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Post by pieter on Aug 29, 2014 23:38:28 GMT -7
  Ukraine crisis: Nato says Russian troops blatantly in Ukraine Russian tanks near the Ukrainian border29 August 2014 Last updated at 12:32 BST Russian troops and equipment have " blatantly" entered Ukraine and have escalated the crisis, Nato says. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned Russia's aggression and called on Moscow to cease its operations in Ukraine. Russia denies sending troops and arms. www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28978513 |
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Post by Nictoshek on Aug 30, 2014 4:18:54 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Aug 30, 2014 5:51:33 GMT -7
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Post by Nictoshek on Aug 30, 2014 9:31:32 GMT -7
War in Europe is not a hysterical idea
By Anne Applebaum Columnist August 29
WARSAW
Over and over again — throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels — I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.
Anne Applebaum writes a biweekly foreign affairs column for The Washington Post. She is also the Director of the Global Transitions Program at the Legatum Institute in London.
In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?
I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to U.S. or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state — Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here — Novorossiya can grow larger over time.
Russian soldiers will have to create this state — how many of them depends upon how hard Ukraine fights, and who helps them — but eventually Russia will need more than soldiers to hold this territory. Novorossiya will not be stable as long as it is inhabited by Ukrainians who want it to stay Ukrainian. There is a familiar solution to this, too. A few days ago, Alexander Dugin, an extreme nationalist whose views have helped shape those of the Russian president, issued an extraordinary statement. “Ukraine must be cleansed of idiots,” he wrote — and then called for the “genocide” of the “race of bastards.”
But Novorossiya will also be hard to sustain if it has opponents in the West. Possible solutions to that problem are also under discussion. Not long ago, Vladimir Zhirinovsky — the Russian member of parliament and court jester who sometimes says things that those in power cannot — argued on television that Russia should use nuclear weapons to bomb Poland and the Baltic countries — “dwarf states,” he called them — and show the West who really holds power in Europe: “Nothing threatens America, it’s far away. But Eastern European countries will place themselves under the threat of total annihilation,” he declared. Vladimir Putin indulges these comments: Zhirinovsky’s statements are not official policy, the Russian president says, but he always “gets the party going.”
A far more serious person, the dissident Russian analyst Andrei Piontkovsky, has recently published an article arguing, along lines that echo Zhirinovsky’s threats, that Putin really is weighing the possibility of limited nuclear strikes — perhaps against one of the Baltic capitals, perhaps a Polish city — to prove that NATO is a hollow, meaningless entity that won’t dare strike back for fear of a greater catastrophe. Indeed, in military exercises in 2009 and 2013, the Russian army openly “practiced” a nuclear attack on Warsaw.
Is all of this nothing more than the raving of lunatics? Maybe. And maybe Putin is too weak to do any of this, and maybe it’s just scare tactics, and maybe his oligarchs will stop him. But “Mein Kampf” also seemed hysterical to Western and German audiences in 1933. Stalin’s orders to “liquidate” whole classes and social groups within the Soviet Union would have seemed equally insane to us at the time, if we had been able to hear them.
But Stalin kept to his word and carried out the threats, not because he was crazy but because he followed his own logic to its ultimate conclusions with such intense dedication — and because nobody stopped him. Right now, nobody is able to stop Putin, either. So is it hysterical to prepare for total war? Or is it naive not to do so?
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Post by pieter on Aug 30, 2014 10:48:46 GMT -7
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Post by karl on Aug 30, 2014 11:58:26 GMT -7
It is of certain that the proposition as surmised by Anne Applebaum has provided an excellent argument with supporting evidence of experience in the last war. With this is, well and good. But, that was the last war, with this, of over 69 years past with out foundation of new ideas, a new generation coupled with a totally different European model of standards.
For she {Applebaum} postulates an either/or scenario and this not how it works. For the direction she is providing in directive answer to the present and currant situation in dealing with the civil war in Ukraine, is very much off the mark to say," War in Europe is not a hysterical idea.
Granted, what we may say or describe, is a speculative matter. But, the reality of this given situation speaks in self. For as well understood, the West is using the adhesive of The EU as a binding force that is holds it {member states} together. For it is not of the past treaties that were broken or bent to suit a vested interest, but The EU is a multi force of many into one. Mr. Putin must be very aware of this as a fact.
The tools of prosperity and peace, are as they are, old as the time of Europe, and that is the tool of: Deplomacy
It is not a every thing fits and works, for that is not how Deplomacy works. It is a negotiated settlement of give and take with trade offs of common agreement. It is not a process of politeness and sportsmanship, but a dirty business of giving away some thing in the arena to gain a better bet for later in the day.
At the end of the day, both parties are not entirely happy, but then, not exactly disappointed in the out come.
In as much to Ms. Applebaum, she made a good argument in her proposition, but some what off the mark. For one, The dreaded Russian bear is not at her door step, perhaps peeping over her gate post, but will stay in the common area.
Karl
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Post by kaima on Aug 30, 2014 14:06:47 GMT -7
Let's go back to the Bush Doctrine:
Ukraine has no oil. They are not worth going to war over.
