Russia's Resurgence Is A Reaction To Obama's Retreat

IBD ^ | 02/27/2014 | IBD Editorial

[Jim Robinson]

Russia: America's old Cold War adversary is acting more and more like it used to, exerting power from Crimea to Havana to Singapore. Think it might be related to the shrinking of our conventional forces?

It might sound crazy today, but historians (writing in Russian or Mandarin, of course) could look back one day at the killing of Osama bin Laden and see it as the beginning of the demise of America as a superpower.

As Center for Political-Military Analysis director and Hudson Institute senior fellow Richard Weitz noted some months after the bin Laden operation, rather than "overwhelming force missions, the Obama team is partial to the deft and swift surgical strikes conducted by missile-armed drones and helicopter-transported commandos."

Consequently, as announced this week, Obama is shrinking the U.S. Army to its smallest size since before World War II. While he's at it, he's scrapping an entire class of Air Force attack jets. The idea is to "modernize" the military — you know, put aside all those obsolete horses and bayonets the president sneered at Mitt Romney about during the final debate in 2012.

An anonymous Pentagon official quipped to the New York Times that "you can't carry a large land-war Defense Department when there is no large land war." Moscow, however, sees it differently.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Wednesday that the once and future superpower plans permanent military bases in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Singapore and other countries; refueling facilities for Russia's strategic bombers are also in the works.

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks to Daniel Greenfield for the remarks below to explain where we are with Obozo as POTUS.

The Post-American order stands for nothing except its own dismantling. That is why Obama sets red lines that he won’t enforce and issues threats that he doesn’t mean.

The only thing less appealing than selfishness is the complete absence of self. The only thing less appealing than empire is an anti-imperialism that so thoroughly negates its own power that it has no influence and no reason to exist.

Post-American America exists to destroy itself. Until that changes, it has nothing to offer the world except membership in a suicide pact.

[1rudeboy]

I swear, will these nimrods, when they see Russia (or even China) punching above their weight on the world stage understand what they’ve done?

[Zhang Fei]

America's old Cold War adversary is acting more and more like it used to, exerting power from Crimea to Havana to Singapore.

The mention of Singapore has to be a transcription error. Singapore has roughly the same access to US equipment as top-tier NATO allies and has placed an order for the F-35. No way they're letting Russians set up a base there short of armed conquest.

[Revolting cat!]

Only hunger can wake people up, like it woke up the Ukrainians. Until then it’s white bread and idiot box circuses!

[DJ MacWoW]

It's February 28th

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[edcoil]

James Buchanan, a massive liberal, might have been gay since our only bachelor president - caused by his lack of leadership the civil war as 15th president.

So to with the current liberal administration but remember Lincoln followed and we are better for it and history remembers Abe, James Buchanan is not even footnoted.

[ScottinVA]

Exactly. Fareed Zakaria can deny it all he wants, but the U.S. is in retraction mode in the international arena, creating a power vacuum. Well.. the Russians (as well as the Chinese) are quite willing to fill that vacuum.

[Zhang Fei]

I swear, will these nimrods, when they see Russia (or even China) punching above their weight on the world stage understand what they’ve done?

China's got the 2nd largest economy in the world and is closing in on #1 roughly in the next decade or so. It's not punching above its weight. At that point, if it chooses to pursue its long delayed geographical expansion by annexing neighboring states, we will have to expend large amounts of blood and treasure stopping them, if we decide to do so.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

According to Fox, Ivan is on the move.

[Revolting cat!]

One Ukrainian commentator I’ve just read says that Putin’s aim is to provoke a civil war in Ukraine and then invade in defense of the Russian minority there, as he did in Osetia.

[Buckeye McFrog]

The Left has been lusting after the DOD budget to redeploy into social benefits since 1968.

[goldstategop]

Its a replay of Transdniester circa 1992. The Moldovan army attacked Slavic separatists. It looked like they would win until the Russian 14th Guards Army intervened on the side of the separatists. Transdniester became a breakaway country under Russian protection.

Now Russia is using the same script to a T in Ukraine. Whatever the outcome, you can be sure Russian peace-keeping troops will stay in the Crimea as just as the do in Transdniester to this very day.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

The history books of the future will mark the return of America under President Cruz and Vice President Glen Beck. Together Russia and America can bring world peace and prosperity.

[Zhang Fei]

Now Russia is using the same script to a T in Ukraine. Whatever the outcome, you can be sure Russian peace-keeping troops will stay in the Crimea as just as the do in Transdniester to this very day.

Russia's population is 50x Moldova's and only 3x Ukraine's. This means Ukraine's capacity to resist Russian incursions is far greater. With zero foreign aid, Stepan Bandera and his men fought the Russians for over a decade, losing only after the Russians conducted mass killings of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian supporters. Whether the Ukrainians keep the Crimea is really up to them. They have the capacity to turf the Russians, but the cost will likely be whatever it costs them to kill thousands of Russian servicemen.

[Savage Beast]

You betcha!

"Moscow signaled it didn't fear confronting the West"

Why would it? Western Civilization is in the advanced throes of decadence, and the Western nations are populated with feckless decadents who cannot even muster the will to survive.

[lentulusgracchus]

The Left has been lusting after the DOD budget to redeploy into social benefits since 1968.

"More flexibility" after the election, remember? This is the flexibility.

Putin was just waiting for the Olympics to be over the whole time.

As for budget priorities ...... for Socialists worldwide, social benefits exist as a way of sandbagging and undermining defense programs. So said a French admiral, Pierre Auphan, who saw the process at work in France in the 1930's when the Socialists got into office and savaged the French defense appropriations, ostensibly to buy groceries for Socialist voters, but actually to undermine the French military on the eve of a new world war.

That's because they see organized armies as the most effective defense tools against their kind of "wars of national liberation" -- as in Greece and Turkey in the 1950's, Malaya and the Philippines (Huks) in the 40's, and Laos and Vietnam in the 1960's.

[lentulusgracchus]

Funny, I never saw any of this on NBC Nightly News. I bet it isn't true! </s>

[Art.] Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced on Wednesday that the once and future superpower plans permanent military bases in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Vietnam, Singapore and other countries; refueling facilities for Russia's strategic bombers are also in the works.

In 1969 the Navy went nuts when they found out a Soviet Echo-II class SSGN (cruise-missile submarine) had sneaked into the Cuban port of Cienfuegos, on the south coast not far from the Isle of Pines, where the Cuban patriots and CIA had been abandoned and defeated by Jack Kennedy in 1961.

Some alert photo analysts had been expecting Russians there ever since they noticed a soccer pitch under construction at the facility. Someone said, "so what?" about the soccer field, and the reply was that "Cubans don't play soccer. Russians do."

The USG starchily opposed the establishment of a Soviet submarine base in Cuba (which would have been a huge logistical help to them, much like Holy Loch in Scotland was to the USN in the early days of the Polaris submarine program), and it was never built.

Now the Russians propose to run wild in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (presumably sharing facilities with the Iranian rocketeers?), and Obama, showing his Benedict Arnold stripes now, rolls over for them (something he's very good at).

"Flexibility". This is it.