Typhoons and Poseidon monitor Russian ships near UK

Nope indeed but tensions have been build up to a war with Russia for almost a decade. There is an unfortunate possibility that we will end up at war in the not distant future. Mainly due to a blindness over what Russia had become from 2000 onward and failing to see how deadly a combination a few things were:

1)Putins belief that the west is weak..while at the same time.. 2)promoting a narrative to his people that the west is a threat to Russian and
3)being welded to the near abroad and sovereignty over all Russian people’s foreign policy ( which is why he felt justified in attacks on UK soil, Georgia and Ukraine)
4) and most importantly Putin is a psychopath who has no place to go…he needs an external threat to keep the population in line or they will likely rip him down and end his life…these individuals tend to rather see their own nations burn before they fall.

It would be illogical for Russia to go to war with NATO, but it was illogical to invade Ukraine during the mud season ( or invade it at all) illogical to use a nerve agent in a UK city….

“Mainly due to a blindness over what Russia had become from 2000 onward and failing to see how deadly a combination a few things were”
You are still blind, your understanding is based on your own perceptions without any real attempt to ask yourself why Russia has these attitudes and a failure to have a honest look at the collective west’s own actions.
On saying that, I do enjoy the comments here very much 🙂

Ulya I’m not blind to the western foreign policy and its impacts on Russia in the 1990s. First I thing the end of history brigade with their the West won and all nations would become western, both damaged Western credibility and completely alienated a lot of nations, Russia included..I’m also not a great lover of the fact that NATO expanded as much as it did. I think it was a foreign policy mistake and we needed a different arrangement for security in Europe post the fall of the Soviet Union, that included Western Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe Russia and the ex soviet states.

NATO was specifically designed as a deterrent against the stated expansionist aims of the communist party of the Soviet Union ( it was a written aim of the CPSU in the early 1950s to make the west communist by any and all means including military invasion) this hard line that communism and capitalism could not co-exist was essentially a creation of stalins but gradually lessened through the leadership of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and then Gorbachev ( who I think was one of the most influential men of the 20c and a sublime statesman). It therefore had very specific connotations to Russia. So my personal view was that Europe could have done with a separate security arrangement that includes Russia, but that is all history and what we have now is profoundly dangerous and what anyone would say is a road to war.

mixed with this we have the profound problem of Russian intergenerational trauma, specifically related to WW2 and the hideous evil that came from the West. It makes Russia very open to very significant foreign policy mistakes….those are:

1) the near abroad issue, the need of Russia to only feel safe if it controls the nations on its boarders with Europe…this simply is untenable and will never ever allow Europe to sit safely. Russia need get to a point it feels secure within its self as a nation, without the need for an Eastern European security blanket, Germany is not going to invade Russia, but will Russia ever truly believe that ?

2) Putins belief that he has sovereignty over all ethnic Russians no matter where they live….again you cannot have this as a usable foreign policy, it inevitably leads to war…..you sovereignty ends at the boarders of your nation anything else is going to create tension and destabilisation

I think the really deeply dangerous issue is that a mixture of western weakness ( at this same time as expanding NATO) and Putin very specific being a leader who needs to be seen as a strong man and needs an enemy has pushed the west and found no Boundaries.

The problem we have now is that Putin has a profound misunderstanding of the West, he does view the West as weak and is very likely to push it beyond what it’s willing to take. Salisbury was a classic example, what would Russian have done if there was evidence that UK intelligence services had deployed chemical weapons in a Russian city and harmed/killed Russian citizens ? Instead of seeing UK restraint in not responding more in kind, Putin saw this as weakness.

Unfortunately Western mistakes in foreign policy in the 1990s have mixed and enabled a profoundly toxic authoritarian in Putin ( who wanted an enemy) have led us to the worst imaginable place. What is sad is all the Cold War the Leaders of the Soviet Union were strong enough in themselves to manage very difficult relationships with the West..Both the West and the Soviet Union knew the red lines and respected them.

Thank you for the reply, some interesting points.

