AI
Saturday, February 07, 2015 10:59:21 PM
bulldzr, if in your (oops much longer and verbose than intended)
"Let 'em have it, and establish some borders that are agreeable to both sides, and
then line up NATO tanks and let Putin know this is the line you dare not cross"
first four words you mean Crimea, then just now i think i agree
(just so you know with me .. repeat .. there is on so many issues some equivocation, as on history and politics
anyway i always know there is stuff i don't know, and which could change my mind, hence .. lol .. my "i think")
with you, .. no more war for those people, i think that's kinda accepted by leaders as the reality on Crimea .. but if the next four words on "borders" refer
to Ukraine then i'm not so sure .. since your Yahoo (often iffy to me) link talks mostly of Ukraine i'm thinking maybe? you have sorta conflated Crimea
and the Ukraine when you talk about agreement on borders .. for me a not sure what you mean on those borders .. think you mean other than Crimea ..
This is another i read yesterday.
What Germany Owes Ukraine
On Ukraine, Angela Merkel enjoys a reputation as Europe’s Iron Lady. Here’s why it’s unearned.
By James Kirchick
February 5, 2015
In a state visit to Hungary on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated what has become her mantra ever since Russian tanks, men, and materiel began pouring over the border into Ukraine last spring. “I am convinced that this conflict cannot be solved militarily,” the Queen of Europe, now entering her 10th year as the most powerful leader on the continent, said .. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/world/german-chancellor-rules-out-weapons-aid-to-ukraine.html .
If only Vladimir Putin agreed.
Almost immediately following its stealth invasion of Crimea and subsequent illegal annexation of the peninsula last march, Russia began supplying arms and tactical support to rebels in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Soon thereafter, Russian soldiers themselves joined the fight. Official Russian claims to the contrary, the steady trickle of body bags back to Mother Russia over the past year has attested to the presence of Russian forces fighting (and dying) in Ukraine. In the past two weeks, pro-Russian rebels, emboldened by the support they have received from regular Russian military forces, have killed .. http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/03/ukraine-rising-civilian-death-toll .. dozens of Ukrainian civilians, including children, by firing shells indiscriminately into non-combatant areas like transit stops.
Putin’s strategy is clear. He intends to punish Ukraine for ousting its pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, and for having the gall to seek a western political orientation. And he intends to do so by rendering it a failed state. A semi-permanent condition of low-intensity armed conflict in the East serves that function. To secure his grip on Crimea, Putin also seeks to establish a land bridge .. http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-battle-bridge-crimea-2014-8 .. connecting it to the Russian mainland, which explains the increased military activity around Donetsk and Mariupol in recent weeks.
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Putin seems to have no misgivings about using military means to achieve his goals.
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Putin seems to have no misgivings about using military means to achieve his goals. Which is why, according to the Ukrainian government, there are currently some 15,000 Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory and an untold higher number amassed at the border, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. A cease-fire agreement .. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29162903 .. signed in Minsk last fall — in which Merkel and other European diplomats naively invested much hope — is no longer worth the paper it was written on, if it ever was.
Much has been said about how fortunate Europe is to have Merkel dealing with Putin at such a sensitive moment, given her East German upbringing, fluent Russian, and appreciation for cold, hard data instilled via a scientific education. A recent laudatory profile .. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german .. in the New Yorker by George Packer praised her “characteristically unsentimental view of Russia.” On the face of it, her tough posture has stood in stark contrast to the emotional attitudes held by so many of her countrymen, especially past Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt, who have bent over backwards to make excuses for Putin. And yet, despite Merkel’s Teutonic stoicism, her position on Russia is anything but firm.
Mindful of her role as leader of the country that twice plunged Europe into war in the last century, Merkel has, from the very start of the Ukraine crisis, repeatedly advised NATO against providing military support to Kiev. “Military action isn’t an option for us,” she declared last March, days before Putin formally annexed Crimea, a line that she has recited at nearly every opportunity. So much for the principle of strategic ambiguity .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_deliberate_ambiguity .
