Posted on 03/02/2014 2:59:03 PM PST by xzins
your full of BS.
I posted the article about the Crimean referendum from Forbes.
Putin is not your pal unless your ex KGb .
Read the article you linked to... pay special attention to their corrections at the end of it.
ROFLMAO! It's good to laugh 3 posts into a serious thread.
Thanks for the link to the WSJ / twitter stream, xzins.
I definitely agree with your second sentence. There's nothing can be done to undo it. (Short of a showdown over nuclear war...and we might lose even that.)
I agree with your first sentence if you mean that there was nothing to do once this started to rumble in the Ukraine.
However, the Ukraine goes back to Bill Clinton, the Budapest Memorandum, Britain, Russia, and (I think) Yeltsin. That was in the late 90's. Since then, some 17 years have gone by.
Geo-politically, Russia never would have tolerated any foreigners or any Ukrainian politicians threatening Russia with having no access to the Ukraine.
The only course that would have prevented this, as I see it, was for those early Ukrainians and foreign ministers to have tried to launch Ukraine as a European version of Hong Kong or Singapore, a free, innovative commerce and financial center that became a great benefit to itself but also to everyone else, including Russia.
The only reason Hong Kong went over to China was a treaty the Brits had with the Chinese from a century prior. Nonetheless, the Chinese have been hesitant to disrupt Hong Kong's commerce. (In fact, they may have copied it in many ways.)
A robust, profitable, striving Ukraine would have had the freedom that comes with being such a successful BENEFIT to Russia that Russia wouldn't have wanted to injure that.
To accomplish that, the Ukraine would have had to live with the Russian presence, but presence is not the same as control...or subjugation. Putin loses absolutely nothing by seizing Crimea or the Ukraine.
And, like you say, anyone who thinks they will dislodge without all out war is dreaming. "Oh noes...they threatened my G8 presence." whined Vladimir Putin. Is there a single soul not in the Obama Administration who thinks that's even remotely how this is going to go?
Is there anyone who thinks the Soviet military is the weak sister that was Iraq's army? Why did Iraq permit the US to stage and prepare for an entire 6 months along the Kuwait/Saudi borders? Because Iraq couldn't prevent it. Period. No sane military leader allows that to happen when he can prevent it.
Does anyone think Putin will allow us to prepare an assault from some neighboring country? Hardly. His nukes match our nukes...I think he actually has more. His military is high tech and capable. We try to stage any kind of operation anywhere near him and we're going to get bombarded the entire time if not overrun before we can even get ashore (think D-Day.)
The only ground attack possible would be a MacArthur Inchon type invasion with total surprise. (Not likely anymore with satellites and listening technology.) It's not likely because we won't have air supremacy....the Ruskies actually have high tech aircraft...and lots of them.
It is also not likely because we don't have the Marine divisions and Army divisions deliverable to do the job...combined we might have the Naval capacity to land 3 divisions (60-70 thousand troops), when Putin already has a reinforced brigade in Crimea and 150,000 troops doing an exercise with heavy armor on the Ukrainian border.
Assuming no hidden agenda, Obama blew this. He blew it pure and simple. He let the tensions get out of hand. He has brought the modicum of Ukrainian freedom back under the jackboot of subjugation.
The reality is, though, that that's probably just fine with Bill Ayers' prize student.
Do you really expect Russia to give up its only warm weather port complete with a Naval base (i.e. the Crimea)? Thus far, the Russians are doing exactly what I expected them to do.
“Those who don’t realize that Russia would never give up their Black Sea Ports haven’t looked at history. It never would happen willingly. They’ve been Russia’s for hundreds of years. It isn’t about right, fair, legal, or friendly. It’s about power and Russia protecting its southern flank and its warm water ports.”
You got that right. Fair has nothing to do with this. (Life aint fair, get use to it - as my dad use to say) Russia will never give up the Crimea without a bloody war.
And the idiots who signed the Budapest Memorandum should have understood this.
Another Clinton Cluster-You-Know-What.
see #104
We have set the tone for appeasement. Obama is seen around the world as a coward and a fool.
