Armed men believed to be Russian seized a Ukrainian military base in Crimea Friday, triggering a standoff but no gunfire in the latest incident of escalating tension in the flashpoint peninsula.The move followed reports earlier in the day that Russia had begun large-scale air defense drills.Witnesses say Russian troops broke through the gate of a missile defense base with a military vehicle, trying to break into a command post, but no shots were fired, Interfax Ukraine reported.Initial Reuters reports said the truck had pushed through the gates of a post in the city of Sevastopol, but there were no signs of damage. There was conflicting information about the circumstances of the raid.A Ukrainian military official, Vladislav Seleznyov, told Reuters the armed men took over the base without any shooting and no one appeared hurt. Another Ukrainian official told Reuters at the post that he was now mediating between Ukrainian forces and the armed group inside.About 100 Ukrainian troops are stationed at the base in Sevastopol, Interfax reported, citing a duty officer and Ukraine's defense ministry. About 20 "attackers" threw stun grenades, the report said.The Ukrainians barricaded themselves inside one of their barracks, and their commander began negotiations, Interfax said.
The whole world smells post-American weakness.
Hell, I'd take a vacation to, just to make people like you cringe. This ain't our fight, if anything it's NATO's. What if the world yawned and made Putin look like a fool. I find all the talk about how strong Putin looks compared to Obama. Do we want a Putin in the White House? Let the killer kill. It's his soul is it not? And this is not our fight. It's NATO's.
ReplyDeleteBut as President Barack Obama’s GOP critics lambaste him, as John McCain did for a “feckless foreign policy in which no one believes in American strength any more,” it’s worth remembering that some things haven’t changed since the bad old days. Because even at the height of the Cold War, the United States generally held back from direct confrontation with the Soviet Union in the face of its most provocative acts within its own sphere of influence — and no American president has ever had good options to the contrary."
ReplyDeleteRead more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/ukraine-russia-crimea-cold-war-104438.html#ixzz2vNLGQlTW
ReplyDelete“There’s all this posturing, all this talk of flexing our muscles,” said presidential historian Robert Dallek. “But happily, when push comes to shove, we show ourselves to be more restrained and sensible. We don’t really have all that many options, short of getting into war with them, and that would be incredibly stupid.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/ukraine-russia-crimea-cold-war-104438.html#ixzz2vP6Kwib0
Robert Dallek (born May 16, 1934) is an American historian specializing in American presidents. He is a recently retired Professor of History at Boston University and has previously taught at Columbia University, UCLA, and Oxford. He currently teaches at Stanford University's Stanford in Washington program in Washington, D.C. He won the Bancroft Prize for his 1979 history of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his foreign policy, as well as other awards for scholarship and teaching.
ReplyDeleteBooks:
Democrat and Diplomat: The Life of William E. Dodd (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968)
1898: McKinley's Decision – The United States Declares War on Spain (New York: Chelsea House, 1969)
The Roosevelt Diplomacy and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970)
Western Europe (New York: Chelsea House, 1973)
Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)
The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs (New York: Knopf, 1983)
Ronald Reagan: The Politics of Symbolism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-674-77941-9)
(Mr. Dallek's interesting but not entirely convincing argument is that Ronald Reagan's ideology stems from a deep psychological need to repudiate the failure of his father, an alcoholic who was dependent on others. The welfare state symbolizes that dreaded dependency, while the Soviet Union represents the same thing in a malignant form. The book is recommended to those with a taste for psychobiography. Others will find more than sufficient explanation for President Reagan's ideas in the political history and culture of this country.)
.Franklin D. Roosevelt as World Leader: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered before the University of Oxford on 16 May 1995 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1995)
Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents (New York: Hyperion, 1996)
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and his Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2003)
Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004)
Lessons from the Lives and Times of Presidents (Richmond, VA: University of Richmond, 2004)
Let Every Nation Know: John F. Kennedy in His Own Words (with Terry Golway) (Naperville, IL: Soursebooks, Inc., 2006)
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York: HarperCollins, 2007)
Harry S. Truman (Times Books, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8050-6938-9)
The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945–1953 (HarperCollins, 2010, ISBN 978-0-06-162866-5)
And why is it we don't have many options? Because we went in for all that reset / pulling-out-of-the-missile-defense-agreement-with-Poland-and-CZech-Republic / "After-the-election-I'll-have-more-flexibility" / blinking while Putin took over the addressing of Syria's chemical weapons shit as soon as this regime came into office. Not to mention that Putin could see evidence of UD decline such as the MEC accepting the Chomsky book from Chavez in front of the world's camera's, the Cairo speech in which he said it was a foremost prioroty of his to change US perceptions of Islam, and doing nothing when a popular uprising occurred in Iran in the wake of the rigged 2009 election.