I disagree about Russia needing to control neighbours, couldn’t care less about Baltic countries or even Finland joining NATO, Ukraine is completely different case, what I don’t understand is why NATO is so desperate to get Ukraine to join or why neutrality was not possible. I understand west Ukrainians not wanting anything to do with Russia but East Ukrainians did, but any sympathy I once had for the west is lost, too many eastern Ukrainians and ethic Russians murdered while waiting for Minsk agreement to be honoured. If there was another option instead of the SMO I would be interested in hearing it.

Russia “feeling secure in itself”, I am not sure I understand this completely but we have absolutely no reason to trust the west and Germany is not an issues, you see NATO as peaceful defence organisation, I see it as an aggressive organisation. You only need to look at your own history since CCCP broke up of making wars to see this, pulling out of AMB, INF, open skies, ignoring Minsk agreement and supporting a coup government to kill eastern Ukrainians and ethnic Russian, there is no trust and cannot be any for many years. None of Western actions can be seen as peaceful, just an attempt to hold on to Western dominance.

I don’t think Putin sees the west as weak, to me he has done much to limit this war so the west does not get directly involved even though it has cost him domestically from those who want to react harder against the west, how long this last I am not so sure, I don’t think it will be long before Western countries put boots on the ground. Salisbury – I have many questions about this and I will never get answers so no point talking about.
Red lines – in an ideal world red lines would be respected, in reality they are ignored, Ukraine was a Russian red line, the west is making same mistake with Taiwan, nothing really to be said about this except get your carriers ready, if the Ami get their war you will follow as usual.

Only positives from this war is the economic divorce of Russian and the west, I am very happy with the sanctions and end of this unipolar system. For now Russia and the collective west are not compatible, we will move on with our other partners, i dont care what the west does. Maybe one day Russia and parts of Europe will be able to be friends again or I as least hope so since I have European partner, but there is nothing in the future for the UK/US without major attitude changes there.

Hi Ulya

thankyou for your response, it does take a lot to clearly state your views on this in a western centric group and I respect that a lot. We also know you as someone who has added to discussions on this forum before the events of 2022.

I think our conversation shows the very real danger we are in at the moment in that I think Russia and the West have effectively lost any understanding of each other. That’s the wider populations not just the political leaders ( I think it’s fair to say that during the time of the Soviet Union the east and west actually had a better understanding and therefore a safer relationship…seems odd to say).

I know we cannot agree on what has caused the Ukraine war. But I think we can simply agree it’s awful and we can only wait for the outcome of the conflict and what the peace looks like ( you cannot force a peace or the end..it will happen when it happens).

I think it’s really important to note, that there is no way at all any NATO nation is putting boots on the ground in Ukraine, there is no one in the west that wants to go to war with Russia ( apart from maybe a very very small number). War between the west and Russia is essentially a mutual death pact, it would inevitably at some point go nuclear and the majority of the entire of human race would be dead within a decade ( crop and black soot modelling shows you loss 10% of the worlds food production for every 100 or so warheads..for about a decade).

I think it’s very important to highlight how much the west fears what Putin will do…interestingly this fear is not directed at Russia as a whole..it’s directed all at Putin and a very small group of people around him…The west are trapped in a very difficult cycle in that there is a profound belief that if Russia defeats Ukraine Putin will move onto another nation with maybe the next nation being a NATO nation, triggering a general war. Therefore the west is stuck between 1) to much support to Ukraine will possibly trigger a general war with Russia 2) not providing support to Ukraine and Ukraine losing will possibly trigger a general war with Russia I suspect Putin is very much trapped in a slightly different but similar catch 22. This is why I personally think war between the west and Russia is literally on a knife edge..not because either side wants a war ( neither does ) but because neither side sees a way to peace.

what I do think is that at some point soon there needs to be a very serious conversation about European security otherwise there will be a war that ends everyone and everything.

I think it’s tragic that Russia and the West are so far apart and that has been a foreign policy blunder of epic proportions on both sides ( Both Russian and Western political leaders are to blame starting, as I said starting from the end of the Cold War until now).

