This was and is US policy. — boethius

You have already quoted the parts of the paper that make clear that it is analysing a course of action where the US intensifies it's efforts. I'm not sure who you're trying to fool by now acting like the paper was an analysis of the existing US policy. Yourself?

You seem to be literally trying to memory hole the entire start of the war in which NATO was the main justification. — boethius

I have repeatedly argued in this thread that NATO is a secondary concern to Russia and that there was no objective reason for the russian government to worry about Ukrainian NATO membership either in 2014 or in 2022.

The authors are clear: counter escalation by Russia (such as what we see) is damaging to US interests. — boethius

But Russia losing it's entire peacetime army and having to engage in several years of grinding war of attrition with huge military expenditures is damaging to russian interests. A scenario which the paper did not forecast on account of it seeming utterly absurd in 2019.

As I explain above, you continue and increase — boethius

Trying to sneak that in here even though you already admitted that you can't actually point to any increase.

And it's all documented in honestly surprising detail (such as Merkel just telling us the Minsk agreements were done in bad faith) so you need to practice your memory holing somewhere else because I see no reason to toss pretty clear and vivid memories that have supporting documentation down the memory hole. — boethius

This honestly just sounds like you're insane. As in mentally ill. This is the actual quote by Merkel:

"The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine,"

Quoted from russian news agency TASS by the way.

Does it say "we did it in bad faith"? No. Does it say "we did it to prepare for war"? No. Does it say "we were actually planning to break the agreement right from the start? Hell no.

So just what is wrong with your reading comprehension that you read into it all these things which are not actually there?

that a ragtag group of Nazis could take on the Russian army with sheer grit and tough guy tattoos. — boethius

Russia has lost its entire peacetime army roughly twice already. Ukraine is currently fighting not the army that invaded in 2022, not the army that came after it, but the one after that.

Did anyone in 2022 and before expect that Russia would loose so much equipment in Ukraine that it would significantly deplete it's gargantuan inheritance of soviet weapons?

I think the ragtag group of Nazis has done quite enough damage, and the war isn't over.

But interestingly US already suspended the treaty in February 2019 and the RAND paper is printed in 2019, so it's almost like this paper was written, someone read it, and the US withdrew from the INF treaty. — boethius

Yes, one could imagine that, but the Wikipedia page which you yourself quoted does also say that Trump had already announced his plan to withdraw in 2018. The Rand report was published in April 2019 by the way. But obviously an unpublished version may have been around long before then.

the US and Ukraine has admitted that money and arms disappearing is a significant problem — boethius

I trust more exact quotations with source than your manipulative summaries. Anyways, the fact that “the US and Ukraine has admitted that money and arms disappearing is a significant problem” is far from being an admission or constituting evidence for the claim “the US bribes all the Ukrainian elites with billions of untraceable funds and weapons as well as essentially de facto full immunity for laundering the money anywhere in the West”. Indeed, the temptation of embezzling resources for personal profit could be common in the Ukrainian military apparatus, and fought by the central government as it is in the Russian military apparatus (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/russian-corruption-probe-widens-as-senior-defence-official-arrested). That has nothing to do with “bribing”.
Besides untraceable funds and lost weapons may have a strategic purpose other than just bribing : like fuelling military operations far from rats in the US administration, and assuring plausible deniability over Ukrainian clandestine operations.
On the other side when talking about actual cases of bribing, since we are in a context of geopolitical competition, I would care more about the American bribing vs the Russian bribing.

These are not sweeping assertions. They are very specific assertions that the RAND experts make, all I'm adding since the war started (as the RAND document is written in 2019) is that what RAND describes in their document comes to pass: US did escalate with more arms assistance and more boasting that Ukraine would join NATO, this caused Russia to take more territory and killing more Ukrainians, which is obviously what is called a "war" (or then a "bigger war" if you want to start the war in 2014). — boethius

So you are telling me that: “These idiots were needed to start the war (i.e. keep shelling the Donbas for 8 years), and impose a terrorizing fascist dictatorship on the Ukrainian people in order to force people to the front (i.e. just straight up assassinate anyone engaging in critical thinking), as well as be propped up as elite soldier heroes for the part of Ukrainian society that actually wants to drink the coolaid” is a quotation or contains quotations from the RAND document? Are you crazy?

Biden doesn't need to bribe CNN journalists to do specific things. If you don't see that mainstream journalists are simply on "team elite" and say what their told to say, then there's little helping you. — boethius

Impeccable.

(such as Merkel just telling us the Minsk agreements were done in bad faith) — boethius

you have both Western leaders and Ukrainian leaders, including Angela Merkel simply coming out and saying the goal of the Minsk accords was to buy time to build up Ukrainian military capacity. — boethius

As for Russia's actions, they are a signatory and so also guarantor of the Minsk agreements, both Ukraine and Western leaders have publicly admitted those accords were done in bad faith with no intention of following them — boethius

"The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine,"


Quoted from russian news agency TASS by the way.

Does it say "we did it in bad faith"? No. Does it say "we did it to prepare for war"? No. Does it say "we were actually planning to break the agreement right from the start? Hell no. — Echarmion

Indeed not only Merkel has NOT admitted what he claims she has, but it can not even be inferred from what she actually said or equated with what she actually said: reinforcing Ukrainian military not only is not incompatible with pursuing a cease-fire but it could also be instrumental to preserving a cease-fire.
Concerning "bad faith" accusations, apparently it's more plausible that Putin (arguably an expert in disinformatia) was duped by the Europeans (however interested in pacifying the conflict to come back to do business as usual with Russia, reason why they have been already rejecting/postponing NATO membership for Ukraine all along), than that Europeans were taking countermeasures against Putin's palpable bad faith back then (having Putin already violated various international and bilateral treaties by illegally annexing the Crimean peninsula and committing acts of armed aggression against Ukraine, and being very much interested in keeping a conflict in Donbas alive, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, or to allow further annexations). LOL.

So why the hell did Russia invade? — Echarmion

Started with an uncompromising decision in the Kremlin circle some time ago.
Probably not an overnight thing, but ended up an easy enough sell (among some folks).
:shrug:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-targets-western-russian-regions-with-drones-russian-officials-says-2024-09-18/