mishustin is the Prime Minister and Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Officially second to Putin. Likely promoted because he is seen as good with policy, personally boring, and offers no threat to Putin’s image as the only top dog.

Dmitry Medvedev had to resign as prime minister, and has become less popular in recent years. However, he is still second in command of the security council (Putin leads it), and the Chairman of the biggest party (only party with any real power).

They say that the only reason Sergei Shoigu has stuck around at the top is because he has no strong opinions, and because he is not ethnically Russian, he will not be seen as a potential president.

There’s other top guys like Sergei Sobyanin (mayor of Moscow), Nikolay Patrushev (secretary of the security council), Alexander Bortnikov (FSB chief), Sergei Lavrov (minister of foreign affairs), and the spy chief who was humiliated by Putin, Sergei Naryshkin.

wease wrote:What’s the correlation between Seagal and Russia? I’ve missed something.

Friend of Putin.