Posted on 10/01/2015 4:51:02 AM PDT by elhombrelibre
Confused about Putin's motives? Look at Ukraine
Eighteen months ago, when Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, confusion prevailed in the West. Today, as Russia sends troops, armor, and aircraft to Syria, we are once again perplexed. On Monday President Vladimir Putin provided the explanation: Russia’s intervention is aimed to defeat ISIS and reduce the flow of refugees to Europe. A review of the last major Russian intervention, in Ukraine, might help us to evaluate this claim.
The superficial links between the two conflicts are obvious. For the first time since Russia invaded Ukraine, a ceasefire is holding. This has allowed Moscow to send special forces from Ukraine to Syria. The naval base in Crimea is now used to project Russian power southwards.
The deeper connection is Russian doctrine. Authoritarian leaders are legitimate, while popular resistance is not. President Putin’s claim to oppose Islamic terrorism is true enough. But he also opposes, with equal fervor and greater determination, secular democrats in his own country and in Europe. Russia invaded Ukraine not to halt a “military coup,” as President Putin rather oddly claimed on Monday, but to hinder a democratic movement by military action. In Syria, Russia has helped and presumably will continue to help Assad repress all resistance, not just the Islamicist variety.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
I wonder if he thinks he has 14...
I think the ROP (religion of Purgatory) will attack Israel and the ME will glow in the dark form the first use of nuclear weapons on a large scale for self defense.
well that would solve all our problems :)
But Israel has to be careful and use conventional troops in a radius big enough to protect them from fallout.
plus there’s 15 months and 20 days left. My bad :)
Time’s Snyder attributes Russian run by Putin motives in simplistic fashion which ignores its desire to control the european energy market by sticking with Assad thus destabilizing energy suppiles from the competing mideast. By getting involved there beside the benefits of reducing the probability of Moslem /Chrisitian religious conflicts within Russia it keeps the Russian market stable.
This is the same Assad Nancy Pelosi called a ‘reformer’. Are the “Progressives’ admitting they were wrong?
Didn't want no mooslime presence near his fleet, his oil outlets, nor the belly of the Russian mama land.
There may yet be some tar-tars left in Crimea...but they are just allowed to stay there to make the sauce.
Ahem.
“I wonder if he thinks he has 14 months before a real leader might take office.”
Of course! Putin see the US as effectively having no president, and a dumb-as-a-post Secretary of State, so he will take advantage of this situation as much as possible while he has the time. Obama is the weakest president in the history of the United States, and rest assured others are watching, for example, China and North Korea. I expect a power play for Taiwan and/or South Korea withing the next year, especially if it becomes apparent a Democrat may not be elected in 2016.
You are right. China made a subtle threat just a few days ago to us.
Bush sent USS McFaul, U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Dallas and USS Mount Whitney to ports of Georgia. He was going out of the office and the French promised to take charge there. Of course they failed miserably.
Maybe some of that but I think it is more so about the oil. The Crimea deal was about the security of his pipelines to Europe. Now he is using the ‘alliance’ with Syria as an excuse to step into the middle east where, there is more oil.
He is already talking about an expanded alliance with Iraq and Iran. Whattaya know, all in about 3 months he will have achieved enormous influence in three big oil producers in OPEC.
Snyder errs by assuming Putin is a one trick pony. His strategy in Syria is linked to his strategy in Ukraine; it is a mistake to think it is a copy. It seems to me he wants to undermine Western sanctions over his intervention in Ukraine, first by pointing out the obvious. US-led Western policy in Syria amounts to the same thing as Russian policy in Ukraine.
The US backed the Islamic Spring, a product of which is the anti-Assad civil war, and has (incompetently) tried to arm the anti-Assad “rebels”. (You really think that $500 million went to training 5 “moderates”?). Putin understands US military capabilities and machinations. The US is not really trying to wipe ISIS out, or defeat Assad. Are we not sustaining a “zone of anarchy” indefinitely by the way we are NOT prosecuting the war on ISIS?
How better to show this than to blast ISIS and Al Qaeda “moderates” to hell, and stabilize the area? By ending the refugee crisis? Will Europe quickly figure out who was to blame? (Starts with an O)? Can Europe support sanctions against Russia after Russia quickly “solves” the Syrian problem that Obama obviously sustains? Will Bashar Assad, and every port or resource in Syria be at his disposal after Putin saves his bacon? The US will be humiliated and shown to be a worthless ally in the ME, and Putin will become a major leader in Europe. This is Putin’s chance of a lifetime for a major success for Russia and himself at very little cost. If unsuccessful in Syria, he walks away. He plays this game better than Khrushchev.
Flashback: ABC’s Diane Sawyer Dished With Assad Over His Love of Shania Twain and Ipods
By Scott Whitlock | September 3, 2013
While covering Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, ABC’s Martha Raddatz described the Syrian dictator as “looking poised and immaculately dressed.” This light-hearted description is reminiscent of some of the softball questions asked by Diane Sawyer on February 5, 2007. The then-Good Morning America anchor dished with the man who, in August, allegedly used chemical weapons on his own people: “You like video games?...Do you have an iPod?”
