Can you reference the speech please? All i see when I search for the context is Palin claiming she said this. I don't actually see where or in what context she said it.
Something else I would like to point out. This won't be like the Georgia situation. Ukrainians are not like Georgians. Ukrainians will fight to the death. They will fight. Russia will squash them, but they will put up a good fight. The country is large and their military is stronger than you would think. What's even stronger is the blood... these people when through the worst of it during WW2 and the survivors have a bloodline that will fight. Ukrainians are very proud people and the men there are all mostly trained to fight in some capacity, many are special forces. The Tatars in Crimea will fight with the Ukrainians. Turkey may even get involved. My wife just read on a Ukrainian website that the Chechens said if the Russians harm the muslim Tatars in Crimea they will destroy Moscow from the inside out. Basically, the world is against Russia. The best thing that could possibly happen is if the Russian people rise up and overthrow Putin. It's time.
I would also like to ask you guys, Major and Rocketsjudoka in particular. How is this any different from Hitler invading Poland?
Whatever happened to your libertarian stance of staying out of other peoples problems? Commodore exposed...
I think the invasion is similar, but the driving force behind the Nazi movement was the believe the Aryan race was the "best" race, for society and such, and the shared hatred for the Jews. I think that Putin falls short of trying to change the world and is more trying to reclaim former Russian occupations. I think this is where his potential world domination will fall on deaf ears since his, in my mind, angle is rallying Russian/non-western idealists. Don't let this come off as an excuse. He can not be allowed to invade countries as he pleases. I think that our involvement comes into play because of the Budapest Memorandum. Our word is at stake ATM. I don't think there will be a conflict UNLESS the Ukraine is able to muster up forces. Russia is invested, $15 billion, in Ukraine and is trying to send a message that they do not want them to lean towards the EU. Unless Ukraine can get some major backing, forces-wise, Russia will not have a conflict with Ukraine. The annexation of Ukraine is also unlikely. As long as Russia's message is sent to the powers in Ukraine and can confirm they are still in bed with a more Pro-Russia mentality they will not mind as long as the finances and policies are in tact. Right now the worst thing to do would be to go on the offensive.
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What people did they push around in Kiev, government forces shot at them. What precedent was set, exactly? And even if they lost the moral authority to complain (what the hell does that even mean), what the hell says I have? I've explicitly said not all of the protesters are my cup of tea. Doesn't mean I can't highlight a fragrant injustice. Sure, I'm hypocritical and biased because based on a precedent that was not set, children are being beaten into submission. Makes sense.
now this makes more sense--- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ys-relationship-to-moscow-putin-clears-it-up/ Already proven several times wrong--- http://rt.com/news/russia-crimea-sieze-gunmen-344/ http://online.wsj.com/news/articles...0001424052702304709904579412801169658772.html Locals at the scene are saying this hasn't happened, also security forces. You're accusing me of being biased, and you're reading Russia Today?
Nobody sane wants the US to get involved militarily, but there is no excuse for diminishing the accountability Ukraine's previous leadership had in conducting the nation to this state where violence was the norm, and corruption leeches billions. I myself was a strong advocate of intervening in Syria, if only in a peacekeeping capacity, and under a UN banner. As that couldn't happen, I had to resort to imagining a world system that ACTUALLY made sense and a set of laws that people would follow, but these are the times we live in--- At this point with direct conflict with Russia, it's ludicrous to consider the UN framework. Simplified or not, there are always ugly ducklings in a protest. You can argue they were involved extensively in the violence. Fine. That does not excuse a government that tried to disperse the protests with force consistently, and then decided, for extra kicks, let's deploy snipers (???)
[rquoter]Telephone conversation with US President Barack Obama March 2, 2014, 01:20 Tags: foreign policy, United States Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with President of the United States Barack Obama on the American side’s initiative. The two presidents discussed in detail various aspects of the extraordinary situation in Ukraine. In reply to Mr Obama’s concern over the possibility of the use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin drew his attention to the provocative and criminal actions on the part of ultranationalists who are in fact being supported by the current authorities in Kiev. The Russian President spoke of a real threat to the lives and health of Russian citizens and the many compatriots who are currently on Ukrainian territory. Vladimir Putin stressed that in case of any further spread of violence to Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, Russia retains the right to protect its interests and the Russian-speaking population of those areas.[/rquoter] http://eng.kremlin.ru/news/6752
I think that a resolution with the Krim as an autonomous region that somehow has ties to both the Ukraine and Russia is probably best. Definitely not worth starting a war over. I hope and think that the leaders of Russia, the EU and the USA are in close contact and somehow agree on a reasonable solution. No bloodshed needed.
Guessing here but Russia will not invade but will get a guarantee that Ukraine will never be allowed to join EU and U.S. will probably be hailed as a great negotiator by the West but be mocked by the East as weak.