But I do profoundly believe that Putin is a very dangerous man who has played all sides to maintain power, but i accept you cannot agree with that ( we are both looking at the different sides of a mountain). where as I think most of the western political leaders are more incompetent than power players in geopolitics and what you and Russians see as naked aggression is more actually about utter incompetence (including a number of major wars and pulling out of treaties). But the difficulty of predicting Putins actions is dangerous ( all nuclear powers need to be really really predictable), I will also admit that the western powers have also become more difficult to predict (due to the incompetence I have mentioned).

Personally I literally don’t understand why Putin invaded Ukraine ( in the same way I don’t understand why the west decided to invade Iraq). Both were catastrophic failures in statesmanship and both as far as I’m concerned were morally wrong ( playing geopolitics is one thing, invading another nation is a whole different thing).

Going onto Ukraine, removing all other reasoning ( the right or wrong of it) the timing of the Ukraine invasion was nonsensical…Russia invaded during the Rasputitisa, why would any army do that…every army that has ever done that suffer catastrophic losses…how many times have Russia and Eastern European countries watched invading armies fall apart due to the Rasputitisa…you cannot do offensive warfare during that time.( the Russian army knows this profoundly) It honestly makes me think that Putin may never have actually thought he would need to invade and he was playing a realpolitik game and ended up for whatever reason having to follow up ( maybe internal pressure from Hawks)

In regards to Taiwan, I’m very much of the belief that the west has managed to entwine itself in a civil war that we should have from the beginning probably left alone, turning the ongoing tension between the ROC and PRC into a totemic issue that may spark WW3.

The only way to have a safe world is to carry a big stick, have very clear red lines, ensuring you understand everyone else’s red lines..have open conversations about the red lines make it clear you will not accept your red lines being crossed while never crossing others…at present world leaders are either to weak to express their reds lines, think others are so weak they don’t respect others red lines or change their red lines every few months. All in all I think we are in the shit, every one of us.

As for one day.. it will all be different…just remember things change on a die…one day we ( the UK ) were friends with Germany…then we were at war, then enemy’s, then at war again, then friends again..all within 50 years…(at the same time we profoundly hated the French for practically a thousand years…and all of a sudden we were friends) as for a unipolar world, I think that was an illusion of the end of history brigade…the post Cold War was simply a transition time as a great empire disintegrated ( as they all do). The end of history brigade and their the west has won and everyone will become the west has a lot to answer in our present very precarious state. As a last point I do also believe Russia needs to watch its back in regards to china, I think the Geopolitics of the china Russia relationship are going to be very very difficult within around 20 years ( china is focused on Taiwan at present but it’s never forgotten the 1858 treaty of Peking and outer Manchuria and I would bet a fair amount of money at some point it’s going to politely but firmly ask for it back).

Good morning, I have flight this morning so can only address a few points as limited time.

Why Putin picked SMO – do you have nother option? Talks clearly failed, how many years must we wait for the west to honour agreements or to listen to our concerns, remembering that civilians are being killed during this time in Donbass? If you take away the option of dialogue you only leave war.

Boots on ground – West keeps escalating, the type of equipment keeps going up, now it is f16, as some point you run out of things to give so you either stop support or enter war, time will tell.

I must finish here sorry but I would like to answer you more fully if you wish to keep this conversation going, you have some interesting points, unfortunately it may be a day or 2 before I can

You are right, We don’t just ‘suddenly’ find ourselves at war with a nation like Russia. We normally see war coming like Churchill and start preparing for it, sorry I am being sarcastic

If we did find ourselves at War with Russia, we would have the backing of NATO anyhow?

Yes. It’s never going to be the UK v Russia on our own.

The problem is Monkey very many wars have started when people did not actually want to go to war..( I’m not even wholly convinced Putin actually planned to invade Ukraine..as the timing was madness).WW1 did not happen because anyone wanted it..they just could not see a way not to have it.

Hopefully that will change