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Putin's Crimea Grab Shows He Misunderstands 21st Century Power

35 points by ytNumbers 13y ago

ck2 13y ago
Here's a scary thought, what if he reinstates Viktor in the Ukraine? Can you imagine the riots? He then has the Russian troops there to force it to happen and end it with violence that might start a civil war. Because that's what he seems headed towards: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/putin-ukraine-unconstitutional-coup-yanukovych-legitimate-leader-article-1.1709894 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/putin-ukraine-unconsti...
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  He doesn't need to. Yanukovych can retire to a country home in east Ukraine or Russia, and they simply need elections free from US and EU interference, and whoever the new Party of Regions candidate is will win. UDAR, Fatherland, and Svoboda will split the pro-EU vote (as they did in the most recent elections), and the Party of Regions will wind up winning again. Given free elections, Putin doesn't even need to rig anything, the PoR actually is the dominant political party in Ukraine (which is why the opposition overthrew them - they knew they couldn't win). Yanukovych came to power when the opposition controlled things, if anyone doesn't remember...
- xentronium 13y ago
  Nah, even the Kremlin inhabitants called Victor Yanukovitch a political corpse having "negligible authority" (Medvedev) in their own country.
junto 13y ago
Picture a small yappy poodle (Britain) hiding behind a rottweiler (US), who is tied to a tree staring down a bear (Russia) with a sore head, who has been baited for the last 20 years by the rottweiler. Meanwhile an old German shepherd dog (Germany) sits inside on the rug in front of the fire, pricks his ears up, listens and goes straight back to sleep.
- hnriot 13y ago
  Inaccurate for one and I'm not sure what your point is. You underestimate England and have a very recent view of history.
  - nmeofthestate 13y ago
    England != UK.
  - oblio 13y ago
    Why is he underestimating England? At this point England is basically: a) an English speaking financial center b) an English speaking media source Does it count for anything else? Both of those are only relevant now because of English becoming today's lingua franca, mostly due to the US. Even in Europe they're second fiddle to Germany/France.
  - junto 13y ago
    > You underestimate England and have a very recent view of history Ok, I'll bite: 1. It was a joke. 2. I'm British. UK or Britain, but not "England". Please. We don't have an English Army. We have an English football team, but that is a different story, and "the Germans always win". 3. The British Armed Forces strength (especially its navy) has been severely depleted in the last 20 years. They currently only have two aircraft carriers, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean. Illustrious was refitted to cover for Ocean whilst in refit (still ongoing), and then would be decommissioned afterwards (sometime this year). The Royal Navy decommissioned the awesome but expensive Harriers [ii]. They (we) have no fixed wing aircraft carriers anymore [iv]. This is all due to the Strategic Defence and Security Review [i] in 2010 in order to save £38 billion. David Cameron went to town and stripped the British Armed Forces to its bare naked minimum as part of this review and stated that: "From a strategy over-reliant on military intervention to a higher priority for conflict prevention. From concentrating on conventional threats to a new focus on unconventional threats. And from armed forces that are overstretched, under-equipped and deployed too often without appropriate planning to the most professional and most flexible modern forces in the world, fully equipped for the challenges of the future." So, in summary, Britain doesn't have the capability to defend itself without the US backing it. It can't even service its own Vanguard submarine Trident II missiles. The UK is a mouth piece. It is that little child that repeats everything the teacher says - in that annoying "I told you so" voice. However, out in the playground he gets bullied and has the seven shades of shit knocked out of him until the teacher steps in. Amusingly Margaret Thatcher (another Tory) stripped the Navy back in 1980/1981, only to find out that she needed them after all. When they needed to go to the Falklands, she didn't have ships. The fascinating story from behind the scenes can be read in full here: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/01/falklands-war-thatcher-30-years http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/01/falklands-war-that... This would have been a very different tale without US support [v]. [i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_and_Security_Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_and_Security_... [ii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15876745 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15876745 [iii] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/uk-can-no-longer-mount-military-operations-like-iraq http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/uk-can-no-lo... [iv] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/david-cameron-defence-cuts-decade-aircraft-carriers-no-jets http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/david-camero... [v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_Falklands_War#The_US_officially_comes_down_on_the_side_of_the_British http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_Falklands...
mercurial 13y ago
I think Putin's Crimea grab shows he understands exactly what he can get away with. The UK and Germany seem both reluctant to do anything harsh, and I don't see France doing anything different.
- jordanb 13y ago
  The UK's position is particularly shameful. Their goal is to "protect the city". They're afraid a pullout of Russian money would hurt the stock market and it'd certainly pop the housing bubble. It's all highly cynical and quite corrupt.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    Agreed, it's pretty sad to see. Unfortunately, politics is a lot about posturing and little about principles.
