Russia doesn’t have the conventional fighting strength to march through Europe but the Baltic states are vulnerable. Properly applied sanctions would stop Putin, but he knows he has the fat orange mess in his back pocket and the US will never be anything more than ambiguous when it comes to defending Ukraine until Trump is no longer president
Politics 🤡 Donald Trump
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NZWarriors.com
As a move towards peace why not sit down with Russia and honestly discuss their security concerns which has never been done. The Baltic states particularly can have their concerns addressed too.
But why should the aggressor be rewarded and get what they want? Surely sets an example that this is the way to go about getting your way. There’s been aggression towards Georgia in recent history too and I know you say this all comes from a historic point of view but also surely the will of the people counts for something too? I understand what you’re saying and perhaps better dialogue was needed before it came to this but I don’t see it right that a power decides they will take you by force when the way the Ukrainians are fighting against this shows it’s not what the people living in the country wants
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Stuff
www.stuff.co.nz
Whether he’s a provocateur, it’s obviously been noted his thinly veiled threats
Bollocks. Conspiracy theories as mentioned
NZWarriors.com
Never been done?. Trump’s real estate negotiator meets Russia on a regular basis. Trouble is all Russia come back with are demands that Ukraine stop defending themselves and that’s about it.
Okay, lets take it back even further. Does Russia have the right to have security concerns. A lot of commenters still refer to the Russians as still the Soviets with the red army.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/02/trump-hegseth-rubio-ukraine-venezuela-boats/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https://s2.washingtonpost.com/car-ln-tr/45fd03d/693070ee1d64392bc2db2760/60b934109bbc0f22cb65cdb8/22/65/693070ee1d64392bc2db2760
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.
In 1967, novelist Gwyn Griffin published a World War II novel, “An Operational Necessity,” that 58 years later is again pertinent. According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunken ship cannot be attacked. But a German submarine captain, after sinking a French ship, orders the machine-gunning of the ship’s crew, lest their survival endanger his men by revealing where his boat is operating. In the book’s dramatic climax, a postwar tribunal examines the German commander’s moral calculus.
No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was to kill everybody,” one said) and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth. President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.
Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.
Marco Rubio, who is secretary of state and Trump’s national security adviser, seemed to be neither when the president released his 28-point plan for Ukraine’s dismemberment. The plan was cobbled together by Trump administration and Russian officials, with no Ukrainians participating. It reads like a wish-list letter from Vladimir Putin to Santa Claus: Ukraine to cede land that Russia has failed to capture in almost four years of aggression; Russia to have a veto over NATO’s composition, peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and the size of Ukraine’s armed forces. And more.
Rubio, whose well-known versatility of convictions is perhaps not infinite, told some of his alarmed former Senate colleagues that the plan was just an opening gambit from Russia — although Trump demanded that Ukraine accept it within days. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a precise and measured speaker, reported that, in a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators, Rubio said the plan was a Russian proposal: “He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.” Hours later, however, Rubio reversed himself, saying on social media that the United States “authored” the plan.
The administration’s floundering might reflect more than its characteristic incompetence. In a darkening world, systemic weaknesses of prosperous democracies are becoming clearer.
Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell’s 1976 book, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” argued that capitalism’s success undermines capitalism’s moral and behavioral prerequisites. Affluence produces a culture of present-mindedness and laxity; this undermines thrift, industriousness, discipline and the deferral of gratification.
Today’s cultural contradictions of democracy are: Majorities vote themselves government benefits funded by deficits, which conscript the wealth of future generations who will inherit the national debt. Entitlements crowd out provisions for national security. And an anesthetizing dependency on government produces an inward-turning obliviousness to external dangers, and a flinching from hard truths.
Two weeks ago, the chief of staff of the French army said: “We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow. What we are lacking … is the spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are. If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.”
Putin has surely savored the French recoil from these words. And he has noticed that, concerning Ukraine and the attacks on boats near Venezuela, the Trump administration cannot keep its stories straight. This probably is for reasons Sir Walter Scott understood: “Oh, what a tang
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.
