On today’s Democracy Now!
As the U.S. pours billions in military aid into Ukraine, we host a debate on the Biden administration’s response to the war and U.S. policy toward Russia amid increasing calls among progressives for a diplomatic end to the conflict. We speak to former Bernie Sanders foreign policy adviser Matt Duss, now a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who specialized in the Soviet Union. “Everyone understands that at some point there will need to be a negotiation to bring this war to a close, but I think the tension within the progressive community comes to when and how that diplomacy actually takes place,” says Duss. McGovern stressest that U.S. policymakers must understand Russia’s motivations, saying Russia sees the eastward expansion of NATO as threatening its core interests akin to how the United States viewed the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s. “We need to go back and figure out how this all started in order to figure out how to end it,” says McGovern.
Matt Duss is just an establishment propagandist. He has no credibility, and I don’t like elevating him to where he’s given a debate with McGovern. It’s one thing to have different opinions or worldviews, but it’s quite another to lie & propagandize. If Duss were to say that he supports U.S. empire and give his reasons why, then he’d be legitimate despite that disgusting position. But pretending to not support U.S. empire makes him illegitimate.
Duss is a legitimate representative of the thinking of the Democratic Party establishment.
“”umm” means “Here is where I am making shiy up”, Matt Duss.
Any Goodman nd her fellow interviewer are braindead. They need to be replaced.
Beware Democracy Now, they must have been bought off by someone, their spreading of Russiagate lies has been outrageous and certainly not from any left I would ever support or remember supporting. Last time I watched them, March/April 2022, they were hustling the Ukraine war with vigor and spreading misinformation about Bucha.
I watched Democracy Now! every morning since it began its broadcast, and listened on the radio even before that. But something happened to Amy Goodman 2 or 3 years before Trump got elected, and she & Democracy Now! went totally down the drain with TDS after that. Stopped watching years ago, basically around when Trump got elected. Too bad, this used to be an excellent morning news show.
I watched Democracy Now! every morning since it began its broadcast, and listened on the radio even before that. But something happened to Amy Goodman 2 or 3 years before Trump got elected, and she & Democracy Now! went totally down the drain with TDS after that. Stopped watching years ago, basically around when Trump got elected. Too bad, this used to be an excellent morning news show.
I wish to thank Ray McGovern for his valiant service to this country in fending off the lies/distortions/falsifications etc. relating to the present war in the Ukraine. We are lucky to have him. I believe that even atheists would say: May God grant him a really long life because we — the citizens of the USA and the world — need him (and others like him speaking the truth).
Ukraine has been in a decades long civil war; we need to start describing it as such. Demographic vary dramatically along an East to West gradient in support of Russia, ethno-Russians, Russian speakers in the East; vs Ukrainian speaking, anti-Russian West. Minsk2, which is another bit of evidence of the very civil war describes this dynamic and calls for a division of the state
Exactly! I’ve been saying the entire time that Russia didn’t start the war, it’s been going on since 2014. Russia entered the war by invading Ukraine, big difference.
The war in Donbas from 2014-2022 was fully as much a Russian “proxy war” — and then some, with about 1,500 Russian casualties — as the current war is a US “proxy war.”
A Russian proxy war against whom? Ethnic Russians in eastern were attacked by the Ukraine government, specifically the Nazi Azov battalion, after they refused to recognize the illegitimate government that took over during the U.S.-fomented coup in 2014. The U.S. proxy war in Ukraine is against Russia, for example. I don’t agree with your claim that the war in the Donbas was a Russian proxy war at all.
And it’s all the same war, it’s not two different wars. Russia’s invasion just changed the war, it didn’t start a new one. When the U.S. entered WWII, did that create a new war?
You don’t seem to understand the concept of “proxy war.” Regardless of the justification (I agree that the Ukrainian regime should have just let the seceded republics go), the Russian regime spent eight years pouring weapons, troops, etc. into the conflict in Donbas on a “let’s you and them fight” premise, using the separatists as proxies in a war against the Ukrainian regime before converting from proxy war to open/direct war.
The term “proxy war” is not about whether it was right or not, it’s about how it was fought. The US and Russia have been fighting proxy wars with each other since at least as far back as Korea.
You missed my point because you misread my reply to you. Read my question and respond to it. I didn’t say Russia wasn’t fighting a proxy war because I agreed with its position, I said it wasn’t a proxy war because Russia had been fighting Ukraine, albeit somewhat indirectly. Did you consider the U.S. to be fighting a proxy war in Vietnam when the U.S. only had “advisors” there? Of course not. The war against Ukraine was a direct war, not a proxy war.
“Did you consider the U.S. to be fighting a proxy war in Vietnam when the U.S. only had ‘advisors’there? Of course.”
Fixed, no charge.
Words mean things.
Early in Vietnam, the US regime fought a proxy war, using mostly ARVN troops.
Then it escalated to direct war (with the Soviet Union and China fighting a proxy war against the US there by arming/supporting the PAVN).
From 2014-2022, the Russian regime fought a mostly proxy war in Donbas, using separatist formations (although there do appear to have been SOME Russian regulars actually fighting rather than merely “advising” their proxies), then escalated to open/direct war in February.
That’s not what a proxy war is. A proxy war appears to be between two entities, one of which is almost always the government of a country, but instead of the appearance, one group is actually being used by a third group. The U.S. didn’t fight a proxy war in Vietnam, but it’s fighting one in Ukraine. The U.S. directly fought against Vietnam, no “proxy” about it.
” A proxy war appears to be between two entities, one of which is almost always the government of a country, but instead of the appearance, one group is actually being used by a third group.”
As when the US used the Republic of Vietnam’s forces, “advised,” by the US, against the PAVN, before escalating to direct war.
And as when the USSR and China used the PAVN against the US forces, with Soviet and Chinese “advisors” helping out (they never escalated to direct intervention of their own forces).
And as when the Russian Federation used “separatist” forces in LPR/DPR, prior to going to direct war with Ukraine.