War with Russia

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toppstuff

13,698 posts

247 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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QuantumTokoloshi said:
toppstuff said:
Quantum - you really do spout some nonsense. You should get a prize.

If the "Mad dogs of Europe" are really on the loose, it seems rather strange that defence spending is falling and that, in spite of your bizarre, Kremlin-inspired rhetoric about how Europe wants war, the military men are not getting what they want. Europes leaders are not handing over the cash. They aren't building armies. In real terms, they are barely even keeping spending static let alone grow it.

No doubt you will argue that this is a cunning plan by the duplicitous EU. They are making war while at the same time cutting spending on armed forces. Fiendish stuff. rolleyes
And where did I mention who the mad dogs were? Those words were used to describe the protagonists in the first world war, leading up to the second. The point is waaaay over there and you missed it.

It is useful to read what is posted before penning a fulmination.
Oh come on. Your subtext is hardly subtle. You would not have posted it otherwise.

QuantumTokoloshi

4,164 posts

217 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
toppstuff said:
QuantumTokoloshi said:
toppstuff said:
Quantum - you really do spout some nonsense. You should get a prize.

If the "Mad dogs of Europe" are really on the loose, it seems rather strange that defence spending is falling and that, in spite of your bizarre, Kremlin-inspired rhetoric about how Europe wants war, the military men are not getting what they want. Europes leaders are not handing over the cash. They aren't building armies. In real terms, they are barely even keeping spending static let alone grow it.

No doubt you will argue that this is a cunning plan by the duplicitous EU. They are making war while at the same time cutting spending on armed forces. Fiendish stuff. rolleyes
And where did I mention who the mad dogs were? Those words were used to describe the protagonists in the first world war, leading up to the second. The point is waaaay over there and you missed it.

It is useful to read what is posted before penning a fulmination.
Oh come on. Your subtext is hardly subtle. You would not have posted it otherwise.
Did you actually bother reading it? No, is quite clearly the answer.

War is a racket, for both sides, the only winners are the people making money out of it. The losers are the civilians and those fighting, ask the conscript above. A de-escalation might be a good idea. We are facing a potential war between nuclear armed opponents, perhaps this text should be handed out in the NATO, Russian and Ukrainian headquarters as a starting point.

After_Shock

8,751 posts

220 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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2013BRM said:
ICBM bought from Russia is where the current intel is at right now
Best case a first gen Russian ICBM/Space type launch craft, if it was acquired directly from Russia which would be silly of Russia on many levels I doubt it would have any guidance systems or even an engine in it.

Im fairly sure direct and near neighbours, china, India, Japan would have more than capable equipment of shooting it down before it reached any further.

Cobnapint

8,628 posts

151 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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War perhaps does generate income for a few arms manufacturers, but anyone suggesting that a modern western leader would unflinchingly commit his forces to a bloody war and risk his country's future stability for the sake of a bit extra corporation tax - has been reading too many books.

The idea that war generates money is the oldest wives tale in the book. The fact is, it literally, costs a bomb.

tractive

6 posts

169 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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China Warns U.S. to Stop Its Ukrainian Proxy War Against Russia


A much-ignored huge news report from Reuters on Friday, February 27th, was headlined “Chinese diplomat tells West to consider Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine.”

China’s Ambassador to Belgium (which has the capital of the EU) said that the “nature and root cause” of the Ukrainian conflict is “the West,” and that “The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration.”

By “real security concerns,” he is clearly referring to NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border, and America’s surrounding Russia with U.S. military bases, now inceasingly including the most strategic of Russia’s bordering countries: Ukraine.

In other words, this diplomat says: “the West” has a “zero-sum” attitude toward Russia, instead of seeking to move forward with an approach in which neither side among the nuclear superpowers benefits at the other’s expense — the entire world moves forward together.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-warns-u-s-to-st...

Cobnapint

8,628 posts

151 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
This is the China that has a long history of p*ss poor human rights records, a long history of supporting succesive murderous dictatorships in North Korea, and is presently in the process of trying to obtain world economic domination for itself by building huge container ports everywhere and buying up a large proportion of the worlds iron ore, metals and minerals.

Like we need any moral direction from THEM.

Mr Whippy

29,040 posts

241 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
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2013BRM said:
More likely black market,
Any market that doesn't have public disclosure of activity is 'black'

That's probably anyone selling nuclear weapons.

Halb

53,012 posts

183 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
Most dictator's/authoritarian regimes have a few things in common.

