This is the really critical point of the negotiations. Somewhere in here somebody needs to get open guarantees to the Ukraine from Russia. If the process is managed properly the open territorial aggression will be largely defused. If it's not managed well we'll wind up with eastern Ukraine under constant threat of illegal occupation by Russian forces trying to create facts on the ground and another secession. This is where soft power comes into play. Sevastopol is secured for the Russians and in return for no more trouble-making in Ukraine the sanctions threat goes away. Ukraine joins the EU when they have met the necessary economic conditions for entry but they do not join NATO and no permanent forces of any other nation are stationed in the Ukraine. It's what has to be done at this point to avoid a real clusterfuck that will hurt everybody but will savage the Ukrainians.
Wars tend to be revolutionary, particularly the really big ones. I don't see left or right in this issue. I see interventionist and isolationist and there are people from both camps across the political spectrum at this point. I also fully agree with you that if something is not done to stabilize things fairly quickly this will spill into the Ukraine and at that point things will get very ugly.
One huge potential byproduct of this now that the US/EU and Russia are entrenched in their positions for the medium term is that the odds on an Israeli airstrike to take out Iran's nuclear production facilities have gone way up. There's going to be no cooperation at all from the Russians (as opposed to the grudging minimal cooperation they were giving before) on the issue and that's likely to lead to a strike at some point. Soon. Edit: just saw the inevitable concession from the Ukraine that it would not join NATO. That's beginning to sound like the deal that will defuse the situation. Russia gets the Crimea and the Ukraine agrees not to join NATO. Hopefully we see the beginning of sanctions easing and Russian troops leaving the Crimea and the deal is done and we can all get back to more important things. Edit again: and now Putin says the Russians have no designs on the rest of the Ukraine. That's the deal. Hope it sticks.
"First Casualty in Crimea" http://news.yahoo.com/ukrainian-soldier-killed-crimea-defence-ministry-162118792.html
Now as a result of this, Sweden and Finland are thinking of joining NATO. So, Putin isn't gonna get NATO at Russia's southern borders, he might get it at the northern borders instead
I don't think either will join NATO. The Swedes have a long tradition of neutrality and the Finns have a long-standing agreement with the Soviets and then Russians not to join in alliances aimed at containing Russia. I think Russia is going to wind up with everybody but Switzerland, Serbia, Sweden, Finland and the Ukraine lined up against them in NATO and have no way to make political gains with some of the countries that might have swayed back towards them over time. I think the anti-missile bases are back in play in Eastern Europe. I think Putin is going to regret not the fact that he went into the Crimea but the methods that he used. The hard power was a relic from the last century and the soft power that answered it is what will rule the next century. He learned a hard lesson. He did come away with the Crimea though, at the cost of his neighbors waking up and beginning to take notice of the Russians again and not in a good way.
I saw something really interesting that the situation in Russia could end up with there being muslim extremists going to fight against the Russians due to issues with the Tartars. Apparently one was already tortured and killed and the jihadists are calling for their brothers to take arms .
The Russians have this issue in several places already, most notably Chechnya. I think Putin will regret the manner in which he annexed the Crimea. He could have stirred up trouble in the Crimea for a year or two and gotten the same vote in the end without putting boots all over the ground. Boots have real connotations to the folks in Europe.
Yes and the fear is the fighters in Syria and Chechnya will relocate to Crimea and then once fighting is over into Western Europe as apparently it's fairly easy to slip into Poland from the Ukraine. Honestly this puts us in another bad situation, do we support the people whom we are war with to prevent Russia from doing whatever they want in Ukraine.
The Sunni Arab world is essentially a broken society at this point. Not broken in the sense that it is trying to deal with reality in the 21st Century through a 14th Century prism, although that's a problem also. It's broken because there is no trust in any authority in that society at this point. Monarchies exist and control the levers of power but more people slip through their fingers each day, drawn into an alternate society in which the state and the authorities cannot intrude. As long as that society is broken it will keep bleeding internally, as it does at a high rate, and it's issues will bleed over into the rest of the world. The more that we interact with the problem the worse it will get. Any attempt that we make to "fix" Arab society makes the problem worse and in fact it was a combination of US, UK and Soviet interference that caused the issues we're dealing with right now.
Well, I must have read the same thing Petro did- it sounded like both were considering it although Sweden a bit more seriously than Finland. I wonder how long it will take for Poland and the Baltics to agree to some form of mutual defense pact outside of NATO. I think NATO's showing itself to be a bit of a paper tiger at the moment. At the risk of dredging up an old war story, I had the opportunity when I was in the Army Engineer Officer Basic Course (in 96, that's just shortly after the Dinosaurs walked the earth, I know) to have an exchange officer from Estonia in my platoon. Older guy, had been a sergeant in the Estonian army under the Soviets back in the day. We had some instruction on the laws of war, things like you can't shoot defenseless POWs, no torture, no shooting civilians, etc. The instructor's point was that if your enemy's rank and file knows they'll be treated well if they surrender, they'll be less apt to resist to the last man. The Estonian dude piped up, "These laws of war, they are all well and good for you Americans. We expect to be overrun by the Russians within 24 hours. We will be fighting by ourselves and hiding in the woods for a long time. We cannot take prisoners with us and we cannot leave them to tell which way we went. What do you propose we do?" Most of the exchange officers in my EOBC class were worthless (Saudi, Jordan, Nigeria(I think?)), this guy while he was overweight, drank like a fish, and smoked like a chimney- but he gave it his all. Definitely a different mindset.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/26/world/europe/ukraine-right-wing/index.html?iref=allsearch What a disgusting article by CNN! I guess Osama bin Laden was a "Robin Hood" as well if they used the term describing this neo-Nazi thug. These are the guys that Putin used as an excuse to invade Crimea.
I'm pretty sure Russian Spetznaz dressed in civvies and infiltrated into the Crimea to cause trouble were the impetus for the invasion by Russian troops. There are lots of different ways to get a Gulf of Tonkin type incident rolling when you share the border that the Ukraine and Russia share.
That sounds similar to how the US orchestrated the Ukraine uprising and chose the new leader of their mainland government actually. We have diplomats recorded in audio discussing who should be put into power. The US isn't the good guys anymore man and it hasn't been that way for a long time. So basically it's the black versus the black.
Good and Bad are often a case of perspective. I see us as the deep gray. I have no doubt the Russians are the black. I'm guessing that many Russians see Russia as the deep gray and have no doubt that the Americans are the black.
One thing that has occurred to me lately is that if you wanted to topple Putin one of the few ways to do that would be to isolate him from the oligarchs and through them much of the economic movers in Russia. The only way to isolate him in that manner and weaken him would be a regime of long-running sanctions that began to bite hard into the bottom line and personal wealth of the few power brokers. Such a sanctions regime would have been unthinkable before Russian forces entered the Crimea. Now it is well under way and appears to be picking up momentum.
They put out a lot of quality programming. The Frontline series runs usually from Fall to Spring. This is probably the first time by my memory that they've chosen to cover a lot of interesting and pertinent current affairs content in such a brief period of time. PBS also typically spaces them out more. They cover a lot of random stories and topics sometimes, these episodes (Syria, NSA, Ukraine) are probably going to be the best they have all year. League of Denial was also a part of this season, which I'm sure many fans remember.
