Keeed pines for the stability of the Cold War.
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was going to PM this to a few posters, but since this is coming up, i’ll just leave it here. You all should watch this brilliant movie.
Good Bye, Lenin! - Wikipedia!
btw, another parallel is that portuguese dictator Salazar apparently had a stroke at the end of his rule, but his family isolated and cared for him, concealing the subsequent change of prime minister, even going as far as publishing a single newspaper of fake news just for him.
Salazar lived for a further twenty-three months. After he emerged from over one month of coma[140] and unexpectedly recovered lucidity, his intimates did not tell him he had been removed from power, instead allowing him to “rule” in privacy until his death on 27 July 1970.
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I agree that sanctions could easily strengthen Putin domestically. Have sanctions ever caused a coup? Can’t remember anything like that happening offhand, and there have been severe and longstanding sanctions in places like Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea.
But people in this thread have been pushing the idea of sanctions–>destabilization–>coup, and that a coup would be a good thing. This seems crazy to me as we don’t know who’s going to do a coup and what’s going to happen to the nukes before, during and after the coup. Seems like tremendous amounts of risk and uncertainty for equally uncertain benefit. But again, I doubt that Biden’s actual goal is regime change as he seems a lot more escalation adverse than many people in Congress like Lindsey Graham or Adam Kinzinger or the many like minded folks in this forum.
Everyone in Putin’s inner circle gives off zero intention of enjoying this war.
His FSB boss that invented a bunch of Ukraine reports?
His intel chief that had a rock in his throat while supporting the invasion?
His oligarchs that would rather party on their 500M$ yachts?
His generals that have completely botched this war?
I’ll take any one of those above in a coup situation over Putin.
Sanctions won’t remove dictators.
But it will starve the economy and limit Russia’s ability to wage future wars.
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My fear is that it will be similar to the fall of the USSR. The people that caused the fall were pro-Democracy, but were ultimately replaced by someone worse in Putin than what we had with the USSR. I see no reason the same thing couldn’t happen here.
I think the big point that people are overlooking is that even if the median replacement is better than Putin, the range of outcomes is much broader with the really bad ones being far worse.
Not going to claim I’m an expert on what Putin is willing to do (and don’t think anyone can really be), but I think the odds of a nuclear war go up when there is instability - which is a likely result from a coup. Hopefully the people behind a coup would retain power, but if not, I feel anything could happen - maybe that wouldn’t be nuclear war with the West, but it could easily be something like warlords fighting and nuking each other. For instance, do we really think Kadyrov is just going to peaceful accept Putin’s replacement?
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there’s a lot of posts itt about who is going to replace putin by people who self-identify as not knowing anything about russian politics.
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I’m fine with sanctions->destabilization and leaving it up in the air as to whether or not there is a coup. A coup is a likely favorable outcome, but not one that we should assume we can cause to happen nor one that we should seek to prevent.
Risk-adverse fear of uncertainty, I believe, is a better explanation for why establishment Democrats act the way they do than the thesis that “they’re in on it”. I disagree with this mentality, even when the stakes are such that nuclear armageddon is a potential outcome. I think it’s crazy to be so passive as to only act when you’re sure about the outcome.
Russian warlords fighting each other is probably better than a Russian dictator fighting the rest of Europe.
I think the calculation also has to include the possibility that Putin being removed is the only way to stop the carnage in Ukraine. Low probability bad outcomes have to be weighed against the much higher probability of a couple hundred thousand dead Ukrainians (and Russian soldiers).
You seem to be okay with whatever bad outcomes for others as long as this means you won‘t be affected in any way.
Or, put another way: I don’t want to do anything to increase the chances of global thermonuclear war.
How many lives of others are you willing to sacrifice to prevent a miniscule increase in the probability of nuclear war?
Granted, but what are you personally willing to give up to achieve that goal? You are effectively demanding the sacrifice of Ukraine without offering anything yourself.
I don’t see how the US could take any additional action right now that would decrease the violence. What actions do you have in mind here?
What are you willing to give up and what steps do you think the US should be taking that we aren’t currently taking?
You didn‘t answer my question.
Right, because your question makes no sense applied to Ukraine. The US doesn’t have any options to intervene and make the war less bad. Any action the US takes now seems like it would make things far, far worse. So of course I’m against doing things that would probably lead to more violence, and possibly much much more violence. But maybe I’m missing something, if so, let’s hear it.
Why are we not even considering that the risk of nuclear war might go down with Putin out of office? The risk seems pretty damn high now to me - unhinged desperate dictator facing total ruin.
If we don’t know either way - then why not root for the tyrant to be deposed? If nothing else than the message it will send to other despots and future Russian leaders.