Posted on 03/27/2014 3:54:03 PM PDT by Mariner
Will Putin call NATO's bluff?
The Russian invasion and rapid absorption of the Crimean peninsula might seem like the spark ready to ignite a new Cold War. In fact, given the feeble Western response so far, the more likely outcome is not the division of Europe once more between NATO's Western alliance and a neo-Soviet Russia, but rather the fracturing and ultimate demise of NATO and the Western alliance itself.
Of course, no one expects the West to use military force to protect Ukrainian territory, despite the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia, the U.S., and the U.K. guaranteed Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for its relinquishing the nuclear weapons that remained on its territory after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Yet even the Russians now seem surprised, indeed somewhat amused, by how disunited and weak the Western response has been. So what comes next?
Having demonstrated to the Ukrainians with his Crimean excursion the emptiness of Western guarantees...
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
How many millions of American kids are you willing to sacrifice for that town?
With Obama at the helm, Putin is living rent-free in the heads of all the Congress-critters in D.C.
The stakes are enormous, potentially existential.
Exactly. Too many want to be like Obama where one's word doesn't mean anything anymore.
Ooops didn't mean to exclude your apology
Should be apology "accepted".
Eliminate NATO and also the European Union!
They are both nothing but roads to a ome world socialist government!
While they are at it scrap NAFTA.
Lithuanian president wants to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP...
Baltic Republics Pledge More Defense Spending as Ukraine Crisis Continues
I’m not saying we shouldn’t fight where our vital interests are at stake.
But Americans are not going to awakened to action over a town hall in a city they can’t even name in a foreign country they couldn’t locate on the map.
Good luck with invoking the NATO Charter’s Article 5 - if that ever happens.
I was a part of it in the "Partnership for Peace" days. Of course they signed up to join NATO, believing our promise that we would wage total war to defend them. Now it is dawning on the world that NATO (and America, its guarantor) wrote checks that it can no longer cash. It was "The End of History" back then, and there was never going to be another major war.
You signing up for the front lines? Or just sending other folks?
Meanwhile the larger, richer countries spend weakly while relying upon a US umbrella:
France, Germany and Italy are ALL under 2%.
The only country that could reasonably be considered as caqrrying their fair share is the UK at 2.4%.
The US spends 4.4%. And all the blood.
Where is the spot where you’ll say “enough”?
I see that there is plenty of Chamberlin fans here in response to your question.
But I think ultimately there wouldn’t need to be a war if NATO would just mobilize to the eastern bloc. Call Russia’s bluff, in the end it would be Russia that would need to start the war.
There virtually no ethnic Russians in Poland.....That was one benefit of Poland getting her Eastern part taken away after the war....Poland is almost exclusively Polish, unlike pre-war Poland that was only 70% Polish.
“There’s really no need for US ground forces to get involved. We’d shoot down anything the Russians sent up, and recreate the highway of death for Russian ground forces in Estonia, “
You are crazy.
First, I think we have about 180 F22’s and zero F35.
The f22 does not have a long “loiter time” because it has no external fuel tanks to be stealthy. The f22 also needs a lot of down time for maintenence. Committing our entire f22 fleet would mean having maybe 20 in the air at all times sustainable for maybe 1 month.
All the other jets can be shot down by russian AA missles.
There will be no highway of death.
from wiki
“In 2004, the F-22 had a mission ready rate of 62%, this rose to 70% in 2009 and was predicted to reach 85% as the fleet reached 100,000 flight hours.[206] Early on, the F-22 required more than 30 hours of maintenance per flight hour and a total cost per flight hour of $44,000; by 2008 it was reduced to 18.1, and 10.5 by 2009;[206] lower than the Pentagon’s requirement of 12 maintenance hours per flight hour.[207] When introduced, the F-22 had a Mean Time Between Maintenance (MTBM) of 1.7 hours; by 2012 the figure was 3.2 hours, exceeding the requirement of 3.0 hours by 2010.[206] By 2013, the cost per flight hour had grown to $68,362, over three times as much as the F-16.[208]
Each aircraft requires a month-long packaged maintenance plan (PMP) every 300 flight hours.[209] The stealth system, including its radar absorbing metallic skin, account for almost one third of maintenance.”
Exactly. We are not mercenaries for hire. Let them receive some telegrams for a change.
The problem is, does Estonia have enough men in arms to do any good? I think they have spirit and would fight if they thought they had any chance to hold out, but they might all be dead or captured before we could get enough assets into the area to turn the tide. :-(
Sure. They asked me to come back in once. I'll go again. Wise ass.
Heh - what was it the Estonian President said about some book describing Americans as being from Mars, and Europeans from Venus: He said the Euros are from Pluto.
I think a valid question is, “What would the Euro’s need to spend to counter Russia’s buildup?” I think that if they all participated, an average of the oft quoted 2% of their GDP might get them there, as their economies in total far surpass Russia. The problem is that it’d take several years to catch up at that rate.
At least some of them are actually talking about it:
On the other side of the argument, though, long term there is great danger in a heavily armed Europe and an ineffectual U.S.
On this, I agree with you.
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