Posted on 05/03/2014 8:29:56 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
With Ukrainian troops launching a major assault on a rebel stronghold Friday, just a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Kiev to withdraw its troops from the east and south of the country, it looks like the Ukraine crisis is entering a new stage.
As The Post's Michael Birnbaum reported from Moscow, "it seemed possible that even a small spark could ignite a tinderbox regional conflict."
Given this escalation, The Washington Post is publishing a new map that shows, using information from the Royal United Services Institute and our own analysis, recent troop movements in the region. The graphic illustrates how military exercises conducted by Russia have left a big build-up of troops on Ukraine's border. It also shows Ukraine's own military moves to its borders with Russia and Moldova's Russian-dominated enclave, Transnistria.
It'd be wrong to assume that military conflict between Russia and Ukraine is inevitable: There remains plenty of hope that a diplomatic solution can be found. That said, the graphic provides an important look at the military reality of the crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Some long dead white folks has warned against exactly such an involvement in European affairs.”
Haha yes true - I suppose we will have to wait and see what Putin’s true plans are. Is this his Sudetenland? i.e. an excuse to invade another country or is what he says the limit of his expansion plans i.e. to take back what they consider to be Russian land or area heavily laden with Russian people. Time will tell!
You know what the Ukraine is? It's a sitting duck. A road apple. The Ukraine is weak. It's feeble. I think it's time to put the hurt on the Ukraine.
“Ukraine is game to you?”
None of the above would happened if not for a western meddling. Just look at Finland after WWII. Finland is not a NATO member, it hasn’t attacked Russia in UN, it is not hurting Russian economic interests and not community-organizing anti-Russian groups inside Russia. And surprisingly, Russians aren’t fly their bombers into Finnish airspace, and ethnic Russians aren’t rioting in Finland.
It shows that Russia is not that expansionist and able to tolerate a stable western country on it’s border unless it takes a strong anti-Russian stance for some short to middle term political and economic benefits as it is the case for Georgia and Ukraine.
Syria was BS, a nothing. Israel can steamroll Syria any time it wants - Netanyahu just wanted the US to fight Israel's war. Heck, Israel just flattened a Syrian nuclear reactor in the making back in 2007 (Operation Orchard), allegedly infiltrating spec ops guys to point out the target(s). A Taliban state in Syria can't harm Israel because Israelis aren't politically-correct about keeping hostile Muslims out. The US is a different matter - just about any Muslim in the world can get tourist visa to the US, which is how 9/11 came about. Obama said no despite intense pressure from moronic Republican pols, and I'm grateful he did. Chemical weapons or not, nobody cares about what happens to the wasteland that is Syria.
Europe is a completely different matter. Europe is, apart from the US, the most productive region in the world. That is why major wars have been fought over Europe, because the stakes are so high. Russians (and I'm deliberately including the hoi polloi) have always had this complex, common to subjects of a number of great empires, that they are destined to rule the world. The Arabs, the Brits, the French, the Dutch, the Germans, the Chinese, the Iranians, Spanish, the Ottoman Turks and so on, have, in their time, also had this view. With the exception of the Chinese and the Russians, the other nationalities on that list have pretty much given up on world conquest, either through military reverses, an evolution in their world views or both.
In the decades ahead, Russia and China are the premier threats to existing national boundaries. Aggressive countries become more powerful by adding to their land and their population, and military victories won by aggressors encourage them to take ever more aggressive military gambles. Ideally, Russia will be stopped at Ukraine and encouraged to take its aggressions out on the Chinese, with whom they are competing for influence in Central Asia, where China was dominant until Arabs defeated a Chinese army at the Battle of Talas River in 751AD.
The power of Ukrainian Army
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AQDc7jAVt0M
I’d start quietly (though not so quietly the Reds didn’t notice) expanding strategic capabilities in the area. In other words, start doing things that you’d need prior to a conflict (adding hangars, resurfacing runways, rebuilding barracks, etc.) while downplaying their significance. Let Putin puzzle over why. This administration isn’t sophisticated enough to pull that off, though. Obie’d probably start talking about how the Reds shouldn’t call his bluff.
Those dead white folks lived in an era when it took a sailing ship from Europe 2 months to reach North America, and mustering and supplying even a force of 10,000 men across the ocean was a major undertaking that taxed even an empire on which the sun never set, which was why Cornwallis finally surrendered. The US landed 100,000 men in France during the invasion of Normandy and supplied 1m men under arms at any given time in Europe, mostly from across the Atlantic. Thereby showing such an operation in reverse was possible, and that Europe's problems will remain there only if a latter day Napoleon is, going forward, prevented from realizing his ambitions on the continent.
~Those dead white folks lived in an era...~
Hmmm, another progressive neocon who thinks Founding Fathers are outdated?
The Founding Fathers believed in liberty. Would they be supportive of Russia's pending armed conquest of Ukraine as you are?
The eternal truths uttered by the Founding Fathers relate to how liberty is to be achieved via the separation of powers and so on. Other aspects are a little more spotty. Feel free to call just about every president since the Founding Fathers progressives, as they expanded the US military and ventured forth into the world. But all of this verbiage you're spouting is just a non sequitur. You couldn't care less about freedom. All you're concerned about is that Russia successfully adds Ukraine to its empire with as little interference as possible from the freedom-loving peoples of the world.
~The Founding Fathers believed in liberty. Would they be supportive of Russia’s pending armed conquest of Ukraine as you are?~
You are turning things upside down. I’m sure the Founding Fathers wouldn’t intervene.
As for Ukraine I think it could be better off as an independent entity, free of dominating influence of either EU and Russia.
To quote Joe Wilson, "you lie". I can think of many ways to justify staying out without parroting Russian propaganda. You have used none of them.
~To quote Joe Wilson, “you lie”. I can think of many ways to justify staying out without parroting Russian propaganda. You have used none of them.~
And what propaganda are you parroting? What are your options for Ukraine?
When one state is about to annex another one via armed conquest, the act speaks for itself. Propaganda is superfluous.
You are speaking with slogans resembling a communist agitator, and not answering my question.
That's weird coming from a guy who supports Putin, a guy who said the collapse of the Soviet Union "was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century". It's pretty simple - you support the armed conquest and annexation of Ukraine by Russia and I don't. Our positions speak for themselves. You are on the side of Russian imperialists, and I am on the side of freedom lovers.
I am unsure of their range but in the Med but that would require a fly over Turkey so not really going to happen!
~That’s weird coming from a guy who supports Putin, a guy who said the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”. It’s pretty simple - you support the armed conquest and annexation of Ukraine by Russia and I don’t. Our positions speak for themselves. You are on the side of Russian imperialists, and I am on the side of freedom lovers. ~
Another fairy declaration on your side and you still haven’t answered what are your prospects for Ukraine.
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