interstitial 13y ago
Or maybe the Latimes misunderstands 21st Century Power.
jordanb 13y ago
I think it was an act of panic on his part. He's popular in Russia because he's a strong man and he makes Russians feel powerful. Yanukovych was Putin's boy in Ukraine and they kicked him out on the ass he rode in on. If Putin can't even keep his puppets in power in former SSRs then what kind of strongman is he? Now Putin needs to 1) make this look like a victory without 2) too many negative international consequences. Given that he controls Europe's natural gas he actually has a lot of leverage to get a decent deal, so my bet is that he'll be able to get some sort of change in political status for Crimea. That may seem kinda pointless given Crimea lacks any sort of strategic importance but remember that Putin's goal is not to gain a better strategic or political position for Russia but rather, to not look impotent to his domestic audience.
- iwwr 13y ago
  By "they" who kicked him out, who do you mean?
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  Exactly the problem with dictatorships. You can't have the ruler "look bad" even for trivial stuff, and he'd rather send thousands or tens of thousands of people to their death, than be embarrassed himself. We can argue whether Russia is a dictatorship or not, but I'd say it's a lot closer to one than to democracy, especially when opposition leaders and protesters are arrested, and everyone else in the Parliament votes for whatever Putin says, out of fear for their lives, and elections are being robbed like there's no tomorrow, while Putin gets to interpret the Constitution as he's being allowed to rule virtually forever in Russia. If Russia had a functioning democracy and Parliament, it wouldn't matter that Putin was "embarrassed" and made to look like a fool (which I don't think anyone thought that, at least not from outside of Russia, but it seems to be more of a thing in his mind).
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    I think you underestimate Putin's popularity. I have a lot of Russian friends, all of them are various degrees of pro-Putin...
hnriot 13y ago
What terrible journalistic analysis. Putinis 21st century power. He understands it just fine.
chj 13y ago
Who's out of touch with reality here? Putin or latimes?
- Shivetya 13y ago
  My question has been this all the long. Really, why is this uprising democratic in nature as many Western news sources claim? They drove off an elected government. One of the heroines of this movement is a monster who was similarly driven out of power in the preceding Orange Revolution (or whatever) If anything its only an issue because Putin has not decided to play ball like the others want. He went his own way in Syria and came off as the side with the sensible alternatives. He is not drawing red lines in the sand only to have other countries ignore them, heck he ignores them. You have a large country on your borders with a very large military do the freak out twice in ten years, yeah I would be concerned. Better yet, since there are many ethnic groups that share similarities across borders, if not merely separated by past Soviet political games, there are some valid concerns to be addressed. Let alone there are Russian military bases are there by treaty and lease in Crimeria, there is also a large contingent that has been trying to align with Russia since the Soviet Union broke up. So its not all cut and dry as many in the West would like. Considering the US recent history with Libya, Syria, and drone assassination programs, its not like we have the moral standing to chastise them
  - pekk 13y ago
    You are GRAVELY misinformed and you are destroying all nuance because you are in such a rush to change the subject to condemning "the West". Tymoshenko was NOT driven out during the Orange Revolution. She was one of its leaders. But since you seem to support the Orange Revolution, why was that democratic in nature? Since you claim that ethnic Ukrainians were prone to carry out a pogrom against ethnic Russians, provide any evidence for that claim. Russia has a port in Crimea and there are some Russian-aligned people there, that is fine, actually the US position was that Putin should pull back to his bases. Somehow you missed the part about marching a large army into Ukraine and how that violates existing treaties and the sovereignty of Ukraine. The existence of drones does not invalidate all treaties. If your problem with drones is violation of international law, you must at least oppose other violations of international law. It doesn't make sense to be selective.
jbooth 13y ago
This whole situation has really highlighted what gossip rags our media are. 90% of the news articles on the subject are just using it as a proxy for the same-old domestic political narratives. I read a George Will column this morning that blamed Putin's invasion on Obamacare. I looked into my crystal ball and came up with some predictions: 1) Russia will annex Crimea, and we won't do a thing about it. 2) The pro-western government in Kiev will survive, join the EU, and possibly NATO 3) A month from now, we'll have pushed our cultural/economic borders 500 miles to the east of where they were in 2013, right up against Russia's, and maybe our military borders as well, while depriving Russia of their last remaining european client state. Without lifting a finger. While Russia had to mobilize to salvage one of their most important ports and keep the situation from being a total loss for them. 4) Columnists will write opinion pieces about how Putin is the real winner here, because of his toughness, the set of his jaw and the captivating, cold stare of those blue-gray eyes.
- jerf 13y ago
