Posted on 02/03/2015 6:15:19 AM PST by Kaslin
Among Cold War presidents, from Truman to Bush I, there was an unwritten rule: Do not challenge Moscow in its Central and Eastern Europe sphere of influence.
In crises over Berlin in 1948 and 1961, the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 and the Warsaw Pact invasion of Prague in 1968, U.S. forces in Europe stayed in their barracks.
We saw the Elbe as Moscow's red line, and they saw it as ours.
While Reagan sent weapons to anti-Communist rebels in Angola, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, to the heroic Poles of Gdansk he sent only mimeograph machines.
That Cold War caution and prudence may be at an end.
For President Obama is being goaded by Congress and the liberal interventionists in his party to send lethal weaponry to Kiev in its civil war with pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk.
That war has already cost 5,000 lives -- soldiers, rebels, civilians. September's cease-fire in Minsk has broken down. The rebels have lately seized 200 added square miles, and directed artillery fire at Mariupol, a Black Sea port between Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea.
Late last year, Congress sent Obama a bill authorizing lethal aid to Kiev. He signed it. Now the New York Times reports that NATO Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove favors military aid to Ukraine, as does Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. John Kerry and Gen. Martin Dempsey of the joint chiefs are said to be open to the idea.
A panel of eight former national security officials, chaired by Michele Flournoy, a potential Defense Secretary in a Hillary Clinton administration, has called for the U.S. to provide $3 billion in military aid to Ukraine, including anti-tank missiles, reconnaissance drones, Humvees, and radar to locate the sources of artillery and missile fire.
Such an arms package would guarantee an escalation of the war, put the United States squarely in the middle, and force Vladimir Putin's hand.
Thus far, despite evidence of Russian advisers in Ukraine and claims of Russian tank presence, Putin denies that he has intervened. But if U.S. cargo planes start arriving in Kiev with Javelin anti-tank missiles, Putin would face several choices.
He could back down, abandon the rebels, and be seen as a bully who, despite his bluster, does not stand up for Russians everywhere.
More in character, he could take U.S. intervention as a challenge and send in armor and artillery to enable the rebels to consolidate their gains, then warn Kiev that, rather than see the rebels routed, Moscow will intervene militarily.
Or Putin could order in the Russian army before U.S. weapons arrive, capture Mariupol, establish a land bridge to Crimea, and then tell Kiev he is ready to negotiate.
What would we do then? Send U.S. advisers to fight alongside the Ukrainians, as the war escalates and the casualties mount? Send U.S. warships into the Black Sea?
Have we thought this through, as we did not think through what would happen if we brought down Saddam, Gadhafi and Mubarak?
America has never had a vital interest in Crimea or the Donbass worth risking a military clash with Russia. And we do not have the military ability to intervene and drive out the Russian army, unless we are prepared for a larger war and the potential devastation of the Ukraine.
What would Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon or Reagan think of an American president willing to risk military conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia over two provinces in southeastern Ukraine that Moscow had ruled from the time of Catherine the Great?
What is happening in Ukraine is a tragedy and a disaster. And we are in part responsible, having egged on the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected pro-Russian government.
But a greater disaster looms if we get ourselves embroiled in Ukraine's civil war. We would face, first, the near certainty of defeat for our allies, if not ourselves. Second, we would push Moscow further outside Europe and the West, leaving her with no alternative but to deepen ties to a rising China.
Given the economic crisis in Russia and the basket case Ukraine is already, how do we think a larger and wider war would leave both nations?
Alarmists say we cannot let Putin's annexation of Crimea stand. We cannot let Luhansk and Donetsk become a pro-Russian enclave in Ukraine, like Abkhazia, South Ossetia or the Transdniester republic.
But no one ever thought these enclaves that emerged from the ethnic decomposition of the Soviet Union were worth a conflict with Russia. When did Luhansk and Donetsk become so?
Rather than becoming a co-belligerent in this civil war that is not our war, why not have the United States assume the role of the honest broker who brings it to an end. Isn't that how real peace prizes are won?
Well yeah, the Soviet Union was too powerful for the world, it took all we and the free world had just to survive and protect ourselves from the Russians conquering the world and maintaining empire that for Hitler had been an unrealistic fantasy.
We won that war and the world survived and today we cannot allow that empire to reassemble and reconquer our allies and the free nations of Europe.
Russia today is just a 140 million people nation with 1 year draftees that can barely run itself, there really isn’t a country there big enough for us to surrender to.
