“WE dither?”
All the dithering has been by the NYT’s own favorite ditherer-in-chief.
Putin’s been around for a while. If we REALLY thought he was some kind of monster, then why did we allow ourselves to unilaterally disarm?
...and what’s the point of sending arms to Ukraine, do we REALLY think that they can read the instruction manuals (if we even have them printed in Ukranian) and then start blasting away Russian tanks and planes?
"Ukraine cannot win this war. Mr. Putin has made it clear that the Russian Army will annihilate Ukrainian forces if they attempt to liberate Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine’s ramshackle army cannot rout the crack troops and conscript forces of an oil-fueled giant.
The West needs to be honest with Ukraine. We talk as though this country were one of us — as if, one day, it will become a member of the European Union and the NATO alliance. That is Kiev’s wish, but the West is not giving Ukraine the means to fight this war.
Ukraine is being destroyed. The economy is in tatters. The military will not survive a Russian offensive. Ukrainians are taking refuge in romantic nationalism and preparing for partisan warfare. The costs are mounting — continuing to fight will cost thousands of lives — and the liberal dreams of the revolution are drowning in the jingoistic fury and hysteria of war."
At least Ben Judah's assessment of Ukraine's plight versus Russia is accurate. It was obvious from the beginning.
"We cannot let this happen. If we believe that Ukraine will one day become a member of the European Union and NATO, then we should be ready to arm it. We must face the fact that the costs of unlimited European Union and NATO expansion have meant war with Russia by proxy — and then fight the war. Having reignited the hottest moments of the Cold War, we must deal with the consequences of encouraging democratization in Eastern Europe.
"This logic demands that we send Western military advisers to Kiev, and give the Ukrainians full intelligence and satellite support. And we must ship them guns, tanks, drones and medical kits by the ton. We must even be ready to deploy NATO troops if Russian tanks roll toward Crimea, as many fear they will, to build a land bridge to the mainland of southern Russia.
"No question, this path involves enormous risks. Russia will throw its might into Ukraine. American and British special forces should be dispatched to plant the flag and protect the airports of Kiev and Odessa. But Mr. Putin may call our bluff: Russian forces might — in an echo of the 1999 Kosovo war — encircle them.
"But if we are not prepared to take these risks, then we must force the Ukrainians to abandon their deadly delusion. It would be up to us to prevent Russia from slaughtering Ukrainian conscripts in vain.
"The only way to achieve this is for the West to oblige Ukraine to surrender. Ukraine is completely dependent on the International Monetary Fund, which is Western money. We must tell Kiev to accept as a fait accompli that Russia has carved out a South Ossetia in the east — or we turn the money off. We can console them: Being another Georgia is not the worst thing in the world."
Again, Ben Judah correctly assesses the war's inevitable outcome and calls on the West to come clean with Ukraine. His calls for Western intervention border on insanity unless we are fully committed to total war in the event "Mr. Putin may call our bluff." We must realize that a major war fought on Russia's border would present an existential threat to Russia and would therefore justify Moscow's use of every weapon in its arsenal. Just as Michael Brown fatally miscalculated Officer Wilson's willingness to use his sidearm to overcome Brown's superior weight and fists, nations must not fail to calculate the full arsenal of any adversaries they might seek to attack in their own homeland. We are talking a very dangerous game that should not be played over Ukraine.
We cannot "force" Ukraine to surrender based on OUR assessment of OUR national interest.
Ukraine must surrender, or not, based on THEIR assessment of THEIR national interest.
It's my opinion that these two things - OUR interest and THEIR interest - have minimal, near zero, overlap.
Anyone who thinks that we, or especially Germany, is going to get into a conflict with Russia over the Ukraine region is, in my opinion, delusional. Russia's interest in Ukraine is great. Ours is near-zero. Germany's is non-zero, but Germany has more to gain from an alliance with Russia than they do from pissing them off.
If the new leaders of Ukraine were smart - something for which there is no evidence - they would have reached an accommodation with Russia months ago instead of fantasizing about "the West", which no longer exists in any real (military) sense.
But, they've made their bed, and now they are having trouble falling asleep in it.
It's too bad.
Mad Vlad does not recognize the sovereignty of other countries. He wants to “make space” from Lisbon to Vladivostok
Author states that even if the West forced a Ukrainian (surrender) with partition, a conflict with Putin would be inevitable.
“Russia would not stop there. Mr. Putin wants to undermine NATO, and the smell of weakness would tempt him further. It would be merely a matter of time before Moscow exploited the Russians in the Baltic States to manufacture new “frozen conflicts.”
President Buckwheat and his leftist ghouls have been busy trying to turn America into a fascist oligarchy.
The smell of weakness is here too coming from the hand full of posters who swing from trees crying we surrender....we are weaklings....give it all to Putin!
Sickening bunch.