[ the bit here on the word "permanent" is the memory hit which with your "then line up NATO tanks and let Putin know this is the line you dare not cross" words helped me find this article again ]
Not only has Merkel opposed NATO supplying weapons to Ukraine, she has also gone so far as to oppose .. http://www.dw.de/latvia-asks-merkel-for-greater-nato-presence-in-baltic/a-17861456 .. the stationing of NATO forces further east on the territory of the alliance’s newer members so as to reassure them in the face of the new Russian aggression. To justify this stance, she has formulated a dubious interpretation of a clause in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations .. http://www.nato.int/nrc-website/media/59451/1997_nato_russia_founding_act.pdf , which stated that NATO would not station “permanent” forces in the new member countries in the “current and foreseeable security environment.” Calls today by Poland and the Baltic states for NATO troops to be deployed on their territory need not violate this provision, however, as they would not necessarily be “permanent.” Moreover, the Founding Act itself has been effectively nullified by the actions of Russia and Russia alone, which has perpetrated an Anschluss. [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Anschluss&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 ] Yet Merkel leads a bevy of other hesitant European statesmen in clinging to its outdated provisions, echoing positions favorable to the Kremlin.
Merkel’s leadership style hinges upon a deft reading of public opinion, followed by a gentle guiding from the front. This rule-by-consensus approach is what has kept her in power for the past decade. As the broad majority of Germans has always opposed sending any military support to Ukraine, there is little reason to believe that Merkel would ever risk standing athwart this popular accord. In the first place, Russia’s propaganda machine has done its work .. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russia-uses-state-television-to-sway-opinion-at-home-and-abroad-a-971971.html . The German public has been especially susceptible to Russian claims that the new government in Kiev is replete with “Nazis,” as Germans are ever sensitive to claims of nascent fascism on the European continent. Secondly, calls to get tough on Russia are often viewed .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ukraine-needs-more-help-from-the-west/2015/01/29/462b1ea4-a71b-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html .. as explicitly American machinations, something many Germans are allergic to in an era when they regard the U.S.-Germany alliance with growing skepticism .. http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-germany-anti-american-sentiment-fuels-push-to-tread-softly-on-ukraine-1402443505 . (Danke, Edward Snowden .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/whose-side-are-you-on-germany.html .)
[ i'm impelled to insert this bit from the Snowden link about
"Never mind that the claim causing so much outrage—that the United States was sweeping up the personal data of tens of millions of European citizens—proved false. In reality, the records analyzed by the NSA were supplied to them by European intelligence agencies, and were collected in war zones and other locales abroad, not in Europe.
But the correction to that grossly inaccurate portrayal of the NSA was lost amidst a further, more embarrassing revelation: that the NSA had been tapping the phone of Angela Merkel, the popular German Chancellor and one of America’s strongest allies in Europe. Merkel, who has tried to downplay the initial revelations about the NSA given her own pro-American proclivities, had little choice but to voice displeasure, at least for the sake of appeasing domestic anger. In an unprecedented move for a postwar German leader, she summoned the American ambassador to her office for a dressing down.
While much of the reporting about the NSA has been sensationalistic, the spying on Merkel was a phone tap too far, as the president himself acknowledged in his apology to her and his (less convincing) admission that he was unaware of its ever happening. But the German response is growing into a dangerous overreaction, one that threatens to fundamentally weaken the transatlantic relationship that has bound Washington and Berlin together for the past seven decades.
Last week, Snowden held a three-hour meeting in Moscow with Hans-Christian Ströbele, a far-left Green Party member of the German Bundestag and the longest serving member of the governmental body that oversees Germany’s intelligence services. In the 1970’s, Ströbele served as a defense attorney for members of the Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group that set off bombs and perpetrated a series of spectacular murders throughout West Germany during the height of the Cold War. Few were surprised when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, it was revealed that the RAF was provided with financial and logistical support from the Stasi, the fearsome East German secret police.
[...]
It’s not just pacifism that seems to be a part of the German DNA, but also confusion about the country’s true friends and adversaries. Despite occasional disagreements, America has long been Germany’s most important ally. The two countries share important values, namely, a commitment to human rights, individual freedoms, and maintenance of a liberal international order. As angry as most Germans may be over the tapping of their chancellor’s phone, it’s hard to see how it justifies stalling the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a major free-trade agreement which some high-ranking German politicians have threatened to shelve in order to punish Washington.
Moreover, by granting Snowden asylum, Germany would be playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin."
[...]
Moreover, self-righteous attacks on America are hardly a new thing in Germany, which has long had a complicated relationship with the United States. It is one marked by love and resentment. There exists a well of gratitude for America’s rebuilding and defense of the country after World War II, but that indebtedness bred a frustration with America’s global hegemony and more militaristic approach. Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner got to the heart of the matter when he described the European anger over American spying as motivated mainly by hypocrisy and envy. “Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don’t have the same means as the U.S., which makes us jealous.”