What would happen if Russia decided that the Aleutian Islands were suddenly in dispute? Would we risk a war with Russia or just surrender the Islands one by one?
Russia’s influence is growing. Now that they have captured the Crimea, what is to stop them from slowly rebuilding the old Soviet Union?
The Iron Curtain is moving west. There is nothing in their way at this point. And they know it.
” John Kerry will travel to Kiev Tuesday in a show of support for the new Ukrainian government.”
John Kerry, will fly to Kiev in “an attempt to halt a further Russian advance into Ukraine” (according to BBC). How he will achieve THAT in Kiev, it remais to be seen.
If the US wants to be taken seriously, it will have to keep this cown from travelling.
Ground John Kerry Now!
The problem is that NONE of the European country agrees with economic sanctions, not when Europe depends for 40% of their energy on Russian imported natural gas.
How to read a Kerry declaration in historical perspective:
“You just don’t in the 21st 20th century (1999) behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country (Serbia) on completely trumped up pretext,” Kerry said. “It is really a stunning, wilful choice by President Putin Clinton to invade another country. Russia America is in violation of the sovereignty of Ukraine Serbia. Russia The United States is are in violation of its their international obligations.”
“..Chicken Comes to Kiev...”
Damn, ya beat me to it....!!!
Hahah! Excellent!
John Kerry is a Pretender!
Still...Bumbling across the globe in search of Glory to satisfy his infantile needs. He hasnt a care in the world..ABOUT the world of Reality!
Your analogy is dead on Marguerite. Whenever the West chooses to ignore national sovereignty in pursuit of some allegedly noble pursuit (protecting Albanian thugs?) it concedes the moral high ground when some less than noble regime decides to do the same thing. Putin operates on the “might is right” principle and he knows that the West will do nothing to stop his ambitions as long as he doesn’t attempt to take over all of the Ukraine. As with the Georgia incident, he’s using a trumped up premise of protecting “Russian speakers” in order to invade a sovereign nation and effectively annex part of its territory into the new Russian empire.
Thank you.
I really don’t think that Russia is interested in taking back all of Ukraine. What it wants is to secure its navy base, vital for the access to the Mediterranian Sea.
As I pointed out earlier on another thread, the internal conflicts of Ukraine remain vivid since the WWII.
While the Western Ukrainians welcomed as “liberators” the nazi German troops, and collaborated with them in assassination en masse of Poles, Jews and ethnic Russians,
the Eastern Ukrainians fought bravely against the nazi occupiers and the famous battles of Kursk an Kharkov stand witness of their heroism.
This profound split between the two continue to this day. Il suffice to see the map of the last presidential election:
Timoshenko the candidate of the West 45% versus Ianukovich candidate of the East 48.5%.
Each part voted for its candidate at 80%.
The Eastern Ukrainians don’t recognize the puppet government (with a vice prime minister and five other ministers, members of a neo-nazi party) issued of Maidan revolt in Kiev, which they consider illegitimate.
More than that, one of this gov. first decisions was to forbid Russian as second official language. For regions like Crimea, Donbass and Donetsk, where Russian is spoken by more than 90% of the population, this was considered as an intolerable agression.
Putin doesn’t even need to intervene in the rest of Ukraine, which interests him moderately (except Crimea). The putschists in Kiev did the job for him.
If you want to know exactly what happened in Kiev - an organized assault on governmental offices, police and symbols of the past by armed ultra-right militias supported by Kerry, Nuland and McCain -
I invite you to watch these videos. The images are self-explanatory, even without comments:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=58b_1392877307
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1di9r5_pravy-sektor-les-neonazis-ukrainiens-moteur-de-la-revolte_news?start=81
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1diadq_maidan-kiev-des-manifestants-pacifiques_news?from_related=related.page.int.behavior-meta2.049c50b121800bd05168f00671f97288139359884
On the Nazi Meter, this was the equivalent of “marching into the Rhineland”.
Yes, something to be concerned about, but deep down there was a sense of “it’s really theirs’” anyway.
Quick! Kerry. Get over there and formulate a piece plan.
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