American Foreign Policy; Be a complete bullying a******

[MSC]

Did I seriously just watch Vance trying to make claims about being more diplomatic, to then watch a master class on how not to do diplomacy? 

I don't know exactly the process by which Trump and Vance receive their paycheck from Putin, but pretty sure Putin will feel like they earned it 100%. This was like watching a pair of mangy scrawny dogs trying to pick a fight with a wounded bear. 

I've honestly never felt such sympathy for a politician but Zelensky shows such self restraint here, I'd have smacked the eyeliner right off JDs face. "Propaganda tour" seriously? Those are real buildings destroyed by Russia, real dead bodies, real stories. Where is the propaganda? This war has been so extensively documented and watched for so long and he has the gall to suggest it's just propaganda? 

This is a new low, are Americans really going to keep standing for this? Is there going to be no public pushback against this administration?

[CharonY]

Folks voted someone in who is known to behave like a wannabe gangster who worships Putin. For a significant proportion of the electorate seeing him behave like a gangster is probably not much of a surprise. Even worse, some would think that this was a show of strength and masculinity. Probably the same who are happy that the US government facilitated the release of sex-traffickers from Romania to the US.

Shocking as this is, it is more of a confirmation of what folks suspected rather than a surprise.

[Trurl]

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

[Alex_Krycek]

Europe has been planning for this since 2020, since Trump finished his first term. 

They knew this day would come.  

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Alex_Krycek

[J.C.MacSwell]

 

2 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

Right. Big mistake giving up their nuclear weapons. What a message for the World.

Europe better start building more of them before Ukraine's well trained army is conscripted against them.

And let's stop being hypocritical about North Korea and Iran.

Only might is right.

Edited 13 hours ago by J.C.MacSwell

[Sensei]

5 hours ago, CharonY said:

Folks voted someone in who is known to behave like a wannabe gangster who worships Putin. For a significant proportion of the electorate seeing him behave like a gangster is probably not much of a surprise. Even worse, some would think that this was a show of strength and masculinity. Probably the same who are happy that the US government facilitated the release of sex-traffickers from Romania to the US.

Shocking as this is, it is more of a confirmation of what folks suspected rather than a surprise.

You make the erroneous assumption that all his voters are as aware as you are.. It's just that most of them don't have a clue where the various states of the US are.. You can't be that stupid to vote for a rapist.. They haven't even seen the film in 2016..

His constituents live in their information bank, to which information from your information bank (and vice versa) is not allowed to enter.

From what I've seen on, my locals who live in the US, and voted for this Russian sockpuppet, the only thing they care about is that it will reduce their taxes. Foreign policy? These losers don't give a damn about it! Climate policy? These losers don't give a damn about it!

 

That's how to know losers that the only thing that turns them on is more money in their pockets..

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Sensei

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t think the exchange matters much. How many times in your life were you in a disagreement and changed your mind or approach?

Trump is right Zelensky has no cards to play. There needs to be a strategy. I have stated on previous posts that I do not like this war. I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win. A military operation will not solve this war. It will start a war.

Zelensky will have to concede. I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

If Zelensky has no, or few, cards to play that is solely because Trump has chosen to betray him and side with the aggressor in this war. So it is pretty rich for Trump to tell Zelensky he has no cards, when it is Trump who has taken them away! 

I actually think this dust-up in the Oval Orifice was a manufactured publicity stunt by Vance and Trump to try to weaken Zelensky personally, in the hope he will stand aside and allow a more Russia-friendly leader to replace him. That has always been Putin's desire. Putin wants Ukraine to hold an election (preposterously, in the middle of a war with parts of the country under enemy occupation) which he can interfere with and cast doubt on. This can provide a pretext for a further invasion later on if the new leader is insufficiently subservient to Russia. The row was televised and no doubt carefully selected clips will now be circulated to depict Zelensky as ungrateful and unreasonable, when he has been fighting for the life of his country for the last three years, against a massively powerful foe. 

Trump has furthermore overturned the entire military posture of the USA since WW2  in the European theatre. He has wrecked the deterrent value of NATO, which has been the centrepiece of military strategy ever since WW2. This leaves Europe exposed to military conquest by Putin's revanchist Russia.  

It is absolutely plain now that Trump and Vance are Russian stooges, wanting to carve the world up into spheres of influence without regard to borders or law. It is also plain that they hate the EU deeply and want it to fail. What better way of achieving that than to neuter NATO and thereby encourage Russia to nibble off bits its eastern frontier, sapping its energy and resources? Meanwhile Vance and Musk try to destabilise it on the political front by encouraging far-right authoritarian movements.

The USA is now, suddenly,  the adversary of Europe, not its ally.

"The West" is now dead. What we have now is the free democracies vs. the rest. Those comprise the EU, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and a few others.

The USA is not a member of this group. 

 

[toucana]

The trifecta would have been FDR saying to Churchill -  "Why aren't you wearing a suit ?"

