Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

"Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is clearly open to the United States."
1 posted on 08/20/2014 12:28:48 PM PDT by DTA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies ]


To: DTA
Glad to hear the opinion of American academia's most long-winded anti-Semite.
2 posted on 08/20/2014 12:34:00 PM PDT by wideawake
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

Non violent activity is now the cause of a military invasion.

Why the West is the great Satan. Same song, different verse.

Sadly, some folks don’t realize they’re humming the old U.S.S.R. tune.


3 posted on 08/20/2014 12:36:07 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (We'll know when he's really hit bottom. They'll start referring to him as White.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA
As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred ... they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns.

But the Czechs, Poles, Bulgarians, etc. felt otherwise, considering collective defense from the iron hand that had held their throat for 50 years, to be more important than appeasement.

This article is a bunch of BS. I heard the same BS about the USSR, e.g., "They are only reacting to encirclement by the West." Yet, when the wall came down and we had that small window of openness, we discovered that the Warsaw Pact had exactly zero defensive war plans.

8 posted on 08/20/2014 12:53:42 PM PDT by SampleMan (Feral Humans are the refuse of socialism.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

I bet not 3 people honestly read that whole load of crap.


9 posted on 08/20/2014 12:53:53 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (Boomshakalaka!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

The author is way behind the journalistic curve on this.

In fact, EVRYTHING BAD that happens in the ENTIRE WORLD is the West’s fault.

We know this because the Liberal media tell us so.


11 posted on 08/20/2014 12:57:58 PM PDT by Jack Hammer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA; All
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West.

This is a common Russian propaganda lie, since they always like to blame their victims for their actions. They said the same thing during their invasion of Georgia. Note the exact same pattern, except, the big difference is the Ukrainians are putting up a better fight than the Georgians did:

"NATO would have expanded by now to admit ex-Soviet republics if Russia had not invaded Georgia in 2008 to defend a rebel region, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday."

http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/11/21/idINIndia-60645720111121

Russia builds or tries to build rebel movements in any country with a sufficient population of Russians, most of whom were forcefully colonized during the Soviet years after the native population was cleansed.

A history lesson on "Post"-Soviet aggression even without NATO membership:

"First, a little history is in order. Russia's hostile actions towards neighbors hardly ended with the collapse of Soviet communism. Russia's hostile actions towards neighbors hardly ended with the collapse of Soviet communism. On the contrary, Moscow continued to bully its former republics and satellites throughout the early and mid 1990s, even before the first round of NATO enlargement (to the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999). In 1992 and 1993 -- after Russia formally recognized the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- Moscow cut off energy supplies to these small, reborn democracies in an attempt to pressure them into keeping Russian military forces and intelligence officers on their sovereign territory. From 1997 to 2000, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Keith C. Smith, Russia halted oil shipments to the country no less than nine times after it refused to sell refineries to a Russian state company. To this day, the Russian Foreign Ministry maintains that the Baltic republics -- which Russia militarily conquered, occupied, and subjugated for nearly five decades -- "voluntarily joined the Soviet Union in 1940." The Balts didn't become part of NATO until 2004. Given this history, is it any wonder why these countries -- or any other country victimized by Soviet-imposed tyranny -- would want to join the alliance? Is it NATO's fault for saying OK?"

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/04/08/nato_expansion_didnt_set_off_the_ukrainian_crisis

Though, this guy might have too bright of a view of NATO. From what I understand, while countries have joined NATO, NATO's military capability itself has not properly expanded. Not all of our allies are meeting their obligations.

At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004

This is another common myth, that what is going on in Ukraine is part of a EU-conspiracy to expand itself.

The deal itself isn't really to join the EU, but is the same type of agreement Israel and Turkey have signed with the EU. It was Yanukovych, actually, who built the foundations for this agreement, largely seen as an economic issue in Ukraine, not ideological (people from the left and right support it). By having this agreement, Ukrainians believe it will help their economy, and help deal with corruption, due to the obligations Ukraine would have once they have signed on to it. Yanukovych campaigned on it and pushed it until after the election when he decided to do the exact opposite thing; however, it still wasn't rejection of the EU agreement that he campaigned on that ignited the Maidan. What did so was Yanukovych's assaulting of the small number of protesters that had gathered. It was the visuals of young and old protesters being brutalized that caused Ukrainians to rise up, and the more people who were beaten or kidnapped by the regime, the more people rose.