  I agree in the longterm that Russia is simply not in a position to be the world power it wants to be, and this doesn't change that; indeed, it is likely to be a step backward for them in the longterm as the world begins taking the idea that Russia is essentially a rogue state very seriously, and adjusting their economics to this reality, which Russia is not going to like. However, in the short term he is still being very successful in making the West look feckless with its total shock that this happened and complete unpreparedness for it. It is simply not a credit to our foreign policy wonks that they are apparently so narcissistic that it appears they are unable to comprehend the idea that Putin would actually do this, despite the fact our foreign policy wonks would never see it as a good idea. For an ideology that is ever-preaching "diversity" it seems to have a really hard idea with the idea that there are people who do not merely have beliefs that superficially differ from it, but that profoundly differ from it.
  - jbooth 13y ago
    "look feckless".. so you agree with the idiot columnists? If we were Russia, we would absolutely see it as a good idea to make sure we controlled Crimea. It's like 70% Russian-speaking, was part of the Russian empire until the 50s and indirectly Russian from then on, and Sevastopol is one of the most important military locations in the world to them, as well as a historic Russian city. Of course they're going to make sure they keep Crimea. But that's all they're keeping, as opposed to the whole Ukrainian nation being under their influence. That's a loss for them, and people who don't track US domestic politics for a living can see that. Russia's not a 'rogue state', they're just looking after their interests here. The US has used a lot more military force for a lot worse reasons, and recently.
agrostis 13y ago
Oh, he seems to understand it well enough. Iraq '03 and Libya '11 have been excellent examples of 21st Century Power. (I'm omitting Serbia '99, as it was, formally speaking, 20th century, but that example was very spectacular, too.)
- einhverfr 13y ago
  See, I was going to say that Putin isn't far behind. After all, apparently the US is still learning these same lessons. one of the really annoying things one starts seeing in the American press when being away from the country for a while is the tremendous inability to see the same patterns at home as abroad. It's quite amusing and also quite disturbing.
- WesternStar 13y ago
  I think they were. You have to look at the situation the US was in a the time. Long quagmires are politically untenable in the US and Afghanistan is the most tactically difficult terrain in the history of the world. Additionally my enemies really aren't states so much as a political movement who survives largely through the tacit support of the surrounding population. I need an easy war and I need a place to kill terrorists and expose the indifferent to the effects of their violence. Whether or not that was the stated purpose that was the effect of the Iraq war. I would argue that excluding the real dollar cost it was probably one of the most successful wars in American history. As for Libya well to be honest it is no longer in America's interest to ensure stability in the middle east. In fact given the long reach of unhappy middle eastern people its our job to make sure they express that unhappiness right at home. The Libyan people are doing that right now.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    > Whether or not that was the stated purpose that was the effect of the Iraq war. I would argue that excluding the real dollar cost it was probably one of the most successful wars in American history. Wait, what? Al Qaeda was [surviving] "largely through the tacit support of the surrounding population" [of Iraq]? Saddam was not a major terror sponsor. But the net effect of this little experiment in nation-building is at the very least 100k dead civilians, and the build-up of insurgencies movements throughout the region, who have by now good weaponry and plenty of veterans. Oh, and fantastic PR for the western world, too.
camino020 13y ago
Putin: goes into Crimeea, doesn't kill anyone, doesn't steal anything. Openly supported by the population. Media: "Bad guy, aggressor, doesn't understand power, etc." Nato/US: goes into Irak, kills millions, destroy country, steal all resources, then goes into Libya - does same thing; working on the same in Syria. Planing the same for Iran. Drone-ing hundreds of children in Pakistan and Afganistan. Media: "Liberators,spreading democracy."
- skylan_q 13y ago
  Most people inside the US don't understand the perception of the US from the outside. This is one of the reasons why Ukraine will be completely lost by the US and become a place where Russia and the EU can have a lot of common ground and realize a closer relationship.
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  By your spelling of Iraq as "Irak" I am going to wager you are Russian.
happyscrappy 13y ago
The whole thing is rather pathetic with Russian officials waving around a piece of paper saying Yanukovych asked our military to come take charge and save us from Nazis. Meanwhile Yanukovych's former aide states that is unlikely. Sad.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  What's pathetic is the west supporting a coup d'État and passing it off as democratic...
skylan_q 13y ago
Sure, the United States and the European Union have no inclination to send troops to defend Ukraine, but they have economic weapons that could severely undermine Russia’s tottering economy. No, they don't. Germany, for instance has a huge energy deficit and gets about a third of it's energy from Russia at a discounted rate primarily through the Nordstream pipeline. The low debt load and the fact that Europe depends on it as a source of energy means that the economic ball is more in Russia's court than the EU's. The US can block all trade between Russia and itself, and all that would do is hurt vodka sales.
- ithkuil 13y ago
  Is it there anything that Russia might need to import from US or US owned companies around the world?