“Consider the situation today. East Germany no longer exists, while Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and every one of Russia’s other erstwhile Warsaw Pact partners are now members of NATO. So are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which in 1989 were parts of the Soviet Union itself. In 1989, the Red Army had almost a half-million troops and 27 maneuver divisions (plus enormous quantities of artillery and other units) on the territory of its three main allies. Today, it has a total of seven divisions in its entire Western Military District, all of which are based on its own territory. Indeed, the entire Russian army today boasts about 25 divisions, fewer than it had forward deployed in its Eastern European allies during the waning days of the Cold War.
Today, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany alone field more divisions than Russia has in its Western Military District.”
Russia is a nuclear superpower.
And it can field a well-equipped, well trained professional army.
This is not your grandfather’s Red army.
The point stands - what are our our vital interests in taking on Russia as the protector of the pro-Russian population in its Near Abroad?
I can’t think of any reason we want to get involved militarily in someone else’s civil war.
And no Russia is not going to back down on its right to police its own backyard in accordance with its own version of the Monroe Doctrine.
It will not allow NATO to finish its creep up to its borders. In Ukraine, for Russia, those are the stakes.
Today they are smaller and weaker, as post 3 shows, much of that Russia is now NATO.
You must be very young to call it my "grandfather's Red Army" and you have things basackwards as far as when they were a threat, and your strategy to allow them to start conquering and enslaving, and becoming that threat again, is also basackwards.
This is the Russia that many here were facing under Reagan.
You think the guy who posted the article is a defense contractor, I don’t think so.
But we do not have the will to fight—If the balloon goes up we sould be running to the UN to stop the bloodshed and end the war. One Nuke—hit one US city and it would be over—we lose. Pajama Boys, race husslers, they don’t want to fight—same with Liberals and Progressives. Its about the will—and we don’t have it.
And you -actually- believe Czechs and Germans in 2015 would send actual soldiers, to fight in an actual war, in eastern Ukraine? On the exact same battlefields the Germans grandpas did? McCain has a bridge to sell you,,,
Raw numbers mean nothing.
More important is the belief in the justice of one’s cause and the willingness to die for one’s country.
The Germans had the initial advantage of surprise and technological superiority in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa but they stalled.
The Soviets had enormous manpower, put together a high quality fighting force and showed enormous courage under a seemingly hopeless situation.
They turned the tide at Stalingrad - we marked the 72nd anniversary of the outcome of that battle yesterday - a pivotal moment in world history in which in the European theater the intiative passed over onto the Soviet side.
If you are referring to me, no I am not, besides I am not a guy, I am a gal, and I don’t think Pat Buchanan is a defense contractor either
“Its about the will—and we don’t have it.”
Why SHOULD an American need to have the will to refight the WWII battles of the eastern front, with us playing the role of the Germans. And trying to cajole them into actually joining us? No, its not lack of will, its an abundance of rational self interest.
Most Americans just ain’t feeling it.
Perfect picture of a fool
Not much to discuss if you guys set the ground rules that NATO doesn’t actually exist, if that is the case, then you have nothing to worry about.
The issue is does the West surrender in advance, or supply weapons to Ukraine to keep Russia from continuing to conquer new territory.
You guys want to surrender in advance, and face the future that will lead to.
What today's American warhawks fail to recognize is that any fight on Russia's own border is an existential threat to Russia. When the 6'5" 300-lb Michael Brown attacked the much smaller Darren Wilson, he gave the police officer the justification to use any force necessary to end the immediate threat to his life. Likewise, if the American military machine jumps into a civil war against Russia's interest along Russia's border in order to sieze a vital Russian port, Moscow will be be justified in using all means at its disposal to end the military threat to its existence. History is full of cocky leaders who thought they knew how things would turn out, but were tragically wrong. This is a very dangerous game, and the civil war in Ukraine is none of our business.
The Germans were ground up at Marmayev Kurgan.
In Stalingrad, the urban combat was like nothing the world had ever seen.
There is a saying famous in the Soviet Union at the time: “there is nothing beyond the Volga.”
Are we going to tempt fate again? The French tried and then the Germans but Russia is a huge country.
European Russia is vaster than all of Western Europe put together.
Good. Let them take care of this issue then.
Why would you live in a fantasy that we must submit, or Russia is going to attack NATO and start a war.
Why would they do that, and with what?
Why don’t you grasp the concept that as the cost grows for Russia, they will decide to quit invading Europe? Why in your mind are they so all powerful and in charge of everything?
We are all NATO.
LOL, who is invading Russia, it is Russia that needs to be able to fight on foreign soil.
?Where do you guys get this mentality that we either surrender, or Russia starts WWIII?
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