[swansont]

8 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t know what Russia wants. But diplomacy is more powerful than war.

Does diplomacy work with sociopaths? If diplomacy is so powerful, why didn’t Putin use it?

Diplomacy is give-and-take, but the pattern with Putin, Trump, et al. seems to be “Give me what I want, or else” 

[J.C.MacSwell]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

 

I actually think this dust-up in the Oval Orifice was a manufactured publicity stunt by Vance and Trump to try to weaken Zelensky personally, in the hope he will stand aside and allow a more Russia-friendly leader to replace him.

 

This has to be correct. 

Lindsey Graham: "I have never been more proud of the President. I was very proud of JD Vance, standing up for our country"

 "He (Zelensky) needs to resign and send over someone we can do business with, or he needs to change"

Lindsey Graham is simply not that stupid. There is nothing Zelensky said that needs taken back.They no doubt hoped for more:

 

[exchemist]

20 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

This has to be correct. 

Lindsey Graham: "I have never been more proud of the President. I was very proud of JD Vance, standing up for our country"

 "He (Zelensky) needs to resign and send over someone we can do business with, or he needs to change"

Lindsey Graham is simply not that stupid. There is nothing Zelensky said that needs taken back.They no doubt hoped for more:

 

This makes me want to retch. 

We will just have to take it on by ourselves in Europe. Europe has already provided more than half the funding for Ukraine. It's a shortage of manufacturing capacity that will be the problem, and that will take several years to rectify. Meanwhile I have no confidence that the US will even agree to sell armaments on commercial terms. I think Trump and Vance want the eastern EU to be overrun by Russia.  

It's fair to criticise the way Europe has not pulled its weight on defence but to pull the plug at zero notice has to be seen as a deliberately hostile act, given that it obviously leaves the countries of Europe exposed to invasion, overnight. 

I think we have to cease intelligence cooperation, too, now that there is yet another Russian stooge in charge of the US intelligence agencies. It's too risky. Ukraine's strategy and tactics could go straight to the Kremlin! And we no longer have any shared goals with the USA for the rest of the intelligence that is currently shared. Even on terrorism, the far right extremists may get tipped off by the USA.

It really is over now. I doubt the USA will be able to get these people out of office - even if the people want to, which is far from clear. After all they did elect them. 

 

P.S. Seems my take on this fiasco is broadly shared by others with more information about what went on behind the scenes: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/28/jd-vance-volodymyr-zelenskyy

This is disgusting. 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by exchemist

[John Cuthber]

It looks to me like the North Korean media ; they broadcast the world cup final and pretend that the winner is NK.. They know that nobody outside their country is going to swallow it.

They know everyone else laughs at them. But they are targeting their  their supporters who will believe anything. And they don't care about the outside world.

In that context, it makes perfect sense.

[Ten oz]

9 hours ago, Trurl said:

I feel for Ukraine, but we give them weapons when there is no chance for them to win.

This is often repeated by various pundits and analysts. I think perspectively it misunderstands the situation. Ukraine isn't attempting to gain anything or permanently defeat anyone. Ukraine is merely fighting (defensively) to exist. 

If Ukraine's goal was to topple the Kremlin and control Russia your assessment would be correct. However the opposite is happening. It is Russia who attempted to topple Kyiv. Russia claimed it would take 3 days. It has now been over 3yrs. It is Russia that can't win. Russia has been trying for 3yrs.

Victory for Ukraine is if they continue to exist. That's it. To that end Ukraine is winning. Russia has lost 200k soldiers, 10k tanks, 20k armored vehicles, 400 planes, 300 helicopter, etc. Russia is losing resources and after 3yrs has failed to maintain any significant portions of Ukraine successfully. The war could end today if Russia simply agreed to stop. 

A diplomatic conclusion would be great. As you admit though it is unknown what Putin will agree to. Putin has had 3yrs to state his demands. Through his actions Putin's demands appear to be all of Ukraine. 

[J.C.MacSwell]

This surprises me from Exchemist's link. Even Keith Kellogg has now swallowed the Kool-aid:

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, tweeted: “Was honored to be with @POTUS, @VP, and [Rubio] in the Oval today during the bi-lateral with President Zelensky. As the President has ALWAYS done-he stood for America....America First.”

[MSC]

58 minutes ago, swansont said:

Does diplomacy work with sociopaths? If diplomacy is so powerful, why didn’t Putin use it?

Diplomacy is give-and-take, but the pattern with Putin, Trump, et al. seems to be “Give me what I want, or else”

Those, are excellent questions. The answers lie in how you practice diplomacy. If all diplomacy is to you, is speaking and words on a page, then no, diplomacy does not work with sociopaths, simply because you're not willing to speak their language. 

If action is also part of the diplomats arsenal, which I believe it is, then yes. Diplomacy can work with a sociopath, it does however require clearly dominating them in some fashion or having unique circumstances within which to find common ground. An example is that the West was able to work together with Stalin, because of a shared enemy in Hitler and clear US nuclear dominations in full display at the wars conclusion. 