35 points by ytNumbers 13y ago

ck2 13y ago

Here's a scary thought, what if he reinstates Viktor in the Ukraine? Can you imagine the riots? He then has the Russian troops there to force it to happen and end it with violence that might start a civil war. Because that's what he seems headed towards: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/putin-ukraine-unconstitutional-coup-yanukovych-legitimate-leader-article-1.1709894 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/putin-ukraine-unconsti...

Mikeb85 13y ago
He doesn't need to. Yanukovych can retire to a country home in east Ukraine or Russia, and they simply need elections free from US and EU interference, and whoever the new Party of Regions candidate is will win. UDAR, Fatherland, and Svoboda will split the pro-EU vote (as they did in the most recent elections), and the Party of Regions will wind up winning again. Given free elections, Putin doesn't even need to rig anything, the PoR actually is the dominant political party in Ukraine (which is why the opposition overthrew them - they knew they couldn't win). Yanukovych came to power when the opposition controlled things, if anyone doesn't remember...
xentronium 13y ago
Nah, even the Kremlin inhabitants called Victor Yanukovitch a political corpse having "negligible authority" (Medvedev) in their own country.

junto 13y ago

Picture a small yappy poodle (Britain) hiding behind a rottweiler (US), who is tied to a tree staring down a bear (Russia) with a sore head, who has been baited for the last 20 years by the rottweiler. Meanwhile an old German shepherd dog (Germany) sits inside on the rug in front of the fire, pricks his ears up, listens and goes straight back to sleep.

