The last president was just a thief of epic proportions. All politicians there are pretty much thieves but these guys took stealing to another level. If you haven't seen his residence yet, here it is: http://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-president-home-2014-2 Then, there's the general prosecutor whose house looked like the Ukrainian version of the Louvre. His official salary was around $40K/year. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/pictured-ukraines-former-general-prosecutor-3181937
I do? Not really LTJF. All I am saying is, if someone stopped Hitler when he invaded Poland, the whole WW2 tragedy wouldn't have happened. I am a leftist when it comes to politics so a war is the last thing I want to see. But also you have to stop tyrants doing whatever they want to do. I don't think the issue is Crimea. I think Russia is testing the waters. If they don't see a strong response from USA and EU, they might start thinking about spilling this into Ukraine.
All I'm saying is that you shouldn't move any ships into position unless you're prepared to use them in a battle which would have the potential to start a real war. If you put ships in the black sea and the Russians become aggressive with it you can't just run away and let them call your bluff. You can't be bluffing if you do that.
See I don't know enough about this topic to make such a judgement, but it does appear on the surface that Russia does have some strong reasons to do what they are doing. If I knew more about this subject, I might actually support Russia.
True. But same thing goes for Russians as well. Can they afford a war with US and EU alliance by shooting down the ships? I don't think so. But at the same time, I get your point. So maybe it wouldn't be wise to send fleet to Black Sea but find another way to make sure Putin understands you mean business.
If Russia is just trying to protect its people in a foreign country, I dont see what the big deal is. The United States has gone into many countries in order to rescue or protect the US citizens.
Well, the thing is there was no indication that ethnic Russians in Crimea were in any danger. But Putin used that as an excuse to flex his muscles and make Russia's presence in Crimea even more significant. This can be also looked at as an example of Obama's foreign policy backfiring. The revolution was supported and funded by the US and EU who were just looking for another way to weaken Russia. Putin responded with force and apparently caught them off guard.
Alright and I read that Obama believed that Putins reason was just an excuse to invade Crimea. IMO the jury is still out then, we dont know if Russia had information that might have indicated that the Russian people in Crimea were in danger.
Putin took a page out of Reagan's playbook. Don't like that government that's allied with your foes that has just come into power in your neighborhood? Send the Marines to Grenada to protect the medical students there and in the process overturn the government. This is about sixty years of US foreign policy coming back to bite us in the ass. You could even make the argument that Russia has been restrained in this type of foreign policy decision since 1991. Dozens of countries small and large have slipped out of their grasp without any of them being invaded and regime changed. Now the Russians are just doing things US style. Why now? Because we can't afford to be the big international border re-arranger any more. The costs have become too high and the benefits not worth their expenditure.
The timing isn't curious. The Ukrainians decided to go all the way in this revolution. No Orange Revolution that lessened ties to Russia and asserted Ukrainian independence this time. This time they went for the whole thing, to break away from Russia and towards the European Union. Putin put down the Orange Revolution in the end by having Yulia Tymoshenko jailed as a political prisoner. This revolution Putin has lost control of the state apparatus in Ukraine. He no longer has the ability to have Ukraine sort out Russia's problems. Armed intervention is all that is left to him and he, like Ronald Reagan, is going to put his foot down in his sphere of influence and make things right.
The fact remains that once the Ukrainian revolution occurred the Russians were going to act against the Crimea. There's no way they were going to let Sevastopol get away from them unless they were just too weak to prevent it. If the Ukrainians are lucky the US and EU had a plan for how to back the Russians down at this point. If not, well then the Ukrainians are likely screwed.
The two situations are completely different though. Both involve Russian clients that are threatened. Saying that the US and Russia should break even is ignoring the fact that Russia is the home team in both cases. The back down that we might get accomplished is the ceding of the Crimea to Russia in return for the withdrawal of the added Russian troops on the peninsula and a re-affirmation of the territorial sovereignty treaty that Russia and the Ukraine signed in 1994. That's the scenario in which the Ukrainians actually get to join the EU and move away from Russia. Look at Syria. That's a perfect example of where the US tried to back down the Russians and failed. Do we want the Ukraine in flames this time next year?
Did anybody hear a beep from China on this? I wonder if this thing is the start of a new alignment. US/EU block versus Russia/China block.
China will be watching very carefully how we handle this as tensions between them and Japan are at quite a high over their disputed islands. Apparently there is also some tension with the Philippines over some disputed islands as well.
The Chinese have said a couple of times that Russia should respect the Ukraine's national sovereignty. This is consistent with their foreign policy position that intervention by outside states to resolve internal matters is unlawful and should be avoided.
If we've learned anything at all from the Neocon Interventionalist Foreign Policy decades is that the reality is, we're not the world's police force and we can't impose an American solution to every planetary issue that comes along. The world will have to learn how to sort out its problems on it's own with minimal US input. In this case, The Ukraine is gonna be tied to Russia no matter who's in the WH beit Obama, McCain, Graham, Palin or ______________. Just the bad luck of being that close to the Bear. I just love how these pundits crawl out from under whatever Tea Party rock they live and spout nonsense about what the US should be doing and how bad Obama looks taking a phone call in jeans. Its almost as if they want the US to continue the road Ancient Rome took by overextending itself to the point of oblivion by being crushed under it's own weight. And they call themselves Patriots and wear their little Flag pins on their lapels. Whatever..
