Roots and consequences of Ukraine's violence

[Dino Velvet]

World war three anyone?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...going-war.html

Yeah but Boris Yeltsin signed it.




"And you get one as well."

[Dino Velvet]

Mr Continental for President of Ukraine. EU Approved too.

[runningdownthatdream]

This is brinksmanship. The Russians know nobody wants to engage in full scale warfare with them over illegal actions taken in Eastern Europe. Does anyone really expect the U.S and Britain to send forces to fight the Russians because they violated the Budapest Memorandum? With all apologies to the Ukrainians and at the risk of sounding completely craven, that would be a hell of a commitment; truly crossing the Rubicon (or the geographic equivalent).

Agreed - which is why it doesn't help the US government to be making big statements and posting Kerry over there. Unless Washington and Brussels are secretly trying to force Russia to act!

[envivision]

This is brinksmanship. The Russians know nobody wants to engage in full scale warfare with them over illegal actions taken in Eastern Europe. Does anyone really expect the U.S and Britain to send forces to fight the Russians because they violated the Budapest Memorandum? With all apologies to the Ukrainians and at the risk of sounding completely craven, that would be a hell of a commitment; truly crossing the Rubicon (or the geographic equivalent).

You see, that's why I am against the legalization of pot in the US..

What are you stating, Cheech & Chong? We should appease Tzar Putin?. Yes, just give him Crimea. He will go away. You know liberal idiots like you said the same thing 70 years... Give Poland to Hitler.... He will go away.

The US puts its legal signature on a piece of paper pledging it will uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in case they give up their nukes. Go ask Clinton, he signed it himself. Well, here we are now. Will the US keeps its words or not?

If your Obama does NOT have the balls to defend the honor of the US, then maybe he ought to resign and be replaced but somebody who will.

FYI, China is watching. Iran is watching. A mentally retarded butcher in N. Korea is watching to see what your Obama will do...

You do know that China has a score to settle with Japan, please tell me you do! We left the Japs defenseless after WW 2 - promising them again that we will defend them against China.... Sorry Japan, but the doped up liberals of America wants to appease DICTATORS and INVADORS.

What would stop China from invading Taiwan, genius? It is part of China , ain't it?. And the people there all speak chinese.

Your ignorant naive ball-less Obama is about to start WW3 without even knowing . Too bad, he just told the Pentagon he is cutting the size of the army in half.

RIP Ronald Reagan. You defeated the evil Soviet Union. Obama revived it.

[Dino Velvet]

Too hard to copy/paste in its form but an update on the happenings.
http://yahoonews.tumblr.com/post/78440354349

Ukraine in crisis: Russian fleet reportedly issues ultimatum: Surrender or 'face storm'

[Prospero]

What grown-up arguments from envision. Full marks. C'mon Obama what the fuck are you waiting for. Let's start a nuclear war.

[Prospero]

On a more considered note....

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...kraine/284168/


No, American Weakness Didn't Encourage Putin to Invade Ukraine
In fact, we've pushed U.S. power further east than anyone could have imagined when the Soviet Union collapsed.
From The Atlantic Monthly by Peter Beinart

If you’ve listened to President Obama’s critics in recent days, you’ve almost certainly heard two claims. First, that under Obama, America is in retreat around the world. Second, that America’s retreat emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

Let’s take the second claim first. Obama’s critics differ as to which moment of White House fecklessness spurred Putin to act. “Ever since the [Obama] administration threw themselves in [Putin’s] arms in Syria … I think he’s seen weakness. These are the consequences,” insists Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, by contrast, suggests, “The big one that started this was the absolute retreat on our missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia.” Either way, there’s a causation problem. If it was Obama’s weakness—in the Middle East or Eastern Europe—that encouraged the Russian president to invade Ukraine, then how do Corker and Rogers explain Putin’s decision to do something similar in Georgia in 2008, back when George W. Bush was president?

Which brings us to assertion number one. It’s true that the Obama administration has withdrawn troops from Iraq and is withdrawing them from Afghanistan. But from where Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat. From his perspective, in fact, the reverse is likely much closer to the truth.

From where Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat.
To understand why, it’s worth casting one’s gaze back a couple of decades. Under Ronald Reagan, the frontier of American power in Europe was Berlin. Then, in February 1990, as East Germany began wobbling, Secretary of State James Baker journeyed to Moscow to discuss German unification. According to James Goldgeier, author of Not Whether But When, the definitive history of NATO expansion, Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if the Soviets allowed Germany to reunify, NATO—the U.S.-led Western military alliance that took form after World War II—would not expand “one inch” further east, not even into the former East Germany itself. But as the year progressed, the White House developed different ideas, and by the fall it was clear that a unified Germany would enter NATO, no matter what the Russians thought.

