EU has no central military command. Even if all member states have standing armed forces, they're not drilled to work together.
Latvians are not as concerned as Ukrainians primarily because the Latvian ecomony is better than the Russian economy which is better than the Ukrainian economy.
Just from talking with someone I know who's parents immigrated over from Estonia, and still has a lot of family back there, saying that in these countries ethnic Russians are actually treated as second-class citizens, denied social & economic opportunities open to the rest of the population. It's not so cut & dry thinking only corrupt rabble-rousers are the cause of the succession movements. When combined in the Southern nations like Ukraine or Moldova, the economies are so much weaker that the conflicts intensify.
They're still worried about Russian aggression but they don't have the same level of internal problems that enable Russian aggression.
The grand moral is, treat others fairly and fewer conflicts arise.
(memory of Roosevelt abandoning them to Stalin is actually still fresh in their minds).
Last Sunday’s poll can be said to have fallen short of the shifting norms of democratic propriety, but none of the Western leaders who have been blustering about “making Putin pay” has challenged the reliability of the outcome as a measure of majority feeling in the region.
The people have spoken, perhaps in tones that fall harshly on Western ears, but making their wishes clear enough. Who is Barack Obama to tell them that their opinion don’t count? If we have to take sides, we should take the democratic approach and side with the Crimean majority. That is to say that on this
specific matter, Ireland should side with the Russians.
:
:
True, Russia has behaved provocatively throughout, manipulating fears, stoking tensions, manoeuvring for strategic advantage. Same as the West, same as ever. When it comes to double-talk, however, there is no contest. Putin is never going to be a match for Obama at talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.
After six years in office, Obama believes he has a right to invade anywhere, bomb anything, kill anybody whose jib the CIA doesn’t like the cut of, irrespective of national or international law or, indeed, of the provisions of the US constitution. And now he lectures Putin on the necessity of “respecting international law”. He has a nerve. I suppose it comes with the job.
Obama’s interest in Crimea has to do with US strategy for curbing Russian power and influence. In the perspective of Washington – the same can be said of Moscow – democracy and human rights are marginal matters, if they figure in calculations at all.
What does Ireland think:
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...a-side-over-crimea-let-it-be-russia-1.1731105
Yea, you don't want to go to far down that path. Russia doesn't have debt like we do. They can do more to harm us economically than the other way around.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/201...-could-signal-the-beginning-of-world-war-iii/
On a side note, is anybody getting out of the stock market? I am starting to get a little nervous about my investments. I could see this thing blowing up and killing the 5 year long bull market we have been riding.
Or Truman could have started another war with our ally of a year earlier, given the geographic reality at the end of WW2. I'm sure that America would have loved it.
Get real.
The rest is the same. Referencing population shifts of 3 generations ago as if they happened yesterday, as if the people of today were the perps is utterly insane, btw.
What does Ireland think:
I think I've got a Vulcan mind meld thing going on with this writer.
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/worl...a-side-over-crimea-let-it-be-russia-1.1731105
You mean like todays whites being blamed for past offenses many generations ago or Mexicans saying the Southwest USA was stolen from them?
You mean like todays whites being blamed for past offenses many generations ago or Mexicans saying the Southwest USA was stolen from them?
Exactly! People who are beneficiaries of the results of past crimes against humanity don't get to pretend they never happened just because they didn't personally do them. US, Russian, whatever.
All of which would be scandalous if it weren't so common. The most tin-eared, self-unaware comment of this episode must still surely be US Secretary of State John Kerry's insistence that "you just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext". Of course, this is perhaps the most eloquent description of America's 21st century invasion of Iraq that anyone has yet offered.
Certainly, Iraq and Crimea are not identical. The biggest difference (aside from the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths) is that America was never going to annex Iraq. That is no longer America's style. But it would be naive to stop there - to accept at face value the suggestion that America therefore has no imperial impulses and operates as a modest nation-state, concerned merely with the administration of its own territory. The age of empire may formally have passed but that just means today's empires take a different form.
Now they expand interests and project power through non-military means. They prop up compliant, unpopular, frequently dictatorial allies through copious aid. Elsewhere they fund civil society groups that non-allied governments regard as hostile. They build military and economic alliances with countries they feel a strategic need to have on their side.
Ukraine is precisely such a country. Indeed, so are several of the former Soviet states that sit between Russia and Europe. This is why America has been so keen to bring them into NATO, thereby forging a military pact with them - the kind that was mobilised to pound Serbia in 1999. Russia fears the same thing could happen to it if NATO incorporates too many countries that sit on its borders. Russia openly regards this as an existential threat.
So far NATO has coaxed Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In time it hoped to add Georgia and Ukraine, thereby surrounding Russia. There's nothing random about America's designs here. And there's nothing random about Russia's determination to stop it, and expand its own alliances in Eurasia. This is an imperial game.