hnriot 13y ago
Inaccurate for one and I'm not sure what your point is. You underestimate England and have a very recent view of history.
- nmeofthestate 13y ago
  England != UK.
- oblio 13y ago
  Why is he underestimating England? At this point England is basically: a) an English speaking financial center b) an English speaking media source Does it count for anything else? Both of those are only relevant now because of English becoming today's lingua franca, mostly due to the US. Even in Europe they're second fiddle to Germany/France.
- junto 13y ago
  > You underestimate England and have a very recent view of history Ok, I'll bite: 1. It was a joke. 2. I'm British. UK or Britain, but not "England". Please. We don't have an English Army. We have an English football team, but that is a different story, and "the Germans always win". 3. The British Armed Forces strength (especially its navy) has been severely depleted in the last 20 years. They currently only have two aircraft carriers, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean. Illustrious was refitted to cover for Ocean whilst in refit (still ongoing), and then would be decommissioned afterwards (sometime this year). The Royal Navy decommissioned the awesome but expensive Harriers [ii]. They (we) have no fixed wing aircraft carriers anymore [iv]. This is all due to the Strategic Defence and Security Review [i] in 2010 in order to save £38 billion. David Cameron went to town and stripped the British Armed Forces to its bare naked minimum as part of this review and stated that: "From a strategy over-reliant on military intervention to a higher priority for conflict prevention. From concentrating on conventional threats to a new focus on unconventional threats. And from armed forces that are overstretched, under-equipped and deployed too often without appropriate planning to the most professional and most flexible modern forces in the world, fully equipped for the challenges of the future." So, in summary, Britain doesn't have the capability to defend itself without the US backing it. It can't even service its own Vanguard submarine Trident II missiles. The UK is a mouth piece. It is that little child that repeats everything the teacher says - in that annoying "I told you so" voice. However, out in the playground he gets bullied and has the seven shades of shit knocked out of him until the teacher steps in. Amusingly Margaret Thatcher (another Tory) stripped the Navy back in 1980/1981, only to find out that she needed them after all. When they needed to go to the Falklands, she didn't have ships. The fascinating story from behind the scenes can be read in full here: http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/01/falklands-war-thatcher-30-years http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/apr/01/falklands-war-that... This would have been a very different tale without US support [v]. [i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_and_Security_Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_and_Security_... [ii] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15876745 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15876745 [iii] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/uk-can-no-longer-mount-military-operations-like-iraq http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/uk-can-no-lo... [iv] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/david-cameron-defence-cuts-decade-aircraft-carriers-no-jets http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/oct/19/david-camero... [v] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_Falklands_War#The_US_officially_comes_down_on_the_side_of_the_British http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Events_leading_to_the_Falklands...

mercurial 13y ago

I think Putin's Crimea grab shows he understands exactly what he can get away with. The UK and Germany seem both reluctant to do anything harsh, and I don't see France doing anything different.

jordanb 13y ago
The UK's position is particularly shameful. Their goal is to "protect the city". They're afraid a pullout of Russian money would hurt the stock market and it'd certainly pop the housing bubble. It's all highly cynical and quite corrupt.
- mercurial 13y ago
  Agreed, it's pretty sad to see. Unfortunately, politics is a lot about posturing and little about principles.

interstitial 13y ago

Or maybe the Latimes misunderstands 21st Century Power.

jordanb 13y ago

I think it was an act of panic on his part. He's popular in Russia because he's a strong man and he makes Russians feel powerful. Yanukovych was Putin's boy in Ukraine and they kicked him out on the ass he rode in on. If Putin can't even keep his puppets in power in former SSRs then what kind of strongman is he? Now Putin needs to 1) make this look like a victory without 2) too many negative international consequences. Given that he controls Europe's natural gas he actually has a lot of leverage to get a decent deal, so my bet is that he'll be able to get some sort of change in political status for Crimea. That may seem kinda pointless given Crimea lacks any sort of strategic importance but remember that Putin's goal is not to gain a better strategic or political position for Russia but rather, to not look impotent to his domestic audience.

iwwr 13y ago
By "they" who kicked him out, who do you mean?
higherpurpose 13y ago
Exactly the problem with dictatorships. You can't have the ruler "look bad" even for trivial stuff, and he'd rather send thousands or tens of thousands of people to their death, than be embarrassed himself. We can argue whether Russia is a dictatorship or not, but I'd say it's a lot closer to one than to democracy, especially when opposition leaders and protesters are arrested, and everyone else in the Parliament votes for whatever Putin says, out of fear for their lives, and elections are being robbed like there's no tomorrow, while Putin gets to interpret the Constitution as he's being allowed to rule virtually forever in Russia. If Russia had a functioning democracy and Parliament, it wouldn't matter that Putin was "embarrassed" and made to look like a fool (which I don't think anyone thought that, at least not from outside of Russia, but it seems to be more of a thing in his mind).
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  I think you underestimate Putin's popularity. I have a lot of Russian friends, all of them are various degrees of pro-Putin...

hnriot 13y ago

What terrible journalistic analysis. Putinis 21st century power. He understands it just fine.

chj 13y ago

Who's out of touch with reality here? Putin or latimes?