The idea of admitting other Eastern European countries into NATO, however, was still considered recklessly provocative toward Russia. The New York Times editorial board and its star foreign-affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, strongly opposed the idea. The eminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote that, “[H]istorians—normally so contentious—are in uncharacteristic agreement: with remarkably few exceptions, they see NATO enlargement as ill conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world.” George H.W. Bush’s national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, was skeptical of the idea, as was Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, William Perry.

For his part, Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned that extending NATO violated the “spirit of conversations” between Baker and Gorbachev, and would produce a “cold peace” between Russia and the West. It didn’t matter. In 1995, NATO went to war against Serbia, and then sent peacekeepers to Bosnia to enforce the peace agreement that followed. This new, Eastern-European mission paved the way for further expansion. By 1997, it was clear Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic would enter the alliance. In 2004, NATO admitted another seven former Soviet bloc countries, three of which—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—had been part of the USSR. In 2009, Croatia and Albania joined the club. Six former Soviet republics—Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—now link their militaries to NATO’s via the “Partnership for Peace” program. All five former Soviet republics in Central Asia—Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan—provide NATO countries with some basing, transit, refueling, or overflight rights for use in the Afghan war.

From Putin’s perspective, in other words, the United States hardly looks in retreat. To the contrary, the post-Cold War period has brought one long march by America and its allies closer and closer to the border of Russia itself. But there was no reason to believe that Russia—which under Putin has been regaining its confidence on the world stage—would go on contracting forever. And by 2008, when Russia sent troops into parts of Georgia, it was already clear that NATO’s expansion onto former Soviet soil had come to a halt.

It had stopped for the same reason that General Dwight Eisenhower, determined at the end of World War II to keep the American death toll as low as possible, refused to push into Eastern Europe to prevent the USSR from dominating the region after the war. And for the same reason that President Eisenhower watched Soviet troops crush protests in Budapest in 1956, and President Johnson watched Soviet troops crush the Prague Spring in 1968. The frontiers of American power in Eastern Europe have long been set by Moscow’s willingness to send troops into countries where, by virtue of their geography, Russia is prepared to take casualties and the United States is not. (Just as the limits of Soviet power in the Americas were set in 1962 when John F. Kennedy proved more willing to risk war over Soviet missiles in Cuba than did Nikita Khrushchev.)

To say that the border of Western power has stopped expanding is not to say it has begun to contract. To the contrary, it’s still almost impossible to imagine any of the countries recently admitted into NATO falling back under Russia’s sway.

The frontiers of American power in Eastern Europe have long been set by Moscow’s willingness to send troops to countries where Russia is prepared to take casualties and the U.S. is not.
Geopolitically and ideologically, the West’s frontier has moved further east than almost anyone could have imagined a couple of decades ago. The bad news is that it has left the countries just beyond that frontier, the ones most eager to be connected to the West, terribly vulnerable. During the Cold War, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia shared that tragic fate. Today, Georgia and Ukraine do.

None of this remotely justifies Moscow’s crude and lawless invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and its European allies should do everything possible to strengthen the government in Kiev politically, economically, and maybe even—clandestinely—militarily. And they should think creatively about what kinds of economic and diplomatic measures might hit the Russian elite where it hurts, with the hope of at least stopping a Russian conquest of all of eastern Ukraine. That such efforts may undermine Russian cooperation on other issues, like Iran and Syria, is a risk the West will have to take.

But the Obama administration will also have to tell Kiev’s revolutionaries that while it supports a unified, democratic Ukraine, it does not support an anti-Russian Ukraine. Russia will not permit it, and at the end of the day, the United States cannot protect Ukraine from Russia’s wrath. It’s a bit like Finland’s dilemma during the Cold War or Taiwan’s now. Even if Ukraine regains control over its domestic affairs, it will never enjoy complete control over its foreign policy. The U.S. has a moral obligation to support democracy and self-determination. But it also has a moral obligation not to make promises it can’t keep.

That was true before Obama, and it will be true after he’s gone. And it has nothing to do with America being in retreat.

[broncofan]

You see, that's why I am against the legalization of pot in the US..

What are you stating, Cheech & Chong? We should appease Tzar Putin?. Yes, just give him Crimea. He will go away. You know liberal idiots like you said the same thing 70 years... Give Poland to Hitler.... He will go away.

The US puts its legal signature on a piece of paper pledging it will uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in case they give up their nukes. Go ask Clinton, he signed it himself. Well, here we are now. Will the US keeps its words or not?

If your Obama does NOT have the balls to defend the honor of the US, then maybe he ought to resign and be replaced but somebody who will.

FYI, China is watching. Iran is watching. A mentally retarded butcher in N. Korea is watching to see what your Obama will do...

