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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15850 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Old Scranton Joe was more generous with the aid to Ukraine than the Don, but he was being a lot more miserly than Europe and the American deep state wanted. He was a bit out to lunch, but his one real red-line policy position that he was cogent of and involved about was no American ground troops in Ukraine.

The Biden administration's limits went a lot further than that - as a matter of vibes it was "nothing that could be considered as a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia because of the risk of nuclear armageddon" and more specifically it included

  • No US troops in Ukraine
  • No NATO troops in Ukraine without plausible deniability
  • No NATO flights over Ukraine and no missiles launched into Ukraine from NATO countries
  • No direct deliveries of US-made warplanes to Ukraine
  • No use of NATO-provided materiel for strikes inside the internationally recognised borders of Russia (it was the Biden administration who blocked the use of British-made Storm Shadow to strike Russia, not the British).
  • Target-by-target approval of strikes in Crimea with NATO-provided materiel

The restrictions on Ukraine using British kit to attack into Crimea or Russia proper were relaxed by the lame-duck Biden administration, and never reimposed by Trump.

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