After the dictator announced that he did, Sawyer sounded more like an Access Hollywood host: “And you’re a country music fan. Faith Hill? Shania Twain?” She then moved on to the topics of what films Assad enjoyed. The fan of chemical weapons and gassing his own people touted The Pursuit of Happyness. He blurbed, “It tells you a story...Maybe there’s many beneficial things to learn from, about real life.” [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Sawyer also got personal regarding Assad’s study in Britain:
DIANE SAWYER: And you met your wife there? But you decided to marry when you were there?
BASHAR AL-ASSAD: No. After I came back.
SAWYER: After you came back.
ASSAD: Yeah, yeah. We decided together. I didn’t decide, we decided.
SAWYER: I stand corrected.
The next day, February 6, 2007, Sawyer offered a fawning interview with Asma Assad. The co-host praised Mrs. Assad as an every woman: “After the small wedding, she stayed private, spending three months traveling quietly, sometimes anonymously in jeans and a t-shirt to meet the people of her country, take note of hopes and needs, sitting among the farmers to ask about their crops, and devise plans for micro-loans she passionately tries to promote today.”
A more modern assessment would be less charitable towards Mrs. Assad:
She was the long-legged London beauty who brought a touch of glamour to a one-party state steeped in repression and violence.
...
As her country crumbles, Asma - who met her future husband when they both lived in London - splashed out on a collection of Bohemian crystal chandeliers each costing in the tens of thousands of dollars from Prague, according to The Mail on Sunday.
She also regularly orders Western food in bulk for her three children as she doesn’t want them to eat only Syrian food, according to an insider. And in photographs posted on her Instagram account, she is shown wearing a new blue $150 Jawbone UP on her right wrist - a device designed to help wearers keep track of how many steps they take and calories they burn.
She also has splashed out more than $400,000 on furniture from an up-market London boutique.
In fairness to Sawyer, she did eventually press Bashar al-Assad on human rights. On February 6, the anchor informed, “But Bashar Assad inherited a - government with a long history of censoring the press, of imprisoning outspoken critics of the government. And human rights organizations sent me a list of names.”
“May I give you the names,” Sawyer added.
She wondered, “But, you were educated in England, and you saw press freedom, political freedom, why not have complete democracy here? Why not have Western-style democracy in Syria?”
Too bad so much of the two day interview was given over to fluff and fawning about iPods and the cute story of how Assad met his wife.
I’d make a more realistic one. Let’s say that Iran, Syria and Russia get ISIS on the run, and they finally leave Syria. Where exactly will they go? Iraq or Saudi Arabia. In either case, they are dumping ISIS back onto the US and it’ll trigger some 50,000 men deployment back into either....by Feb of 2016. ISIS will be the US problem then....completely.
(The media will put anyone on a pedestal who will promote their agenda in the moment.)
Sawyer: Describe the current President Bush to me in your view.
Assad: I’d rather give objective view. … I’ve never met him personally to describe him, but what I know about this issue that this administration, in general, are not interested in peace at all. This administration is not willing to achieve peace. They don’t have the will, and they don’t have the vision. This is, in brief, what I know about this administration not about the president in particular.
Sawyer: Who do you admire the most in the world?
Assad: That’s a very difficult question. The prophets, all the prophets. The three prophets — Moses, Jesus and, of course, Muhammad.
Sawyer: And is there anyone operating on the world stage today that you admire? Any leader, any diplomat?
Assad: Maybe Bush, the father, because of his will to achieve the peace in the region. Of course, President Clinton, he has the same will, and he is admired in our region and respected.
Sawyer: And, Mrs. Clinton?
Assad: I’ve never met her. I don’t know a lot about her.
Sawyer: So you’re not endorsing her for president?
Assad: We’ll see if she becomes president. … We’ll see what her polices are.
Someone trusted the French? wow.
the petrodollar has become the jesus nut of American capitalism. Putin knows this and he been positioning himself to undo that nut for years-the gazprom deal with China, the precious metal stockpiles, the leverage over Europe. He has recently introduced legislation that eliminates the dollar from trade between the commonwealth of independent states. China is complicit and has already started dumping dollar denominated assets as has Russia. His endgame is clear to me. He’s going after the petrodollar and us with it and there are a lot of other nations that will happily join him in this.
Putin’s aim, IMHO, is Israel... to take a spoil, of oil and gas and technologies... also, look at that long coast line. It’s prophesied in the Bible too (of course, that’s the premise of my assertion)... Read Ezekiel 38 and 39. Many bible scholars believe that the end times are upon us. And that preparation needs to be made in every man’s soul, that is, to acknowledge God as creator of all and lover of our souls, as expressed in the sacrifice of God’s own son on the cross for the forgiveness of sin John 3:16... God’s word promises that if you confess with your mouth that Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised Hime from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10: 9,10.
That is not Putin’s endgame. Look at IMF prediction for their 2015 GDP.
United States 18,124,731
Mexico 1,231,982
Russia 1,175,996
Russia does not have much economic muscle with their GDP smaller than Mexico’s. What they do have is propaganda muscle to spread fear and uncertainty through their vast propaganda network. Russia does not have much successes other than their effective fear mongering. It is a country where doctors earn $100 a week.
or not
The Soviets have been a controlling influence Syria in one form or another since 1946, and have often stepped in to support the controlling regime. What is really surprising is the number of mental midgets who are shocked by Putin’s move given the long history of Soviet-Syrian relations.
Well, I’m sure your support for Putin won’t waiver, and your anti-USA military remarks show you to be an anti-American.
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