On Peace Negotiations And Treaties With Russia
Executive Summary - Russia takes what it wants, and will continue to do so until it is forced into unconditional surrender. There are no negotiations with armed robbers, it's a zero-sum game.
Russia's economy is dependent on the extraction of resources, mainly fossil fuels - oil and natural gas. Russia's Siberian oil and gas fields have been in operation for over 60 years, they're nearly played out, they're using hydrofracturing to get at the remainder. In Russia's Far East, north of Manchuria in eastern China, there's a lot of exploration going on, and this could be a rich source of resources, along with a port - Vladivostok. Unfortunately, China has its eye on those resources and port as well, and is looking to abrogate the 1860 treaty which gave the region to Russia. China has already changed the name of Vladivostok to its pre-1860 name on its maps. China has invaded this area before in 1969, the Russian Army drove them out in six months. It's doubtful whether the current Russian Army could do this if China made a move.
Ukraine is rich in natural resources - oil, natural gas, and coal, and also rare earth metals, including lithium - it has the second largest ore deposit in Europe - and there are extensive oil and gas formations in the northern Black Sea, off the Crimean coast. Crimea has at least two good warm water ports - Feodosia and Sevastopol - and it would be easy to put in loading points and refineries - plus Russia doesn't have to be concerned with the engineering difficulties arising from extreme cold, as in the Far East. And Putin, with his 1997 PhD in natural resource economics from St Petersburg Mining University, is well aware of this.
Usually, companies negotiate oil/natural gas lease arrangements, for exploration and extraction - and refining, storage, and shipment - but Russia has never done this. It takes countries with resources that it needs with military force - that's how it got the Far East in 1860 - the Chinese got the short end of that stick. Now things have changed, and China is able to change things in its favor - and take back its old lands. Putin thought he could easily take Ukraine back - it had been colonized by the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great in 1783 with Crimea, Odessa, and Eastern Ukraine under Russian control. With the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1918, Ukraine declared independence, but was reconquered by the Bolsheviks under Lenin in 1922. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1991, it again declared independence.
Under a weak and incompetent American leader, Obama, Russia was able to march in and occupy Crimea, and under another weak and incompetent American leader, Biden - Obama's vice president, Russia was able to invade Ukraine and seize and occupy more territory. This is Russia's historical modus operandi - it uses military force to colonize its neighbors, and will only be stopped by military force and the unconditional surrender of its leadership. The only kind of peace treaty that Russia will honor is unconditional surrender -
- and those are the terms which must apply to it. It's a zero-sum game, either Russia wins, fully, or it loses totally. If Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, other targets will be next on the list and subjected to the same terms. Peace negotiations and treaties are simply a ploy, a tactic to gain operational advantage, nothing else, and people should not fool themselves, or allow themselves to be fooled, otherwise.
Update: Weasel words from Trump -
He appears to be wholly owned by Putin - he’s not weak or feckless like Biden and most of the Europeans whose pledges of support have come to nothing except in very few cases, most notably the UK and the Baltic states (because they know they’re next after Ukraine). If we want to avoid a major European war, Russia must be defeated. Germany did the same things in 1938 and 1939 - and then they and Russia invaded Poland, and that kicked off World War II. And the US, under Franklin Roosevelt did not join in until Hitler declared war on the US - and without that declaration of war, it’s anyone’s guess whether the US would have come into the European war, instead of focussing its efforts on the war with Japan. It seems like history is repeating itself. The lesson of World War II was that invading autocrats had to be stopped at their own borders - or they would continue until they were stopped. What happened was that Eastern, Central, and Western Europe fell - except for those countries which were part of the Axis pact, like Italy and Romania, or which were under Fascist rule, like Spain and Vichy France. Switzerland and Sweden maintained their neutrality, and Finland lost Karelia and concluded a separate peace with Stalin, which effectively submitted that country to Stalinist rule, a/k/a “Finlandization”. And the US is the final target of Putin, as prescribed by Dugin, whose policy set out in 1997 is being closely followed by Putin:
More comments - it’s up to the UK and Europe now, because they’re in Russia’s gun sights now, and they should consider themselves to be on their own, because the US has now withdrawn, if not overly siding with Putin:
Excellent bit of history about Russia. I suspect history will not be kind to Putin’s folly. Hopefully if the West doesn’t cave in a repeat of 1918 the world ending WW3 won’t happen. (Red vs White army).