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Sunday, March 2. 2014

The Ukraine doesn't matter

Spengler makes the case: Ukraine Is Hopeless … but Not Serious.


This is amusing: Sweet Nothings - Obama’s Smart Diplomacy:



Here’s the Kremlin’s summary of the call. In a nutshell: a) The U.S. wanted the call so Putin took it. b) Nothing Obama said to Putin was particularly worth noting. c) Putin explicitly told Obama he reserves the right to move further into Ukraine.


Smart diplomacy at work. Putin is surely quaking in his boots.



Russia is a crappy country full of poor drunks run by KGB thugs. It just happens to produce the most beautiful women in the world - until they turn 35. The Ukraine is another crappy country run by thugs. Should I - or Obama - really care what these people do? I can find no reason to care, but I do feel for all of the people in the world who are living in crappy places with crappy and corrupt governments with delusions of grandeur. It's the norm in the world.


Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 11:40 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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I hope Spengler (or Goldman?) is right but it still seems a little bit more scary to me. We have a belligerent thug who has dreams of recreating the old USSR on one side. On the other, we have team of feckless idiots lead by a jackass who apparently couldn't be bothered to actually attend a meeting of his National Security team. Together they could not assemble a clue about foreign policy. Clayton Cramer (http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/2014/03/remember-when-obama-campaigned-in-2008.html) reminds me that wars are sometimes started by accident.

Clayton also reminds me that we (and the UK) have a treaty obligation to guarantee Ukraine's security.

I don't think Obummer has the balls to get in a fight with Putin (obviously Putin doesn't either) but sometimes that can cause rash decisions with grave consequences.

Should we hope that Obummer will continue to be so detached and incompetent that there will be no possibility of any confrontation? That seems to be the safest call in the short term but that is part of the reason for the situation in Ukraine now and where will that lead?

I'm not hopeful.
#1 mudbug on 2014-03-02 12:34 (Reply)
On CNN this morning, Zbigniew Brzezinski recommended that NATO provide military assistance to the new Ukrainian government and that some NATO forces be repositioned.

His arrogance is simply stunning. Does he think the US/EU/NATO can maneuver freely on Russia's borders and threaten Russian interests and that the Russians will meekly obey. The best analogy to Sevastopol is Pearl Harbor. Does anyone doubt that we would fight to keep Pearl. Does anyone doubt the Russians will fight to control Sevastopol?

Just how stupid and arrogant is our ruling class? Zbig's message is the same one Conrad gave to Franz Joseph: We will smash these silly Serbs.
#2 bob sykes on 2014-03-02 13:37 (Reply)
I guess it is too late to implement an isolationist policy.

It's like being in Caligula's Rome. A half breed faggot of dubious provenance on the throne and toadying grifters running the place. You gotta forgive me, I'm not well ... sometimes I think I've seen too much. I wish Putin had grown up in Boise.
#3 chasmatic (Link) on 2014-03-02 14:11 (Reply)
Putin knows a sniveling, lazy asswipe when he sees one.
#4 model_1066 on 2014-03-02 15:20 (Reply)
"Russia is a crap country full of poor drunks run by KGB thugs. It just happens to produce the most beautiful women in the world - until they turn 35."

I happen to be Polish and I have lived through the martial law in Poland in the Eighties, and I remember 17 September 1939 (do you even know what that date is?), but I still resent the patronising, ugly, typically American stereotyping that goes on in the statement I quoted above. Russia is NOT a crap country any more than the USA is. If Americans ever wonder why the world doesn't seem to like them too much, it's largely due to comments and opinions such as this. You are not the only human beings on the planet, you know. And the rest of us resent being treated like mentally challenged children and / or slaves.
#5 magdalena on 2014-03-02 18:54 (Reply)
If the US is no less a crap country than Russia, why are you here and not there? Poland has a rich history and culture. Why did you leave?
And I'm sick of being lectured by Europeans about our attitude. If you think you're "being treated like mentally challenged children and / or slaves," let me suggest you have greater psychological issues than The News Junkie who posted the entry.
#6 BlogDog on 2014-03-02 19:28 (Reply)
Where exactly is the "here" you speak of? The internet? Do you know where I am, physically? I am NOT in the States. Anyways, you chose to interpret what I said as "Russia is as crap as the US is" when I meant "Russia is not crap and neither is the US". You say you are sick of being lectured by Europeans - so maybe it really is a wider problem you should start addressing sometime. I don't think I have psychological issues - I don't usually make comments on the internet about how other countries are crap and full of drunks etc. or spout other nasty stereotypes - unless I am deliberately trying to be offensive. Was the News Junkie trying to be offensive, or just saying whatever came into their head without considering the possible reception of their words?
#7 magdalena on 2014-03-02 19:41 (Reply)
"crappy and corrupt governments with delusions of grandeur."

Certainly our present government is at least as "crappy and corrupt" as Russia's, if not worse.
#8 Jim on 2014-03-02 22:37 (Reply)
Without knowing exactly why the News Junkie said "Russia is a crap country", I would give my reason: It is run by a totalitarian thug who seems to have respect for the rule of law. There is a lot of alcoholism and a declining birthrate which means that its future is pretty bleak. The only thing that saves it is its petroleum reserves.

Unfortunately, that describes the some of current situation in the US pretty well - which is not to say that I think the US is in as bad a shape as Russia. I don't currently have a lot of faith in the US's leaders to make any good decisions in the near term.

We (Russia and the US) have apparently elected the wrong guy and some of the mechanisms for those electoral victories may not be that different.

Russia and the US have great potential to be or continue to be great countries but there are impediments that are currently taking center stage. However, I have more faith in the US's positive impact on the world stage than I do in Russia.

As for Poland, I think it has mad great strives after their USSR satellite status during the cold war. The poles are a great people. I am very disappointed in our government's treatment of Poland recently.
#9 mudbug on 2014-03-02 22:45 (Reply)
I struggle to understand why we should care that much about the Ukraine. They are a demographically dying country, a historical mish mash of former countries and ethnicities and it is far more strategically vital to Russia than it is to Europe or us. I also don't get all the hate for Putin and Russia. Putin is supporting Christians and Christian morality much better than the wickidness coming our culture. I find it a bit amusing in a sad kind of way how our 'leaders' are getting smacked around by Putin.
#10 phil g on 2014-03-03 13:20 (Reply)
Just a question: should we have been concerned about Hitler's taking Czechoslovakia (for the same reason)?
#10.1 mudbug on 2014-03-03 14:33 (Reply)
The USSRs invasion of Ukraine is just the next step in the attempt to reestablish the communist empire.
If it's not stopped somehow, I fully expect Poland and the Baltic states to soon follow...
A "border incident" is easily fabricated, even the Germans managed to do that back in '39.
#11 J.T. Wenting on 2014-03-03 14:53 (Reply)
You're still fighting the last war. Russia is no longer communist. Russia is more nationalist now and establishing a strategic buffer more along the lines of former emperial Russia. I don't see the parallel with Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia although it sounds ominous to mention it.

Also the Ukraine is a basket case. I just don't see the strategic imperitive for US to get involved.
#11.1 phil g on 2014-03-03 15:35 (Reply)

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