Posted on 03/02/2014 9:22:45 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Maybe the Obama administration is taking the Budapest Memorandum more seriously than we imagined — or at least want Russia to think we are. Secretary of State John Kerry told ABC’s This Week that “all options are on the table” for a response to Vladimir Putin’s Crimean invasion, including military options:
Secretary of State John Kerry said that “all options are on the table” when it comes to steps the U.S. can take to hold Russia accountable for its military movements in Ukraine, including economic sanctions and potentially military action.
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today on “This Week,” Kerry said Russian troops moving into the Ukrainian region of Crimea was “a military act of aggression” and that the U.S. will move swiftly to impose penalties if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not withdraw his troops.
While military force is among the options President Barack Obama is considering, Kerry said the U.S. and its allies hope they can avoid such action.
“The hope of the U.S. and everybody in the world is not to see this escalate into a military confrontation,” he said.
Sounds like tough talk, but would Russia buy it? Moving troops into Ukraine from the west would all but declare war between NATO and Russia, including the US. If Putin thought for a moment that the West would fight over Crimea again, he wouldn’t have taken it over this week in the first place.
That’s not to say that we have no options, and even some military signals can have an impact on the situation, argues retired Admiral James Stavridis at Foreign Policy:
In the military sphere, these include ordering the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), led by U.S. General Phil Breedlove, to conduct prudent planning and present options in response to the situation. While such planning should be left to the current commanders and military experts, some ideas to consider would include:
Increasing all intelligence-gathering functions through satellite, Predator unmanned vehicles, and especially cyber.
Using the NATO-Ukrainian Council and existing military partnerships with the Ukrainian military to share information, intelligence, and situational awareness with authorities in Kiev.
Providing advice to Ukrainian armed forces to prepare and position themselves in the event of further conflict. Developing NATO contingency plans to react to full-scale invasion of Ukraine and to a partial invasion likely of Crimea. NATO contingency planning can be cumbersome, but in Libya it moved quickly. …
Many will consider any level of NATO involvement provocative and potentially inflammatory. Unfortunately, the stakes are high and the Russians are moving. Sitting idle, without at least looking at options, is a mistake for NATO and would itself constitute a signal to Putin — one that he would welcome.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, put it another way on Fox News Sunday. The problem is that we’re reacting instead of driving events, while Putin has moves figured out several steps ahead:
“Putin is playing chess and I think we are playing marbles, and I don’t think it’s even close” the Michigan Republican said on “Fox News Sunday.” “They’ve been running circles around us. And I believe it’s the naïve position on the National Security Council and the president’s advisers that, if we just keep giving things to Russia, they’ll wake up and say, ‘the United States is not that bad.’ That is completely missing the motivations of why Russia does what Russia does.”
Putin intends to expand Russia’s “buffer zones,” as it has in Ukraine, Rogers said, predicting the next former Soviet republic to see a Russian invasion will be Moldova.
“It is in their interest to continue to push out that buffer zone,” Rogers said. “And, by the way, the big one that started this was the absolute retreat on our missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia, caused us huge problems for our allies and emboldened the Russians and it really has been a downhill slide.”
Ethnic Russians only comprise 6% of the Moldovan population, compared to 18% in Ukraine. Moldova is also land-locked on the other side of the north shore of the Black Sea and has no common border with Russia, and wouldn’t even in a partitioned Ukraine. If I were Latvian (26% ethnic Russian) or Estonia (25% ethnic Russian), I’d be a lot more concerned than the Moldovans at the moment.
here’s the solution
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/26/article-2568206-1BC8DAD100000578-680_634x436.jpg
Just let it go , peacefully .
Let those with fidelity towards Russia become part of Russia a
allow those with fidelity towards the Euro Union become part of the Euro Union . Set up a process for property and holdings swaps , for those leaving from one region to another so no one is dispossessed and allow this to happen peacefully over the next few years . No rush , no drama , no fighting .
WHEN YOU BASE YOUR FOREIGN POLICY on:
RESET
SOFT POWER
LEADING FROM THE REAR
ETC.
The world understands that America is finished.
No credibility
No Power
No trust
No backbone
No will
No trust
Putin on the other hand is there for his allies and is playing Chess to Obama’s checkers.
Pathetic.
Kerry: “All options are on the table”
The freaking moron doesn’t get it yet.
Russia got Crimea back, wiping out Krustchev’s mistake from 1954.
Crimea was NEVER ukrainian.
Including his resignation, and Zeros? is that on the table?
Obama may even resort to a sternly worded letter filled with ALL CAPS and multiple exclamation points!!!!!!!
The russians are in for it now!
Crimea was NEVER ukrainian.
It was “The Autonomous Republic of Crimea” with its own Parliment, Prime Minister, government and budget.
But if you speak Russian you get a free pass to Russian citizenship??
“Kerry: “All options are on the table” in response to Russian invasion of Crimea”
I think Kerry really means “All options are on the table” for lunch.
How was Crimea separated from Russia?
In 1954, a controversial decision of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, himself an ethnic Ukrainian, transferred the Crimea peninsula to the Ukrainian SSR, extracting it from Russian territory.
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev’s “gift” has been widely criticized by many Russians, including the majority of those living in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
In 1991, the people of Crimea took part in a referendum, which proclaimed the region an Autonomous Republic within the Soviet Union, with 93.26 percent of the voters supporting the move.
TODAY the ultimate goal of the ethnic Russian population in Crimea is to hold a referendum on whether the region should retain its current status as an autonomous region in Ukraine, to become independent, or become part of Russia again. In the meantime, they claim to have a right to disobey orders of the “illegal” government in Kiev.
This guy has got more wrinkles than my grandma.
No one takes Kerry or hussein seriously.
What options?
Will John Kerry con a river patrol boat up the Dnieper River? An event that will forever seared into his memory?
Face it, we don’t have any cards to work with - military, political, or economic.
BTW - do we have any fans of the late Thomas Leo “Tom” Clancy (1947 - 2013) around? If so, what do you think about the events in his last FICTIONAL novel “Command Authority” (2013) and the events unfolding in modern day Ukraine? I don’t know where he go his crystal ball but I want one! And this is not his first fictional work that has predicted actual world events before they happened.
5. Take a vacation.
We don't have options, unless it's between one asinine public statement or another. And if you think the country is going to rally behind a gay activist and a traitorous phony war hero and march off smartly into battle, think again.
5.56mm
There is nothing military we should do in retaliation. It’s not worth going to war. Putin wants the oil spigots, the same as he wanted those in Abkhasia and South Ossetia. However, we should be sending European forces to border countries for “drill.” Get those missile defense bases installed (you know, the ones Obama cancelled) in Poland and Czech Republic.
Obama won’t do anything more than a beer summit and Europe will do even less.
There are no viable options. There is nothing on the table.
Mindless jargon and endless balderdash is all that Kerry can provide.
The level of incompetency being exhibited by the RAT party through it’s currant administration far beyond the suspension of belief and penetrates deeply into the realms of willful ignorance.
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