"I prefer Russia," says Sean Connery's character in The Russia House. "It's as corrupt as America, but there's less bullshit." That's about the size of it. When circumstances demand it, neither power cares much for the niceties of international law, and neither is meaningfully bound by it. Both aim to project their power as far as possible. But America's form of empire building is generally sophisticated enough to retain the veneer of normal international relations. Russia just goes ahead and annexes stuff.
Other U.S. policies are coming home to roost in this crisis. Recognition of state sovereignty has long been the stabilizing pillar of international law, requiring that states not interfere in the internal affairs of other states. The Russians, of course, have done this. But against what background? The U.S. intervened militarily in Panama, Grenada, Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya and did so (in part or whole) in the name of protecting civilians, whether American or foreign.
The rationale for these actions is humanitarian intervention, or what it is more recently called, The Responsibility to Protect (commonly known as R2P), after a 2001 report commissioned by the Canadian government. That is high-minded, of course, but it comes at a cost. When states reserve the right to intervene militarily in the affairs of other states, even to protect civilians, the international system that has been in place since the founding of the UN begins to come unraveled. The Russians are contributing to this by their actions in Crimea. But we opened the door for them. You cannot redefine the rules to suit yourself and then complain if others play by them.
The U.S. should cool the rhetoric and promote negotiations that include all of the relevant parties, including the Crimeans (whose claim to self-determination we don't recognize) and the Ukrainians (whose new government the Russians don't recognize). We could then provide a model of world leadership the American people could be proud of and just perhaps avert disaster.
Perhaps the most telling part of it all is the way that the Crimean referendum is referenced in the western media- not that it was rigged, or dishonest, or that it doesn't reflect the will of the people who live there, but rather that it was illegal. Which is pretty rich, coming from people who support the ultra nationalist overthrow of the elected Ukrainian govt in the first place.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych on Friday blamed the leaders of protests on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square in downtown Kiev, the symbol of Ukrainian protests) and Western countries for the current crisis in his country. Yanukovych said he believes that Russia would use all possible means to prevent chaos and terror in Ukraine. He addressed a press conference in southern Russia, appearing in public for the first time since leaving Kiev.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has blamed the leaders of protests on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square in downtown Kiev, the symbol of Ukrainian protests) and Western countries for the current crisis in his country.
Yanukovych had to flee his official residence and leave Ukraine following riots in his country that resulted in parliament taking over and appointing an interim head of state.
"Now I place the entire responsibility on those who led our country into the crisis, I would say to the chaos and disaster," he said. "They are to blame for that. Both those who came to power today and those who command them on Maidan, both visibly and invisibly. Including representatives of the West, the United States who patronized Maidan."
Or Truman could have started another war with our ally of a year earlier, given the geographic reality at the end of WW2. I'm sure that America would have loved it.
Get real.
The rest is the same. Referencing population shifts of 3 generations ago as if they happened yesterday, as if the people of today were the perps is utterly insane, btw.
So Russia fears what happened to Serbia could happen to them? What are they planning? More ethnic cleansing?
How'd that turd get into the punchbowl?
Pretty clumsy innuendo & a nice string of false attribution, too.
Just parrot the talking points. You embarrass yourself going off-script like that.
Ukraine is precisely such a country. Indeed, so are several of the former Soviet states that sit between Russia and Europe. This is why America has been so keen to bring them into NATO, thereby forging a military pact with them - the kind that was mobilised to pound Serbia in 1999. Russia fears the same thing could happen to it if NATO incorporates too many countries that sit on its borders. Russia openly regards this as an existential threat.
How'd that turd get into the punchbowl?
Pretty clumsy innuendo & a nice string of false attribution, too.
Just parrot the talking points. You embarrass yourself going off-script like that.
Their nuanced view closely mirrors my own and REALITY.
So, uhh, how far back should we set the clock, anyway? 2000 years, like the Israelis? And what's the basis for claiming that ethnic Russians in Crimea are denying the past? Was their ancestors' immigration any less forced than the expulsion of other people to to other parts of the former USSR?
Is it more important to squabble over the past than to embrace the present & the future?
Perhaps the most telling part of it all is the way that the Crimean referendum is referenced in the western media- not that it was rigged, or dishonest, or that it doesn't reflect the will of the people who live there, but rather that it was illegal. Which is pretty rich, coming from people who support the ultra nationalist overthrow of the elected Ukrainian govt in the first place.
Gee a growing chorus of the intellegentia are weighing in:
Their nuanced view closely mirrors my own and REALITY.
http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.c...kes-in-crimea-and-ukraine/Content?oid=2350604
Yes, decisions on territory, policy, etc should always be made with historical context in mind. Why wouldn't you?
Could you be referring to the historical context of Crimea being part of Russia from 1783 to 1954, (longer than most states have been part of the United States).
During the time period that Crimea was part of Russia, America was created by butchering the native inhabitants and stealing their land.
During the time period that Crimea was part of Russia, America was created by butchering the native inhabitants and stealing their land.