They very much like being rich

They very much like being alive
Being rich and alive is almost a universally wanted state of affairs.
99.9999%? biggrin

johnxjsc1985

15,948 posts

164 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
tractive said:
==China Warns U.S. to Stop Its Ukrainian Proxy War Against Russia==
A much-ignored huge news report from Reuters on Friday, February 27th, was headlined “Chinese diplomat tells West to consider Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine.”

China’s Ambassador to Belgium (which has the capital of the EU) said that the “nature and root cause” of the Ukrainian conflict is “the West,” and that “The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration.”

By “real security concerns,” he is clearly referring to NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border, and America’s surrounding Russia with U.S. military bases, now inceasingly including the most strategic of Russia’s bordering countries: Ukraine.

In other words, this diplomat says: “the West” has a “zero-sum” attitude toward Russia, instead of seeking to move forward with an approach in which neither side among the nuclear superpowers benefits at the other’s expense — the entire world moves forward together.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-warns-u-s-to-st...
I am not a big fan of the US foreign policy but perhaps someone could help me out.
How many Russians have been killed by the US and how many millions of Russians have been killed by fellow Russians. Doesn't the danger for Russian citizens come from within its own borders?.

AreOut

3,658 posts

161 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
Cobnapint said:
This is the China that has a long history of p*ss poor human rights records, a long history of supporting succesive murderous dictatorships in North Korea, and is presently in the process of trying to obtain world economic domination for itself by building huge container ports everywhere and buying up a large proportion of the worlds iron ore, metals and minerals.

Like we need any moral direction from THEM.
every empire has fallen, theirs will too

skyrover

12,671 posts

204 months

Thursday 5th March 2015
quotequote all
johnxjsc1985 said:
tractive said:
==China Warns U.S. to Stop Its Ukrainian Proxy War Against Russia==
A much-ignored huge news report from Reuters on Friday, February 27th, was headlined “Chinese diplomat tells West to consider Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine.”

China’s Ambassador to Belgium (which has the capital of the EU) said that the “nature and root cause” of the Ukrainian conflict is “the West,” and that “The West should abandon the zero-sum mentality, and take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration.”

By “real security concerns,” he is clearly referring to NATO’s expansion right up to Russia’s border, and America’s surrounding Russia with U.S. military bases, now inceasingly including the most strategic of Russia’s bordering countries: Ukraine.

In other words, this diplomat says: “the West” has a “zero-sum” attitude toward Russia, instead of seeking to move forward with an approach in which neither side among the nuclear superpowers benefits at the other’s expense — the entire world moves forward together.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/china-warns-u-s-to-st...
I am not a big fan of the US foreign policy but perhaps someone could help me out.
How many Russians have been killed by the US and how many millions of Russians have been killed by fellow Russians. Doesn't the danger for Russian citizens come from within its own borders?.
Yes

. said:
Evidence mounting of Russian troops in Ukraine

Evidence is mounting that Russian soldiers are officially fighting in eastern Ukraine. Reporters and human rights activists describe their attempts to remain undercover.

It was a surprising confession. In an interview with the opposition Russian newspaper, Nowaja Gaseta, (from Monday, March 2) a wounded Russian tank operator confirmed what many have long assumed: That contracted Russian soldiers are fighting alongside the separatists in Eastern Ukraine against the Ukrainian army.

And not just a few soldiers. A day after the interview was published, US General Ben Hodges said in Berlin that the US military was working on the assumption of 12,000 Russian troops in the region.

It's not the first time such reports have surfaced. On Feb. 19, the Russian newspaper Kommersant published a surprisingly frank feature about the deployment of Russian soldiers in Eastern Ukraine. The article appeared in the online version of the paper, which belongs to oligarch Alisher Usmanov, known to be loyal to the Kremlin. Reporter Ilja Barabanov recounts how he met three Russians who had until recently been professional soldiers. In the second half of January, they went to Eastern Ukraine to fight.

"Former miners"

The men said they had fought since Jan. 20 on the front in various units of the separatist army of the "People's Republic of Donetsk." Before they left, they applied to end their army contracts and be officially discharged.

Whether or not they were actually discharged, and what their current status is, is unknown.

The three men said that their "indefinite business trip," as it was called by the Kommersant reporter, was approved by Russian officers. Later, in an interview with the Russian broadcaster, Business FM, Barabanov said he'd had the impression that the young men had gone to fight in the war "of their own free will."

In his article, the journalist described the tactics used by the professional Russian fighters in Donbass. They fight on the foremost front, but are constantly making sure that they fly under the radar of journalists and other observers.

