Russian Troops Using AR Rifles in the Crimea

[Dori]

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-2 ... -sanctions" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Barack Obama is forbidden from eating the bananas in our fridge.

[Jason K]

I'm not ready to start WWIII over Ukraine, but NATO has an obligation to protect the Baltic members. On a podcast I listen to, host Dan Carlin had a good idea. Give each Baltic state & other Eastern European nation close to Russia a few tactical nukes....either short-range missles or "suitcase" nukes to plant at key infrastructure. If Russia tries to rebuild the Warsaw Pact, let the nations with skin in the game handle it. We have more pressing concerns....like dealing with totalitarian governments closer to home.

[jmra]

I'm not ready to start WWIII over Ukraine, but NATO has an obligation to protect the Baltic members. On a podcast I listen to, host Dan Carlin had a good idea. Give each Baltic state & other Eastern European nation close to Russia a few tactical nukes....either short-range missles or "suitcase" nukes to plant at key infrastructure. If Russia tries to rebuild the Warsaw Pact, let the nations with skin in the game handle it. We have more pressing concerns....like dealing with totalitarian governments closer to home.

Russia can be brought to her knees without a shot being fired. The key is oil. Russia needs oil to be at least $90 a barrel in order to survive economically. If the US opened up drilling in key areas we could send oil down to $50 a barrel in a matter of months. This would cripple Russia's economy and send them crawling back to the mother land.

[The Annoyed Man]

I'm not ready to start WWIII over Ukraine, but NATO has an obligation to protect the Baltic members. On a podcast I listen to, host Dan Carlin had a good idea. Give each Baltic state & other Eastern European nation close to Russia a few tactical nukes....either short-range missles or "suitcase" nukes to plant at key infrastructure. If Russia tries to rebuild the Warsaw Pact, let the nations with skin in the game handle it. We have more pressing concerns....like dealing with totalitarian governments closer to home.

NATO's only obligation is to NATO members. NATO may choose unified action in non-NATO countries (Iraq, for instance), but there is no obligation for NATO member countries to defend non-member countries. However, part of Putin's motivation for acting as he did is that NATO members were agitating to bring Ukraine into NATO membership. But Ukraine is not the only place that Putin is flexing russian muscle:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 38387.html

http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/putin-to-put ... n-america/

[Jason K]

TAM: That's why I stated the Baltic states specifically. They've been NATO members for nearly a decade. Poland & the Czech Republic as well.

It's a lot like the RKBA discussions we have here. Instead of having these nations wait for the police (NATO) to protect them, they should have effective means to protect themselves.

[The Annoyed Man]

TAM: That's why I stated the Baltic states specifically. They've been NATO members for nearly a decade. Poland & the Czech Republic as well.

It's a lot like the RKBA discussions we have here. Instead of having these nations wait for the police (NATO) to protect them, they should have effective means to protect themselves.

Agreed about NATO. I guess my point is that NATO has no legal obligation to protect a nation that was considering NATO membership, but was not yet a member. Thus, NATO has no legal obligation to protect Ukraine. Whether there is a moral obligation is open for debate, but either way, there is no doubt that Putin has set out on a path to enlarge Russia's territory by annexing sovereign nations against their will, using the excuse of "protecting the rights of ethnic Russians" in those countries. It's laughable on its face. Imagine the president of Mexico ordering a military invasion of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to "protect the rights of ethnic Mexicans".

Putin is a pig. More importantly, he is an expansionist pig. Western european nations, on their own, lack the ability, the inclination, or the strength of character to defend their own interests by whatever means necessary. Their heavily socialistic structures have existed as long as they have because American taxpayers have footed the lion's share of their national defense costs, thereby freeing up Euros for social entitlements. Without the U.S. to cajole, prompt, lead, or bully fellow NATO members into acting in any kind of cohesive manner, NATO is a hollow shell, and as Charles L. Cotton pointed out above, we don't have a real President. He's an empty suit too, and he has shown ZERO inclination to lead in the world. In fact, even his supporters acknowledge that one of his goals is to pull America back from the front and to let other nations take the lead in things.......although they say it like it was a good thing. Putin is fully aware of that, and he is taking advantage of it.

Reagan was an advocate of peace through strength. You make yourself SO strong that your enemies (yes, Mitt Romney was right on that account.....Russia IS a geopolitical enemy) behave themselves. They don't behave themselves because they know it is the right thing to do. They behave themselves because they know they'll pay an extremely heavy price for upsetting the apple cart.

Obama has pursued a policy of geopolitical weakness. Putin well understands this. He may be a pig, but he's a smart pig. He is misbehaving because there is nobody to stop him for it. Nobody. The downside of making yourself weak is that you then have to fight a war to get back to an even footing. Putin knows that Obama will not commit the U.S. to a war. He knows that western european nations will not defend one another. Putin has already been making noises about doing the same thing to Estonia that he did to Ukraine. He's already done it in Georgia. He is agitating in Moldova right now, and it will go down next. You watch. Moldova will be annexed by Russia within the next year. But to do that, he will have to pull off a massive invasion of Ukraine proper. Guess what? Russian troops are massing on Ukraine's northern border by the tens of thousands. It's not an "exercise"; it's a build up to invasion. Estonia will be the next to fall after that. After them, look for Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus to fall, all in the name of "protecting the rights of ethnic Russians". If I were Poland, I'd be REALLY worried. Also, to the south of Ukraine lie Romania and Bulgaria and Turkey, all of whom are NATO members, and all of whom, particularly Turkey, have the ability to bottle up Russia's fleet in the Black Sea. Turkey in particular controls the Black Sea Fleet's access to the Mediterranean through the very narrow Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits. In any ground war, look for Russia to attack Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey. It would be fairly easy, militarily, for Russia to snap off that strip of NW Turkey, even without having to capture Romania or Bulgaria. The NW coast of Turkey, on the Black Sea, has miles and miles and miles of nice white sand beaches to accommodate landing craft.

