Posted on 03/19/2014 5:51:23 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
IT’S EASY to conclude that Vladimir Putin’s passionate defense of Russia’s takeover of Crimea “just didn’t jibe with reality,” as Secretary of State John F. Kerry put it. In a speech on Tuesday, the Russian ruler repeated mendacious charges that the Ukrainian government had been hijacked by “nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites”; voiced his paranoid conspiracy theory about supposed Western sponsorship of popular revolutions, including the Arab Spring; and brazenly compared Russia’s abrupt annexation of Ukraine with the reunification of Germany.
It’s necessary, however, to take some of what Mr. Putin said seriously, because of the implicit threat it poses to European and global security. Mr. Putin advanced a radical and dangerous argument: that the collapse of the Soviet Union left “the Russian nation” as “one of the biggest, if not the biggest ethnic group in the world to be divided by borders.” That, he suggested, gave Moscow the right to intervene in Crimea, and, by extension, anywhere it considers ethnic Russians or their culture to be threatened.
Mr. Putin’s doctrine would justify Russian meddling not just in other parts of Ukraine — he claimed that “large sections of the historical south of Russia” now “form the southeast of Ukraine” — but also in other former Soviet republics with substantial populations of ethnic Russians.
Western officials seem to be betting that Mr. Putin won’t dare to extend his aggression beyond Crimea. But then, just last week they were saying they did not expect Moscow to move quickly on Crimean annexation. The Obama administration and its European allies have been too slow to grasp that Mr. Putin is bent on upending the post-Cold War order in Europe and reversing Russia’s loss of dominion over Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
For what it’s worth, there are more ethnic Russians in the United States than there are in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania combined. Will Kerry acknowledge Putin’s legitimate interest in Brooklyn?
One of the more interesting aspects of the ideology lies in its proposition of a Russian-Iranian alliance as the linchpin of a “Moscow-Tehran axis”.
Oh yeah, that’s pretty obviously what’s taking place.
To the best of my knowledge, the book is only available in the Russian language; I have a print copy, but my Russian is very rusty, so it take me awhile to slog through it.
A former student of mine brought it to my attention a couple of months ago; that individual works for the VZ (Vojenské zpravodajství), Czech military intelligence.
Heh....my students (former and current) are an interesting bunch. I can proudly even call a former Defense Minister as a former student.
Biggest missed opportunity of the 20th century. Russia could have been neutered right then and there. There would now be nobody to stand against if more had listened to Patton back then.
Out free marketeer the Russians.
Obama grasps Putins ambitions.....
He simply doesn’t care....
Yep. You know we are in bad shape when a WaPo editorial is being attacked as neocon warmongering in the comments section.
He only care about March Madness game bottom line
vaudine
Our country is no longer adrift. The ship of state is being piloted toward the rocks by a grinning fool. This grinning fool makes GF Jimmy Carter look great.
Why is there any amazement at all of this, at all?
MR. VLADIMIR PUTIN STATED THIS VERY THING AS ONE OF HIS GOALS, WHEN HE WAS RUNNING FOR OFFICE, IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!!
There is a maxim that those of us who were in any way involved in The Cold War remember: “When the KGB whispered there was something that was going to happen, you could make book on it.”
We’ve got a backwater gimp for a President and a man so ashamed of his medals that he forgot he threw them away, when he came before Congress as a leader of a Communist group now performing in the role of Sec’y of State.
Vladimir Putin: I should be concerned about what Obama may say or do? Don’t make me laugh. The only reason that turd can even talk is he has a teleprompter to do his thinking for him. Crimea today...Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania tomorrow!
1. We were not going to fight the Soviet Union in 1945. There was absolutely no public support for such a proposition, not after we had just beaten Germany with them. Not while we were still at war with Japan.
2. We were going to have a Cold War. It actually began in late 1943 or early 1944, when perceptive people began to realize that Stalin intended to dominate Eastern Europe as his exclusive territory, and there was not one damn thing we could do to stop it.
Or he does and that's what his plea with the Russian ambassador to wait until after the election when he would have more flexibility was all about. It sounded like a plea of a store owner to the Mafia representatives. Please you gotta gimme a month, I'll have the money by then!
We get Money, Jobs, Undercut Russia's Massive profits, and get new customers In Europe.
This is exactly what we should be doing.
His Arrogance doesn’t give a crap about much if he can play golf and Reggie!
The country of Georgia doesn’t fare very well in that analysis does it?
You make a fair point about the political reasons why the West couldn’t fight the USSR but from a military standpoint (and Patton was first and foremost a military man) I think it was doable.
By 1945 the USSR was exhausted, speaking purely anecdotally, I had an uncle, a big 6’ Swedish American man, he was 19 and in the US Marines and never fired a shot in anger in the entire war. He spent it on guard duty at a Navy base in Derry Northern Ireland, they were shipping him to Japan when the bomb was dropped. By that stage women were driving tanks on the front line for the Red Army. Every boot on the Red Army’s feet came from the US as did most of their trucks.
The Red Army was beatable by 1945, there was just no way anyone was going to try beating them (particularly not by Patton’s means of rearming the Wehrmacht and giving them a go).
That’s fair enough, what is galling though is how the threat was never even used, Stalin walked rings round Churchill and Roosevelt, anything he asked for he got, everyone was terrified of upsetting him. Stalin was a bully and he had the measure of the west’s leadership, he knew they wouldn’t lift a finger to stop him but that was mainly because no one even threatened him.
If the west had shown a bit more backbone and let’s say gave Patton a bit of free reign instead of publicly reprehending him when he spoke out things might have worked out a bit different. A bit of hard cop soft cop never goes amiss in negotiations; “Gee that Georgie Patton guy’s a nut Joe, he really wants to take on your boys and figures we could cut off all aid to you and we could give it to the Krauts instead, we don’t wanna do that now do we? So let’s be reasonable here eh?”.
But no, whatever Uncle Joe asked for, Uncle Joe got.
And it would not have been a pushover. I don't think you know much about the Red Army that emerged from World War 2. The Red Army was a large, well-equipped and well-led military machine accustomed to any and every hardship. And with the iron grip of the commissars, they would have followed Stalin's orders to fight to the death.
Yes, we could have beaten them, but only with a staggering butcher's bill that the American public would never have accepted.
This scenario violates henkster's Law of alternate histories. It's not a viable alternate history if it involves the Americans not being the Americans, and American public would never have paid the blood price the Soviets would have extracted. Not with the prospect of the same against Japan at the same time.
The reality is that the Cold War never ended. The Soviet Union just changed names to the Russian Federation and temporally lost some territory. It is trying to get it back now under the guise of protecting “ethnic Russians.” Sounds very much like Adolf Hitler in the 30s.
Whatever, “Russia” and “Red China” are every bit the threat they were before....in some ways more so. This is NO time to be downsizing the military...and to withdraw all forces to within U.S. borders. We need to maintain a robust standing Army (augmented with a quality Guard and Reserve), a well equipted Air Force (do not can the A-10s), and we need to grow the U.S. Navy and associated Marine units.
This plus we need a new strong POTUS....and one that isn’t an isolationist fool like Rand Paul.
Sadly Russia is still fighting WWIi... and I am talking the one of active Barbarosa treaty with the Nazis against the West that let them invade Finland.
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