Russia expels 60 American diplomats & closes US consulate in St Petersburg
24 replies, posted
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/29/russia-accuses-uk-of-violating-international-law-skripal-case
And in response, the US will...
And then Russia will respond with...
Ah, good, the Cold War has finally finished napping.
How dare you punish us for using a nerve agent on allied soil.
US Consulate orders pizza after Russia orders it shut down
https://mediadc.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/181d257/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5415x3065+11+30/resize/1060x600!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmediadc.brightspotcdn.com%2F36%2Fe7%2F7a4c5e7048b69c74735eed8b626e%2Fap-18089400151303.jpg
Pizzagate 2
What’s in those boxes, Soros? UNDERAGE CHILDREN?!?!?
"I have to deliver the pizza to what country?! Oh the Embassy. Right."
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/979465218559565826
I don't trust Russian media as far as I can throw it, but this seems relevant.
why the fuck is my text shaking?
Also, I wonder if this has anything to do with that twitter poll the russians put out a few days ago.
It's a shame that the historical example that most nations seem to follow in these kinds of disputes is to expel the people who's job it is to resolve them without violence. Dear Putin, if we end up at war, nobody wins, and we just waste a lot of our people and resources. Plus, whichever side loses will still be very angry and likely start another war in the future, continuing the cycle of violence. I know it seems nonsensical, but if you want the west to stop fucking with you, stop fucking with the west. The same goes for the west: If you want Russia to stop fucking with you, stop fucking with Russia. Focus on mitigating the effects of the incidents of Russian aggression. We're never going to be able to force the other side into being rational and mature. We can only refuse to respond to violence with violence. Self-defense occurs during an incident, and is used to mitigate its damage. The damage of this attack is already done. We need to start looking for the man who pulled the trigger, trying to organize a domestic Russian response against the use of international murder (not through intentional propaganda and bending the truth but just as an honest attempt to change minds), and most importantly making sure something like this doesn't happen again.
I'm pretty sure most Russian Embassies are just massive FSB spy bases, not actually full of diplomatic workers.
unless corroborated by another source I'm not believing it
Can you give me a source on this? I think it would be kind of ridiculous (but funny if true), if Russia actually made no attempt at diplomacy with us. The Russian government clearly thinks it can benefit from this conflict, so I suppose it would be in their favor to shutdown dialogue. However, if Russia is really acting as evil and impossible to be reasoned with as this makes it seem, then I think they are trying to provoke us into getting so flustered by their subversive activities that we end up attacking them and losing our international standing for starting a massive, bloody, offensive war. If you don't think this is possible, look at the Iraq war. Russia probably thinks we're dumb enough to do it again, and allow them to respond in turn, and have it be "justified" because whataboutism.
It's pretty much common knowledge that embassies are for spies as much as they are for diplomats. That goes for everyone, not Russia. Shutting down a consulate isn't compromising the diplomatic process, it's a symbolic retaliation that is less likely to escalate to actual conflict than stuff like economic sanctions. The only real damage it inflicts is expelling the case officers posing as diplomats, setting back their HUMINT operations.
Russia is not going to provoke the US into attacking them. That hasn't been a thing since WW2 and Iraq is in no way comparable; Saddam Hussein didn't goad the US into attacking him and the fact that we still run NATO suggests we haven't lost international standing.
Just because an embassy is also used to gather information doesn't mean that the embassy isn't an embassy, and it isn't accomplishing anything diplomatic. If embassies are as much for spies as for diplomacy, then every embassy is likely a diplomatic embassy that also houses spies/a spy base. The truth resists simplification, I guess.
No one has shut down any embassies.
Only consulates, which while have many similar functions, do not house the official representation of the country.
No ambassadors have been expelled, either, which is a serious thing to do. Only diplomatic staff, of which many are bound to be intelligence officers anyway.
First, in this specific context we're talking about a consulate, not an embassy. Consulates exist to serve the citizens of the consulate's country in the host country. If you are an American in St. Petersburg and need help with visas or local law enforcement, you go to the consulate. If you're a Russian representative of the state seeking an audience with a representative of the United States, you go to the embassy. So the idea that this is compromising diplomatic relations is completely wrong to begin with, because until the day the official US embassy in Moscow is shut down (something that simply will not happen, even if we go WW3), communications between the US and Russia remain unaffected. American tourists in St. Petersburg can't get American help as quickly, any ongoing HUMINT operations will suffer a setback, and Russia sends a message to the US. That's the extent of the repercussions.