WRM writes well. [rquoter]Putin Smashes Washington’s Cocoon A Politico report calls it “a crisis that no one anticipated.” The Daily Beast, reporting on Friday’s US intelligence assessment that “Vladimir Putin’s military would not invade Ukraine,” quotes a Senate aide claiming that “no one really saw this kind of thing coming.” Op-eds from all over the legacy press this week helped explained why. Through the rose tinted lenses of a media community deeply convinced that President Obama and his dovish team are the masters of foreign relations, nothing poor Putin did could possibly derail the stately progress of our genius president. There were, we were told, lots of reasons not to worry about Ukraine. War is too costly for Russia’s weak economy. Trade would suffer, the ruble would take a hit. The 2008 war with Georgia is a bad historical comparison, as Ukraine’s territory, population and military are much larger. Invasion would harm Russia’s international standing. Putin doesn’t want to spoil his upcoming G8 summit, or his good press from Sochi. Putin would rather let the new government in Kiev humiliate itself with incompetence than give it an enemy to rally against. Crimea’s Tartars and other anti-Russian ethnic minorities wouldn’t stand for it. Headlines like “Why Russia Won’t Invade Ukraine,” “No, Russia Will Not Intervene in Ukraine,” and “5 Reasons for Everyone to Calm Down About Crimea” weren’t hard to find in our most eminent publications. Nobody, including us, is infallible about the future. Giving the public your best thoughts about where things are headed is all a poor pundit (or government analyst) can do. But this massive intellectual breakdown has a lot to do with a common American mindset that is especially built into our intellectual and chattering classes. Well educated, successful and reasonably liberal minded Americans find it very hard to believe that other people actually see the world in different ways. They can see that Vladimir Putin is not a stupid man and that many of his Russian officials are sophisticated and seasoned observers of the world scene. American experts and academics assume that smart people everywhere must want the same things and reach the same conclusions about the way the world works. How many times did foolishly confident American experts and officials come out with some variant of the phrase “We all share a common interest in a stable and prosperous Ukraine.” We may think that’s true, but Putin doesn’t. We blame this in part on the absence of true intellectual and ideological diversity in so much of the academy, the policy world and the mainstream media. Most college kids at good schools today know many more people from different races and cultural groups than their grandparents did, but they are much less exposed to people who think outside the left-liberal box. How many faithful New York Times readers have no idea what American conservatives think, much less how Russian oligarchs do? Well bred and well read Americans live in an ideological and cultural cocoon and this makes them fatally slow to understand the very different motivations that animate actors ranging from the Tea Party to the Kremlin to, dare we say it, the Supreme Leader and Guide of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As far as we can tell, the default assumption guiding our political leadership these days is that the people on the other side of the bargaining table (unless they are mindless Tea Party Republicans) are fundamentally reasonable people who see the world as we do, and are motivated by the same things that motivate us. Many people are, of course, guided by an outlook not all that dissimilar from the standard upper middle class gentry American set of progressive ideas. But some aren’t, and when worlds collide, trouble comes. Too much of the Washington policy establishment looks around the world and sees only reflections of its own enlightened self. That’s natural and perhaps inevitable to some degree. The people who rise through the competitive bureaucracies of American academic, media and think tank life tend to be those who’ve most thoroughly absorbed and internalized the set of beliefs and behavioral norms that those institutions embody and respect. On the whole, those beliefs and norms have a lot going for them. It would not be an improvement if America’s elite institutions started to look more like their counterparts in Russia or Zimbabwe. But while those ideas and beliefs help people rise through the machinery of the American power system, they can get in the way when it comes to understanding the motives and calculations of people like President Putin. The best of the journalists, think tankers and officials will profit from the Crimean policy fiasco and will never again be as smug or as blind as so much of Washington was last week. The mediocre majority will go on as before. The big question of course, is what President Obama will take away from this experience. Has he lost confidence in the self-described (and self-deceived) ‘realists’ who led him down the primrose path with their empty happy talk and their beguiling but treacherous illusions? Has he rethought his conviction that geopolitics and strategy are relics of a barbarous past with no further relevance in our own happy day? Is he tired of being humiliated on the international stage? Is it dawning on him that he has actual enemies rather than difficult partners out there, and that they wish him ill and seek to harm him? (Again, we are not talking about the GOP in Congress.) Let’s hope so. There are almost three years left in this presidential term, and they could be very long ones if President Obama chooses to stick with the ideas and approaches he’s been using so far.[/rquoter] http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/03/01/putin-smashes-washingtons-cocoon/
For starters, I don't think Poland supported the invasion by Hitler. As of now, it seems like the leadership of Crimea is OK with Russian forces coming in - though that's not totally clear as we don't have a good sense of the ground situation just yet. The Ukraine situation is complicated by the fact that there are split loyalties within the country itself. Again, that's not to say Russia's at all right in doing any of this. But it's fairly logical to expect them to assert themselves and their interests there because of the extensive Russian population in the country and their economic interests there - this would be true even if they weren't led by a Putin type. Anytime a major power's neighbors go into chaos, you can expect that country to get involved - both to gain influence and to prevent chaos from crossing over into your own borders. If North Korea goes to hell, you can be sure China will involve itself. If Mexico were to descend into civil war, you can be sure the US would involve itself. Antagonizing the west and the general trouble making here seems more like a bonus for Putin than his focus here.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p><a href="http://t.co/uCeQuUDbJz" title="http://gordonua.com/news/politics/Na-granice-u-propusknogo-punkta-Senkovka-skoplenie-rossiyskoy-tehniki--12342.html">gordonua.com/news/politics/…</a> Ukrainian reports that Russian troops amassing at border near Senkovka, 143 miles outside Kiev <a href="http://t.co/aTcxamRnZW" title="http://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/439947534077661184/photo/1">pic.twitter.com/aTcxamRnZW</a></p>— Kevin Rothrock (@KevinRothrock) <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/status/439947534077661184" data-datetime="2014-03-02T02:17:20+00:00">March 2, 2014</a></blockquote> <script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
