Shag Nasty

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Agreed

[Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel]

I don’t know if Zelenskyy watches the news, but the mood in France, Italy and Albania is not good. Large protests are underway, sometimes turning into clashes with police. In southern Italy roads are set to be blocked for the next two days. People are protesting bad education, poverty, soaring fuel prices and actual shortages of diesel and gasoline in some regions.

Against this backdrop, six months before elections in France and Italy, Volodymyr Zelenskyy is asking for another €70 billion to fund an endless war that Ukraine is losing. The previous €90 billion were already extracted with huge difficulty. Hungary and Slovakia have already said they will not take part in this new financing.

This is not about whether I support Zelenskyy. The economy in Ukraine is nearly stopped — by Russian strikes and by the incompetence of a wartime government. The Constitution is on pause, as one of Zelenskyy’s own friends has said.

The war is taking more lives and more land, and the only answer we hear is “give Ukraine more money”. Money that Europeans no longer want to give and can no longer afford to give. Every third euro in Ukraine is now Western borrowing.

To save the country we need a deal and a chance to rebuild. I do not believe Ukraine can remain an equal partner while it is this dependent on the West, or that this strategy has any long-term future.

It breaks my heart that this war is destroying so much in Ukraine and causing such degradation. It also breaks my heart that European countries, including France, Italy and Albania, are going through such hard times.

That is why I say again: let’s end the only war in Europe so that all of us can start building a future.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@AmericaFirsst Fake news. I can’t believe there are two men who are attracted to that woman.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@RobGilbey Pro Peace = Pro War. Got it.

[Cynical Publius @CynicalPublius]

RE: The Midterms and National Survival

The Democrat Party has been hijacked by an alliance of literal Communists and Islamic jihadists who now wear the mantle of Tip O’Neill and Sam Nunn like a skinsuit while espousing the most radical, anti-American agenda the USA has ever experienced.

These are people who want the Constitution eviscerated, capitalism extinguished, Sharia law imposed and your very way of life destroyed. If they achieve power, the lawfare you saw in 2020 will be NOTHING by comparison. If you hold traditional conservative values and/or if you are a practicing Christian or a Jew, they want you destroyed—economically, politically, practically, reputationally and—if necessary—they want you in a Gulag or to pay with your life.

This is not hyperbole, nor is this something that will happen overnight if we lose the midterms. However, if they win the midterms this will be for them a major step towards their ultimate goal of domination, a domination where the Bill of Rights has no meaning and all elections are pre-determined.

I really don’t care how much you dislike RINOs or how upset you are that Trump did not fully fix your pet issue in less than two years or how irritated you get filling up your gas tank. If you sit out these upcoming midterms to “send a message,” all you are doing is participating in your own demise.

If this is you, please wise up. This is NOT POLITICS AS USUAL. National survival is at stake in a way it never has been before.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Funny stuff 😁

[PhillyGodfather ® Sports Bettor @phillygodfather]

I spit out my coffee.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@Clemanns1984 Putin isn’t interested in taking Ukraine. Catch up!

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@_pinkrantz We can always dream.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@marcthiessen @TheStudyofWar Consider the source. No one would expect any other opinion from this outfit. It’s always more bombs.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@bisonfan86 @SenKevinCramer Fight to the last Ukrainian, right? It’s better for all of them to die and the entire country destroyed if it weakens Russia in some fashion!!!

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Fair analysis.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

As someone who wrote an article literally titled "Why Mearsheimer is wrong on China" (https://t.co/8mqY524iLg), it's clear I'm no diehard fanboy of the guy.

However, on Ukraine, honesty requires recognizing that he was more right than most, starting with predicting the war in the first place. At the beginning of the war I wrote a long thread listing all the strategic thinkers who predicted it (https://t.co/Yme3Cdrc8l), and Mearsheimer's prediction really stands out as the most complete, almost like a script of what followed.

It is true, though, that since the war started, he's sounded a bit like a broken record in announcing Ukraine's imminent collapse, which hasn't exactly materialized.

He has this bad habit of running everything through the iron laws (according to him) of great-power competition, the very same framework that leads him astray on China.

A framework that, as per his own admission, doesn't leave any room for the individual characteristics of a state: as he himself puts it in his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics “The theory pays little attention to individuals or domestic political considerations such as ideology. It tends to treat states like black boxes or billiard balls”.

Which is very unnuanced: it’s painfully obvious to any student of history that there is more to geopolitics than raw power, and that a nation’s history, culture, sense of itself, contemporary zeitgeist and ideology are absolutely critical in shaping its behavior.

In many ways, Mearsheimer's "offensive realism" is the lazy man's approach to geopolitics: it spares you the trouble of reading a country’s history or understanding how its people see the world.

Mearsheimer actually tacitly recognizes this. If you listen to him on his own country, the US, what he is ironically very good at predicting is how they WON'T follow his theory: in the same breath, he’ll tell you the US should stop wasting resources in Europe and the Middle East to focus on China, and that it won’t, because of the Israel lobby, a crusading liberal ideology and the groupthink of the "blob". In other words, because of domestic politics, ideology and individuals: precisely what his theory tells you ought to be ignored.

Which shows that when it’s a country he actually knows from the inside, he has no trouble seeing that the black box/billiard ball is in fact a living, breathing nation in all its complexity and nuance.