And Putin WILL succeed because there are two forces at work here:

1. Obama is weak. He lacks the vision or the leadership to understand just how crucial America's role was in the world's geopolitical stability, and he lacks the willingness to shoulder that role. The cost of shouldering that role is to cut way back on social entitlement programs and to pour money back into rebuilding/refitting/re-equipping a military which has been stretched thin for years in terms of personnel and equipment. We have not built a new Abrams tank since 1999 ("new" tanks today consist of refurbished older variants and repaired battle-damaged units), on the (Bush/Rumsfeld inspired) rationale that future conflicts would be small regional conflagrations rather than the old cold-war fear that 100 divisions of Soviet tanks would pour through the Fulda Gap and annihilate NATO. Even the A10 Warthog, originally built to kill Soviet tanks in the Fulda Gap and which was recently pulled back from the brink of extinction, has not been in production since 1984, the last 716 that were ordered having been canceled. True to the dictum that we are always equipped and trained to fight the nation's last war, we are now scaled to fight local conflicts, making heavier use of special operations forces and counterinsurgency warfare than ever before, and we are no longer prepared for an ascendant Russia threatening its neighboring countries with 100s of divisions of tanks. That is a cold hard fact. That situation could be reversed, if Obama had the will, but he doesn't. He'd rather spend on social programs.
2. The nation is tired of war. For better or for worse, after 13 years of it, Americans are not going to be as willing to go die on foreign soil for people who lacked the character to prepare their own defenses, even if it meant cutting back on entitlements.

Like I said, Putin is very well aware of these things, and he is taking full advantage of it. So, by the way, is China.

Peace in Europe which was bought at such a high price in WW2, and maintained through American due diligence in the years since, is about to fly out the window, and the world my granddaughter grows up in will be far less secure than the world my dad helped to pay for with his blood, or I helped to pay for with my tax dollars. Now my tax dollars are used instead to buy birth control and abortions for skanks in the democrat party.

Fun times, n'est pas?

[bayouhazard]

Until Obama frees the states that seceded 150 years ago he is a hypocrite for objecting to Russia reclaiming states that left their union.

[The Annoyed Man]

Until Obama frees the states that seceded 150 years ago he is a hypocrite for objecting to Russia reclaiming states that left their union.

Russia isn't reclaiming states that left Russia. It is trying to "reclaim" states that left the former Soviet Union, of which Russia was just a part. When the USSR collapsed, its member states were free to go as they please, including Russia, but that didn't give Russia any legal or moral right to swallow up those states. What he is doing is pure expansionism. If you want to compare it to our states, the proper comparison would be the same as if the U.S. had ceased to exist, and Texas tried to annex Oklahoma. Just because they were both states in the former United States of America, it wouldn't give the former state Texas the right to annex another former state, not even under the pretext that a lot of Oklahomans are ethnic Texans whose rights need to be protected.

Obviously, that analogy doesn't work, and neither does the one you stated.

[mojo84]

No worries. Obama put Putin in place today via phone. Told him to pull his troops back. I'm sure Putin jumped right on that.

[Jason K]

TAM: Good analysis of the situation. I'll add one thing....

If Russia attacks Turkey, it will mobilize the Muslim nations against them. Look for things to heat up in Syria, Chechnya, & the 'Stans. And look for the Black Sea & Suez Canal to get real unfriendly toward Russian traffic.

[Charles L. Cotton]

Fighting Russia now would not be WWIII; it would be short and decisive. Fighting Russia in 10 years will be another story. How many times will the U.S. be blind to the threat that Gen. Patton warned about almost 70 years ago. We were at the brink of a total nuclear exchange with them on at least 3 occasions the public knows about and there were likely more. Currently, Russia is a shadow of the threat it once was, but all things change with time.

Any people that choose the former head of the KGB to be their leader is a people who long for the days when the Bear was feared worldwide, not a people who want peace.

Chas.

[karder]

Between Russia getting stronger and the current administration gleefully downsizing our own military, in 10 years we may be in no position to oppose Russia or anyone else.

[anygunanywhere]

Fighting Russia now would not be WWIII; it would be short and decisive. Fighting Russia in 10 years will be another story. How many times will the U.S. be blind to the threat that Gen. Patton warned about almost 70 years ago. We were at the brink of a total nuclear exchange with them on at least 3 occasions the public knows about and there were likely more. Currently, Russia is a shadow of the threat it once was, but all things change with time.

Any people that choose the former head of the KGB to be their leader is a people who long for the days when the Bear was feared worldwide, not a people who want peace.

Chas.

The only thing that kept the exchanges from occurring was the policy of mutual assured destruction - MAD. During the cold war, even though the Soviet block was virulently intent on spreading their communism world wide, they were still sane individuals who still had the sense of self preservation when faced with nuclear strength and superiority of warhead numbers. This is no longer the case.

We are quickly heading to losing the warhead superiority. As of this moment we are further reducing the number of warheads under the SALT treaties. This combined with the Chinese, North Korean, and unknown numbers of radical Islamic warheads negates the effectiveness of MAD. MAD only works if the opposing forces fear death and eradication. Once your enemies display their willingness to destroy you through their own suicide and willingness to sacrifice their own people you lose everything.

We are nearly there.

Anygunanywhere

[RoyGBiv]

Jews ordered to register in east Ukraine

Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city's Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee "or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated," reported Ynet News, Israel's largest news website.

[Jaguar]

Jews ordered to register in east Ukraine

Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city's Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee "or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated," reported Ynet News, Israel's largest news website.

Wow. Just wow. I cannot believe a complacent world will sit around while this happens again.