Posted on 04/16/2014 9:30:57 AM PDT by Zhang Fei
WASHINGTON — Ukraine’s military has an urgent need for nonlethal military assistance like body armor, night-vision goggles, communications gear and aviation fuel to defend against a potential Russian attack, according to a new analysis by a former NATO commander and a former Pentagon official.
But wary of provoking Russia, the Obama administration has been reluctant to provide it, they say.
(snip)
The new interim government in Ukraine submitted a request to NATO nations last month for military assistance, including vehicles, mine-clearing equipment, communications gear, medical supplies, fuel and the sharing of intelligence. The United States has sent 300,000 M.R.E. — meals ready to eat — rations to Ukraine’s forces, but the Obama administration has made it clear that it is not planning to send weapons or other forms of so-called lethal aid for fear of provoking Russia.
NATO has also moved cautiously. Ukraine’s foreign minister recently said a NATO team would assess his nation’s military needs, but some Western officials say the alliance is unlikely to provide much assistance until a new president is elected on May 25 and the East-West crisis over Ukraine eases.
(snip)
The Obama administration has been relying heavily on the threat of stepped-up economic sanctions to dissuade the Russians from invading eastern Ukraine and has rebuffed proposals from Senator John McCain that the United States provide light weapons to the Ukrainian military as too risky.
“We do not see a military solution to this crisis,” Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sounds like you want to cut spending on Americans with no problem with spending for the world. Nah.
If the Ukraine government cannot even command the loyalty of its troops, it has a diminished claim to being a sovereign state. They should perhaps come to some accommodation with the
It’s Russian ethnics do not appear to want rule from Kiev, and we/NATO cannot force them to be. This is part of the Russian sphere unlike Czech lands which were Kingdom of Bohemia since before Charlemagne and then Austro-Hungarian Empire, never a part of “Germany”. Ukraine was part of Russian Empire since Charlemagne, more or less..
Our priorities are different. You want to continue spending 5 out of every 6 dollars in the federal budget on able-bodied leeches. I'd like to see the budget revert to a more traditional stance - where most of that 1 dollar on defense is maintained, and the remaining 5 dollars is shrunk drastically.
Besides, you're changing the subject - 5 out of every 6 federal budget dollars are spent on civilian expenditures, mainly on welfare programs, but in your mind, it's defense that's causing the budget deficits. If we zeroed out the defense budget, the annual deficit would have been $200b.
Give them advanced crowd dispersion equipment, (ultrasounds etc.) Russian tactic is as follows: move in 2-3 dozens of armed “pro-Russians”, surround them with a few hundred civilians, commie grandpas, drunk thugs etc. and wait... If Ukrainians open fire, there’s a pretext for a full scale invasion (to “protect civilians”) If they don’t, repeat it in another town. Once civilians are chased out non-leathally, full ahead, kill any armed “pro-Russian” fecker.
"Bottom line is that Benes wimped out, and the nation suffered the consequences."
Was that the Czech Republic or Slovakia Benes was representing? Czechoslovakia was a shotgun wedding of a nation from the start created in the aftermath of WWI just like the current Ukraine is a shotgun wedding of a nation created in the wake of the Cold War.
You do know that when they could do as they damn well pleased Czechoslovakia became two countries, don't you?
If Benes was the problem, then by extension the losers who are now pretending to run the Ukraine are the problem. So, the solution is have Americans fight to support obvious losers who have good intentions?
Oh, I forgot, you assert that people who can say, "been there, done that", are unqualified to consider such matters.
What's wrong with a Ukraine and a, I dunno, what would they call themselves, Donbas is the region?, so the nation of Donbas as two separate countries?
Can countries decide their own fate without being bombed into agreeing with the European elites who run the EU and NATO?
Is self-determination only for puppets of or members of the EU and/or NATO or is it for everyone?
Why is it good when NATO, US, or UN, troops impose a government on a sovereign nation but not good when a sovereign nation decides to have a tidy and fairly bloodless little Civil War of sorts to work out their own problems?
Why are operatives from the EU and NATO being in the Ukraine no big deal but Russian ones being there just horrible? I mean, sending troops is pretty much sending operatives, no? (and if there aren't US/NATO people on the ground there already it'll be a break from the norm)
Say the US and NATO ride to the aide of the Ukraine and it's like Hungary in '56 but with us on the receiving end, would that be "proof" that evil Russians are resisting us or would it just be proof that Ukrainians want to settle their own problems their own way without the EU, NATO, the US, or anyone else with no "ethnic" stake in the matter mucking around in their business?
And while I think of it, what's to keep aid to the Ukraine from leading to the same sort of thing that freedom fighters in Syria are doing where, with stomachs full of US MREs and US supplied arms and ammunition, Mooze Lames are butchering whole towns full of men, women, and children?
US advisers? The innate kindness of the Ukrainian people who didn't bat an eye at Nazi atrocities during WWII? Or, is it that as long as "ethnic Russians" are on the receiving end it's no big deal just like it was no big deal as long as Jews were on the receiving end? You know, nipping the risks to Ukrainian security in the bud. The kind of thing "disarming ethnic Russians" implies.
