Posted on 03/04/2014 8:12:43 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Four years after CNN foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria praised President Barack Obama for scrapping the missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Zakaria swiftly backtracked on Sunday after top Ukrainian officials declared that Russia was invading the country.
Zakaria, the host of CNN's weekly Fareed Zakaria GPS program, said on his show that NATO should consider building a missile defense system in Eastern Europe that the Obama administration scrapped:
"Militarily there is less that can be done. After all, Russia’s military budget is about 18 times that of Ukraine. But NATO should restart talks on providing assurances to countries like Poland – including perhaps building the missile defense system that was abandoned."
During Obama's first year in office, though, Zakaria had a different tone. He said that Obama did not cave on scrapping the missile defense system in Eastern Europe because Obama "traded the fantasy of the system with the reality of what it is."
"The president's reasons for shifting gears on the antiballistic missile systems for Poland and the Czech Republic are sound," Zakaria said in 2009. "Look at the facts. Since the 1980s, the United States has spent well over $150 billion on missile defense. That's more than the total cost of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo mission to the moon. Despite this, in 25 years, the program has not produced any workable weapon system, something unprecedented even in the annals of the Pentagon's bloated budgets."(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
str: Russia doesn’t operate under the same PC conditions that we do.
Stories of Soviet atrocities - without corroborating video - against Afghans, whom nobody in the West knew from Adam, prompted billions of dollars in aid for the Afghan insurgents. Russian atrocities against Ukrainians, accompanied by video and posted on Youtube will lead to billions *per year* in material assistance and perhaps even NATO air support against Russian forces in Ukraine. In that respect, it would be little different from Soviet flyers facing off against USAF and USN pilots during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
We have satellites that we use to detect launches, and which can warn the tracking stations in Alaska and California of the threat.
Stories of Soviet atrocities - without corroborating video - against Afghans, whom nobody in the West knew from Adam, prompted billions of dollars in aid for the Afghan insurgents. Russian atrocities against Ukrainians, accompanied by video and posted on Youtube will lead to billions *per year* in material assistance and perhaps even NATO air support against Russian forces in Ukraine. In that respect, it would be little different from Soviet flyers facing off against USAF and USN pilots during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.
That was then, this is now. The west is now run by pansy corporate fascists. They won’t be shooting at Russians in the Ukraine. Many of them think what Russia is doing now in their “near abroad” is perfectly understandable.
Have you looked at the size of NATOs military lately? That ship sailed long ago.
It’s better to pay for that radar than to have to decide what to do in the future when Putin rolls tanks into some place like Estonia and they invoke article 5.
A radar system that provides no protection for the U.S. is going to keep Putin from rolling the tanks on Estonia? So what if he did? Who is going to stop him? Germany? France? Denmark?
Doing less than nothing right now just encourages Putin to start rolling tanks through NATO countries.
If the NATO countries are not willing to fund their own defense then why should we do it for them?
Hint: $71 billion, -- guess who? $10 billion is cumulative budget of all ex-USSR countries except the RF.
The red bar is number of active servicemen. 1 million -- guess who?
The dotted line is the cumulative of all ex-USSR countries except the RF, against the RF.
(Courtesy Sputnik i Pogrom)
In East Europe the Cold War never ended.
Our entire popular culture in a nutshell. Well said, thank you.
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- Cokehead Barack Hussein Obama Junior : “Tell Vladimir after my election I have more flexibility.” (I need more “space”)
- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev : “I understand. I will transmit this to Vladimir.”
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If the NATO countries are not willing to fund their own defense then why should we do it for them?
There has been recent news of increased defense spending in Europe. The Estonian FM made a statement about that I believe. They know they have to spend more.
A robust NATO response now including new installations would give Putin pause. He lives in the 1970’s and dreams of reassembling the USSR. You seem ok with that. I am not. It is not in US interest to have a nuclear armed bad actor rampaging through Europe today and someplace else tomorrow.
That’s the wrong chart. You need one with market size. The banksters in London and Frankfurt are willing to feed Ukraine and the Baltics to the Russian bear to keep their cut of the Russian kleptocracy coming in. That’s what pays for their ferraris and high priced hookers. So what if millions are put back in Russian chains, they simply don’t care.
Actually the missile defenses Bush planned in Poland and Czech Republic would’ve protected the East Coast of the US from Iranian ICBMs. Out East Coast has absolutely no missile defenses now.
Russia objected to those missile defenses on the pretense they were targeting them, but they know darn well that no missile defenses will protect the West from their arsenal.
So now we want to spend billions and billions trying to piss off Putin by building a missile defense system that doesn't threaten his ability to nuke us to begin with? And which is supposed to defend us agains Iranian missiles that don't exist? That doesn't make a lot of sense.
Or maybe a picture of the dolt that got his foreign policy by reading Zakaria's book.
You are, once again, correct in your assessment of the satellite threat detection network. But they don't qualify as fire-control radars. The ones in eastern Europe will. That's why we need them there.
They also serve as a threat deterrent/tripwire against Russia. Putin knows that once those radars are online, he cannot act against them without inviting an American preemptive nuclear launch. The only reason he would strike at them would be to clear the way for his own first strike. The second he takes them out, we launch before he does. That's why he's doing everything he can to keep them from being installed. And our girlfriend President is being very accommodating.
Then I stand corrected. I was sure it Madeline Notbright.
The military size and the market size are interrelated, aren't they? The Russian Federation can act like the old Brezhnevite bear on the military arena because it knows that the bankers will block any diplomatic effort by the West.
The first major blunder of the obama administration was scrapping the east european missile defense system.It could have been part of the negotiation in order to get something in return; however, it was scrapped unilaterally, apparently to spite the previous administration. Never made a bit of sense.
“The first major blunder of the obama administration was scrapping the east european missile defense system.”
I don’t see it as a blunder, they planned it and dd it. It makes 100% sense for their goals.
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