Posted on 08/27/2008 6:42:06 PM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Cold War tension rises as Putin talks of Black Sea confrontation
Russia has criticised the US for using naval ships to deliver aid to Georgia
Michael Evans, Defence Editor
A new Cold War between Russia and the West grew steadily closer yesterday after the Kremlin gave a warning about “direct confrontation” between American and Russian warships in the Black Sea.
Dmitri Peskov, a spokesman for Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister, declared that Russia was taking “measures of precaution” against American and Nato naval ships. “Let’s hope we do not see any direct confrontation in that,” he said.
Any attempt by countries in the West to isolate Russia would “definitely harm the economic interests of those states”, he said.
A day after the Kremlin said that it was ready to fight a new Cold War, both sides gave the impression that they were preparing for a protracted stand-off. Foreign ministers of the G7 leading industrialised nations condemned Russia’s excessive use of force and the decision to recognise the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, while the US and Russia shelved a key nuclear agreement that would have given the Americans access to Russian nuclear technologies and Russia help from the US in establishing an international nuclear fuel storage facility for spent fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Too bad Patton wasn’t allowed to take care of the problem when he had the ability to do so.
Pray for our sailors...let them do the job they must if it comes to that.
“Too bad Patton wasn’t allowed to take care of the problem when he had the ability to do so.”
Yep. They were far more exhausted physically and mentally from the war than we were and our superior air power and the A-bomb would’ve made short work of them.
These folks ain’t hacks, they no how the game is played and have a tremendous depth of experience. Sure they were down for a while, but an influx of cash puts them right back in the game with a fresh set of “starters.” They make their bold move in a period of sensitive transition here in the US. Make no mistake, this has been on the Russian drawing board for a looong time. The timing is not a coincidence and this did not simply crop up as a chain of events.
hear, hear!
So Megatons to Megawatts/Megabucks is canceled? Looks like Dick Lugar is gonna be wailing and crying.
By the way, I have seen many replies here on many threads for USN ships at Georgia, which kept saying that ships' mission is purely humanitarian and we should not read too much into this. They sounded quite defensive.
We all know, as this Putin's reaction shows, that Russians would never see this as purely humanitarian mission, when Aegis destroyer was hauling into rudimentary humanitarian relief supplies. So I don't know why they are so frantic about convincing non-Russians of innocent nature of this mission, while it should be Russians who should be convinced. I wonder why they try to spin the opinion here at FR.
and blame Bush.:-)
Thinly veiled lies seem to be the order of the day. International opinion is such a fragile/emotional thing that it’s damn near a necessity to get anything done. An annoying, but necessary evil. And it will continue to be so until the “bad guys” are plainly revealed.
The Cold War, perhaps, was not because the Russians were Communists, but that the Communists were Russians.
just because the intelligentsia abandoned Marxism Leninism for a less dysfunctional form of authoritarianism doesn’t mean they still don’t think they should rule the world.
International opinion is so mired in cowardly self-righteousness that by the time the bad guys are revealed, it has doomed millions of people to die by their hand.
We have a century of really comprehensive, accurate history to demonstrate this, and it won't matter.
Which is exactly why we’ve acted unilateraly on the most critical issues facing our position. For lesser matters, we cannot use up geopolitical capital to simply roll up and do what we know needs to be done. Sure it’s a shit state of affairs, but we do not ignore that reality.
It’s not ‘those who forget history,’ it’s those who refuse to recognize that this really is the “same old shit” all over again. That requires guts to make the hard calls before things get out of hand.
They are very afraid. Dmitri is directly projecting his fears upon the world. Note he said we do instead of NATO does. Russians are very afraid. If you really were prepared to fight, you would never tell your enemy what actions could be taken to avoid the fight.
bless him, everything is always GW’s fault (NOT)
Russia barely has a GDP bigger than that of Texas, we could leave the next World War to them and be better off IMHO. :-)
They’ve got enough to get by, and that’s what Russians are best at.
We need immediate confirmation of Ukraine and Georgia as NATO members. Then, we need to move American missile systems into both countries. If Adolph Putin wants a war, then let’s give it to him.
“We need immediate confirmation of Ukraine and Georgia as NATO members. Then, we need to move American missile systems into both countries. If Adolph Putin wants a war, then let’s give it to him.”
The rest of Europe can assist Ukraine and Georgia. Expanding obsolete NATO is not the answer. NATO is welfare for Europe so they can continue to fund their socialist welfare programs with the money they would otherwise have to put into defense.
Isolate Russia. What the hell!
Don’t forget MacArthur as well. Russia/Soviets and the ChiComs are at the heart of world unrest/proxy wars throughout the last 60 yrs. and counting.
Way to go. Standing up to the bear is one thing, poking him with a stick is another, and not much of a plan.
'Russkies don't take a dump without a plan'...
It would be wise to have a better plan than poking them with a stick. Especially since they appear to have one, and we don't yet know exactly what its breadth and scope are.
I'm all for keeping the bear in check, but you can run in willie nilly and poke it with a stick. I'll watch.
The only thing Russians understand is force. BTW, you sound like a European.
I guess we should have just left WWII and the Cold War up to the Europeans, too.
100% USDA Grade A Hoosier.
And I understand force. But force applied incorrectly and unintelligently can be much more damaging to us.
If Georgia fell into a Russian trap, who's to say that going in half cocked on our part isn't also part of a trap.
The game of chess is played by thinking out your moves well in advance. And Russians do know how to play chess. Do you? Or is checkers more your style?
“I guess we should have just left WWII and the Cold War up to the Europeans, too.”
The Cold War is over. The USSR was a far greater threat than Russia is today. In fact, the only real danger the Russians pose is to Europe. Europe is no longer an in-need-of-rebuild wreck like it was after WWII. It has the industrial and technological capability of containing and defeating any Russian threat except all-out nuclear attack. We are no longer needed. China, and our own country’s porous borders, are a far greater danger to the USA than Russia.
But you repeat yourself.
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