Zelenskys approach, of pressuring Russia, invading back, fighting tooth and nail and being man enough to ask the world for help, that is the correct approach. If I had one criticism of how Biden handled Putin, he wasn't aggressive enough. Nato should have done far more than it did. 

Trump's approach... Well if your goal is to Marry Putin and be his new wife, he's on the right track. 

[swansont]

4 hours ago, MSC said:

Those, are excellent questions. The answers lie in how you practice diplomacy. If all diplomacy is to you, is speaking and words on a page, then no, diplomacy does not work with sociopaths, simply because you're not willing to speak their language. 

If action is also part of the diplomats arsenal, which I believe it is, then yes. Diplomacy can work with a sociopath, it does however require clearly dominating them in some fashion or having unique circumstances within which to find common ground. An example is that the West was able to work together with Stalin, because of a shared enemy in Hitler and clear US nuclear dominations in full display at the wars conclusion.

So you need a threat of war, which violates the dichotomy that was presented.

[Phi for All]

12 hours ago, Trurl said:

I don’t know what Russia wants.

This is ostrich behavior.

[CharonY]

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

I actually think this dust-up in the Oval Orifice was a manufactured publicity stunt by Vance and Trump to try to weaken Zelensky personally, in the hope he will stand aside and allow a more Russia-friendly leader to replace him

There is little doubt that this was premeditated. The fact that the VP was allowed to do the attack made it pretty clear.

[MSC]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

So you need a threat of war, which violates the dichotomy that was presented.

Something Putin has violated and then some. There is already a war. A war started by Putin, it may be that future historians will mark the start of a third world war, as being a time that has already passed by us, if we recognize a cold start. Maybe when Russia annexed Crimea, maybe later, maybe sooner. 

There are no easy answers when we consider what lies in front of us now, I am hesitant to say that a third world war is inevitable, but considering who is in the Whitehouse and how things are going, and considering how little impact we ourselves or people like us, can have on the outcome except to watch... Maybe it is inevitable. I'm really not sure. 

37 minutes ago, CharonY said:

There is little doubt that this was premeditated. The fact that the VP was allowed to do the attack made it pretty clear.

Yup, typically VPs just end up as the administrations attack dog. That's what Vance is, just be careful he doesn't stop to try and hump your leg.

[CharonY]

22 minutes ago, MSC said:

Yup, typically VPs just end up as the administrations attack dog. That's what Vance is, just be careful he doesn't stop to try and hump your leg.

Especially a VP that has been emasculated repeatedly by the president. If he didn't have the marching order he would never have dared to make a noise.

[swansont]

27 minutes ago, MSC said:

Something Putin has violated and then some. There is already a war. A war started by Putin,

Yes. I don’t see how this supports the notion that diplomacy will work if war is eliminated as an option.

27 minutes ago, MSC said:

it may be that future historians will mark the start of a third world war, as being a time that has already passed by us, if we recognize a cold start. Maybe when Russia annexed Crimea, maybe later, maybe sooner. 

If war spreads it’s likely because of Putin attacking someone else. Europe (et al.) seems content to send support but not troops. He might be emboldened by Trump cutting off aid, and not supporting NATO but does he think he’s strong enough to take on everyone else in NATO if he attacks member state?

[TheVat]

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

is absolutely plain now that Trump and Vance are Russian stooges, wanting to carve the world up into spheres of influence

The claims that Trump was turned by the KGB in 1987 are becoming more credible.  When you look at the kind of person Trump is, it is so easy to imagine kompromat being found.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5162890-assessing-new-allegations-that-trump-was-recruited-by-the-kgb/

OK, back to scanning Zillow listings for Vancouver.  

6 hours ago, Ten oz said:

diplomatic conclusion would be great. As you admit though it is unknown what Putin will agree to. Putin has had 3yrs to state his demands. Through his actions Putin's demands appear to be all of Ukraine. 

And likely restoration of the CCCP, starting with the easiest pickings in bordering eastern bloc.  Putin has stated this pretty overtly in the past.  The rest of your post was an excellent summation of Ukraine's struggle for existence.

[swansont]

6 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The claims that Trump was turned by the KGB in 1987 are becoming more credible.  When you look at the kind of person Trump is, it is so easy to imagine kompromat being found.

Or he just wants to be a dictator, and prefers the company of them

[TheVat]

2 minutes ago, swansont said:

Or he just wants to be a dictator, and prefers the company of them

Except the ones he calls dictators.  🙂

1 hour ago, MSC said:

Yup, typically VPs just end up as the administrations attack dog. That's what Vance is, just be careful he doesn't stop to try and hump your leg.

Or sofa.  Just have to chuckle, again, at the conservatives around here who were positing that Vance would emerge as a more judicious and rational version of Trumpism.  Blew that theory out of the water yesterday.