Poland Begins to Fortify the New Iron Curtain

Center for European Policy Analysis ^ | July 8, 2022 | Chels Michta

[ought-six]

“Poles have ALWAYS worried about both - having Germans and Russians as your neighbors is not pleasant.”

Poland is in an awkward geo-political location; stuck between two historically aggressive cultures that hate each other.

[ought-six]

“A New Iron Curtain means lot’s of money for defense contractors and the Neocon sperm who swim about Washington DC.”

So buy some defense industry stock and quit bitching about it.

[FreshPrince]

IG Farben?

Builder of the nazi crematoriums I beleive

[griswold3]

“But Biden will just give it away.”
After he skims 10% off the top, of course.

[griswold3]

“But Biden will just give it away.”
After he skims 10% off the top, of course.

[JonPreston]

I’m already heavily indexed in the MOEX.

[Alas Babylon!]

Yeah, they manufactured a synthetic rubber plant in Auschwitz, but I think they most famous for manufacturing the Zyklon-B and Sarin gas used to gas concentration camp victims.

Completed in 1930, the IG Farben Building in Frankfurt was seized by the Americans after the war. In 1996 it was transferred to the German government and in 2001 to the University of Frankfurt.

[BeauBo]

“It appears that what Trump planned for Poland - a permanent US base - is about to come to fruition.”

Perhaps even before the next Trump Administration, at the rate things are going. Fort Trump.

Thanks for your interesting and informative posts.

[BeauBo]

"It is also finalizing a deal to buy 500 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers. In short, Polish rearmament dwarfs the potential of other allies along the flank. "

[FreshPrince]

Ahh ok I knew there was a connection to the holocaust

[ought-six]

“I’m already heavily indexed in the MOEX.”

Ah, the MOEX; aka the Moscow Exchange.

[sergeantdave]

When will Poland bomb Brussels? It’s long overdue.

[cpdiii]

I lived in the UK at the height of the Cold War. I was 20 miles West of Heathrow Airport. 20 miles from USAF RAF Strike Command in High Wycomb, 15 miles from the UKs plutonium processes center and about 20 miles from Harwell, the UKs center for nuclear weapons research.

I had a perfect plan for if war happened. Pour a very large single malt scotch whiskey and sit in the backyard. I aint never seen the fireworks show that was about to happen. I was dead meat.

[Zhang Fei]

[I had a perfect plan for if war happened. Pour a very large single malt scotch whiskey and sit in the backyard. I aint never seen the fireworks show that was about to happen. I was dead meat.]

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That’s the theory. In real life, I doubt any top leader would have given the authorization to initiate nuclear strikes. Each of them understood where that would lead. A country with 1/10 of its pre-war population and most of its industry devastated can’t properly be called a great power. And many countries change administrations after cataclysmic wars, occasionally with further large-scale loss of life. Even losing large amounts of land and millions of people doesn’t justify nuclear strikes. Because millions of dead << hundreds of millions of dead.

[HKMk23]

“New Iron Curtain”

Not unclear about the endgame, are they.

Ukraine as a Russia-controlled, toothless buffer between Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe now turns into a hard line at the Western Ukrainian border.

One must wonder when the razor wire and machine gun towers will start going up.

[RedMonqey]

Keep baiting the bear.

I now know how cold wars turn hot.

[Zhang Fei]

redmonqey: [Keep baiting the bear.

I now know how cold wars turn hot.]

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Ukraine ping

Wars don’t start by accident. They require massive appropriations. The Russians want to conquer. Whittling them down to size in Ukraine will cramp their style. As Vegetius is said to have written “si vis pacem, para bellum”. Actually, he could actually have said “si vis bellum, para pacem”. And the policy of these United States has been “si vis pacem, para pactum”, i.e. Pax Americana.

The Russians need to understand that if they poke any one of their traditional victims, they will lose a great deal of blood and treasure. That’s what the aid to Ukraine is all about - making the Russians pay a heavy price. The kind of price Uncle Sam paid in Korea and Vietnam, to the tune of 100,000 GI dead and just under 10,000 aircraft destroyed, thanks to copious Russian supplies to North Korea and North Vietnam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-15#Soviet_MiG-15s_in_the_Korean_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Korean_War_flying_aces#Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Brezhnev#The_Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-17#Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-19#Vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-21#Vietnam
https://www.rbth.com/history/332396-how-soviets-fought-against-americans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_losses_of_the_Vietnam_War

[RedMonqey]

We made promises not to advance NATO into former Warsaw Pact to create a neutral zone of sorts. NATO abandoned this in the war of the former Yugoslavia territory, the bombing of Libya, and meddling with Ukrainian politics. The most egergious was getting them to give up nukes for an amorphous “promise” to back them up, without an senate approved treaty.

Russia, in it’s various configurations has one common tract, paranoia, especially from the West. Before the dust from the fall of the Berlin wall, the NATO countries have made moves to only feed the distrust that Russian leaders are born with.

Like many other wars, theses always an off ramp to take but pride, paranoia or politics blind those in power from making claim, sensible recessions. The one up manship will lead to destruction.

[Zhang Fei]

redmonqey: [We made promises not to advance NATO into former Warsaw Pact to create a neutral zone of sorts.]

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Ukraine ping

No commitment was made.

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https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no/
[We now have a very authoritative voice from Moscow confirming this understanding. Russia behind the Headlines has published an interview with Gorbachev, who was Soviet president during the discussions and treaty negotiations concerning German reunification. The interviewer asked why Gorbachev did not “insist that the promises made to you [Gorbachev]—particularly U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s promise that NATO would not expand into the East—be legally encoded?” Gorbachev replied: “The topic of ‘NATO expansion’ was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. … Another issue we brought up was discussed: making sure that NATO’s military structures would not advance and that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR after German reunification. Baker’s statement was made in that context… Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”]

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Even if a verbal commitment had been made, it would only apply to the Bush administration. The Budapest Agreement - now that wasn’t a ratified treaty, but it was definitely in black and white. We sure tore that up. We guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial boundaries. The Russians invaded. We acted as if nothing had happened.

Russia in its various configurations has feigned paranoia* because its rulers can’t exactly say personal vanity drives their wars of conquest. That way lies popular revolution and dynastic extermination, as happened to the Romanovs.

In reality, an 11-time zone empire 2x the size of the US has no genuine fear of invasion. Its only fear is of not seizing the copious opportunities to strike in any direction it wants without much worry about being invaded in return, thanks to its nuclear arsenal. That’s why it keeps poking the eagle, supplying both material and personnel to kill GI’s in both Korea and Vietnam. Ultimately the bear will keep pushing until it sustains unacceptable losses, upon which it will withdraw to lick its wounds, as occurred in Afghanistan.

Russia doesn’t invade because it’s afraid. It invades because it’s not afraid. That’s the purpose of the aid to Ukraine - to fill the Russian Tsar of the moment with the fear of the kind of expense and casualties that leads to armed uprisings within his empire.

* Germany is justifiably paranoid. During the 30 Years War, many German principalities lost 50% of their population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

Nothing like that has ever happened in Russia. During WWII, Russia lost less than 10% of its people. And pre-war Germany was 1/50 the size of Russia.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Zhang Fei.