You do know that China has a score to settle with Japan, please tell me you do! We left the Japs defenseless after WW 2 - promising them again that we will defend them against China.... Sorry Japan, but the doped up liberals of America wants to appease DICTATORS and INVADORS.

What would stop China from invading Taiwan, genius? It is part of China , ain't it?. And the people there all speak chinese.

Your ignorant naive ball-less Obama is about to start WW3 without even knowing . Too bad, he just told the Pentagon he is cutting the size of the army in half.

RIP Ronald Reagan. You defeated the evil Soviet Union. Obama revived it.

I don't smoke pot. In my job, if they suspect you of any drug use they test you, and fire you. Most of your post is a bunch of ignorant drivel.

I don't think the U.S should unilaterally engage another nuclear power without first going to the U.N. or without building a coalition of some sort. But to resort to violence in the face of Putin's aggression could get us embroiled in a major conflict.

Nobody is saying that Putin should be able to annex Crimea or that the fact that there are ethnic Russians living there makes his actions legal.

And a final point, when Germany invaded Poland it was right wing isolationists who did not want us to get involved in conflict. And if you knew anything about WWII, you would use the Anschluss or Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland on the grounds that there were a lot of ethnic Germans there as a parallel.

Anyhow, you're a reactionary moron and your post looks like it was written by a third grader. Good luck with that.

[Stavros]

You see, that's why I am against the legalization of pot in the US..

What are you stating, Cheech & Chong? We should appease Tzar Putin?. Yes, just give him Crimea. He will go away. You know liberal idiots like you said the same thing 70 years... Give Poland to Hitler.... He will go away.

The US puts its legal signature on a piece of paper pledging it will uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in case they give up their nukes. Go ask Clinton, he signed it himself. Well, here we are now. Will the US keeps its words or not?

If your Obama does NOT have the balls to defend the honor of the US, then maybe he ought to resign and be replaced but somebody who will.

FYI, China is watching. Iran is watching. A mentally retarded butcher in N. Korea is watching to see what your Obama will do...

You do know that China has a score to settle with Japan, please tell me you do! We left the Japs defenseless after WW 2 - promising them again that we will defend them against China.... Sorry Japan, but the doped up liberals of America wants to appease DICTATORS and INVADORS.

What would stop China from invading Taiwan, genius? It is part of China , ain't it?. And the people there all speak chinese.

Your ignorant naive ball-less Obama is about to start WW3 without even knowing . Too bad, he just told the Pentagon he is cutting the size of the army in half.

RIP Ronald Reagan. You defeated the evil Soviet Union. Obama revived it.

a) "You know liberal idiots like you said the same thing 70 years... Give Poland to Hitler.... He will go away". The opposite is true -it was precisely because Germany invaded Poland in 1939 that war was declared.

b) "The US puts its legal signature on a piece of paper pledging it will uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine in case they give up their nukes. Go ask Clinton, he signed it himself. Well, here we are now. Will the US keeps its words or not?" -the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 was an agreement to respect the territorial integrity of the Ukraine in return for it becoming a non-nuclear state -in the event of that integrity being violated the Agreement calls for 'consultation', nothing more, nothing less.

c) "We left the Japs defenseless after WW 2 - promising them again that we will defend them against China.... Sorry Japan, but the doped up liberals of America wants to appease DICTATORS and INVADORS". The occupation of Japan by US and British troops in 1945 ended with the San Francisco Treaty of 1951 whereby security guarantees were given to Japan by the US, this was consolidated in the Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security, 1960 which
grants the United States the right to military bases on the archipelago in exchange for a U.S. pledge to defend Japan in the event of an attack.
http://www.cfr.org/japan/us-japan-se...lliance/p31437
The Treaty stands to this day; US troops are stationed in Japan, and have been since 1945.

d) "Your ignorant naive ball-less Obama is about to start WW3 without even knowing . Too bad, he just told the Pentagon he is cutting the size of the army in half". Obama did not appoint a President in the Ukraine whose blatant corruption made a mockery of that country's attempt to reform itself in the post-Soviet era; the US has encouraged reform in Ukraine -and elsewhere- in the same spirit as President Reagan confronted the USSR with his 'Let Poland be Poland' campaign in the 1980s, but without the overly dramatic, inflated rhetoric of Reagan -did the USA have a right to intervene in Polish politics in the 1980s?

Obama was elected to give the USA a different, less strident voice, to draw back from military engagements that seemed to make a situation worse and appeared to have no end, and which have cost the USA several trillion $$$. It is up to a President of your liking to beat the drums of war, and send service personnel to their deaths in a foreign field -if he or she can get elected. Obama was democratically elected, get over it. Russia dominates Eastern Europe and the Caucasus -what can you do about it?

[Dino Velvet]

BBC News Ukraine The far right groups patrolling Kiev