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Post by Jaga on Aug 30, 2014 22:17:03 GMT -7
Kai,
I agree, but Ukraine has lots of coal and good, fertile soil and it is more industralized that Russia.
I wonder how this crisis would finish, I did not really believe that Russia would push more and more....I guess, they cannot stop just like some Am neocons which would like to see the global war of America against Islam.
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Post by Jaga on Aug 30, 2014 22:46:24 GMT -7
This "Russia" versus "non-Russia" map is very telling not about how Russia treats other countries but it explains the behavior of countries that behave like "superpowers".
Here is the recent development:
A Ukrainian military spokesman said on Saturday that Russian tanks had attacked the town of Novosvitlivka near Luhansk and "destroyed virtually every house".
Spokesman Andriy Lysenko said troops had been ordered to retreat from Novosvitlivk
Ukrainian soldiers have also been trying to evacuate Ilovaisk in the Donetsk region, which has been surrounded by the rebels. Reports say a number of soldiers have been killed in shelling by the separatists.
Jump media playerMedia player helpOut of media player. Press enter to return or tab to continue.
Cars queue to leave Mariupol, from where Yuri Vendik reports
Rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko told the Russian News Service radio station a new offensive was being planned to create a corridor between Donetsk and Luhansk.
In south-eastern Ukraine, people have been leaving the port city of Mariupol, after advancing rebels captured Novoazovsk to the east.
Western and Ukrainian officials say this offensive has been substantially helped by Russian regular troops, opening a new front. Russia denies the accusation.
War in eastern Ukraine: The human cost
At least 2,593 people killed since mid-April (not including 298 passengers and crew of Malaysian Airlines MH17, shot down in the area) - UN report on 29 August
951 civilians killed in Donetsk region alone, official regional authorities said - 20 August
In some particularly dangerous places, such as Luhansk region, victims are said to have been buried informally, making accurate counts difficult
Rebels (and some military sources) accuse the government of concealing true numbers
155,800 people have fled elsewhere in Ukraine while at least 188,000 have gone to Russia
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Post by Jaga on Aug 30, 2014 22:53:03 GMT -7
Pieter,
Annie Applebaum's story is one of the popular ones in Washington Post. I read Washington Post since the time we lived in MD.
Although Russia is a danger Mrs. Applebaum likes to talk about some subjects and omit the others. By the way, she is a wife of Sikorski, Polish minister of Polish affairs. She is much more sensitive on Russia issues than on for instance Israel-Gaza issues..... maybe because she is Jewish. I may be biased, but she just like some subjects more than other.
As for the total European war, I cannot believe in it, but who knows. A couple of months ago, I did not believe that Russia would become aggressor in Ukraine.
Who also would predict the ISSA crisis in the MIddle East? There are some voices calling for the national draft in the US, what a nonsense!
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Post by pieter on Aug 31, 2014 1:50:29 GMT -7
Dear Jaga, I knew about Applebaum's existance and Polish connection and Polish life with Sirkorski before I posted this thread. I believe that Applebaum due to her marriage with Sikorski and her experience as a Newsweek reporter in Poland makes her different than other American journalists in Poland and Russia, who do not speak Polish or Russian and have less experience. Before and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 she wrote about Poland, Central- and Eastern-Europe for The Economist, about the important social and political transitions in that area of Europe Applebaum got her start covering the demise of the Soviet Union as a Warsaw-based correspondent for the Economist during the late 1980s. This experience sometimes appears to color her views on contemporary U.S. foreign policy issues like the "war on terror." Anne Applebaum was brought up in a "very reformed" Jewish family.[5] She graduated from the Sidwell Friends School (1982). She earned a BA (summa cum laude) at Yale University (1986), where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. As a Marshall Scholar at the London School of Economics she earned a master's degree in international relations (1987).[6] She studied at St Antony's College, Oxford before moving to Warsaw, Poland in 1988 as a correspondent for The Economist. I don't believe that she as a American jewess and Polish citizen, is forced to be Pro-Israeli, or that being jewish means you are Pro-Israeli. It depends on your upbringing and whether your are a Jewish Nationalist in the sense of zionism and Israel. In a free and democratic society as ours it is perfectly okay to be a zionist or Pro-Palestinian, good journalists have an instinct, intuition, experience with and an eye for both the Palestinian Arab and Israeli jewish perspectives, and the reality on the ground in the Middle-east. Since Anne Applebaum is a 'specialist' in Central- and Eastern-European affiars, Applebaum lived in London and Warsaw during the 1990s and was, for several years, a columnist for London's Evening Standard newspaper. She wrote about both foreign and domestic policy issues. Applebaum is proficient in French, Polish and Russian. Applebaum married Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski in 1992. They have two sons: Aleksander and Tadeusz. Applebaum became a Polish citizen in 2013. Read these links: www.anneapplebaum.com/2004/04/18/this-gamble-by-sharon-is-at-least-based-on-reality/rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/applebaum_annewww.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2009/01/pointless_peace_proposals.htmlCheers, Pieter |
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