Germans have a right to be angry over America’s tapping their chancellor’s phone, but they also need to be realistic and put the brouhaha into perspective."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/whose-side-are-you-on-germany.html
.. hmm, that excerpt is much longer than first intended .. :) .. first time i've read the link .. the rest you will appreciate, too ]
But most immediately,
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Germans’ hesitation to confront Russia is rooted in their confused understanding of their country’s wartime history.
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Germans’ hesitation to confront Russia is rooted in their confused understanding of their country’s wartime history. Seventy years after World War II, German political discussion of Russia continues to be plagued by a misplaced sense of guilt toward Moscow. This sympathy for Russia is so wide and so deep that the epithet Russland-Versteher, or “Russia understander,” entered the political lexicon last year. Many German political leaders have difficulty separating the historic atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht and SS against Soviet troops and citizens with the atrocities being visited upon Ukrainians by Russians this very day. So, when, for instance, last year German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble very reasonably compared Putin to Adolf Hitler — on the basis that both men forcibly seized whole chunks of other countries’ territories based solely upon the utterly illegitimate predicate of ethnic comradeship — he was set upon .. http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/170076/germany-hitler-putin%5D .. by all sectors of German media and politics as an uncouth barbarian trampling upon Germany’s sacred debt to honor its wartime history. Their number included no less a figure than the Chancellor herself, who described Crimea as “a standalone case .. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-ukraine-russia-germany-idUSBREA2U0S420140331 .”
Simply put, most Germans, already averse to violence in the first place, cannot countenance the idea of German weapons being used to kill Russians. It doesn’t matter if those weapons are being used purely in self-defense to protect Ukrainians, who would otherwise perish in the Russian onslaught. More important to the collective German conscience is its own moral immaculacy. It’s an understandable historical hang-up, but a deeply erroneous one. For in ascribing permanent victimhood status to Putin’s Russian Federation, the Germans not only absolve the Russian leader of responsibility for his actions — they commit a grave historical error by conflating the former Soviet Union with contemporary Russia.
“The vast majority of Ukrainians who fought in [World War II] did so in the uniform of the Red Army,” writes .. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/timothy-snyder-about-europe-and-ukraine-putin-s-project-12898389-p6.html .. historian Timothy Snyder. “More Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht than American, British, and French soldiers — combined.” By swallowing Russian propaganda about Ukrainian nationalists .. http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/20/putins-ghost-under-the-bed/ .. who fought on the side of the Nazis against the Soviets, Germans forget that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians who fought in World War II did so on the side of the Soviets and died at the hands of Germans. If war guilt is to be a major determinative factor in the formation of 21st-century German foreign policy (and it appears that it will), then Germans owe Ukrainians at least as much, if not more, than whatever they may owe Russians: after all, their grandfathers killed plenty of both. Ultimately, what Germany owes both countries in equal measure is an honest accounting of history. It is the very least that Germany, which has produced some of the best historians of World War II, can do.
An honest accounting of history, then, would show that Ukraine was a victim both of German and Soviet predations, and is today being set upon by a rapacious, authoritarian Russia. In words, at least, Merkel seems to understand this. “What Russia is visiting upon Ukraine is a violation of our European system of peace and security,” she said Tuesday in Budapest, stating that Moscow’s actions signify “the old pattern of thought that neighboring states are spheres of influence, and not partners.” It is just that she seems unwilling to match her words with deeds.
Today, Germans proudly see themselves as staunch advocates for liberal democratic values — the sharpest repudiation possible of their own dark past. In Budapest earlier this week, Merkel criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban .. http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/16/hungarys-pit-bull-prime-minister/ , whose right-wing populist government has repeatedly come under fire from the European Union and human rights watchdogs for weakening checks and balances and for whitewashing the country’s World War II collaboration with the Nazis. But during the same visit, she repeated her position against arming Ukraine. Hungary, however, is not where the continent’s most desperate battles in defense of a struggling new democracy are being waged. It’s all well and good for Merkel to speak out for democracy with words and bureaucratic instruments. But in neighboring Ukraine, where the state’s very existence hangs in the balance, the battle for democracy must be waged with bullets.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/what-germany-owes-ukraine/
.. just now i'm tending to tend toward some sympathy with James Kirchick .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kirchick 's position .. even though just at this moment i've seen it looks he is a pretty far right-wing guy ..
