Wow, I wonder why all those countries so close to Russia spend so much on their defence. It's baffling really, it must be big bad America wanting a war with Russia. Lets move onto the dumb nuke argument even though it's irrelevant in todays time where nukes can be fired from anywhere in the world with ease.

Lets compare then shall we.

NATO countries with nukes which border CSTO countries = 1 (Türkiye borders Armenia)

NATO countries which border CSTO countries who have nukes = Finland (Borders Russia), Estonia and Latvia (Borders Russia), Lithuania and Poland (Border Kaliningrad) but also now border Belarus who have Russian nukes = Total of 5.

If Russia takes Ukraine = 8 (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania).

Countries can't border Russia with nukes but Russia can border 5-8 countries with nukes, okay.

"But Ryuu! If America puts nukes in Ukraine (despite them never putting them in the Baltics or any country that borders Russia) they could reach Moscow!"

• Distance between Moscow and Ukraine's border = 450km
• Distance between Moscow and Latvia border = 600km

Whopping 150km difference, how will America cope? Their nukes have became useless! Russia is invading a country to create a 150km buffer zone!

"An intercontinental ballistic missile is a ballistic missile with a range of greater than 5,500km"

Oh okay, I guess America isn't devasted by the loss of 150km.

"Okay, but Ryuu. What about Armenia! America has nukes in Türkiye! That threatens Russia's ally!"

Tell that to Armenia, I suppose.

Armenia Signs Arms Contract With France Amid Boost in Military Ties

Damn NATO taking away another Russian ally.

• Armenia Freezes Participation in Russia-Led Security Bloc - Prime Minister | Reuters
• Russia Announces Total Withdrawal of Troops From Nagorno-Karabakh – POLITICO
• Russia Leaves Armenia Ally to burn in Azerbaijan - Asia Times

Oh no, it's just Russia being a twat as per usual. If Russia wasn't such a dick to everyone then it wouldn't have pushed neutral countries like Finland into NATO, it wouldn't have pushed Poland to start asking for nukes, it wouldn't have pushed the original Baltic states into NATO, it wouldn't have pushed Ukraine into NATO and it wouldn't have pushed Armenia, it's own damn ally, into France's arms.

Pure hatred for your own country causes this kind of brain-rot.

You consider yourself Republican don't you? We'd likely disagree on a lot but I do appreciate that you are at least capable of calling out the MAGA nutjobs infecting the GOP. Feels like a lot of Republicans are incapable of doing so and simply fall in line.

Hey Shtinamin, Glad to see you commenting on here. :) What specifically would you like for us to be discussing? I feel like we have been discussing policy positions, though foriegn affairs may have hijacked everything for a bit.

Keep parroting US State Department lines and I’ll keep accusing you of being willfully ignorant. My main point is that international conflicts are more nuanced than one side being the “bad guy”. You can accuse me of being overly sympathetic to Russia, but I have no interest in talking about me: Let’s focus on you for a bit, okay? How could you possibly be telling me that my more open-ended perspective on the conflict is less correct than your assertive perspective which relies heavily on some narrative? What evidence do you have to truly back your claims? And taking lines from speeches and what-not isn’t sufficient: Biden and Putin always talk about wanting to engage in peace talks, for example, yet if I pulled this bit of evidence up coming from Putin, you would reject it as rhetoric (as you reasonably should). Let’s get deep into examining the intent behind each countries’ potential interest in engaging/withdrawing from such conflict. To me, it does not at all feel sufficient to narrow it down to Putin wanting imperialist glory. (And I’ll be back later with my points…I’m pushing it off bc while yes the semester is over, I do still have lots of studying to do…I am a math phd, as you may remember.)

Maybe you could start by responding to the user that you completely ignored who wanted to talk about more than just foreign policy.

I was being sarcastic, I don’t think most Americans really know or care a whole lot about foreign policy and even many people who do, probably care more about domestic issues.

Like if you went around and asked people on the left if they would choose universal healthcare & abortion protections vs funding for Ukraine & a ceasefire in Gaza or asked people on the right if they would choose finishing the border wall & relaxing gun laws vs cutting foreign aid & continuing trade war with China, both groups will likely choose the domestic issue first.

Hell, the average American who pays little attention to politics would probably abandon any position they have on foreign policy if it meant gas & grocery prices would go down.

I’m not trying to make light of those foreign policy issues but I find it weird that Firebush’s argument is that voting doesn’t matter because both sides are the same but refuses to discuss how they are the same on the multitude of domestic issues that most Americans are going to find more important.

Except I'm not parroting nobodies lines except what I feel is right. That Russia has no excuse to invade another country on the premise that said country may or may not have in the future joined a defensive organisation, especially when Russia themselves have contradicted that narrative multiple times and used dozens of other excuses for their invasion.

But here's you straight up parroting the victim blaming bullshit that it's Ukraine's fault for being invaded because it wanted to join NATO. I'm not an idiot who needs people to feed me lines, I can formulate my own thoughts and opinions. You'd even find me criticising US's approach to this war but once again you've ignored all that.

Many times throughout history conflicts have been simply one bad guy wanting to achieve bad things, Hitler for example.

"Biden and Putin always talk about wanting to engage in peace talks" - Once again you're cutting out Ukraine from the conversation.

This is Ukraine vs Russia, not America vs Russia and there's about a dozen countries in Europe taking a tougher stance than America on Russia.

Like Ryuu suggested, you could start by explaining how both sides are the same on domestic issues like healthcare, abortion, immigration, infrastructure, climate change, crime, LGBT rights, voting rights, gun safety, education, childcare, student debt, marijuana legalization, labor rights, housing, tax policy, social security, etc?"

It’s literally the point of this thread, comparing the candidate’s (and their parties in general) policies.

I'm a registered republican, I have some social liberalism views (women's rights) and fuck everyone involved in Jan 6th.  It was treason, full stop.