Posted on 07/25/2014 8:22:48 PM PDT by duckln
In Ukraine, Putin responded to a U.S.-backed coup, which ousted a democratically elected political ally of Russia, with a bloodless seizure of the pro-Russian Crimea where Moscow has berthed its Black Sea fleet since the 18th century. This is routine Big Power geopolitics.
I really wish folks would start using “Russian Orthodox” instead of “Christian.” Putin cares about the former.
At the time Ukraine refused to agree to it because it read so. They wanted absolute “military protection”, which none were willing to commit to, regardless of the demands they change the wording to reflect that. So by Ukraine signing it, as stated, they were well aware this would not necessarily mean the nations would provide Ukraine cover....and they also knew this would leave them vulnerable unless they built up their own military. Which they never did, and in fact it continued to deteriorate., as we all well learned during and after Crimea.
Why do you ask? ;)
Good point there is nothing Christian about the Russian Orthodox church in Russia.
Thus is a serious commentary that deserves a serious response. The article really has not so much to do about the comparison as it drives to our current elite and administrations skewed idea of the world (both at home and abroad)and policies. Buchanan has been around the block and I believe this article has merit.
He is correct in that we had a hand in engineering the Ukraine coup. Partly with the NGOs there as a tool. Ukraine is quite useless to us as was supporting the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya. Egypt is and hopefully will be a valuable and close ally again.
Bolton, whom I like, generally, McCain and Obama and his metro-sexual advisor children are way off the mark which Buchanan tries to point out. The the incitement causing actions by the administration do nothing but to push Russia away from tables of engagement. Arming Ukraine would be stupid. World wars start this way. Far better to come to an understanding through close engagement than to saber rattle sanctions, which become tit for tat get evens.
There are enough problems in various countries where Russia can do a little and cause the US and the west grief. Unfortunately Obama and Lurch are the antithesis of a Churchill, Ike or even a FDR. So is seems also by the rants of the current Republican elite a similar lacking. History can teach us well if we use it. it seems many of our ruling elite failed history.
Regarding Crimea .........there is a long history of Crimea trying to get it’s Independence from Ukraine:
While Crimea was officially ‘an autonomous region’ formally within Ukraine, it has its own Parliament and, up until 1995, its own President. The majority of Crimeans are Russian-speakers, ...... they have voted repeatedly for close relations with Russia throughout their history.
Crimea was unilaterally handed over to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 – in a move of dubious legality – Crimea was caught between Russia and Ukraine as the old USSR collapsed.
(In 1991), the Movement for a Republic of Crimea gathered 180,000 signatures on a petition calling for a popular ‘referendum on Crimean independence’, an informal “opinion poll” was held in which the modified ‘demand for close relations with Russia’ passed overwhelmingly, and the elected Parliament adopted a resolution declaring Crimean sovereignty.
Kiev responded to this with the threat of force, and at that point the bargaining began....... The Crimeans, for their part, used the separatist threat to gain some leverage in the negotiations with Kiev:.... what they wanted – and got – was ‘control over local resources’, which were about to be “privatized” by the crooks in Kiev. and looted by various Western Ukrainian oligarchs........... The local oligarchs took exception to this, and in the end they won out:.......... Kiev basically caved and the resulting compromise kept Crimea within Ukraine, albeit ‘with full economic and political autonomy’.
The compromise, however, didn’t last long:
(in 1993), as the Ukrainian economy collapsed, the Ukrainian currency approached worthlessness, and the social fabric of what was essentially an administrative unit of the old Soviet Union rather than an actual nation came apart at the seams,....... a national movement for Crimean independence gained traction....... The presidential and parliamentary elections of (1994) gave Yuri Meshkov, a Russian nationalist, a big majority and a subsequent referendum on closer ties with Russian won nearly 80 percent of the vote.
Kiev went ballistic, and Meshkov appealed to the Russians for protection, but President Yeltsin was more interested in appeasing the West and the Crimeans were ultimately ‘left to fend for themselves’.......... The Crimean presidency was abolished by unilateral decree of the ‘Ukrainian Rada’, and troops from Western Ukraine were sent in.
That same year, Yeltsin signed a tripartite agreement with Ukraine and the US, in which the Ukrainians agreed to give up their nuclear weapons – left over from the old Soviet days widely believed to guarantee Western ‘support’ for Ukraine in the event of a threat to its arbitrarily-defined borders.
Yet the Crimean desire to be free of the Ukrainian yoke did not abate:
in (2008), the Crimean Parliament voted to recognize Abhkazia and Ossetia, two former Soviet autonomous regions that had been arbitrarily handed over to Georgia and subsequently voted to rejoin Russia........... That same year, ‘one million’ Crimeans signed a petition demanding the Russian fleet be allowed to retain its presence in Sevastopol.
In spite of threats of force, and a series of heavy-handed administrative measures, Crimean separatism has continuously bubbled just beneath the surface, ....and polls show the majority of Russian-speakers and Ukrainian-speakers favored separation....... This desire to get away was no doubt amplified a thousand-fold as a coalition of corrupt oligarchs and outright fascists with US support overthrew Viktor Yanukovich, the elected President, and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and chaos.
With officials of the ultra-rightist Svoboda party – formerly the “Social National” party – in top positions in the new government in Kiev, and with the outright neo-Nazis of “Right Sector” being handed control of police and law enforcement bodies, ......Crimeans refused to recognize Kiev’s authority. .........The Crimean Parliament once again declared independence and appealed to Russia for security guarantees, ....while the head of the Ukrainian navy, which is stationed in Sevastopol, defected to the Crimean side.
http://www.wallstreetsectorselector.com/investment-articles/analyst-desk/2014/03/russia-crimea/
And thanks a lot for the link, I'm saving that.
Regards
Regards to you as well.
Pat favors a Putin empire but is worried about an American one.
But ... the poor Crimean refugees! The slaughter! The tanks!
Oh. Nevermind. That didn't happen. The Crimeans actually wanted to be back in Russia and it was done peacefully. Our "tough guys" side with the butcher, Kruschev, not the Crimean people.
Kiev Governance has been so deeply corrupt, and robbed the people for so many decades, it will take at least that long for the people to believe their nation has a chance to get above the waterline their leaders have subjected them to...if ever.
It should not have surprised any Crimea sought leaving Kiev once the New Governance was installed......or that the East would attempt to follow suit, though they simply wanted their own Parliament and self-rule. The people have been downtrodden and beat by their government and the new one only promised it would get worse...and it has as we see the deaths and destruction in the East..
“Saddam did not have 100%”
I was referring to what was on the official record. Obviously he was feared and hated by millions of Iraqis.
From Reuters, 2002 -
Saddam Wins 100 Percent in Referendum
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein won 100 percent of votes in a referendum for a new term in office, official results showed on Wednesday.
Saddam’s top deputy Izzat Ibrahim, reading official results at a news conference in Baghdad, said turnout was also 100 percent in Tuesday’s referendum.
Nearly 12 million Iraqis were eligible to answer a simple “Yes” or “No” for another seven-year term for Saddam, who has ruled Iraq for 23 years through the tight grip of the military and police.
The authorities had urged voters to turn out in force to show massive support for Saddam in the face of U.S. threats of military action and President Bush’s declared desire to remove him from power.
The United States has dismissed the vote and said it lacked any credibility.
_______________
From AFP via Babelfish translation -
Iraqi referendum: 100% of “yes” for Saddam, participation of 100%
Wednesday October 16, 2002
BAGHDAD, Oct. 16 (AFP) - Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was re-elected for seven years at the time of the referendum of Tuesday, with 100% of the voices and a rate of participation of 100%, announced Wednesday the number two of the mode and president of the electoral commission, Ezzat Ibrahim.
____________________
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/769961/posts
Your butt he is cooperating with us on Iran. He also arms and supports North Korea, Cuba, and other Latin Americam Marxist/Communist dictatorships. Russia has been conducting joint military exercises with the ChiComs in preparation for war with the West. He supported Saddam Hussein, even after the war begun.
Not only does KGB Putin think mass-murderer Stalin deserves to have statues in his honor, he thinks the ‘collapse’ of the communist Soviet Union was the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century”!
“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century” -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
“World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin’s State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.’
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
_____________
“’The Black Book of Communism,’; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low.”
Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZmY0MjI1MDgyYjg1M2UwNDMzMTk2Mjk5YTk0ZTdlMWE=
The Russians are masters at the art of deception. They play 3d chess while most everyone else sucks at simple checkers.
The Obama Administration and John McCain make all prior US foreign policy seem sane, sober and brilliant.
That, thankfully, could never happen here as the President follows the law... wait. What's that droning noise?
Yes. Stalin certainly fooled Hitler and the Germans in the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa.
And how about the way the Tsarist fleet tricked the Japanese Navy in the Battle of the Tsushima Strait?
Americans have been trained to believe that anyone targeted by law enfarcement is guilty until proven innocent, and sometimes not even then. Shades of 1930s Germany.
Most targets become the equivalent of lepers.
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