Posted on 10/06/2015 2:31:51 PM PDT by Mariner
Western diplomats have been left scrambling to revise their Syria game plans as Russia accelerates its ruthless offensive in the country, with the French seeking leverage over Moscow as its manoeuvres threaten to destabilise the region even further.
Not even a week after Moscow launched its first air strikes in Syria, startling its Western counterparts and sending the UN General Assembly into a diplomatic frenzy, the Russians continue to swing at anyone who opposes President Bashar al-Assad, from alleged CIA-trained rebels to Islamic State group militants. They've even 'strayed' into Turkish airspace.
Their offensive comes on the back of a dazzling performance at the UN's annual meeting of world leaders, which President Vladimir Putin and his cohorts dominated from start to finish, combining military action with a carefully orchestrated diplomatic crusade.
Painting itself as the only legitimate foreign force in the bloody four-and-a-half-year conflict and a crucial middleman between the West and the Syrian regime, Russia scolded Western powers for intervening in Libya and Iraq, as Russian jets pounded opposition targets in Syria.
The difference, Russian Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on October 1, is that the Russians are “polite people who do not go where they are not invited”.
--snip--
Lavrov, meanwhile, joked with reporters at a Russian reception last week, “we’re not expecting a breakthrough, but we’re hoping to avoid a breakdown”.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
The opening of Homeland on Showtime says it all.
“The Europeans do NOT want to be held hostage by Russia (in the form of high oil prices and single sourcing).”
The Europeans are holding themselves hostage, as far as energy is concerned. There’s 400 years of coal on the continent. Britain is sitting on a minimum of 100 years of gas, accessible via fraking. The global warming brainwashing has completely paralyzed the Europeans. Morons.
“The Europeans will eventually war against Russia to keep it from controlling the Middle East.”
I am sure Putin loses hours of sleep every night worrying about the European Army
Being toughest compared to weinie in the WH is not saying much.
That's not even funny. The Europeans have no chance to win such a war if they start it. At their best effort they will only manage to kill everyone on the planet. But a far more realistic scenario is that they will surrender after a few key cities are destroyed. The term for that is "unacceptable losses." For that reason EU will direct their war effort at countries that have no nukes or air defense - like Libya. Unfortunately, such targets also have little importance.
I say Britain goes down first.
Damn, you took my post.
So how many they killed vs western air strikes ?
One in 2015....via drone.
the Russians are “polite people who do not go where they are not invited”
I don’t care who you are, that there’s funny.
Many Frenchmen fought and died bravely in World War I.
Thanks....the guys I knew in the Commando units were exceptional.
Yes and they also mutinied and refused to conduct offensives -p though given the poor tactics of the French officers I can’t fault them too much for that. In both the Franco Prussian war and WW1 and WW2 the French troops were let down by officers who did not understand the tactics being used against them. In the Franco-Prussian War the French failed to see how to use the then new repeating rifles and early rapid fire weapons relying on tactics developed by Napoleon 60 years earlier. However the fortifications of Paris built by Louis-Napoleon around Paris held off the Prussians even though the French lost the soldiers in the army fought well and bravely. In WW1 the French overall commander setup his headquarters in a building without a telephone or telegraph access. In WW2 the French did not know how to use their tanks .
Perhaps it is only French officers that surrender automatically.
So yeah point taken. I was simply trying to say they have at time fought bravely before surrendering.
If I remember my history correctly, it wasn’t the fortifications of Napoleon III that stopped the Prussian army. The Prussians halted their advance to let the French army go back into Paris and put down the Paris Commune. After the battle started up again, they captured the Emperor. As was said of the British in WWI, they fought like lions led by donkeys.
If I'm an European and I had a choice between living under Russian domination or Islamic Caliphate, I'll rather be ruled by the Russians.
If I'm an European and I had a choice between living under Russian domination or Islamic Caliphate, I'll rather be ruled by the Russians.
So Russians killed 1 ISIS guy... ?
True, but cut the demand for oil by using coal and nukes and the price of oil goes down. Then you can afford to ship it from anywhere.
I happened to recently be at a breakfast meeting with a presentation by a university professor Russia / Russian government expert. The talk was generally about Putin, the Ukraine, and Syria.
In Q&A I asked if what Putin being in Syria might be about, was stopping the ability of the ISIS Sunnis to ultimately allow Sunni (Arabian Peninsula) oil and gas pipelines to transit Syria to get to the Med and Europe. Assad has been a bit of a client state of Iran (Shiites), and friendly to their interests, which coincide with the Russian interest of limiting the flow of pipeline energy from the Sunni states in the Arabian Peninsula to Europe.
I was dumbfounded when he said he hadn’t thought about that, in a way that made me think he would some in the future.
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