2012 U.S. Presidential Election

[Roy Karrde]

yeah i am pretty confident that obama cares about the outcome of the midterm elections and the future of the country

to argue against this would be nonsensical

Is that why he did little to campaign in the 2010 midterms? Or why he is refusing to give Congressional Democrats money?

First thing you need to realize is that Obama cares about himself above all else.

i'm not at all saying that the war was justified. merely that the russians can portray the escalation against separatists as an escalation against themselves. thus, a gradual escalation of skirmish into the all-out invasion. which is what happened...

That sounds more like Russia was fishing for a excuse to go to war.

but russia does not conduct itself in this fashion anywhere other than the south caucasus - this is also the only area in which russian-allied separatists engage in conflict with another state. this has no bearing on the rest of europe or the united states - and one can not characterize any gradual escalation of conflict in these areas as a consequence.

That is rather false, Russia has shown itself to go to war when ever it feels like it can gain back a piece of it's previous empire. Georgia in this example. Chechnia in the past.

russia has taken no practical steps to stop this process (because a secure europe is in russia's interests) - in fact, we find the argument in your citation that they object as they aren't able to participate in this security themselves (as in the proposed joint plan).

No steps to stop this process? You mean like threatening to target the missile shield in Europe or saying the START treaty is invalid with the missile shield? funny that sounds like they are trying to take steps to stop the process.

of course, they engage in open objection against the process. we find two reasons for this

1) it helps legitimize their system of government: a cold war mindset in nationalist supporters remains prevalent, and this is a process which is historically effective at justifying authoritarian rule in russia
2) it also maintains positive relations with iran. but while russia is an important trade partner for iran, iran is not nearly as important to russia. the key here is russia's development of WTO accession and bilateral relations with the EU! we're talking hundreds of billions in trade compared to merely billions.

You keep saying that Russia wants to have bilateral relations with the EU and that they are working toward Europe, but nothing could be further from the truth. Russia continues to defy the EU by keeping close military relations with Iran, they defy the EU by supplying military arms and even anti terrorist troops to Syria, they routinely threaten to shut off the gas to the EU as a means to create a energy crisis. These are not the acts of a nation that is willing to develop deeper relations with the EU, in fact it looks like a nation looking to regress into it's old Soviet Union ways of us versus the rest of the world.

even if you think the russians somehow are motivated towards harming themselves through the development of a less secure europe, we find news today that they have agreed to not do so. that's the whole story which this discussion opened on. look at the actual outcome here! it is an easy task for the russian government to cry about something which benefits them while making no practical difference on the matter.

the logical conclusion is to find that they do not favor harming their own interests, they have not done so on this issue, and will not do so in the future (as their ties with the EU grow).

You mean as their ties with the EU falter, but lets be clear here, by trying to take away the missile shield they are opening up the EU to attack, period, no other way around it.

Edit: By the way, Poland is starting to worry that Obama is selling them down the river