Posted on 03/09/2014 12:50:35 AM PST by elhombrelibre
For a man who is new to the job, the Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is pretty impressive. Indeed, his performance would be stunning by the standards of any long-serving national leader. Responding to the refusal of Russia’s foreign minister to enter into any direct talks with his country, and the less than thrilling response to this obduracy by the western powers, Mr Yatsenyuk’s spontaneous exasperation was pitch perfect: “What’s happened? What’s up with global security? Are we crazy?” It was startling, and deeply shaming.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Perfectly sums up the situation we’re in, the entirety of Western civilization. It’s so damn visible and obvious too.
The US is weakened by an *ssclown pretending to be a mature male homo sapiens, and the mob of followers all chasing him around in circles with their hands out grabbing whatever he tosses to them.
Meanwhile, he’s so preoccupied with taking expensive vacations while spreading homosexuality, abortion, drugs, and racial set asides, all the while weakening the military, that he has no time for world affairs.
This situation shows too how few bullets our president really has. One was uncertainty. The line in the sand in Syria showed his hand and left Putin nothing to guess at. That whole Syrian debacle will go down as a defining moment in history. Obamas moment.
I agree. Obama and Putin are the perfect storm for the end of the Western world. Obama is an inviting target eager to ignore real role of government so he can toss treats to his cronies. Obama trades limited government for unlimited government. Putin is keen to exploit US and Western weakness for his own Imperial Glory. Putinistas love it. American patriots and conservatives see a world becoming a choice between two tyrants both on foolish paths.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” - Theodore Roosevelt
“Flounce prettily and ingest big sticks” - Barry O’bigears.
If/when the US becomes a major NG exporter then the power of GAZPROM (or “Russia” as some call it) would be sharply curtailed.
Extraction economies (like Russia, Saudi, Venezuela, etc) seem to be uniquely vulnerable to pathological oligarchies. If we took away Russia’s ability to charge > $400 per thousand m3 of NG then Europe - and Russia itself - would turn into a better place
We also need to arm the people of Ukraine from the bottom up: encourage them to adopt a 2nd Amendment of their own. That would have a sanitizing effect on their whole political system.
I don’t believe Putin will be ousted from the Crimea: not only because it might trigger a world war, but because it’s not morally obvious that the people of Crimea shouldn’t be allowed to secede from the hot mess that Ukraine has become. Many American states have secession movements, and most of us would move to a seceded American state in a heartbeat.
But the West could take steps to ensure that the rest of Ukraine becomes its own master - not a puppet for Russia or the EU, nor fall prey to undemocratic forces in its own borders.
But will it? No. Instead I suspect that our current masters want to bring Ukraine into their own sphere of subjugation, instead of building up a free nation inside the increasingly tyrannic borders of Europe.
Yes, extraction economies seem especially vulnerable to oligarchies and cronyism. Thomas Sowell makes the same point often.
Thanks for the tip!
Exporting LNG will raise the cost of home heating and electricity for struggling Americans. It’s the exact kind of policy likely to stoke public anger and play into the left’s hands. The last thing conservatives need is enraged Americans shivering in the dark and cursing GOP politicians for putting geo-political strategizing that they don’t care about over their interests.
The biggest mistake was pushing the EU and NATO on Ukraine. Neither is necessary or even in Ukraine’s interests. The EU is likely not to be around much longer anyway. As Kissinger argues, we should have kept Ukraine officially neutral and worked to allow it to trade with both EU countries and Russia. Had we done that, we would be on much firmer ground to confront Russian meddling in Ukraine(which would have likely been less of problem without the threat of NATO on Russia’s borders).
Very true. While Putin schemes to remake the soviet empire, Obama dithers in his normal misguided way. Georgia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland are all well aware of Putin’s rage.
That NG and LNG prices will rise is as sure in a global economy as the stagnation of the American economy with the world catching up and the shrinking of consumer products for cheap large boxes of cereal and soap suds to small expensive boxes. It is what the G7-8 nations are collectively seeking to achieve with Quantitate Easing and money printing policies.
Obama will just issue an executive order!
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