For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw.

This is quite a mockery, because it makes the crimes of the regime that led to the protests to be a nullity. It also imagines these people conducting a military coup and replacing the government, when this did not happen at all. After the Russian-trained members of the SBU conducted the shootings, this was the real last straw of the Ukrainian parliament. Yanukovych's own party turned on him. Members of his party who had held posts were resigning. Yanukovych declared that he would soon resign, but then fled the country to a foreign enemy, thus abandoning his office. This is like Obama fleeing to Russia, rather than, say, to California, where he might be safer. The Ukrainian Rada voted for his removal after he had already removed himself and then immediately set a date for new elections. This is not a "coup" by any definition of the word.

He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base

It already holds a Russian naval base, which he used to take over the peninsula. The "Referendum" in Crimea was accomplished by Russian special forces marching into the Crimean Rada, where they appointed a new Prime Minister who was a known member of the Russian-Mafia (the Russian mob, however, is an FSB organization), who then proceeded to "democratically" announce a Soviet-style referendum.

Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault - The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

I am not sure what this person means by "liberal" delusions. Actually, these are anti-NATO arguments pushed by Communists, and only lately by Liberaltarians like Ron Paul, who are traitors anyway.

The whole thesis of this article is flawed too. It is basically saying that Russia is a justified wife beater, and that we should have expected as much since the woman has a big mouth, and we were trying to get her some help.

12 posted on 08/20/2014 12:58:57 PM PDT by Greetings_Puny_Humans (I mostly come out at night... mostly.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

Ahh a leftist Joooo hater will set us straight about Russia invasion of Ukraine.....barf!


13 posted on 08/20/2014 12:59:58 PM PDT by free_life (If you ask Jesus to forgive you and to save you, He will.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

-——the liberal delusions———

dr ben carson just put forward the phrase “secular progressives”

the secular progressive delusion is responsible......


28 posted on 08/20/2014 2:28:26 PM PDT by bert ((K.E.; N.P.; GOPc.;+12 ..... Obama is public enemy #1)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

To: DTA

The only new thing in this analysis are the couple of paragraphs near the end where he takes Ukrainian wishes into consideration, and even then it amounts to “hey, suck it up”.

Russia has been driving this conflict for a year now, not the West. The author advocates neutral Ukraine but that is what it was for the past 20 years. Recently, 5 years of pro-western Yuschenko were followed by 4 years of pro-Russian Yanukovich but the country remained neutral. The break from equilibrium happened when Yanukovich was about to sign on to the Eurasian Customs Union. (There is a huge difference between signing a trade agreement with EU and joining the Customs Union where Ukrainian economic sovereignty was to be surrendered to the majority controlling Russia. EU Trade Agreement was just that, a free trade agreement. The political Association Agreement accompanying it, is very weak. Israel and Muslims in North Africa have a political Association Agreements with EU, insignificant, it can’t compare to loss of economic sovereignty if Ukraine was to sign on to the Customs Union)

So from the geopolitical point of view, it was Russia pushing Yanukovich towards CU who broke the neutrality of Ukraine.

Personally, I’m not fully convinced to see this conflict purely in geopolitical terms, as something between Russia and US. With all due respect, $5B over 20 years, or $250M a year is pocket change. The estimate of how much Yanukovich and his Family were stealing had been billions of dollars a year.

Looking solely at geopolitics doesn’t explain
- why 2004 Maidan was peaceful and 2014 Maidan was not. The situation is almost identical and if “Russian strategic national interests” had been threatened Putin would’ve put up a fight back then.
- why Ukraine under Yu. didn’t join NATO but continued to have relations with Russia. If Germany and France blocked the NATO bid under Yuschenko they would continue to block it with the next pro-western Ukrainian leader.
- why US had “allowed” a pro-Russian president like Yanukovich to be elected in Ukraine or why Georgia is making overtures to Russia today. US was putting so much effort to bring these countries under the western influence, why give them up?

Russian “strategic national interests” argument is BS. Conquering and holding Warsaw can be a “strategic national interest”. So is bombing Washington. Russia can pursue her strategic national interests all she wants, but if pursuing her own national interests means moving soldiers into Ukraine, which is against Ukrainian national interests, then she can go f**k herself.


32 posted on 08/20/2014 4:56:55 PM PDT by Ivan Mazepa
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson