“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia – the fruits of his genius for statesmanship – and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević.”
- Anthony Bourdain, 2001
The US isn’t party to the ICC. And has a law expressly stating if a US military member or other government employee is held by the ICC, we’re to stop at nothing to retrieve them.
Yes, we have a law that says we’ll invade The Hague should the ICC ever attempt to try an American.
The US can’t be party to the Rome statue without a constitutional change. Other countries also had to amend their constitution but in the US it’s both far harder to accomplish and it’s also more politically charged since the US does not like relinquishing any sovereignty.
When I think of people like Kissinger and Churchill I feel pity for people who believe in shit like karma is a bitch, or that you pay for your deeds and all that.
Not only is sad this person managed to spread so much death and suffering throughout the World but much of it was just to feed his "importance" and ego.
He's poster boy of "deal making" who has no problem in playing the janitor or useful idiot role, I give him that.
I guess it's OK to speak ill of the mf since he's not dead yet.
He'll die soon enough, and probably get a big state funeral, with gushing media coverage, after lying in state in the Capitol. Most likely the President of that time will give a eulogy. Makes me sick.
He's a monster, but he's also one of the few sane voices loudly calling for peace between the West, China and Russia. The escalation we're seeing in Ukraine (I hope the Belgorod incursion wasn't done using NATO weapons, and that the nuclear missiles being positioned in Belarus are a pure bluff) would not have happened under his watch.
A bunch of things could go wrong - China gets involved, Russia wipes Ukraine off the map, war sets in to Easter Europe for a generation. Escalating towards using nukes. Russian command decides that they need to take over all of Ukraine in the long term and not just the Eastern half.
NATO weapons being used on Russian soil would be another new line being breached. At some point there will be a bigger reaction than what we've seen so far.
Russia winning in Ukraine would continue Russia's colonial war in eastern Europe
>Russian command decides that they need to take over all of Ukraine in the long term and not just the Eastern half.
How? They tried already. They currently lack the ability and are going to need a multi year grind to accomplish that at which point sowing domestic discord in Russia degrades their ability.
They just conquered 10% of Ukraine, so they might do that 10 more times.
> Why would China get involved?
Biden has been quite explicit that he wants Putin gone. If NATO triggers a collapse of the Russian government that would be very bad for China. They want a stable Russia. At some point they'll get involved in this if it looks like NATO is going to keep escalating the situation.
> How? They tried already.
They walked in, were surprised by unexpected resistance, walked out and resorted to taking back the parts of Ukraine that prefer to speak Russian. There isn't much in the way of reliable information to decide if it was that they can't destroy Ukraine or they don't think it is useful to do so.
These are all hypothetical scenarios because it is a war and figuring out what is happening in a war is tricky because all the players start lying. But it is hard to see how keeping this war going will improve the situation. There are a lot of ways this could go even worse. Which is something Kissinger has been pointing out recently - even he can tell at 100 years old because it is that obvious.
>They just conquered 10% of Ukraine, so they might do that 10 more times.
How? Meatgrind the rest of the country? That's going to cause immense losses among Russian troops and sowing as much discord as possible in Russian civil society seems like a great strategy to prevent that.
>They want a stable Russia
They want a Russia that is economically advantageous to them. Too much Russian success will cause Europe to become even more reliant on the US and therefore antagonistic to China. China's and Russia's interests are not aligned.
>They walked in, were surprised by unexpected resistance, walked out and resorted to taking back the parts of Ukraine that prefer to speak Russian.
This is cope. Look at how much it took to take Bakhmut.
> This is cope. Look at how much it took to take Bakhmut.
Look at the fact that they have taken Bakhmut. So maybe that is the limit of Russian ability or maybe if Ukraine can't stop them taking Bakhmut, there isn't a line where Ukraine can suddenly stop them.
Ukraine just lost 10% of its territory in 1 year, 25% of their population and their most economically prosperous region s [0] are now at risk of becoming a war zone. I don't like the prognosis for Ukraine if the Russian foreign policy takes a firm "no, we don't think they can exist as an independent country".
> Look at the fact that they have taken Bakhmut. So maybe that is the limit of Russian ability or maybe if Ukraine can't stop them taking Bakhmut, there isn't a line where Ukraine can suddenly stop them.
Bakhmut was taken by Wagner, who perform much better than the regular Russian armed forces at least in this conflict.
And even then it still cost them 50k-100k causalities just for Bakhmut.
Wagner have left Ukraine entirely now. It remains to be seen if Russia can hold Bakhmut if it gets attacked.
