🗣️ | UA-NATO/RU | Crisis Environment | ANALYSIS OF REPORTS

[RiffRaff]

Didn't Russia at some point want to join NATO or maybe it was the EU I don't remember, and was denied? That was a mistake IMO. A paranoid person or country is dangerous because you don't know for sure what they will do.

One of the biggest failures of US foreign policy in American history. We had a historic opportunity to turn Russia into an ally and instead we just let the crime bosses take over.

The other even bigger failure of US foreign policy also involved Russia at the end of world war two. Russia fought with the Allies on both the German front and the Japanese front. Truman fucked up that opportunity, which is directly responsible for where we're at now.

 

[Publius]

One of the biggest failures of US foreign policy in American history. We had a historic opportunity to turn Russia into an ally and instead we just let the crime bosses take over.

The other even bigger failure of US foreign policy also involved Russia at the end of world war two. Russia fought with the Allies on both the German front and the Japanese front. Truman fucked up that opportunity, which is directly responsible for where we're at now.

So you believe Stalin was going to respect the Yalta plan and facilitate free and fair elections in what came to be known as the eastern block nations.

I’m not saying there is no culpability by the Americans. But international relations are not so black and white.

Just as with Ukraine today. Putin was in-fact very clear about a color revolution and removing Yanukovych in Ukraine. And our intelligence community and command didn’t take him serious.
That is not a condemnation of western efforts to develop and influence relations within Ukraine.
It just is what it is, nation states act in self-interest, sometimes they do well sometimes they don’t.

 

[RiffRaff]

So you believe Stalin was going to respect the Yalta plan and facilitate free and fair elections in what came to be known as the eastern block nations.

I believe the US didn't even try due to the perception that they were now invincible being the only country on earth to have nuclear weapons technology, and by the time the Soviets had acquired it, it was too late. The mutual distrust and paranoia was already too big a hurdle to overcome.

 

[Publius]

I believe the US didn't even try due to the perception that they were now invincible being the only country on earth to have nuclear weapons technology, and by the time the Soviets had acquired it, it was too late. The mutual distrust and paranoia was already too big a hurdle to overcome.

That’s certainly true about mutual distrust. There was a 200+year history on both sides for that.

That still doesn’t make it a solely the fault of America.
The Soviets began installing Soviet controlled government in many eastern block nations before the war was even over.
They annexed the three Baltic nations in 1940.

So they broke their word of provisional governments and free elections sometimes before the war was even over and before the Potsdam conference?
And that was because they knew Truman wasn’t going to act in good faith ahead of time.

As far as the atomic bomb. I can only say that if Truman was truly intending to US the bomb to coheres Stalin he would have used it on Soviet forces or in North Korea. Instead he fired a General for publicly calling for the nuking of the chines at the Yalu River and Manchuria itself.

Did the US employ espionage tactics to subvert the Soviets? Absolutely! Just as the Soviets were also doing at the same time.