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 Post subject: Ukraine
PostPosted: Wed Feb 11, 2015 7:08 pm 
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Ist Krieg
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A lot of talk from the U.S. about arming and training the Ukranians.

If this happens (which it will by all indications from our war-mongering gov.), I wonder what Putin's next move will be...

Also, a European perspective, or even just a non- US perspective (our media is untrustworthy, and that goes well beyond just FOX) would be appreciated.

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 2:56 am 
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One doesn't need to have wasted thousands of dollars and several years studying this subject(look, I made fun of myself!) to know that increasing U.S. involvement in the Ukraine is senseless and dangerous.

http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-and-kissinger-dont-increase-us-military-involvement-ukraine

Kissinger and Chomsky agree.


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 6:59 am 
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North From Here wrote:
One doesn't need to have wasted thousands of dollars and several years studying this subject(look, I made fun of myself!) to know that increasing U.S. involvement in the Ukraine is senseless and dangerous.

http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-and-kissinger-dont-increase-us-military-involvement-ukraine

Interesting. The US powers sell the world the story of stopping Putin from pushing into Eastern Europe all the while consolidating power and positions in Ukraine. The Obama administration is indeed playing a very dangerous game here. I like the man less and less as his presidency wears on.

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:16 am 
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Ist Krieg
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I knew you would be interested in the subject. It's just mind boggling how our government thinks it can just box Russia in without any pushback.
I don't think I've witnessed a more inept and dangerous foreign policy in my lifetime (this administration's ... ignorance?...disregard? of Ukraine's and even Crimea's significance to Russia is staggering)... we have quite enough on our plate what the colossal failure of the "Arab Spring" without pushing a Putin - led Russia into a corner.

If I were Putin, I would be very concerned about the US's actions... missile shields, sanctions, and now a proxy war right in their backyard... Russia is not Iraq.
I hate to say it but the US governments complete arrogance greed and war mongering is bringing the world very close to potential catastrophe.

Good article, I was going to post the Biden Jr. connection, but the article already covered it.

Curious to see what Russia's next move will be.

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 7:51 am 
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Thrash til' Deth wrote:
North From Here wrote:
One doesn't need to have wasted thousands of dollars and several years studying this subject(look, I made fun of myself!) to know that increasing U.S. involvement in the Ukraine is senseless and dangerous.

http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-and-kissinger-dont-increase-us-military-involvement-ukraine

Interesting. The US powers sell the world the story of stopping Putin from pushing into Eastern Europe all the while consolidating power and positions in Ukraine. The Obama administration is indeed playing a very dangerous game here. I like the man less and less as his presidency wears on.


Well, Obama's always been a greasy piece of shit...
The really funny part is listening to these soulless vipers lecture another country about "aggression"...

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 10:32 am 
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It's a hugely depressing subject. Am not at all a fan of Putin but am as wary of kicking off a proxy war as you guys. Wouldn't automatically take Putin's side just because of Obama, though. Bit more of a balanced outlook than the popularresistance.org guy quoted - http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... xplains-10

Europeans tend to fear and despise Putin as a neighbouring autocrat (was watching a political program last night and a UK government minister called him a dictator without being challenged). And it's a shame to see Ukrainian nationalists (aka people who don't want to be invaded by Russia) dismissed as 'nazis' (unless it is literally and only Nokturnal Mortum taking up arms, but I doubt it!). Ultimately am against US military involvement but fine with stronger, more directed EU sanctions on Russia (hate the EU but this is the point of it, really).

Also worth reading - http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21 ... c30b6f1709

Quote:
Opponents of military aid, including Germany, warn of a proxy war with Russia that the West cannot win. No NATO country is ready to send in troops, and Ukraine’s forces are underequipped, undertrained and poorly led. The suggested weapons are “needed, but will not be a game-changer,” argues Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst at IHS Jane’s. Sending weapons could provoke a Russian response and play into Mr Putin’s claims that Ukraine’s army is a NATO foreign legion. Russia would just send more equipment to the rebels, says Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. If Mr Putin called in the full force of the Russian army, no amount of arms would save Ukraine, as even the most hawkish would admit.


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 11:56 am 
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Image

Hm!

http://en.delfi.lt/lithuania/foreign-af ... d=65776132


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Fri Feb 13, 2015 4:48 pm 
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Hello Goat.
I wouldn't side with Putin, per se , but I can see how he would feel as if his back is against the wall. The US has been intruding on Russia's sphere of influence for quite some time now; I would rather the US stay out of it and even EU involvement is a bit sketchy.
Further complicating things is the Budapest Memorandum.
The question is: has Russia (as opposed to pro-Russian rebels fighting from within Ukraine's borders) actually invaded eastern Ukraine?
If so, then Putin has violated that treaty; if not then it is an internal conflict that ultimately will have to be sorted out by Ukraine. Its a shame to see yet another fratricidal war, though.

