malchior wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 6:08 pm
Pyperkub wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 5:56 pm
Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Tue May 30, 2023 5:53 pm
Biden’s legacy will be “I wasn’t Trump!”
Biden prevented WW3 by building up our relationships with NATO and Zelensky after Trump torched them, and then hit exactly the right notes in preventing Ukraine from falling in the first week, supporting Ukraine so forcefully (yet in enough of a restrained manner), that China couldn't take the risk of invading Taiwan.
If he does NOTHING else, he's still been one of the most effective Presidents ever.
But, he has also done a good job at rebuilding infrastructure with an eye towards the future, getting us to the main covid finish line, and now, creating a bipartisan package which prevents the bomb-throwers from defaulting on the debt, while also keeping inflation in check after the bills for a massive Tax Cut and then massive Stimulus spending for Covid came due during a massive war which exploded gas and other prices to boot.
When one looks at at the things which were realistic to accomplish, he has overachieved massively.
Do you actually believe all this? Or is this sarcasm?
It's backed up vis a vis Ukraine:
RE:NATO
The Biden administration’s secret planning began in April 2021 when Russia massed about 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. The buildup turned out to be a feint, but Blinken and other officials discussed U.S. intelligence about Russia’s actions with leaders of Britain, France and Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels that month. Their message was, “We need to get ourselves prepared,” a senior State Department official said.
RE: UKRAINE PREP
CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to Moscow on Nov. 1 to warn President Vladimir Putin that the United States and its allies were prepared to arm Ukraine and impose crippling sanctions on Russia if he invaded. Putin apparently thought Biden wouldn’t be able to deliver.
Persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to take the invasion danger seriously wasn’t easy, initially. Blinken spoke to him at the COP 21 climate summit in Glasgow in early November and provided a summary of intelligence about Russia’s plans. “I basically had the task of telling him that we thought it was likely that his country was going to be invaded,” Blinken recalled. Zelensky was skeptical, according to a State Department official.
RE: PREVENTING FALL in 1st Week of War
U.S. intelligence provided Ukraine with a preview of Putin’s battle plan. Though Russia had surrounded Ukraine with 150,000 troops, Putin’s real strategy was a lightning, decapitating strike on Kyiv by a relatively small group of elite special forces. The Russians planned to seize Antonov Airport in Hostomel, west of the capital, and then use it to quickly pump troops into Kyiv...
...The Ukrainians knew the Russians were coming. Burns had secretly traveled to Kyiv in January to brief Zelensky on the Russian plan, according to two knowledgeable officials. The Ukrainians used the U.S. intelligence to devastate the attacking force at Hostomel, in what may turn out to be the decisive battle of the war. “The Russians had no Plan B,” explained Marek Menkiszak, a Polish intelligence analyst with the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw.
RE: CHINA (this is more supposition on my part, but
I do think this article shows how China was aware of Russia's imminent invasion and wanted to use it for Chinese gains - IMHO, not just after the Olympics for TV, but also - in my mind - to invade Taiwan - YMMV, but that noise is a LOT lower after the West stopped Putin rather than rolling over AND hit Russia with historic sanctions - specifically booting them out of SWIFT and the Western Financial World - which would terrify China)
A Western intelligence report said senior Chinese officials told senior Russian officials in early February not to invade Ukraine before the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, according to senior Biden administration officials and a European official....
...China held the closing ceremony of the Olympics on Feb. 20. The next day, Mr. Putin ordered more Russian troops to enter an insurgent-controlled area of eastern Ukraine after state television broadcast a meeting between him and his national security council and, separately, a furious speech in which he said Ukraine should be a part of Russia. Early on Feb. 24, the Russian military began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including carrying out attacks on cities with ballistic missiles, artillery and tanks.
It is extremely easy to just wave away the work the Biden Administration put in for over a year to prevent Ukraine from falling, but it happened and it was bloody hard work, especially after Trump was blackmailing Zelensky to provide dirt on Hunter Biden.
If Trump were President (he's even saying NOW that his plan to end the War in Ukraine is essentially to let Russia have it), Ukraine falls in a week (read above) which then pushes Putin's eye towards Poland - a NATO partner, and China sees that the West is as weak as they have been claiming, and invades Taiwan.
So yeah, the data is mostly there, but we aren't involved in a War in Poland and China right now. And Heck, most World Wars have started with the US on the sidelines - that didn't happen here.
Oh, and
there does appear to be intelligence that China would invade Taiwan in 2022:
"Because of the war, Russia has such a negative image for a number of countries that the United States can easily push sanctions against China, at least with the Europeans, if it risks circumventing the sanctions on Russia," the letter read. "China depends on exports so much that, coupled with its dependence on commodity prices…this would be almost a fatal blow."
The whistleblower continued: "Not only that: Xi Jinping was at least tentatively considering the capture of Taiwan in the autumn—he needs his own small victory in order to be re-elected for a third term—there is a colossal power struggle among the [party] elite. Now, after the events in Ukraine, this window of opportunity has shut, which gives the United States the opportunity to both blackmail Xi and negotiate with his [political] rivals on favorable terms."
The author concludes that Moscow's actions had inadvertently trapped Beijing, forcing the Chinese leadership to scuttle its own invasion plans.
China *did* conduct a massive "training" exercise in the Taiwan region in August 2022 as well.