The topic in this thread is whether it makes sense to send nonlethal aid. If the Ukrainian government were semi-organized, not obviously bought by Putin and not inclined to surrender, then probably. Given that the government is not obviously any of the above, the odds are good that any aid sent is a gift to Russia or to the numbered accounts of the Ukrainian leadership. Besides, there's no actual war going going on. The Ukrainian army don't actually need anything right now. If any fighting begins, there'll be plenty of time to supply them. The Afghans started their insurgency with muzzle-loading 19th century rifles. Ukrainians should have plenty of time to bleed the Russians if they invade.
Oh, so the answers to my questions aren’t in the little notebook you work from. Gotcha.
I thought I answered your observation in a previous post. Your contention seems to be that countries with weak leaders deserve to be annexed by countries with strong leaders. I disagreed.
To dispel your mischaracterization of my views, though, I'll answer your gross mischaracterization.
Imposed amalgamations that won't defend themselves deserve whatever they get when they won't defend themselves. They don't deserve a defense by other nations not threatened by a particular outcome. If the EU or Poland want to send men to defend the Ukraine, they should start soon. Time is a wastin'.
If the countries you hypothesize "should be taken over by Germany because they had weak leaders" are amalgamations that won't defend themselves, so be it. If they are in fact sovereign nations full of people who identify themselves as citizens of said sovereign nation they'll defend themselves and they have the right to determine their own internal affairs without others coming to their "aid" when the real problem is internal with a propaganda icing of "external threat" on it.
Now answer the questions. Start with my question about what's to keep the Ukraine from Ukraine collapsing into butchering one another along ethnic or other lines as soon as an outside force provides them the cover to do so. There's nothing in their history that leads anyone to believe they're not more than happy to slaughter one another and yet, your comments make the point that they should be segregated along ethnic lines as soon as possible and that people who intermarry with "ethnic Russians" are a threat to the State.
So, SOP would seem to be ethnic segregating leading to, what? Is that equal treatment under the law? What law, the eugenics laws that pass out citizenship rights based on who you marry and who your parents were? Where have we heard that one before and how did Ukrainians side with the nation that promoted that worldview?
Obvious evasions, changes of subject, and ignoring the questions, all lead to a single conclusion about the nature of a given poster as do comments such posters make that clearly show reality is not first and foremost among their concerns.
have a nice day now, ya' hear
Obastard would rather fight the Russians by throwing pancakes at them.
I'm not sure what the bit about segregation comes from. In a wartime situation, potential enemy aliens - especially those in senior government positions - need to be vetted for their loyalty to the state. During WWII, this meant the internment of Japanese citizens along with small numbers of German and Italian nationals. It occurred all over the world, not just in the US, and remains standard practice in most countries. That is why you will not find Arabs in make-or-break government positions in Israel, just as you won't find Muslims in equivalent positions in India.
For a more recent example, it is empirical fact that Slovenes, Croats and Bosnians defected to their ethnic groups' respective Territorial Defense units within days of the Wars of Partition. For Ukraine's government to not consider the possibility of treachery from within would be foolhardy in the extreme.
His concerns were with Russian vital interests in the Crimea being held hostage by blue helmets or NATO and he solved that problem Beyond that, well, nature abhors a vacuum and a vacuum installed itself in the Ukraine so it won't be long before the Turks are demanding a chunk of the Ukraine and who knows who else.
Oh, Pleeeezzzze, no one in their right mind buys that and anyone selling it is either a half-wit or a dedicated propagandist with no regard for the facts.
For starters, what percentage of the Ukraine is "ethnic Russian", a threat to the State for having married an "ethnic Russian", or the next door neighbor of an "ethnic Russian" and therefore a potential sympathizer?
That dog that won't hunt and it's nothing but a lame attempt disguise the initial steps toward the goal of expelling all "ethnic Russians" from the Ukraine exactly like the Nazi wannabes are demanding. Not that I"m the least bit surprised at the lame attempt to disguise the real goal which is implementing the "final solution" to the "ethnic Russian" problem.
As I've said before, I'm 100% behind diverting all military aid of any kind from all Muslim states and sending it to the Ukraine. How the current "government" could manage to hang on to any of it with units defecting or deserting one after another I don't know, but that's the extent of what this country should do and only if it's actually diverted from what is now going to Iz Lame ists.
Not that Ukraine "deserves" such support, just that it's a lesser waste of tax money than passing it out to Mooze Lame scum and we can eventually buy it back for next to nothing instead of having it distributed as jihadists see fit.
The Final Solution involved exterminating the Jewish population. This is not the kind of Final Solution that was imposed by Russia on millions of Ukrainians via the Holodomor. Like it or not, internment in wartime is a standard treatment for potential enemy aliens. While the long term solution to Russian irredentism may be expulsion, just as Germans were expelled from Danzig, Konigsberg and the Sudetenland, it's not clear that Ukraine is anywhere near that point. Only time will tell.
Why should the EU, the US, or anyone else lift a finger to help people who are infatuated with the idea of an ethnically pure State not unlike the State Nazi Germany envisioned for Germany?
Now about my original questions . . .
For the same reason that the Allies backed the expulsion of Germans from Danzig, Konigsberg and the Sudetenland - because they serve as a focal point for the irredentist ambitions of an imperialist power. The issue isn't that they're not Ukrainian - it's that they're used as an excuse for, and heavily back the territorial ambitions of an expansive power. The analogue of Nazi Germany in this situation is Russia, not Ukraine.
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