.. Crimea? .. in the two referendums held some 90% wanted to go with Russia so i agree let that be, no more war foisted on the people there .. ok .. and about Ukraine and new borders to which Kirchick i think says no way .. so while writing above i felt some sympathy with that position .. at the same time that 'other view' nagged in .. then i think, well, if a very high % of some part of Eastern Ukraine want to go with Russia then why should not the same? argument as Crimea hold .. well .. a minute ago i got this one ..
the first bit
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"3. The southeast is the third region. Asian nomads migrated to this Steppe, or flat grassland, and the Slavs expanded into this area in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This region has very little in common with the West. In the nineteenth century, industry developed widely and urbanizes the area, attracting Russians."
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could be seen as supporting an hmm, just to stop the damn war .. a position toward/or some sympathy to settling (if at all possible) on new borders .. then there is this ..
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What will happen next?
As always, there is no consensus about what will happen next. The population in Crimea is mixed, with Tatars (Turkic ethnic groups), Ukrainians, and Russians all living together. It is unclear how Russia is going to handle Crimea, given the shifting demographics.
There is concern that Russia will move into eastern Ukraine (where there still exist confrontations and provocations), though Putin has said he isn’t interested. No one knows.
How does this crisis affect the rest of the world?
When Ukraine became independent in 1991, it inherited a nuclear arsenal from the Soviet Union, which made it the fourth largest nuclear power in the world. After much persuasion from western countries, in 1994 Ukraine gave up these weapons, and they were removed from the country.
In return, Ukraine was reassured by the leaders of the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom of its security, sovereignty, and the inviolability of its borders. Russia has invaded Crimea, but the United States and the United Kingdom are still committed to this promise.
Of course, promises may be broken without much reaction. But this may spark growing concerns about countries not developing nuclear weapons, which may have grave implications for global security.
The next steps are still unclear—we must wait and see.
http://www.summer.harvard.edu/blog-news-events/conflict-ukraine-historical-perspective
.. that promise was made by Russia only 24 years ago .. that swings me back, i 'feel' to something like Kirchick's position .. i'm thinking if Ukraine succumbed to Putin's aggression in Eastern Ukraine now, what of 10-20 years down the track? ..
then, still, again cognitive dissonance swings in and i muse .. IF .. IF .. the people of Ukraine overwhelmingly said 'let the East, at least some parts of where the war is going on now be gone to Russia' .. IF enough really felt that .. then maybe ..
then again even still 'if enough of southern USA wished really to secede, and the rest of the USA felt 'hey, good riddance' .. i think there would be yet another war .. i'm guessing an overwhelming percentage of Ukranians do not want to let go of more of their Ukraine .. that's my lean to position now ..
.. we definitely agree that NATO (the West) should back off giving Russia a valid reason for feeling more threatened than they have felt for
years (sorta the same way Ukraine must have felt before ongoing hostilities broke out) .. there was one some time ago i posted .. not this one ..
Nato faces up to crises on its borders
"Nato insists that it is not establishing new permanent bases closer to
Russian soil (and thus it, unlike Moscow, is respecting the Nato-Russia Founding Act).
However, that is not going to cut much ice with the Russians who have already signalled that a
movement of Nato forces eastwards will be met by a change to Russia's own military planning."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105919500
not this one either .. note it felt a bit hawkish
Estonia Kidnapping Claim Puts NATO on the Hot Seat
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=105955087
AHA! .. this is the one ..
The cost of surrounding Russia militarily is that Russia feels surrounded militarily. Allowing NATO to die after it achieved its mission after the Cold War would have left Moscow with a freer hand in Eastern Europe -- and some current NATO member states would have faced negative consequences. Their relations with Russia would have reflected relative power and geography, and they would have had to defer to Russian prerogatives more than at present.
At the same time, other states, such as Ukraine, have arguably been worse off as a result of NATO's persistence.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103610997
.. so the 'don't pressure Russia', with 'no war over Crimea' i think are the two we are in total
agreement on .. sorry i think i went on too long and meandered too much .. chuckle .. shit, click ..