All that being said, what is his main point on Ukraine? Famously, and bluntly, that “the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”

With about a fifth of its territory under Russian control, about half a million Ukrainian casualties (https://t.co/DLwPDaZ13U), a population that has shrunk from almost 42 million before the war to around 29 million in government-controlled areas (https://t.co/7kinxp04xv), 14% of its housing stock damaged or destroyed (https://t.co/VJiel2DHDx), an economy a fifth smaller than before the war in real terms (https://t.co/HKjT1jhA8Y), and a state whose entire civilian budget is financed by foreign aid (https://t.co/afZ6U1Mn7m), it’s hard to think of a more fitting word.

Ukraine is, factually, wrecked. Still fighting, with a courage and resilience no black-box theory could have predicted, but wrecked.

I don’t think anyone can seriously argue otherwise. The most direct responsibility lies with Russia, which made the choice to invade. But nobody - on either side - can be happy with that outcome, or deny that more could have been done to avoid it.

Which is, when you strip it down to its essence, the gist of what Mearsheimer is saying. It's not that sophisticated but it's also common sense, and probably the most humanistic position one could have held: for all his talk of black boxes, he turned out to be the one most concerned with the people inside them.

So, no, long story short: Mearsheimer hasn’t “discredited himself over Ukraine”. The ones who should worry about their credibility are those who led Ukraine down the very primrose path he warned about, and still haven’t had the decency to admit where it took the country.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Thank you.

[AJ Inapi (Allan) @aj_inapi]

The current war in Ukraine didn't begin in a vacuum. If you want to understand it, you need to understand the history of NATO's expansion and the national security interests of the world's major powers.

Let's go back to 1990.

As the Soviet Union was collapsing and Germany was preparing for reunification, US Secretary of State James Baker told Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, that NATO's military jurisdiction would not move "one inch eastward."

Other Western leaders also made assurances during those negotiations.

Although no treaty was signed prohibiting NATO from admitting other Eastern European nations, the discussions left Moscow with expectations about the future security architecture of Europe.

Then look at what happened.

NATO expanded eastward in successive waves:

▪️ 1999: Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

▪️ 2004: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Slovenia.

▪️ 2009: Albania and Croatia.

▪️ 2017: Montenegro.

▪️ 2020: North Macedonia.

▪️ 2023: Finland, which shares a long border with Russia.

▪️ 2024: Sweden.

That's seven rounds of post-Cold War enlargement, bringing NATO to 32 members.

And Ukraine?

At its 2008 Bucharest Summit, NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members. In 2024, the Alliance reaffirmed Ukraine's future membership aspirations.

Ukraine is not a NATO member, but the possibility of its eventual membership has become one of the central security disputes between Moscow and the West.

Now, understand this: great powers do not view national security the same way smaller countries do.

The United States has long sought to prevent hostile powers from establishing strategic footholds in its neighbourhood. President Trump has pursued a policy of reducing Russian, Chinese and Iranian influence in the Western Hemisphere.

Russia has its own strategic interests and security calculations. Putin has pursued Russia's objectives through military force, with devastating consequences for Ukraine.

Explaining Russia's security concerns does not justify invading a sovereign country. And acknowledging Ukraine's right to choose its alliances does not mean we should ignore the wider geopolitical consequences of decisions made by the world's major powers.

Both realities matter.

I don't consider Putin a saint, nor do I automatically support everything he does. But I recognise a basic truth about international politics:

Putin will pursue what he believes is best for Russia. Xi will pursue what he believes is best for China. President Trump will pursue what he believes is best for America.

That's how great-power politics works.

The question is why so many people expect the leaders of major powers to ignore their national interests while pretending that every geopolitical decision is driven purely by democratic ideals.

Nations pursue power, security, resources and strategic advantage. They always have.

The real challenge is preventing those competing interests from dragging the rest of the world into another catastrophic conflict.

Stop looking at geopolitics through the simplistic lens of saints and villains. Study the history, understand the strategic interests, and question the motives of every government.

Because when great powers collide, ordinary people pay the price.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@KatiePavlich That’s a BIG problem.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Another Republican who sides with the foreign policy of Obama, Biden, Blinken, Kerry, Pyatt and Nuland, ignores Secretary of State James Baker’s commitment and the Maidan coup and believes the war started in February 2922. And with a dictator who refuses to hold elections, closes Christian churches, aligns with Azov and Biletsky, refuses to engage in meaningful peace talks since April 2022 and enriches himself with diversions of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@Coolermama Don’t take it as a literal statement. For purposes of trade and commerce, think of the border between the U.S. and Canada as the border between Texas and Oklahoma. Does that trouble you?

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@GeraldoRivera Some of us see NATO as the aggressor and Zelensky as a neo-Nazi. We know what happened in 2014. And think Azov and Biletsky.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

Interesting. Has there ever been an audit conducted on the funds provided to Ukraine?

[Martin A. Armstrong @ArmstrongEcon]

I have made it clear that all my sources and the computer have laid it out – Zelensky is the problem. He takes his orders from the EU, NATO and UK.  As long as he remains in office, he continues to take money putting into offshore accounts and there may in fact be kickbacks to European leaders who put their own people a risk and refuse to accept any peace deal. Something is just not right.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@KritterBoogie @MisfitPatriot The data is readily available.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@JamesPa41826783 @DougKlain What was the population of Ukraine on 1/1/2022? What is it today?

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@JamesPa41826783 @BeraG23660 @DougKlain You can’t reason with empty space.

[Shag Nasty @DanHartsfield3]

@brithume Tiresome neocon propaganda from Hume never ends.