Posted on 08/26/2008 6:56:57 AM PDT by gitmogrunt
Quite the opposite, anyone "familiar with Russian history" knows that the 1999 NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia is what brought Putin to power to begin with. Ordinary Russians were absolutely horrified by it, and Russia realized that Yeltsin was just getting used and abused by the US. In 1999, Russians came to the conclusion that the US wasn't going to behave like "the moral force for good" that we had always presented ourselves as.
Of course "it's Cold War II again", but only because we squandered our "Cold War I" win by thinking that there were no consequences to treating the entire world as though there were no more rules to international diplomacy -- there was only raw power, and we had it so screw everybody who gets in our way.
There is a large difference between "siding with Russia" and understanding how we screwed up our real opportunity with Russia, post Cold War I. Learning from mistakes, produces improvement. Denial of mistakes just produces more of the same lousy results.
"Kosovo" does NOT justify Georgia, only because our actions in Kosovo were never justified to begin with. It does however explain Putin's rise to power, and it explain Russia's sense that there are no more "international rules" period -- raw power is all that matters, the rest is window dressing so let the world bitch about anything it wishes, including Georgia, but there is nothing that they can do about it.
So, Serbs and Georgians were sacrificed...
Even in post 9-11 America The West has yet to realize how royally it screwed up.
This is an interesting thread. There's about 6 different opinions amongst the various posters, and they all seem to contain kernels of the truth.
I've been rigorously studying and making films about the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia for over 15 years now, and I still don't have it all figured out. I guess we just keep pushing forward and talking it out.
I thought it was the 1999 KGB bombings of Moscow apartment buildings.
Remember, blame America first. Re-write whatever else as necessary.
Check out #13. LOL!
Sorry, thought this thread was dead.
Anyone familiar with history knows that they feel that their rightful hegemony over central Asia and Eastern Europe was robbed from them by England and France in the 19th century and by the US in the 20th century.
No matter what the US did or didn’t do ten years ago the fascists in Russia were going to attempt to reestablish hegemony over their former empire. The question is, whose side are you on now? Stalin established ethnic Russian populations in all of the former Soviet republics. Do you just let the Russians march in and take over wherever they want or do you stand up and try to stop them? Georgia is an ally of the US. Do we turn our back on them as we did the Vietnamese in 1975 or do we stand by them as we did the Germans in 1948?
That’s why I don’t understand all the “we provoked the Bear” bullcrap. Russia has always had designs on all of these territories, and is playing those of us who believe the above for fools.
I am so sick of hearing that baloney. It's no argument at all.
You know people act like we have no foreign policy activity. Or that we never, ever screw up. It's an arrogant, narcissistic attitude.
What are people here for, if not to intelligently argue policy decisions? Just to hear the sound of their own voice? If that's the case, I've got better things to do!
And what the hell are you going to do about it? Other than cheerleading other people going to their deaths over it?
Yeah, dealing with "Russia's a bitch" -- big damn surprise for you there, huh?
I am beginning to think that you really are just a "rude boy". If that's the case, then grow the hell up! The world is what it is and there are limits to even our power to change it, so you learn to live with it and change what you can.
Wiping Russia off the map is not an option, however you might like that, so you figure out a strategy that works with that, like it or not. And whining about it, isn't working. If it was, there wouldn't be Russian troops stationed in Georgia. So you come up with something else, even if it means having to put your little ego on hold and people don't like you much for bringing other ideas up. But that's what real grown ups do -- not because they want to, but because they have to.
Dobray utra Bokababe,
What we are going to do about it is isolate Russia from the world economy. Get used to people in Moscow standing in line for bread.
Russia has backed herself into a corner. Just like last time.
We have no desire to wipe Russia off the map. Russia is a great nation and has the potential to do great good in the world. The problem is, Russia has been taken over by a fascist dictator with Hitlerian aspirations. Unless Barak Obama is elected president the West will unite. Putin will loose. The only bad part is, good Russians will suffer.
I don't speak Russian -- and it's rude to pull that nonsense.
We are certainly going to try to "economically isolate Russia", but I doubt that it will work. Russia's greatest export is oil and gas and more people (Europe) want & need that oil & gas at current prices than there are Europeans who are as angry at Russia as we are.
We are playing chess and Russia's playing poker. Things get ugly, Europe suffers as they currently get 60% of their gas and 30% of their oil from Russia.
Push comes to shove and Russia's threatens retaliation, just whose side do you think that Europe will take? The side that keeps their economy moving and keeps them warm in winter, or us trying to prove some point re Georgia? If your guess is the latter, then you haven't spent much time in Europe.
Push comes to shove and Russia's threatens retaliation, just whose side do you think that Europe will take?
Russia's oil resources are becoming depleted. Russia needs revenues for oil exports to support their currency. That's why they are trying to seize control of the oil resources of the Caucasus and that's why they are trying to lay claim to the practically the entire polar ice cap, including a chunk of the North American plate - virtually all of it in international waters.
I'd be interested to know your European links? I lived in the UK for about six months during the later part of Cold War I and have traveled across most of western half of the continent. I was in Berlin when Gorbachev fell. I don't regularly read the European press but I do correspond with people in the UK and Italy on a fairly regular basis.
Europe's economy is more aligned with the US economy than you seem to recognize. Life under Russian hegemony is not viewed as being in their best interests by a good many Europeans. And make no mistake about it; Russia's goal is hegemony over the entire Eurasian continent. We are in the early stages of Cold War II. There will be defeatists in Europe and here but most Europeans take a longer term world view than most Americans and will stand up against the Nazi thug Putin if the need arises.
"I'd be interested to know your European links? "
I correspond regularly with friends in England, France, and Italy, and occasionally one friend in Germany and another in Serbia. I was in Italy for a month, last September and have traveled through much of Europe and been to Egypt twice.
Most of my European friends are anti-EU, Conservative and seriously concerned about the recent Islamic changes to the cultures of their countries.
The general thinking that they seem to convey is that yes, Russia was wrong to invade and occupy Georgia. But, on the other hand, it wasn't unprovoked and that Russia has no designs on turning back into "the invading Soviet Union" that it once was -- it simply does not want to deal with "American pawns" on its doorstep, continually poking them in the ribs.
They believe that our government is and has been playing a very dangerous game with Russia, and that Europeans may be the ones who will have to suffer the consequences of that game-playing. According to them, this is the general thinking in their countries, among those who actually "think".
All feel that the US government wants to be the lone super-power, and that everything from the missile shields in Poland to the bases surrounding Russia, are just to assure that the US' only potential rival in the way of gaining "ultimate world power" status, Russia (with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world), is completely neutralized as a rival.
They extrapolated that if this US strategy were to be successful, the POTUS would no longer be the POTUS, he would have the power of life & death over the entire world -- in short, lead a one-world government centered and managed from here. We Americans would then be "expendable", given that the rest of the citizens of the world could take our place if we objected.
Sure, some of these ideas are just theoretical, some even seem a little paranoid. But not all are wrong. F William Engdahl wrote a very long but interesting piece on the subject a year ago.
Russia may be all the tough things we say it is, and that is very useful fodder to whose ambitions know no bounds. Not everyone who represents the US, has the interests of American citizens at heart.
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