Shivetya 13y ago
My question has been this all the long. Really, why is this uprising democratic in nature as many Western news sources claim? They drove off an elected government. One of the heroines of this movement is a monster who was similarly driven out of power in the preceding Orange Revolution (or whatever) If anything its only an issue because Putin has not decided to play ball like the others want. He went his own way in Syria and came off as the side with the sensible alternatives. He is not drawing red lines in the sand only to have other countries ignore them, heck he ignores them. You have a large country on your borders with a very large military do the freak out twice in ten years, yeah I would be concerned. Better yet, since there are many ethnic groups that share similarities across borders, if not merely separated by past Soviet political games, there are some valid concerns to be addressed. Let alone there are Russian military bases are there by treaty and lease in Crimeria, there is also a large contingent that has been trying to align with Russia since the Soviet Union broke up. So its not all cut and dry as many in the West would like. Considering the US recent history with Libya, Syria, and drone assassination programs, its not like we have the moral standing to chastise them
- pekk 13y ago
  You are GRAVELY misinformed and you are destroying all nuance because you are in such a rush to change the subject to condemning "the West". Tymoshenko was NOT driven out during the Orange Revolution. She was one of its leaders. But since you seem to support the Orange Revolution, why was that democratic in nature? Since you claim that ethnic Ukrainians were prone to carry out a pogrom against ethnic Russians, provide any evidence for that claim. Russia has a port in Crimea and there are some Russian-aligned people there, that is fine, actually the US position was that Putin should pull back to his bases. Somehow you missed the part about marching a large army into Ukraine and how that violates existing treaties and the sovereignty of Ukraine. The existence of drones does not invalidate all treaties. If your problem with drones is violation of international law, you must at least oppose other violations of international law. It doesn't make sense to be selective.

jbooth 13y ago

This whole situation has really highlighted what gossip rags our media are. 90% of the news articles on the subject are just using it as a proxy for the same-old domestic political narratives. I read a George Will column this morning that blamed Putin's invasion on Obamacare. I looked into my crystal ball and came up with some predictions: 1) Russia will annex Crimea, and we won't do a thing about it. 2) The pro-western government in Kiev will survive, join the EU, and possibly NATO 3) A month from now, we'll have pushed our cultural/economic borders 500 miles to the east of where they were in 2013, right up against Russia's, and maybe our military borders as well, while depriving Russia of their last remaining european client state. Without lifting a finger. While Russia had to mobilize to salvage one of their most important ports and keep the situation from being a total loss for them. 4) Columnists will write opinion pieces about how Putin is the real winner here, because of his toughness, the set of his jaw and the captivating, cold stare of those blue-gray eyes.

jerf 13y ago
I agree in the longterm that Russia is simply not in a position to be the world power it wants to be, and this doesn't change that; indeed, it is likely to be a step backward for them in the longterm as the world begins taking the idea that Russia is essentially a rogue state very seriously, and adjusting their economics to this reality, which Russia is not going to like. However, in the short term he is still being very successful in making the West look feckless with its total shock that this happened and complete unpreparedness for it. It is simply not a credit to our foreign policy wonks that they are apparently so narcissistic that it appears they are unable to comprehend the idea that Putin would actually do this, despite the fact our foreign policy wonks would never see it as a good idea. For an ideology that is ever-preaching "diversity" it seems to have a really hard idea with the idea that there are people who do not merely have beliefs that superficially differ from it, but that profoundly differ from it.
- jbooth 13y ago
  "look feckless".. so you agree with the idiot columnists? If we were Russia, we would absolutely see it as a good idea to make sure we controlled Crimea. It's like 70% Russian-speaking, was part of the Russian empire until the 50s and indirectly Russian from then on, and Sevastopol is one of the most important military locations in the world to them, as well as a historic Russian city. Of course they're going to make sure they keep Crimea. But that's all they're keeping, as opposed to the whole Ukrainian nation being under their influence. That's a loss for them, and people who don't track US domestic politics for a living can see that. Russia's not a 'rogue state', they're just looking after their interests here. The US has used a lot more military force for a lot worse reasons, and recently.