"Let 'em have it, and establish some borders that are agreeable to both sides, and
then line up NATO tanks and let Putin know this is the line you dare not cross"
first four words you mean Crimea, then just now i think i agree
(just so you know with me .. repeat .. there is on so many issues some equivocation, as on history and politics
anyway i always know there is stuff i don't know, and which could change my mind, hence .. lol .. my "i think")
with you, .. no more war for those people, i think that's kinda accepted by leaders as the reality on Crimea .. but if the next four words on "borders" refer
to Ukraine then i'm not so sure .. since your Yahoo (often iffy to me) link talks mostly of Ukraine i'm thinking maybe? you have sorta conflated Crimea
and the Ukraine when you talk about agreement on borders .. for me a not sure what you mean on those borders .. think you mean other than Crimea ..
This is another i read yesterday.
What Germany Owes Ukraine
On Ukraine, Angela Merkel enjoys a reputation as Europe’s Iron Lady. Here’s why it’s unearned.
By James Kirchick
February 5, 2015
In a state visit to Hungary on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated what has become her mantra ever since Russian tanks, men, and materiel began pouring over the border into Ukraine last spring. “I am convinced that this conflict cannot be solved militarily,” the Queen of Europe, now entering her 10th year as the most powerful leader on the continent, said .. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/world/german-chancellor-rules-out-weapons-aid-to-ukraine.html .
If only Vladimir Putin agreed.
Almost immediately following its stealth invasion of Crimea and subsequent illegal annexation of the peninsula last march, Russia began supplying arms and tactical support to rebels in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. Soon thereafter, Russian soldiers themselves joined the fight. Official Russian claims to the contrary, the steady trickle of body bags back to Mother Russia over the past year has attested to the presence of Russian forces fighting (and dying) in Ukraine. In the past two weeks, pro-Russian rebels, emboldened by the support they have received from regular Russian military forces, have killed .. http://www.hrw.org/news/2015/02/03/ukraine-rising-civilian-death-toll .. dozens of Ukrainian civilians, including children, by firing shells indiscriminately into non-combatant areas like transit stops.
Putin’s strategy is clear. He intends to punish Ukraine for ousting its pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, and for having the gall to seek a western political orientation. And he intends to do so by rendering it a failed state. A semi-permanent condition of low-intensity armed conflict in the East serves that function. To secure his grip on Crimea, Putin also seeks to establish a land bridge .. http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ukraine-battle-bridge-crimea-2014-8 .. connecting it to the Russian mainland, which explains the increased military activity around Donetsk and Mariupol in recent weeks.
---
Putin seems to have no misgivings about using military means to achieve his goals.
---
Putin seems to have no misgivings about using military means to achieve his goals. Which is why, according to the Ukrainian government, there are currently some 15,000 Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory and an untold higher number amassed at the border, ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. A cease-fire agreement .. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29162903 .. signed in Minsk last fall — in which Merkel and other European diplomats naively invested much hope — is no longer worth the paper it was written on, if it ever was.
Much has been said about how fortunate Europe is to have Merkel dealing with Putin at such a sensitive moment, given her East German upbringing, fluent Russian, and appreciation for cold, hard data instilled via a scientific education. A recent laudatory profile .. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german .. in the New Yorker by George Packer praised her “characteristically unsentimental view of Russia.” On the face of it, her tough posture has stood in stark contrast to the emotional attitudes held by so many of her countrymen, especially past Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt, who have bent over backwards to make excuses for Putin. And yet, despite Merkel’s Teutonic stoicism, her position on Russia is anything but firm.
Mindful of her role as leader of the country that twice plunged Europe into war in the last century, Merkel has, from the very start of the Ukraine crisis, repeatedly advised NATO against providing military support to Kiev. “Military action isn’t an option for us,” she declared last March, days before Putin formally annexed Crimea, a line that she has recited at nearly every opportunity. So much for the principle of strategic ambiguity .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policy_of_deliberate_ambiguity .
