On the war in Ukraine we're mad not to use the tools of diplomacy to try to end the war. I'm sure that you want to jump the gun on me now and tell me that I'm a Russian stooge etc. Heck, I'm not even using the dreadful words of negotiation and peace here. No, what I'm saying yet again is why not try to stop the war? Putin will not fall this year or the next, and by the time he does we'll all be really out of pocket money. Now don't expect Europe to fund the reconstruction because something like that always comes after the above mentioned usage of the tools of diplomacy. Jaw, jaw is always better than war, war, remember that Churchill saying? Heck, we're all coming out of a pandemic and we're still funding a war instead of ending one. Utter madness!
PS I'm sorry that I've left some of the discussions on faith unaswered as yet on here. It was because of ill health. I'll try to bring those to the front too next. But lets move to this one yet again first
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@LeopoldBloom Means nothing at all that statement of yours. That ship has sailed. America has accepted that situation in 2014. Now don't try to rewrite history in only ten years time. On the other hand you're actually saying that Putin will have no where to go than to surrender those too. Good luck with that. It doesn't change the fact that he can't stop the war with that. Even after the Russians been throw out of those lands they'll still won't want to stop the war. It could become something like the Irish issue with that mindset of yours
@Human1000 Wrong again, but heck don't believe me. One doesn't hear anyone at all talk about an independent Tibet these days, which I find very hypocritical because it's so much larger than Taiwan, etc. Don't expect me to think that America is all about helping the other either. My own guess is that they left Afghanistan and are supporting Ukraine for the same reason. The first was draining resources and the second is draining those of Russia. It's a totally reasoned look at it. Vichy France was a fairy tale
@Human1000 Oh heck, you're not even trying to be real. What was the 1945 settlement about than to appease Stalin? Ever heard what happened to the Free Poles or the German-led Cossacks? But then again, it's much easier to throw words at someone. It's not nice either by the way :-)
@val70 There was no support in the US in 1945 to go to war with Russia. You can call it "appeasement" or diplomacy. There was no support in the USSR in 1945 to go to war with us, either. By your thinking, Stalin was an "appeaser" too.
@val70 Any historian who thinks the US was eager to go to war with Russia in 1945 should get a different job. Maybe if a psychopath like Curtis LeMay had been in the European theater instead of the Pacific, it might have happened, but there would have been little support for it and the commander would have risked court-martial.
In hindsight, maybe we could have gotten away with it as the US was in far better shape than the USSR at that time. Instead, the line was drawn between eastern and western Europe, followed by the formation of NATO, and later the Warsaw Pact. Calling this "appeasement" is ignorant and insulting.
"Appeasement" usually refers to a situation like Neville Chamberlain's agreement with Hitler. However, the UK was not prepared to go to war with Germany in 1938, so what Chamberlain really did was a strategy to buy time rather than a spineless capitulation.
