There's been no US invasion only by Russia. But the Ukraine is an independent country and it's being basically attacked by insurgents who are affiliated with the Russians. There are treaties on this kind of stuff. You can't just let them go back to smaller countries and basically take them over.
The Ukraine has been a province of Russia or the USSR forever. Look at a map. The smart money says the US had a hand in toppling Yanukovych, the Russians surely think so, and they know a hell of a lot more about what goes on over there than we do. Their interest in what happens on their border is orders of magnitudes stronger than some bullshit platitudes you hear from the US Secretary of State about supporting democracy and freedom, blah, blah, blah. There are just some fights you shouldn't pick, and the Ukraine is one of them. We need Putin a hell of alot more than we neet the Ukrainians.
Absolutely. You can have the most ruthless of depots committing unconscionable atrocities, however the moment the U.S. steps in to intervene the entire Middle East mindset defaults to "poor besieged sovereign nation (and it's rightful leader) attacked by the Great Satan - Al mout li Amreeka!" Stay out, sit back, nuke some popcorn and watch it play out. A Russian/Iranian/Assad collilition should put the squeeze to ISIS in short order. And if not, nuke some more popcorn.
The worst part is that we couldn't get things under control for the Ukrainians after the action started. Who knows who started this, but once we stood up as the other side we needed to be able to wind things down without leaving the Ukrainians in a perpetual cold war with the giant next door. Our answer was to put sanctions on Putin and his cronies or primary supporters, a tactic that might cause some moderation in the end but was certain to infuriate the Russians and cause exactly the kind of untraceable interventions that we've seen since then. We're using the Ukraine as a pawn in our fight against Putin and pawns get sacrificed all the time.
Ukraine isn't a province of Russia anymore. And sure the US probably had a hand in Yanukovich's toppling, and good riddance. That criminal now lives in Russia's Rublevka with all the other criminals with all their stolen money. What do we need Putler for anyway? That dictator scumbag has to go.
That's some pretty tough talk about showing the door to the leader of the second largest military in the world. You and what army?
Bay of Pigs scenario doesn't work. Same reasons, anybody who managed to get deposed in the first place is probably not well enough equipped to get back in power.
We're not going to depose Putin with the help of former members of the KGB. Anybody who was in position to really help with that has already been dealt with in some way. They've been bought off in a way likely to stick. They've been buried somewhere. They've been put somewhere they can't hurt the current government. If that wasn't the case Putin wouldn't be doing his second gig as the supreme ruler. He'd have been deposed during all the machinations with his puppet the last time around. It just isn't going to happen that way. The real assets that might have been able to help us were the old guard we had co-opted while the Soviet Union was still a going concern. Those guys are all 70 years old or older now and they're not in positions that will help us much, assuming they survived the fall of the Soviet Union. If we think that we have reliable people inside Putin's government it's likely only because he wants us to think that's the case. This isn't political games that we're playing here. It's not a battle of ideologies. It's nationalism and money and the people who are willing to take money always come out behind in the end. Assets who would gladly have deposed the Soviets because they didn't believe in Communism aren't likely to be interested in making Russia a lapdog of the west. That's not the same thing.
If you watched Obama's Q&A with the press corps today he was directly asked what his response will be if Russia attacks those he considers moderates against Assad. And groups in Syria the U.S. has had relations with. In terms of equipping them and more. That's the $64 Question. Which he basically didn't completely answer.
Being opaque in a situation like this is much better than giving the other guy a clear vision of what will happen. This assuming that we're not interested in WWIII and believe the Russians aren't jonesing for it either. Lines in the sand tend to get stepped across all the time and then what do you do?
Putler kills most Russians who speak out against him.We only know about the obvious ones like Nemtsov and Politkovskaya but who knows how many more he's killed. Though it needs to be said that while the KGB does not exist anymore, they copied the USA, and now have 2 branches the SVR and the FSB. One doing foreign work and one doing domestic, both answering to Putler. There's also the military GRU, which also answers to Putler. One can only hope there are people like Dmitri Polyakov in their current intelligent services, helping the CIA and the FBI.
I'm still waiting for the sequel to Charlie Wilson's War which actually identifies all the unintended consequences those heroes caused.
Basically I dont know how much truth is in this documentary but I took out the time to see it and Putin seems more like a Godfather than a President. People who get close to investigating him end up dead. Doc. covers the apartment buildings in 99(?) to now. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/putins-way/
When you arm an insurgency you own it and then when things go badly, as they will 90% of the time, you own the aftermath also, assuming you are still welcome in the region. China is going to have more trade with South America than the US at some point fairly soon and that's all on us at this point. South Americans hate us.
