What we know for certain is that Zelensky met with Biden soon after he was inaugurated in 2021, and that caused a 180-degree face turn on Zelensky’s part. While he was elected as the “peace president” who was supposed to bridge the divide between the Russian-majority eastern Ukraine (he swept the votes in those regions) and western Ukraine, Zelensky almost immediately began to ramp up all sorts of inflammatory rhetoric, like joining NATO.
Understandably, this spooked Russia, who then spent the rest of 2021 trying to deescalate the situation. This culminated in the US-Russia Summit in June 2021, during which the Russian diplomatic team sent hundreds of pages of proposal and presented various options to address their security concerns. It was ignored by the US. In less than two months, first in August 2021, the US would send Stingers and Javelins to Ukraine, followed by another shipment in December 2021. Two months later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
However, let’s not give Trump any slack here. Trump was the one who resumed the military aid to Azov after it was paused under the Obama admin. He was also the one who pushed Merkel to build a massive LNG terminal for Germany to purchase American LNG instead of Russian gas. When both Trump and Merkel left offices, the project was not pursued further, until… Europe sanctioned Russia and Nord Stream was bombed. We should also note that the construction of Nord Stream 2 was completed around the same time in 2021, but its certification process kept getting “delayed” with no end in sight. This undoubtedly added further doubts for the Russians on whether the US is interested in a good faith de-escalation. With all the events happening leading up to February 2022, it may very well have convinced the Russians that the US always had intended on an aggressive provocation. Later events would prove this reading of the situation correct.
So, there really isn’t a difference between Trump and Biden when it comes to implementing the strategic policies of the US. What sets them apart is Biden’s willingness to be ruthless and decisive about it. Ending Europe’s prosperity, who cares? As Victoria Nuland once said, fuck the EU, right? One million Ukrainian casualties, who cares? Starting new wars with every continent on the planet, who cares?
But the most disturbing part is that, now that Biden has already crossed the line, it means every president that comes after him, Democrat or Republican, will no longer have to worry about taking their masks off anymore. It’s now a race to the bottom, a race to see who is the most hawkish president (who can deliver a better profit making scheme for the capitalists like Biden has accomplished). There is no turning back from here. The mask has been taken down. Millions will die.
This is mostly correct, I don't believe for a second Trump had any idea what he was doing with that LNG terminal, I seriously honestly doubt he even knows what LNG is, this is literaly the clean coal guy so that part of the explanation is rough imo. IMO Trump would have been more likely to say fuck Ukraine once he realized the majority of the right wing base wanted war with China instead.
While liberals were quick to make Ukrainians into honorary whites, as far as chuds go white christian fundamentalist Russia is already as "white" as it gets so there would be no benefit on a political level to be "tough" on Putin. Why would he do that? To please libs only.
The thing with Trump is that you're ultimately correct there was only minor differences in the grand scheme both served US imperialism very similarly, but otoh Trump does have that unpredictability and personal petty/ego that somehow manages to bypass all the common sense/no good principles of being a neoliberal ghoul.
To put it bluntly Trump doesn't care nearly as much about any sort of grand US project or even political power(on a world level) as much as living life like a literal king. Competent neoliberals can't afford to be this shallow.
I agree in the sense that neither Trump nor Biden know what they’re actually doing, they simply carry out what the neocons are telling them to do.
I disagree, however, with the “realists” faction who think the US can ally with Europe and Russia against China. In fact, I am one of the few people with the unpopular take that the “neocons”, as deranged as they are, are actually correct in their assessment about the US geopolitical position. Post-2009 crash, the US simply does not have the capacity to counter China if the EU (the second largest economic body in the world) takes China’s side.
While the EU was also weakened by the post-2009 recession, it was also saved by Nord Stream and allowed a relatively rapid recovery of their industrial sector. This is why the EU has every incentive to move closer to Russia, and eventually China. The US financial capital also suffered massively from the 2009 crash, and they are rightfully afraid of the EU exerting its influence to tilt the balance of power towards China.
In other words, the EU must be destroyed before the US can take on China. And that means engineering a war with Russia and forcing Europe to abandon its Eurasia ambitions. It is simply too risky to leave the EU unchecked.
Permanently Deleted
John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Amy Klobuchar in Ukraine with Nazis
Beatings, Stabbings, & Electric Shocks: Donetsk Militia Vets' Ordeal in Ukraine's Torture Chambers
Olga spent 120 days in SBU captivity. She endured endless interrogations, torture with electric shocks in a specially set up torture chamber in the basement. An electric current would pass through metal electrodes placed upon wet tissues in the area of the kidneys. “The pain was excruciating, impossible to describe in words,” recalled Olga.
These techniques were pioneered by the US 🦅
The Maidan massacre in Ukraine: revelations from trials and investigations
Did you forget the Euromaidan coup started in 2013?
Why are you spreading Russian propaganda? Fucking Putinites smdh my dick head, what time is it in Moscow comrade?
A fan of alternative realities I see? Did you forget the US instigated this war in 2014 by couping the Ukraine government and installing the Nazi fascist, Banderite Maidan regime to pull Ukraine into NATO's orbit?
I really wish Trump was a KGB agent who wanted to dismantle NATO. I wish I lived in the communist fantasies liberals and conservatives concocted in their dilapidating skulls
I wish I lived in the chud fantasy land where every US politician that even pays lip service to vaguely center left politics is an avowed communist.
Yes, it was bound to happen. The US had been messing with Ukraine for a long time. Russia would be very stupid to stand by and let the US set up military bases in Ukraine.