As to the graphic, ha, it's just the tip of the iceberg, unfortunately.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_o ... operations

Make of that what you will.

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 5:40 pm 
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... mailonline


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Wed Feb 18, 2015 8:57 pm 
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Goat wrote:
It's a hugely depressing subject. Am not at all a fan of Putin but am as wary of kicking off a proxy war as you guys. Wouldn't automatically take Putin's side just because of Obama, though. Bit more of a balanced outlook than the popularresistance.org guy quoted - http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... xplains-10

Europeans tend to fear and despise Putin as a neighbouring autocrat (was watching a political program last night and a UK government minister called him a dictator without being challenged). And it's a shame to see Ukrainian nationalists (aka people who don't want to be invaded by Russia) dismissed as 'nazis' (unless it is literally and only Nokturnal Mortum taking up arms, but I doubt it!). Ultimately am against US military involvement but fine with stronger, more directed EU sanctions on Russia (hate the EU but this is the point of it, really).

Also worth reading - http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21 ... c30b6f1709

Quote:
Opponents of military aid, including Germany, warn of a proxy war with Russia that the West cannot win. No NATO country is ready to send in troops, and Ukraine’s forces are underequipped, undertrained and poorly led. The suggested weapons are “needed, but will not be a game-changer,” argues Konrad Muzyka, a defence analyst at IHS Jane’s. Sending weapons could provoke a Russian response and play into Mr Putin’s claims that Ukraine’s army is a NATO foreign legion. Russia would just send more equipment to the rebels, says Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. If Mr Putin called in the full force of the Russian army, no amount of arms would save Ukraine, as even the most hawkish would admit.


I should write a longer (but will try to be clear...I promise) post on this subject this weekend. Funny that this article quotes Trenin though, I quoted Trenin a couple times in my paper and my ever friendly advisor tore me apart: "Trenin is basically a pimp", he said.


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 9:00 am 
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i agree that a proxy war, especially one based on military support and not economic support*, is both dangerous and unproductive, but to quote Kissinger (commenting on sanctions against specific people, not on this kind of intervention, but i think it applies to the general situation):
Quote:
“I think one should always, when one starts something, think what one wants to achieve and how it should end. How does it end?”


does Putin just get to have his way with it? what happens to Ukraine then? serious question. i repeat, i'm not in favour of escalating this proxy conflict, but what happens if the West does nothing? and it does act, what's the best course of action?

*one could say the whole thing started with the West's lures of economic support, i guess, but at least (assuming it wouldn't all slip through the cracks of corruption) that would've accomplished something had Russia not gone crazy

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:28 pm 
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Azrael wrote:
*one could say the whole thing started with the West's lures of economic support, i guess, but at least (assuming it wouldn't all slip through the cracks of corruption) that would've accomplished something had Russia not gone crazy


Economic support was a major lever the West used in 1990 for trying force Gorbachev's hand over the German question. He had to eventually cave over the issue of united Germany thanks to his own weakening position in the collapsing USSR, and the desperate promise that Western aid would come to the rescue to keep the Soviet Union afloat.

The USA dictated the end of the Cold War when Russia was too weak to shape the peace. The problem started there: Gorbachev and his supporters thought everyone 'won' the end of the Cold War, but NATO expansion eastward made Russian perceive that only the US won, and that it was trying to punish Russia for losing. Miscommunication occurred during the united Germany negotiations in 1990, with Gorbachev and some within the Russian delegation claiming it was promised "NATO would never move eastwards" while the Western delegation thought they were just promising that NATO troops would not be moved into East Germany.

Regardless of who was right, the creeping expansion of NATO eastwards in the past two decades was seen as a major affront to Russian national pride. The last American ambassador to the USSR, Jack Matlock (really nice guy, btw), pointed out that the USA was just responding to E. European countries requests, but he also agreed with Gorbachev that NATO should have been dismantled somewhere along the way and something different should have replaced it. Should Russia have been invited? I think so, though after the Russian free market economic collapse in 1998, and further humiliation over NATO intervening in Kosvo it was probably too late to make that move, even before Putin took over a few years later.

