This is superficial. Neither Russia nor China are particularly antagonistic to Israel or the Gulf states, even if they see the US as a foe in their own region. Russia for example is very careful about balancing its relations with the Gulf, Israel and Iran. China, views Iran as a potential foothold to the region, but China actually benefits from the US presence, it is far more energy import dependent than the US and has no desire to fuel instability by helping Iran pursue offensive goals.

The actual reason that Iran and the USA are enemies has to do with the US’ sectarian alignment with Sunni powers and Jewish nationalism, and more complicated reasons relating to politicial and religious struggles in the entire region that Iran happens to be one side of (i.e anti-monarchism, clericism, etc). And an institutional (and not necessarily rational) hatred of Iran in the US top brass due to its role in helping Iraqis and Lebanese fight American soldiers.

You cannot talk about this issue in terms of “Russia-China-Iran” balancing without mentioning the deeper and much more relevant issues that make US-Israel relationship exceptional on a globsl level: post-Holocaust philosemetism, anti-Islamism, anti-Arabism and (very underreported) Christian piety that actually motivates US-Israel policy. And the Israel lobby, which is so deeply engrained that Israel is treated more or less like the 51st state.

Politics goes far beyond amoral power calculus. You could have justified a ceasefire and even an embargo on Israeli arm transfers in accordance to amoral power calculus, but for Biden, Blinken and the rest, this is a moral question relating to a transcendent moral and religious cause, steeped in centuries of historical memory.

I have zero doubt that Joe Biden believes that by helping murderous racist Netanyahu slaughter and expel the people of Gaza, he has placed himself in the company of Cyrus the Great and other deliverers of Jews rather than Idi Amin and Radovan Karadzic. The GOP puts such things in explicitly religious terms and thus appear less rational or calculating. But it’s not even that well-hidden in the case of Biden and Blinken given what we know of their careers and lives.

Nothing he has done is exceptional. He was a lame duck and his accomplishments are middling.

There is really no reliable way to calculate the long-term costs for solar and wind because production is dependent on international supply chains and international energy prices. Even fossil fuels can prove pricier than expected over time due to supply shocks (like what Germany experienced in 2022-today).

Often the transmission lines and opportunity cost of so much land usage isn’t included in the LCOE of renewable. You also can’t run certain important industries on unreliable energy sources like solar and wind. Even being initially long to build and pricey, nuclear is the best investment to ensure uninterrupted, invariable baseload power for a very long time.

The US builds plants rather idiosyncratically, instead of using a standardized cookie-cutter model, and the sector is overregulated. In Japan and China, nuclear plants take only a few months longer than gas-powered plants to be up and running. Just north of the US, Ontario province in Canada successfully commissioned 20 CANDU plants in 22 years. They have been on schedule with all their refurbishments too.

And let’s not forget that renewable need to be renewed. They rely on smooth international production and supply chains. Good luck getting cheap solar panels if the South China Sea or Taiwan Strait become a free fire zone.

If we want to talk about the real problem with nuclear energy, the key issue is nuclear weapon proliferation, which is enormously underplayed even in serious scholarship on civilian nuclear programs, but it’s not a pressing concern when it comes to nations who have nuclear weapons or operate under a nuclear umbrella.

I played launch version which had it. I didn’t unlock all perks this time around. There really isn’t a major diff between launch and current when it comes to the things discussed in my post except for the insane number of bugs removed.

Wow! NYT has an in-house mind-reader!

Yes, you can actually see the disappointing number of so-called liberals who make a mockery of the concepts of humanitarianism, anti-racism and the rule of law.

I agree with you about BoTW. I played the whole thing. It is actually overrated. Maybe I just needed to soace it out a bit since I played it a ton in college.

Wow! Now that I know the Biden administration implemented a new anti-redlining framework for banks that may come into effect in 2026 (provided Trump doesn’t scrap it) I realize that he wasn’t a lame duck! He was the most transformational orogressive president since FDR! LOL.

“We want to see the end of the (Israeli) investigation before we speak to that, which does not mean that it is an open-ended timeline,” State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said during a daily press briefing.

So they’re giving them an open-ended timeline.

Yes, I do agree that European diplomats are generally more intelligent than US diplomats. But when you say stuff like “he also mentions his stay in Afghanistan, confirming that war is a terrible thing” I start to wonder if you don’t work for him.

I think the “breath underwater” perk in a game with literally no missions where you need to touch water except one - where you have a divesuit anyways - is the best example of how shallow the game is.

Hahahaha that’s an opinion piece, not a piece of legislation make your own arguments for yourself. Tax breaks for green energy! Wow! Something that even fucking broke third world nations have in place! Bravo!

Not at all surprised to see you dismiss actual data with your own made up hypotheticals

Not only did I not dismiss the data at all, nothing I said was hypothetical. It’s not surprising that you use scattershot public opinion polling from wikipedia as an argument. You now have to explain why one poll shows a 50/50 split years before 2014. You also have to explain how it is that the national polling service retained integrity during a civil war. Hint: two of those pollsters stopped polling people in Donbas.

The factors I listed are things that can actually be assessed and that you can make coherent, non-hypothetical arguments about. You’re snide and refuse to argue your case besides arguing hypotheticals. You also seem not to know the basic history of any of these nations, what you said about Finland is manifestly ignorant. As for handwaving informations, that’s exactly what you’ve done as it regards NATO papers concerning Finland’s prospects for joining and reasons for not doing so post-2012. Have a good one.

It’s a little telling that you have yet to refer to a specific one that you find to be earthshatteringly awesome.

What if we’re wrong and BlueSky just gets better? I mean, with some of the corporate trappings of old Twitter, but still user-friendly, big userbases, vibrant subcultures and banning troublemakers?

Polling data good enough?