ReplyDeleteOr the statement, "I suppose Greeks and Brits think their countries are exceptional, too."
ReplyDeleteSolway says about your Ronnie and the Bear: "When the Soviets engineered martial law in Poland in 1981, that master cold warrior, Ronald Regan himself, did not “begin bombing in five minutes,” (as he once joked he might like to in a sound check for a radio address). Instead, he called “upon all free people to join in urging the government of Poland to reestablish conditions that will make constructive negotiations and compromise possible.”
ReplyDeletehttp://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/ukraine-russia-crimea-cold-war-104438.html#ixzz2vP6Kwib0
Of course it all worked out but did you blame your Ronnie for the invasion back when?
You posit that "Putin could see evidence of UD decline such as the MEC accepting the Chomsky book from Chavez in front of the world's camera's (sic)'Do you know this for fact? Did Putin ever say so? If so, please provide citation or link:
ReplyDeleteNo, because nurturing Lech Walensa's Solidarity was the far more strategically wise course. As well as aking common cause with the Polish Pope.
ReplyDeleteRe: Do I have any hard and fast documentation that the footage of theMEC accepting that book was seen by Putin, much less having verifiable impact on him: You really aren't going to stoop to that, are you?
ReplyDeleteWorld leaders are sizing each other up al the time. It's always at least in their peripheral vision. It's what history books are filled with. You know damn well Putin was aware of that.
ReplyDeleteWell I do not care for either sizing up or being sized up so let them be rich, powerful and famous then, and leave me the F alone, thank you very much world leaders.
ReplyDeleteTalk about decline of the west, carping over acceptance of a book, sheesh. Putin is a dick. Would you prefer to have a leader like that, ooh so stwong, like Ahnnold, only interested in pumping himself up. I'd avoid the jerk personally.
ReplyDeleteEach of us, as we journey through life, has the opportunity to find and to give his or her unique gift. Whether this gift is quiet or small in the eyes of the world does not matter at all--not at all; it is through the finding and the giving that we may come to know the joy that lies at the center of both the dark times and the light."
ReplyDelete—Helen M. Luke
read more at http://www.parabola.org/
Why you are so indifferent to the growing likelihood that your grandchildren will experience darkness that you never did is beyond me.
ReplyDelete"Leave me the F alone, world leaders." Yes sir, there's a policy orientation informed by history.
ReplyDeleteAs for the grandchildren experiencing darkness, well, it's not dark yet.
ReplyDeleteSure, it's informed by history. History shows world leaders will not leave me and the world alone, but I see the light.
As for Putin, he is the one you should be damning, not our current commander in chief who is correctly, with the aid & abetment of other allies, letting Putin hang himself. You seem to prefer some awesome display of strength but Putin and we know we have. A silver lining for your ilk though might be curtailed cuts to the military budget, much of which goes to, yep, "entitlements (for the military)." Our ilk hates Putin as much as your ilk does. Only difference is that you think yours is the only way, which is right now basically bitching about US causing Putin to do what he's doing.
This is the Tao of Putin, wait around a bit and watch him fall and fail:
"...Putin risks alienating himself not only from the West and Ukraine, to say nothing of the global economy he dearly wants to join, but from Russia itself. His dreams of staying in office until 2024, of being the most formidable state-builder in Russian history since Peter the Great, may yet founder on the peninsula of Crimea. "
Read more at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2014/03/17/140317taco_talk_remnick?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook
Sounds like the same delusional thinking that causes post-American Freedom-Hater leaders to register surprise when some thug behaves as thugs do.
ReplyDeleteWhen we have a military that has been downsized the way ours recently was, that has become a bastion of political correctness and social engineering, and is unwilling to call out the jihadists in its own ranks, when we have a secretary of state who thinks "climate change" is as big a threat as WMD proliferation, and when we have a "president" who appeases rogues and spurns allies the way the MEC has, such a situation must be included in any conversation about the current state of post-America - Russia relations.
ReplyDelete