[ the bit here on the word "permanent" is the memory hit which with your "then line up NATO tanks and let Putin know this is the line you dare not cross" words helped me find this article again ]
Not only has Merkel opposed NATO supplying weapons to Ukraine, she has also gone so far as to oppose .. http://www.dw.de/latvia-asks-merkel-for-greater-nato-presence-in-baltic/a-17861456 .. the stationing of NATO forces further east on the territory of the alliance’s newer members so as to reassure them in the face of the new Russian aggression. To justify this stance, she has formulated a dubious interpretation of a clause in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act on Mutual Relations .. http://www.nato.int/nrc-website/media/59451/1997_nato_russia_founding_act.pdf , which stated that NATO would not station “permanent” forces in the new member countries in the “current and foreseeable security environment.” Calls today by Poland and the Baltic states for NATO troops to be deployed on their territory need not violate this provision, however, as they would not necessarily be “permanent.” Moreover, the Founding Act itself has been effectively nullified by the actions of Russia and Russia alone, which has perpetrated an Anschluss. [ https://www.google.com/search?q=Anschluss&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 ] Yet Merkel leads a bevy of other hesitant European statesmen in clinging to its outdated provisions, echoing positions favorable to the Kremlin.
Merkel’s leadership style hinges upon a deft reading of public opinion, followed by a gentle guiding from the front. This rule-by-consensus approach is what has kept her in power for the past decade. As the broad majority of Germans has always opposed sending any military support to Ukraine, there is little reason to believe that Merkel would ever risk standing athwart this popular accord. In the first place, Russia’s propaganda machine has done its work .. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/russia-uses-state-television-to-sway-opinion-at-home-and-abroad-a-971971.html . The German public has been especially susceptible to Russian claims that the new government in Kiev is replete with “Nazis,” as Germans are ever sensitive to claims of nascent fascism on the European continent. Secondly, calls to get tough on Russia are often viewed .. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ukraine-needs-more-help-from-the-west/2015/01/29/462b1ea4-a71b-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html .. as explicitly American machinations, something many Germans are allergic to in an era when they regard the U.S.-Germany alliance with growing skepticism .. http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-germany-anti-american-sentiment-fuels-push-to-tread-softly-on-ukraine-1402443505 . (Danke, Edward Snowden .. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/whose-side-are-you-on-germany.html .)
[ i'm impelled to insert this bit from the Snowden link about
"Never mind that the claim causing so much outrage—that the United States was sweeping up the personal data of tens of millions of European citizens—proved false. In reality, the records analyzed by the NSA were supplied to them by European intelligence agencies, and were collected in war zones and other locales abroad, not in Europe.
But the correction to that grossly inaccurate portrayal of the NSA was lost amidst a further, more embarrassing revelation: that the NSA had been tapping the phone of Angela Merkel, the popular German Chancellor and one of America’s strongest allies in Europe. Merkel, who has tried to downplay the initial revelations about the NSA given her own pro-American proclivities, had little choice but to voice displeasure, at least for the sake of appeasing domestic anger. In an unprecedented move for a postwar German leader, she summoned the American ambassador to her office for a dressing down.
While much of the reporting about the NSA has been sensationalistic, the spying on Merkel was a phone tap too far, as the president himself acknowledged in his apology to her and his (less convincing) admission that he was unaware of its ever happening. But the German response is growing into a dangerous overreaction, one that threatens to fundamentally weaken the transatlantic relationship that has bound Washington and Berlin together for the past seven decades.
Last week, Snowden held a three-hour meeting in Moscow with Hans-Christian Ströbele, a far-left Green Party member of the German Bundestag and the longest serving member of the governmental body that oversees Germany’s intelligence services. In the 1970’s, Ströbele served as a defense attorney for members of the Red Army Faction (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang), the Marxist-Leninist terrorist group that set off bombs and perpetrated a series of spectacular murders throughout West Germany during the height of the Cold War. Few were surprised when, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification, it was revealed that the RAF was provided with financial and logistical support from the Stasi, the fearsome East German secret police.
[...]
It’s not just pacifism that seems to be a part of the German DNA, but also confusion about the country’s true friends and adversaries. Despite occasional disagreements, America has long been Germany’s most important ally. The two countries share important values, namely, a commitment to human rights, individual freedoms, and maintenance of a liberal international order. As angry as most Germans may be over the tapping of their chancellor’s phone, it’s hard to see how it justifies stalling the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a major free-trade agreement which some high-ranking German politicians have threatened to shelve in order to punish Washington.
Moreover, by granting Snowden asylum, Germany would be playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin."
[...]
Moreover, self-righteous attacks on America are hardly a new thing in Germany, which has long had a complicated relationship with the United States. It is one marked by love and resentment. There exists a well of gratitude for America’s rebuilding and defense of the country after World War II, but that indebtedness bred a frustration with America’s global hegemony and more militaristic approach. Former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner got to the heart of the matter when he described the European anger over American spying as motivated mainly by hypocrisy and envy. “Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don’t have the same means as the U.S., which makes us jealous.”