agrostis 13y ago

Oh, he seems to understand it well enough. Iraq '03 and Libya '11 have been excellent examples of 21st Century Power. (I'm omitting Serbia '99, as it was, formally speaking, 20th century, but that example was very spectacular, too.)

einhverfr 13y ago
See, I was going to say that Putin isn't far behind. After all, apparently the US is still learning these same lessons. one of the really annoying things one starts seeing in the American press when being away from the country for a while is the tremendous inability to see the same patterns at home as abroad. It's quite amusing and also quite disturbing.
WesternStar 13y ago
I think they were. You have to look at the situation the US was in a the time. Long quagmires are politically untenable in the US and Afghanistan is the most tactically difficult terrain in the history of the world. Additionally my enemies really aren't states so much as a political movement who survives largely through the tacit support of the surrounding population. I need an easy war and I need a place to kill terrorists and expose the indifferent to the effects of their violence. Whether or not that was the stated purpose that was the effect of the Iraq war. I would argue that excluding the real dollar cost it was probably one of the most successful wars in American history. As for Libya well to be honest it is no longer in America's interest to ensure stability in the middle east. In fact given the long reach of unhappy middle eastern people its our job to make sure they express that unhappiness right at home. The Libyan people are doing that right now.
- mercurial 13y ago
  > Whether or not that was the stated purpose that was the effect of the Iraq war. I would argue that excluding the real dollar cost it was probably one of the most successful wars in American history. Wait, what? Al Qaeda was [surviving] "largely through the tacit support of the surrounding population" [of Iraq]? Saddam was not a major terror sponsor. But the net effect of this little experiment in nation-building is at the very least 100k dead civilians, and the build-up of insurgencies movements throughout the region, who have by now good weaponry and plenty of veterans. Oh, and fantastic PR for the western world, too.

camino020 13y ago

Putin: goes into Crimeea, doesn't kill anyone, doesn't steal anything. Openly supported by the population. Media: "Bad guy, aggressor, doesn't understand power, etc." Nato/US: goes into Irak, kills millions, destroy country, steal all resources, then goes into Libya - does same thing; working on the same in Syria. Planing the same for Iran. Drone-ing hundreds of children in Pakistan and Afganistan. Media: "Liberators,spreading democracy."

skylan_q 13y ago
Most people inside the US don't understand the perception of the US from the outside. This is one of the reasons why Ukraine will be completely lost by the US and become a place where Russia and the EU can have a lot of common ground and realize a closer relationship.
IgorPartola 13y ago
By your spelling of Iraq as "Irak" I am going to wager you are Russian.

happyscrappy 13y ago

The whole thing is rather pathetic with Russian officials waving around a piece of paper saying Yanukovych asked our military to come take charge and save us from Nazis. Meanwhile Yanukovych's former aide states that is unlikely. Sad.

Mikeb85 13y ago
What's pathetic is the west supporting a coup d'État and passing it off as democratic...

skylan_q 13y ago

Sure, the United States and the European Union have no inclination to send troops to defend Ukraine, but they have economic weapons that could severely undermine Russia’s tottering economy. No, they don't. Germany, for instance has a huge energy deficit and gets about a third of it's energy from Russia at a discounted rate primarily through the Nordstream pipeline. The low debt load and the fact that Europe depends on it as a source of energy means that the economic ball is more in Russia's court than the EU's. The US can block all trade between Russia and itself, and all that would do is hurt vodka sales.

ithkuil 13y ago
Is it there anything that Russia might need to import from US or US owned companies around the world?