In 1967, novelist Gwyn Griffin published a World War II novel, “An Operational Necessity,” that 58 years later is again pertinent. According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunken ship cannot be attacked. But a German submarine captain, after sinking a French ship, orders the machine-gunning of the ship’s crew, lest their survival endanger his men by revealing where his boat is operating. In the book’s dramatic climax, a postwar tribunal examines the German commander’s moral calculus.
No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was to kill everybody,” one said) and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth. President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.
Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.
The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.
Marco Rubio, who is secretary of state and Trump’s national security adviser, seemed to be neither when the president released his 28-point plan for Ukraine’s dismemberment. The plan was cobbled together by Trump administration and Russian officials, with no Ukrainians participating. It reads like a wish-list letter from Vladimir Putin to Santa Claus: Ukraine to cede land that Russia has failed to capture in almost four years of aggression; Russia to have a veto over NATO’s composition, peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and the size of Ukraine’s armed forces. And more.
Rubio, whose well-known versatility of convictions is perhaps not infinite, told some of his alarmed former Senate colleagues that the plan was just an opening gambit from Russia — although Trump demanded that Ukraine accept it within days. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a precise and measured speaker, reported that, in a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators, Rubio said the plan was a Russian proposal: “He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.” Hours later, however, Rubio reversed himself, saying on social media that the United States “authored” the plan.
The administration’s floundering might reflect more than its characteristic incompetence. In a darkening world, systemic weaknesses of prosperous democracies are becoming clearer.
Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell’s 1976 book, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” argued that capitalism’s success undermines capitalism’s moral and behavioral prerequisites. Affluence produces a culture of present-mindedness and laxity; this undermines thrift, industriousness, discipline and the deferral of gratification.
Today’s cultural contradictions of democracy are: Majorities vote themselves government benefits funded by deficits, which conscript the wealth of future generations who will inherit the national debt. Entitlements crowd out provisions for national security. And an anesthetizing dependency on government produces an inward-turning obliviousness to external dangers, and a flinching from hard truths.
Two weeks ago, the chief of staff of the French army said: “We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow. What we are lacking … is the spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are. If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.”
Putin has surely savored the French recoil from these words. And he has noticed that, concerning Ukraine and the attacks on boats near Venezuela, the Trump administration cannot keep its stories straight. This probably is for reasons Sir Walter Scott understood: “Oh, what a tang
NZWarriors.com
I meant Europe to do their own negotiating with Russia.
I get what you are saying but surely diplomacy and dialogue have to continue to find ways to stop the fighting. NATO in particular refused to discuss Russias security concerns. Now Russia have reacted we do not talk with them because of the aggression. When can they be spoken to?
Can you provide some links to the things you're mentioning, particularly the NATO refusing to discuss Russia's security concerns? And also from previously, the claim of looking to break up Russia and sell off it's assets?
Agree dialogue and diplomacy have to continue, but Russia are clearly the aggressor and have been for over a decade now.
NZWarriors.com
In 2008 NATO projected that Ukraine and Georgia will eventually be admitted into NATO. Russia said thise were red flags but NATO said they would not address Russias concerns. Georgia and Ruzsia had a war. Russia invaded Georgia but after fighting stopped withdrew. As for breaking up Russia just google if.
Yes I think Russia certainly has rights and I agree it’s very complicated, but the will of the people should have the overriding say to the outcome in my view
Would be good to get a handle on where you're coming from really. The breaking up russia sounds to me like russian disinformation, and there's plenty of that around.
NZWarriors.com
Why Vladimir Putin has already lost this war | Yuval Noah Harari
The Russians may yet conquer Ukraine. But Ukrainians have shown that they will not let them hold it, says historian and author Yuval Noah Harari
I totally agree Russia should not hzve invaded. However invasion, intimidation are not just restricted to Russia, how about Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Lybia, Yugoslavia, Vietnam, Ukraine coup. Probably Venezuela soon. There is Russian disinformation, however there is also western disincormatiin in the mainstrean media. Name me a western leader who does nof lie regularly. Where I come from is anti war.
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SickeningStuff
www.stuff.co.nz
Bow down to the king. No wonder soccer is such a shit sport
The narcissism is off the charts. The award is as pathetic as netanyahu’s sad rant about how deserving he was of a peace prize