Germans have a right to be angry over America’s tapping their chancellor’s phone, but they also need to be realistic and put the brouhaha into perspective."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/06/whose-side-are-you-on-germany.html
.. hmm, that excerpt is much longer than first intended .. :) .. first time i've read the link .. the rest you will appreciate, too ]
But most immediately,
---
Germans’ hesitation to confront Russia is rooted in their confused understanding of their country’s wartime history.
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Germans’ hesitation to confront Russia is rooted in their confused understanding of their country’s wartime history. Seventy years after World War II, German political discussion of Russia continues to be plagued by a misplaced sense of guilt toward Moscow. This sympathy for Russia is so wide and so deep that the epithet Russland-Versteher, or “Russia understander,” entered the political lexicon last year. Many German political leaders have difficulty separating the historic atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht and SS against Soviet troops and citizens with the atrocities being visited upon Ukrainians by Russians this very day. So, when, for instance, last year German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble very reasonably compared Putin to Adolf Hitler — on the basis that both men forcibly seized whole chunks of other countries’ territories based solely upon the utterly illegitimate predicate of ethnic comradeship — he was set upon .. http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/170076/germany-hitler-putin%5D .. by all sectors of German media and politics as an uncouth barbarian trampling upon Germany’s sacred debt to honor its wartime history. Their number included no less a figure than the Chancellor herself, who described Crimea as “a standalone case .. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/31/us-ukraine-russia-germany-idUSBREA2U0S420140331 .”
Simply put, most Germans, already averse to violence in the first place, cannot countenance the idea of German weapons being used to kill Russians. It doesn’t matter if those weapons are being used purely in self-defense to protect Ukrainians, who would otherwise perish in the Russian onslaught. More important to the collective German conscience is its own moral immaculacy. It’s an understandable historical hang-up, but a deeply erroneous one. For in ascribing permanent victimhood status to Putin’s Russian Federation, the Germans not only absolve the Russian leader of responsibility for his actions — they commit a grave historical error by conflating the former Soviet Union with contemporary Russia.
“The vast majority of Ukrainians who fought in [World War II] did so in the uniform of the Red Army,” writes .. http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/timothy-snyder-about-europe-and-ukraine-putin-s-project-12898389-p6.html .. historian Timothy Snyder. “More Ukrainians were killed fighting the Wehrmacht than American, British, and French soldiers — combined.” By swallowing Russian propaganda about Ukrainian nationalists .. http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/03/20/putins-ghost-under-the-bed/ .. who fought on the side of the Nazis against the Soviets, Germans forget that the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians who fought in World War II did so on the side of the Soviets and died at the hands of Germans. If war guilt is to be a major determinative factor in the formation of 21st-century German foreign policy (and it appears that it will), then Germans owe Ukrainians at least as much, if not more, than whatever they may owe Russians: after all, their grandfathers killed plenty of both. Ultimately, what Germany owes both countries in equal measure is an honest accounting of history. It is the very least that Germany, which has produced some of the best historians of World War II, can do.
An honest accounting of history, then, would show that Ukraine was a victim both of German and Soviet predations, and is today being set upon by a rapacious, authoritarian Russia. In words, at least, Merkel seems to understand this. “What Russia is visiting upon Ukraine is a violation of our European system of peace and security,” she said Tuesday in Budapest, stating that Moscow’s actions signify “the old pattern of thought that neighboring states are spheres of influence, and not partners.” It is just that she seems unwilling to match her words with deeds.
Today, Germans proudly see themselves as staunch advocates for liberal democratic values — the sharpest repudiation possible of their own dark past. In Budapest earlier this week, Merkel criticized Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban .. http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/03/16/hungarys-pit-bull-prime-minister/ , whose right-wing populist government has repeatedly come under fire from the European Union and human rights watchdogs for weakening checks and balances and for whitewashing the country’s World War II collaboration with the Nazis. But during the same visit, she repeated her position against arming Ukraine. Hungary, however, is not where the continent’s most desperate battles in defense of a struggling new democracy are being waged. It’s all well and good for Merkel to speak out for democracy with words and bureaucratic instruments. But in neighboring Ukraine, where the state’s very existence hangs in the balance, the battle for democracy must be waged with bullets.
JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images
http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/02/05/what-germany-owes-ukraine/
.. just now i'm tending to tend toward some sympathy with James Kirchick .. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Kirchick 's position .. even though just at this moment i've seen it looks he is a pretty far right-wing guy ..
.. Crimea? .. in the two referendums held some 90% wanted to go with Russia so i agree let that be, no more war foisted on the people there .. ok .. and about Ukraine and new borders to which Kirchick i think says no way .. so while writing above i felt some sympathy with that position .. at the same time that 'other view' nagged in .. then i think, well, if a very high % of some part of Eastern Ukraine want to go with Russia then why should not the same? argument as Crimea hold .. well .. a minute ago i got this one ..
the first bit
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"3. The southeast is the third region. Asian nomads migrated to this Steppe, or flat grassland, and the Slavs expanded into this area in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This region has very little in common with the West. In the nineteenth century, industry developed widely and urbanizes the area, attracting Russians."
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could be seen as supporting an hmm, just to stop the damn war .. a position toward/or some sympathy to settling (if at all possible) on new borders .. then there is this ..
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What will happen next?
As always, there is no consensus about what will happen next. The population in Crimea is mixed, with Tatars (Turkic ethnic groups), Ukrainians, and Russians all living together. It is unclear how Russia is going to handle Crimea, given the shifting demographics.
There is concern that Russia will move into eastern Ukraine (where there still exist confrontations and provocations), though Putin has said he isn’t interested. No one knows.
How does this crisis affect the rest of the world?
When Ukraine became independent in 1991, it inherited a nuclear arsenal from the Soviet Union, which made it the fourth largest nuclear power in the world. After much persuasion from western countries, in 1994 Ukraine gave up these weapons, and they were removed from the country.
In return, Ukraine was reassured by the leaders of the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom of its security, sovereignty, and the inviolability of its borders. Russia has invaded Crimea, but the United States and the United Kingdom are still committed to this promise.
Of course, promises may be broken without much reaction. But this may spark growing concerns about countries not developing nuclear weapons, which may have grave implications for global security.
The next steps are still unclear—we must wait and see.
http://www.summer.harvard.edu/blog-news-events/conflict-ukraine-historical-perspective
.. that promise was made by Russia only 24 years ago .. that swings me back, i 'feel' to something like Kirchick's position .. i'm thinking if Ukraine succumbed to Putin's aggression in Eastern Ukraine now, what of 10-20 years down the track? ..
then, still, again cognitive dissonance swings in and i muse .. IF .. IF .. the people of Ukraine overwhelmingly said 'let the East, at least some parts of where the war is going on now be gone to Russia' .. IF enough really felt that .. then maybe ..
then again even still 'if enough of southern USA wished really to secede, and the rest of the USA felt 'hey, good riddance' .. i think there would be yet another war .. i'm guessing an overwhelming percentage of Ukranians do not want to let go of more of their Ukraine .. that's my lean to position now ..
.. we definitely agree that NATO (the West) should back off giving Russia a valid reason for feeling more threatened than they have felt for
years (sorta the same way Ukraine must have felt before ongoing hostilities broke out) .. there was one some time ago i posted .. not this one ..
Nato faces up to crises on its borders
"Nato insists that it is not establishing new permanent bases closer to
Russian soil (and thus it, unlike Moscow, is respecting the Nato-Russia Founding Act).
However, that is not going to cut much ice with the Russians who have already signalled that a
movement of Nato forces eastwards will be met by a change to Russia's own military planning."
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=105919500
not this one either .. note it felt a bit hawkish
Estonia Kidnapping Claim Puts NATO on the Hot Seat
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=105955087
AHA! .. this is the one ..
The cost of surrounding Russia militarily is that Russia feels surrounded militarily. Allowing NATO to die after it achieved its mission after the Cold War would have left Moscow with a freer hand in Eastern Europe -- and some current NATO member states would have faced negative consequences. Their relations with Russia would have reflected relative power and geography, and they would have had to defer to Russian prerogatives more than at present.
At the same time, other states, such as Ukraine, have arguably been worse off as a result of NATO's persistence.
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=103610997
.. so the 'don't pressure Russia', with 'no war over Crimea' i think are the two we are in total
agreement on .. sorry i think i went on too long and meandered too much .. chuckle .. shit, click ..
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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