To answer your question specifically Azrael, I do think the West should have done nothing regarding Ukraine. Since they are already doing something though, I'd still advocate winding it down. Any sign of helping Ukraine is just be used for Putin's propaganda purposes and makes Russia dig in further. Putin's power is already severely limited by Russian structural and economic weakness, and attempts to gain further ground in Ukraine are just an expensive distraction for his frustrated domestic constituency. Polish and Baltic leaders can whine all they want, but I'd argue those countries are just as much to blame for inflaming the crisis. They can talk all the want about the Russian threat, but Russia simply has no capacity to actually invade them without self-destructing considering their economic weakness, and Putin and his leadership are very much aware of this.

TLDR;
Ukraine does (and should) matter more to Russia than it does to the USA and Western Europe. Getting involved in Ukraine speaks to the dangerous power of small countries with traumatic but outdated memories leading the larger countries towards potential confrontation. The unending expanse of NATO, which has no real purpose for existing post 1991 except as a flashpoint for inflammatory rhetoric, does not make Europe safer, and it should been replaced long ago.


Included a few links below if you were interested (1st and 2nd ones are Gorbachev and Matlock remembering the 1990 negotiations very differently, but agreeing NATO remaining was a bad idea. 3rd one is Gorbachev today blaming the West for messing relations between the two. If Gorbachev fundamentally agrees with Putin on foreign policy than the West and Russia fell out a lot of farther than just blaming it on Putin's personality.)
http://sputniknews.com/russia/20090402/120879153.html
http://jackmatlock.com/2014/04/nato-exp ... a-promise/
http://rt.com/news/221367-gorbachev-nato-war-russia/


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 1:17 am 
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very nice post man, thanks.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuut what happens in Ukraine should the West drop out entirely?

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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Tue Feb 24, 2015 3:24 pm 
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this is interesting


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Tue Mar 03, 2015 11:41 am 
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Azrael wrote:
very nice post man, thanks.

buuuuuuuuuuuuuut what happens in Ukraine should the West drop out entirely?


A complete withdrawal (no aid at all) would be impractical because the US and EU wouldn't allow the Ukrainian economy to collapse. Say there was a complete withdrawal though. The civil war would probably get much worse for a while and then a cease-fire eventually would be forced after the global community became appalled enough and Russia determined the rebels had carved out enough territory. The rebels hold what, 5% of Ukrainian territory currently, centered around Donetsk in the extreme southeast. I could see Kharkiv (home of the very pro Ukraine patriots Drudkh) and Russian-speaking parts of Northeast Ukraine also falling away to Russia in this Putin fantasyland. The rebels other main target is the key Black Sea port of Odessa, but Odessa is more cosmopolitan, and located much further to the West than Kharkiv. With the Crimea likely returned to Russia forever, I think making a grab for Odessa would actually be too greedy for Putin, and he would call off the rebels there.

So from 5%, maybe the rebels would end up with 20%, most of the Russian-speaking parts of the country, chunks of Eastern Ukraine which were always parts of Russia (remember the official creation of Ukraine's borders was a Soviet construct, and Russia usually tried to show Ukraine deference within the USSR because Ukrainians felt bonded to Russians way more than Tajiks or Georgians, and Russia obviously wanted to encourage this). After Russia got its chunk of Ukraine, the rest of the country (majority Ukrainian speaking, parts of the country which Russia did not always control, Austria-Hungry actually had a huge chunk of Western Ukraine before WWI) would join Nato and hopefully this silliness ends. And I don't mean to disrespect all those dying in the conflict of course, but if borders had been drawn better years back this stuff doesn't happen. Sadly, the calamity of badly drawn borders, whether in Africa or the Middle East, is a reoccurring theme in the world

But what I described above is a worst case scenario for Ukraine, I don't see Putin winning a protracted money war with a Western aided Ukraine while his own economy gets hammered by sanctions, and Russia's continued threats to turn off its supplies of natural gas to Ukraine will ring hollow as the warmer weather approaches. Eventually the rebels' efforts will become more of a drain than a help to Russia's strategy, and then you should see a real peace instead of the continually broken cease-fires you see now.

I would argue Russia's earlier moves in the Crimea and continued support for the rebels in East Ukraine were all lashing out from a position of weakness anyway. Russia's elite knows the majority of Ukraine is lost to them forever, and so it is just trying to carve out a few pieces of it before Nato and the West got hold of the entire country.

I'm certain China loves these distractions.


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 Post subject: Re: Ukraine
PostPosted: Mon Apr 20, 2015 9:40 pm 
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The US now has training advisors on the ground in the Ukraine. Gotta love how it manages to provoke Russia and Iran at the same time (US forces are in route to block arms deliveries by Iran to the Yemen rebels) when as I understood it, the greatest threat to America was Sunni terrorism. Don't Iran and Russia fight Sunni extremists more than anyone else? Thank god the priority is actually to prop up and support corrupt regimes in Saudi Arabia and Ukraine instead.


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