Second, I think you overstate the significance of embassies in diplomacy to begin with. Diplomats are not 'the people who's job it is to resolve them without violence', they're the people whose job it is to convey such resolutions from their superiors in the least offensive and most agreeable way possible, suss out undisclosed information of intelligence value from their opposing counterparts, and report back as needed. It's no coincidence that diplomats work alongside case officers and case officers pose as diplomats; they have overlapping duties.
Third, you are dramatically exaggerating the impact of the Second Iraq War on international relations. None of our allies viewed the US as 'infallible' after Vietnam, and despite supposed loss of international standing we've had no difficulty dragging the same NATO contributors into operations in Syria, Libya, and Africa. Maybe in the public consciousness people don't trust the US anymore, but nobody engaged in realpolitik follows what the public thinks so that's meaningless. The fact is that in ongoing US-Russia tensions, Europe is overwhelmingly sided with the US, and noting Russia is doing is serving to change that- quite the opposite. They're not making us less credible or goading us into invasion (where do you even get that idea?), they're engaged in the same partisan interest in Europe that they've maintained since the Soviet era, but taking a high-tech and low-profile approach to enacting policy change.
If the US lacked credibility in Europe, Russia would be blitzkrieging its way through Ukraine and Poland as we speak, Crimea on a large scale. It is only the maintained threat of unified NATO retaliation (literally USEUCOM's primary goal) that limits them to small-scale, deniable actions, and forces them to seek clandestine means of policy change. Whether our allies think we're gods among men or not (spoiler, they never have), the US has enough credibility to deter overt military action, and Russia, with its current military strength approximately a fifth of what it was in the late-80s, has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to seek military action.
In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an
escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be
tracked by the State Department, were going missing.
The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would
eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA. One
was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one
particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official,
another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert.
Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber-optic
cables tend to run.
According to another U.S. intelligence official, “They find these
guys driving around in circles in Kansas. It’s a pretty aggressive
effort.”
It’s a trend that has led intelligence officials to conclude that the
Kremlin is waging a quiet effort to map the United States’
telecommunications infrastructure, perhaps preparing for an opportunity
to disrupt it.
“Half the time, they’re never confronted,” the official, who declined
to be identified discussing intelligence matters, said of the
incidents. “We assume they’re mapping our infrastructure.”
Russia escalates spy games after years of U.S. neglect
Thanks for educating me! I'm less afraid now because I know more. I can't really respond to everything you're saying with the time I have at the moment, but I'm just gonna kinda brainstorm. I'm particularly interested in your comment that diplomats do not engage in diplomacy, they just follow orders. I guess the people who are called diplomats aren't really diplomats, since they're just following orders. But that wouldn't really make sense because pretty much everyone think that when they work their job, they are "just following orders". It's how they deal with the guilt of not quitting when they're asked to do something they feel is injustice. They act like they were never really in control. Here's how you can make a change, right now, in my opinion. Every human who renounces the practice of giving and following orders, and instead decides to think and make careful decisions in everyday life, has freed themselves. Some would surely be shot if they tried to do this though. That doesn't mean they shouldn't try though. What we'll find is that if we decide to do the right thing instead of accepting it when society tells us we have to do something that we think is wrong, we will have our fellow humans at our backs, defending us from the aggression of those who would force us rather than teach us.
Well fuck, the better source has arrived (USA Today reporter)
https://twitter.com/OrenDorell/status/979764266646622209
I voted in that poll last week.
https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/978273613349556224
the BI article mentions this, and one case where it was different
Targeted expulsions like the one announced this week are not uncommon. When former President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to Russia's interference in the 2016 US election, the move was made under similar conditions.
Russia, however, responded to Obama's targeted expulsion by ordering the US embassy in Moscow to cut its staff by 755 diplomats, meaning those who were kicked out could not later be replaced by newcomers.
this was june I think, and I'm sure everyone's forgotten but there was a dumb Trump moment to go with it, too
President Trump said Thursday that he was "very thankful" that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered the expulsion of hundreds of U.S. diplomats from the country in response to sanctions — because the administration needs to cut the State Department's budget anyway.
However, a day later he claimed he was only being sarcastic in making those comments.
Its like in the division where the russian consulate was just a giant sever farm hacking into the US government.
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