But I think Trump would have forced Germany, Poland and other NATO nations to send troops to Ukraine. Republicans would consider Zelensky a hero and Zelensky would try to appease them even more by doing conservative things like attacking LGBTQ+ people and Muslims.
The Democrats would be pro-peace (at least to the public, in Congress they would 100% support aid to Ukraine) and blame Trump for the whole war. Trump would simply call them losers.
Trump refuses to send more than token "aid" to Ukraine.
Trump restates how the USA pays a huge chunk of NATO's dues and points to Germany and the like as needing to step up as the war is practically in their own back yard.
Invasion lasts about a year before Ukraine and the EU are out of juice to continue countering Russia's offensive. Trump walks in to broker the peace agreement to get public credit for "stopping" the war.
Democrats have two choices, openly fight to continue the war in Ukraine so Trump can't get credit (because Cheeto-Man bad!) or openly side with Trump in slowing/stopping the war to help their chances of re-election. I guess those who weren't needing to be running could remain silent on the issue.
Trump get's elected again.
Materialist analysis
From a Marxian perspective, there is no 'great man' theory of history. Trump, Biden, Obama whatever. They are all products of the same material conditions, and are inherently insignificant compared to the structural reality that makes conflict inevitable. Remember, capitalismneeds to grow. It needs markets. It needs to sell off public sector and privatize, and Ukraine has been in the crosshairs for decades. US fomented a coup in Ukraine, and they sure as fuck wanted Putin to invade so they could make all that money in arms sales. Gotta understand the US is three corporations in a trenchcoat. There are venture capitalists drooling at the thought of a kinetic event in Taiwan knowing their profits will jump 1000%.
The machine feeds on blood. Trump, Biden, Hillary, don't make a goddamn difference
Great man theory being incorrect can be taken too far. It’s incorrect to also say that individual choices are inconsequential.
Had Trump been in power, Ukraine wouldn’t have been confident of US backing, and so would have folded early in the game.
The broader centuries-long conflict between Russia / China and the western empire would have remained, great man theory being incorrect works here. But it takes it too far to insist the individual choices made by people with great power don’t shape global events on the scale of years or decades.
Like, had Gore been president during 9/11 then it’s unlikely the US would have invaded Iraq because that was a project for a particular political faction in the US. So individual choices can impact history a lot. But of course had Gore been president there still would have been games being played in the Middle East.
While I agree with most of this, I still doubt anything would have been different in Ukraine with Trump in power. He vetoed the bill to stop supporting the Yemin war and this Ukraine proxy war was already underway before Biden took office. So of course it's not that people in power don't effect politics, but we have a tendency to put everything on them and ignore dialectical materialism. Capitalism needs war. It will happen no matter if it's Jimmy Carter Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein. It may not be overt wars like Iraq but it will shift to covert operations, outsourcing, proxy war etc. Until and unless capitalism is dismantled this is the unfortunate reality.
The timing may have been different but the core conditions likely would have remained. It's possible that Russia would not have invaded during his term because Trump is not an ideological and cunning imperialist and he fights with the NatSec ghouls who are, so the exact escalations that occurred during the Biden admin may not have occurred. One can imagine a Minsk III under Trump. Minsk I and II created the conditions that became intolerable for Russia, so this should be understood to be kicking the can down the road, not a reversal in overall policy strategy.
It's important to look at the proximal causes to get a sense of the timing. The Biden admin pushed Ukraine to badger Russia and ramp up the campaign in Donbas after icing them out of diplomatic talks or implementing any aspects of Minsk II. Russia lined up a mobilization due to the failing diplomacy and hawkish lines drawn by Washington and their proxy with Zelensky. We figured that this was a bluff and Russia was just trying to get leverage for talks, but it's clear that this was some kind of test, where if shelling escalated an invasion would proceed.
In addition, we shouldn't forget that Russia still wanted diplomacy after the invasion. They sought a Minsk-like status quo again and those talks were undermined by the US and its proxies. The official US policy was that this was a good situation for the US and the war should be extended. I think it's also reasonable to think that Trump could have had the opposite policy due to him being at odds with some of the ghouls or literally just so he could take credit for the treaty.
The official US policy was that this was a good situation for the US and the war should be extended.
People think that this is in order to hurt Russia, and it is, but it is also to disrupt the EU and keep them reliant on the US.
In the coming decades there will be a lot of blowback from the refugees displaced and spillover from the Nazis in Ukraine getting access to weapons and expertise they then bring back to their home nations. They will be used by the US to punish uncooperative regimes the same as ISIS adjacent orgs were used in Iraq and Syria, and everyone will pretend they could not have predicted this.
People think that this is in order to hurt Russia, and it is, but it is also to disrupt the EU and keep them reliant on the US.
Exactly. And that's why this war has been successful for the US. They never needed or cared about Ukraine winning. They were going to meet the objectives they cared about.
I'd also add that the third objective here was to clear all the old munition stocks, and probide profit fir the MIC, since Afghanistan was shut down, but that kind if goes without saying
Yes.
The election of a single person in a bourgeois state rarely ever changes the long-established basis for imperialism and capitalism. Both Biden and Trump are imperialists, upholders of NATO, and so on. A similar policy towards Eastern Europe (particularly Ukraine) would exist under Trump, and there's no reason why inter-imperialist competition would not take place.
The only thing which Trump's presidency would guarantee would be a greater chance for world war three.
Ukraine was an established red line regardless of who is the American president at any given time.