This Wiki graph is a bit of an abomination. There is no point to jumping between different pollsters between months. But it’s also a very incomplete picture of A) Ukraine’s intentions B) the role that ethnic breakdown of these polling outcomes and C) whose views actually matter for security policy in Ukraine. And once again I return to the ethnic schism in Ukraine. The most significant bloc of opposition to NATO membership were the same Russian-speaking regions that felt disenfranchised when Yanukovych was removed from power.

I don’t even know what you mean by this sentence.

You claimed that when it comes to NATO membership for Ukraine, it’s not about NATO’s wishes or Russia’s wishes, but Ukraine’s wishes. I am arguing that it’s not the case at all since both NATO and Russia had deep influence over Ukraine economically, politically and militarily.

Euromaidan was a nationalist movement because the catalyst for the movement was, surprise surprise, Russian meddling…

What point of mine are you responding to here? I never said anything to contradict that. I’m not making a moralistic argument, I’m making a causal one. Russian meddling was a huge part in depressing support for NATO membership in Ukraine, and Euromaidan was an enormous blow to Russian meddling. QED That’s why Russia switched from meddling to compellence.

If what you’re arguing is that Russia’s actions made Ukraine more interested in joining NATO, I think the counterargument is quite easy to make. Russia, inatead of playing a losing political game inside Ukraine, decided to use its might to make it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO, first by supporting disaffected Russian-speakers secede, and then by partitioning Ukraine directly when it feared the secessionists would lose.

I thought it was about being neutral and not about being pro-russia? Pro-russia isn’t the same as being neutral.

Actually it is. Neutrality involves both pro-Russia and pro-West parties coexisting, alternating and sharing power. That’s almost always been the case with neutral/buffer states. Finland had a pro-USSR and pro-NATO leaders alternating for the entire Cold War almost. The issue is that in the post-Soviet space, that “neutrality” has actually manifested in two groups of differently-aligned corrupt oligarchs alternating. The economic gravity, superior governance and stronger military/intelligence influence of the West leads to popular support for the pro-Western oligarchs. They’re voted in, corruption continues, the electorate becomes disillusioned and votes for the more Russia-friendly oligarchs. That’s basically been the story for several decades in Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Montenegro etc.

Ukraine war has affected that significantly, but Ukraine is more important to Russia than any other neighbor for historical, geographic, economic, cultural and demographic reasons.

Finland and Sweden who for decades were members of the EU and had no desire to be a part of NATO

That’s absolutely not true. Finland in particular came quite close to joining NATO several times and a long-term trend towards public and political support for joining NATO. In fact, if you read NATO think tank studies on the matter from 2000-2012, you’ll find that the matter went from uncertain to being treated as inevitable. The main issue was always concern over Russian economic ties. But that went out the window when Russia was subject to nuclear sanctions after invading Ukraine.

Sweden is actually a similar case. It has basically acted as an auxiliary partner in basically all of NATO’s major operations in the past. There is also a good study on how it used the threat of NATO-ization as part of its economic diplomacy with Russia (I think by Henrik Larsen). But it joining after the nuclear sanctions on Russia also makes sense. There have never been any downsides to the prospect of joining NATO except for 1. being dragged into others’ conflicts 2. damaging economic and political relations with Russia. Following nuclear sanctions, there really were no more incentives not to join. I think with Sweden it’s more complex as there are ideological factors which are more prominent than in Finland.

Exactly. Ukraine didn’t want to join NATO.

If you make a claim this outrageous, you need to back it up. Ukraine officially entered into negotiations to join NATO and entered a membership action program to do so. It does in fact matter what the two forces with most impact on Ukraine’s economy, politics and security environment believe and aim for.

Except Russia annexed Crimea before the election. If Russia was worried about a pro-NATO government why would they do something that guarantees a pro-NATO government?

Let’s say that it was up to Ukraine whether or not to join NATO (which it was.) Russia had absolutely no guarantee that Ukrainian leadership would remain anti-NATO. Time wasn’t on Russia’s side - the lure of the EU and greater association with the West would be a death knell for the style of politics Russia relied upon to forestall pro-NATO reforms in Ukraine. Euromaidan changed the rules of the game. It was a Ukrainian sovereignty movement, with explicitly anti-Putin and some ultranationalist anti-Russian characteristics. The second Yanukovych fled, the game was over for Russia, and the second that he left, Western diplomats became heavily involved in helping craft a new government for Ukraine.

So what makes him special lol? Everyone and their grandmother is giving Russia “sharp retorts”. Sikorski and his wife are both idiots.

The EU-Ukraine agreement wasn’t the single issue in 2014, though it the catalyst. Economic integration with the EU was seen by both the West and Russia as a vital step in reforming Ukraine so that it could become part of the Western alliance - this was said explicitly over and over in Western capitals and NATO papers. Inside Ukraine it wasn’t seen that way, as most Ukrainians wanted to enjoy good relations with both sides but to elevate themselves to Western standards - until 2014. For Russia however, it meant the end of economic influence which was its chief way of exerting political influence to keep Ukraine neutral or friendly, and for an important subset of Ukrainian security and political actors who would win out during 2014, it was in fact a path to NATO.

You’re forgetting that Euromaidan was first and foremost a nationalist and anti-Russian movement, and that the ethnic issue is really what led to the civil war and Russian hostility to Kiev. People for some reason tend to overlook this when talking about EU, NATO etc. The real litmus test for Russia as to whether Ukraine would become a “hostile” (ime pro-West) state was Kiev’s relationship with ethnically Russian regions of Ukraine.

Did Sikorski pay for this article himself? LOL. Almost all the criticism is about his wife. They even neglect to mention the time he created a minor diplomatic kerfuffle by joking that Obama’s grandfather must have been a cannibal.