JD Vance opposes military aid, NATO membership for Ukraine. He's now Trump's VP pick

breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca to World News@lemmy.world – 710 points –
JD Vance opposes military aid, NATO membership for Ukraine. He's now Trump's VP pick
kyivindependent.com

Vance is one of Trump's most vocal supporters and an outspoken critic of U.S. aid to Ukraine.

. . .

Vance has said that it would be "completely irresponsible" for Ukraine to join NATO. He has also argued for the U.S. to focus solely on preventing Chinese expansion, even if that means sacrificing sovereign Ukrainian lands to Russia.

"Any peace settlement is going to require some significant territorial concessions from Ukraine, and you're gonna have a peace deal, because that's the only way out of the conflict," Vance said in February.

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What peace deals were those? Must've missed them.

The ones where Ukraine agrees to defund its military completely and stop asking for aid and Russia paints a little smiley face on their bombs in order to seem more friendly of course!

It was a peace deal where Russia would have withdrawn to Feb 23 2022 positions, hostilities would stop and Ukraine would agree not to join NATO. Boris Johnson flew in and said that NATO would give them money to keep fighting. Fast forward two years later and we have tens of thousands more dead Ukrainians and much more lost territory, and a terrible negotiating position.

Remember Chamberlain? He made his allies submit to german concessions because that would maintain peace. Fast forward five years and we had 40+ million more dead Europeans and the continent bombed to rubble.

Is every war WW2 for you guys? Do you know the non-propaganda reason this war started?

Russian expansionism.

Thats the propaganda version. Why did russia invade Georgia? (Hint: its the same reason they invaded Ukraine)

Yeah, that's what I said, russian expansionism.

Gotcha, I can explain it to you. Russia believes that NATO expansion toward them is an extential threat to their existence. NATO and the US know this, and know that NATO membership of the countries like Ukraine and Georgia is unacceptable. So when Georgia was going in the direction of NATO, then russia invaded a couple months later. So then when Ukraine was going in the direction of NATO membership, russia invaded. You can disagree with their reasons, but that is their reasons not some bullshit claim that Russia is the next 1930s germany.

Well, Nato did expand toward them, Sweden and Finland, and what did Russia do? Did they immediately start strengthening their defences against these new Nato countries? Nope, on the contrary, the baltic bases are near empty of forces. It is concrete proof that Russia does not see Nato as a real threat, they know fully well that Nato will not be the aggressor. The whole Nato expansion excuse is the propaganda, and you are eating it.

They probably do feel threatened also by those countries, but not the same as Ukraine and Georgia. And they are doing the most they can do. Where do you think this ends? Nuclear war? Why do you suddenly care about a shitty corrupt country like Ukraine?

These places should be part of our sphere of influence and we dont like them drifting elsewhere is exactly the reason for Hitler taking over Austria, then the Sudetenland, then Danzig. Its very comparable, down the the presense of ethnic Germans/Russians being present in the Sudetenland/Donbas and them needing to be "protected" being offered as an excuse.

One other given reason that people seem to forget is the published position by Putin that Ukraine is a fiction, that Ukranians don't exist in a culturally distinct way, and that their claimed history and distinctness should be erased and made properly Russian.

It's not just imperialism at that point, it's genocidal.

Hey! These countries want to be grouped together to defend against my expansionism! Better invade them to stop them from grouping together, halting my ambitions to get the band back together! Nato is a defensive agreement after all.

You can not like their beliefs, but this was was completely avoidable, and the idea that russia invaded Ukraine and Georgia due to expansionism is a lie, and the people telling you this are aware it a lie.

Yeah, if russia didn't want to expand it's territory, it would have been avoided. However that's not the case, it's not a lie. Why would countries join a defensive pact around russia if russia wasn't eyeballing their territory?

You are just repeating the propaganda talking points. NATO knew that it was the reddest of red lines, and they did it anyways. You can not like it, but its the known consequence of the action.

You should be asking; why would NATO take a completely unnecessary action that would cause a war. But I guess if you keep looking at russia, then you wont think about what is happening.

You are just repeating the propaganda talking points. russia knew that it was the reddest of red lines, and they did it anyways. You can not like it, but its the known consequence of the action.

You should be asking; why would russia take a completely unnecessary action that would cause a war. But I guess if you keep looking at NATO, then you wont think about what is happening.

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Please cite an official Russian source putting forward that offer.

I mean it's not hard to Google "Boris Johnson Ukraine Deal":

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/22/boris-johnson-ukraine-2022-peace-talks-russia

"As Charap and Radchenko show, the reality is a bit more complicated. Johnson didn’t directly sabotage a ceasefire deal in spring 2022; indeed, there was no deal ready to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. The two sides hadn’t agreed on territorial issues, or on levels of military armaments permitted after the war. Ukraine’s position during the negotiations necessitated security guarantees that western states were hesitant to provide. And there were domestic political questions inside Ukraine related to Russian demands about “denazification” to contend with."

So, no, it's not as cut and dried as CableMonster makes it out to be. There was no fixed "deal" ready to go, at best it was a negotiation.

As Charap and Radchenko show, the reality is a bit more complicated. Johnson didn’t directly sabotage a ceasefire deal in spring 2022; indeed, there was no deal ready to be signed between Russia and Ukraine. The two sides hadn’t agreed on territorial issues, or on levels of military armaments permitted after the war. Ukraine’s position during the negotiations necessitated security guarantees that western states were hesitant to provide. And there were domestic political questions inside Ukraine related to Russian demands about “denazification” to contend with.

So no, they hadnt agreed to revert to the feb-22 borders, that was still a matter of contension, and Russia were pushing for Ukrainian disarmament post war (i.e. surrender).

My dispute wasnt that there were attempts at negotiation, obviously there were; Macron in particular made a big show of pushing for them. But the idea that Russia ever offered status-quo ante-bellum (as they suggested) is ridiculous.

Correct, but I'm also going to lean on the side of Cablemonster either mis-remembering the facts, or mis-understanding the facts, rather than mis-representing the facts.

The Guardian article I found is presented as a fact check, so the idea that Boris Johnson killed a peace deal is clearly something that's been floating around in the zeigeist.

Fair enough, personaly I find it hard to give the benefit of the doubt to people from that instance when it comes to topics like this.

Well, I have the benefit of having heard the same thing about Boris Johnson and just not bothering to run it down until now, so it doesn't surprise me that someone could hear it and uncritically parrot it. :) I mean, that happens online ALL the time!

You want me to look it up just so you can say "THATS A TERRIBLE SOURCE!!!!". I am going to pass.

So pulled out your arse then, gottcha.

If world wide news is considered my arse, then sure thing bro.

I mean, if it was world wide news surely it would be easy to get a reputable source like AP reporting that Russia officially made that offer?

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