Posted on 05/03/2014 2:10:07 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Western policymakers have long been in denial. One needed only to read his own pronouncements to understand Mr Putin’s intentions. A decade ago he spoke of the collapse of the USSR as “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
Stalin is rehabilitated in schools. Dissidents are punished. Journalists go missing. Television stations, newspapers and the Internet regurgitate Kremlin propaganda.
Mr Putin has played a double game with the West, with considerable success. He encouraged oligarchs to buy up blue chip investments abroad and as many properties as they wanted. He promised to leave them alone to make and spend their billions, as long as they handed him and his coterie large stakes and did not challenge him politically.
Those who played by his rules have enjoyed a life of unsurpassed luxury. They have created lucrative micro-industries for the UK in real estate, jewellery, designer fashion, super yachts and private jets. ....
At the heart of the collusion and backslapping are the deals that have been done in the energy sector and the banks. Western Europe’s economies are locked into Russia’s. BP and other oil companies are inextricably linked to Russian firms that were formed out of the robber capitalism of the early 1990s.
To punish them would be to punish ourselves. That is why Western leaders have been so cautious. When they insisted they were taking a pragmatic, incremental approach to sanctions to give Mr Putin some wiggle room, they are being disingenuous. The main reason was their desperation to find a way to avoid confronting those to whom they are beholden.
As Mr Obama talked tough, with Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel standing uncomfortably at his side at the White House on Friday, it was clear that the West’s response had only emboldened the Russians.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Spectator? View it from the Russian perspective. The West supports an uprising against the President of Ukraine. That President is deposed. Western governments are quick to recognize and support the new government. Western leaders visit. Kerry visits and announces $1 billion in support, Biden another $100,000,000. NATO threatens to bring Ukraine into the alliance.American military units are deployed into the region.
Good. Obama should stay out of any entanglement that might have him using our troops any more than he has already. He is incapable.
So I don’t give a flying fig what Putin does in countries that were once part of Russia. I hope a future American president has the stones to return California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and California to America after zer0 and his henchman Holder gives it to LaRaza Mexico.
Even with all the evil of Putin granted, at least he is actually Russian and cares more for the well-being of future Russian generations than our scumbag so called leaders.
Jimmy Carter was excellent at looking at things from the Russian point of view.
Obama and Rand Paul seem to share that ability.
“Western world reduced to role of spectator”
What did people think would happen when Western finance built Asia up to make a buck? Most of the world’s industry and population are in Asia; as long as they can access resources in the same manner we did, what role does “The West” have anymore? The West has been contracting for decades, importing Third World populations to sustain the facade of “nations”; now those populations can just stay home and find a job instead of coming here to live on food stamps.
The Ukraine situation turning into Laker fan riot
Out of the entire article, this one sentence speaks the truth: “To punish them would be to punish ourselves.”
The Europeans have had years to prepare themselves for the eventual stranglehold that Russia has on Europe.
Instead of preparing themselves to cast off Russia as a primary supplier of gas, the stupid Brussels Nazis decided to gamble on wind, solar and alternative energy that will NEVER supply Europe’s energy needs.
These Brussels mutts are Gaia Nazi cultists. They don’t care if half the European continent dies and goes up in flames as long as they have their comfortable commie dachas and plenty of stolen cash.
The Nazis in Europe are rising again as an unelected and unaccountable fascist European bureaucracy, and it’s up to European patriots to kill them dead and send them to hell.
Europe despises nationalism and freedom.
The EU is not preserving Europe - its imposing a tyrannical oligarchical rule on the continent that made the Communist excesses look modest in comparison.
There is no such thing as “Europe” and will never be.
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