"When it's time to do battle, only those who are really there to fight leave the base. They get the job done and come back. In the towns they've occupied, the members of the local citizen's army (term used by the separatists to describe themselves – Ed.) gather round, and the men then like to portray themselves as former miners," Barabanov writes.

It's all meant to give the impression that only local residents are fighting on the side of the rebels, and no one else. Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a similar account of the situation. In Budapest recently, he remarked about the Ukrainian army: "It's always a bad thing to lose, especially when you're losing against former miners and tractor drivers."

"They want remuneration"

In an interview with DW, Dmitri Pyslar of the Association of Russian Soldiers' Mothers said that Russian troops are fighting in Eastern Ukraine, and that they were part of the attack on Debaltseve, even after the ceasefire was agreed. But since such pains are taken to keep everything secret, it is hard to get exact information. Pyslar said it is impossible to say how many soldiers are participating in such operations.

"We tried and we failed. One goes, and another comes. It's not as if troops are sitting there (in Ukraine) over a long period of time," he said. However, he doesn't buy the message being spread in Russia that soldiers are merely "vacationing" on the front in Donbass, or fighting voluntarily without a valid contract from the Russian army.

Valentina Melnikova from the Association of Russian Soldiers' Mothers talks to lots of soldiers but has never heard any confirmation of this official version of events. "No one said anything like that to us," she told DW. Rather, soldiers she spoke to said they were promised "some type of reward" *– such as an honor, or a veteran's ID. Often, these promises are not kept. "They complain to us that they don't want to go back to Ukraine a second time because they didn't get what they were promised," she said.

Disappearing soldiers

In Russia, it is only legal for the state to send military personnel to work abroad if the person is a professional soldier on a contract, and if they have expressly agreed to a foreign deployment.

There are many cases of soldiers who have refused, said Melnikova. "The Russian military court opens proceedings for desertion in that case," she said.

The same thing happens to Russian soldiers who are taken prisoner in Ukraine. With her help, the New York Times documented one such case.

An orphan by the name of Petr Khokhlov signed a limited contract in 2014 with the Russian army. One day, he disappeared from his base, without saying a word to either his fiancee or his brother. Some time later, he surfaced again on a video made by Ukrainian authorities as a prisoner of war. Later, his brother learned that Petr had been exchanged for Ukrainian soldiers and had been handed to the separatists. But the Russian army representative didn't want to know about it. Officially, Khokhlov was a deserter. His trail went cold again until months later, a New York Times reporter found Khokhlov at a separatist checkpoint in Eastern Ukraine. He told the reporter that he was there voluntarily.

"Vacationing" in Donbass

The government in Moscow insists that there are "no regular Russian troops" in Ukraine. No Russian army formations have been spotted in Eastern Ukraine. At the end of August last year, though, a large group of Russian soldiers was seen in Ukraine, but Russian authorities explained that they had gotten lost and had crossed over the border without realizing where they were.

That's the Kremlin's official position. However, Russian politicians are more frequently referring to "volunteer" fighters with military backgrounds who've gone to Donbass on their own accord. "Anyone who has left the army or who is on vacation can go where they want," said Russian parliamentarian, Viktor Savarsin. "It's a fact that there are officers and soldiers who have gone there and who have participated in battles, and we are not hiding this fact."
http://www.dw.de/evidence-mounting-of-russian-troo...

Cobnapint

8,628 posts

151 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
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Baltic states shiver as Russia flexes muscles - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-31759558

He's up to no good that man....

Mr Whippy

29,040 posts

241 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
quotequote all
Be afraid, be very very afraid!

Go lose your life for the greed of others.

As if this is about fighting for freedom against tyranny, it's a joke.


If Russia ruled Lithuania, or Lithuania did, it'd probably make little difference to 99% of Lithuanian's.

Yet they'll fight to defend their apparent freedom.


The Greeks just voted for a hard line on Europe, and yet now it seems the oldies might be giving up a chunk of their pension savings to pay off the Troika and IMF.

No matter who you vote for, you still get the same wealthy/political types calling the shots. Be it Putin or Obama.



I'd be interested to know if those willing to go fight for Lithuania are as willing as those being drafted in Western Ukraine.

Dave

skyrover

12,671 posts

204 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
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raftom

1,197 posts

261 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
quotequote all
rofl

scherzkeks

4,460 posts

134 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
quotequote all
Cobnapint said:
The idea that war generates money is the oldest wives tale in the book. The fact is, it literally, costs a bomb.
One point for ignorance, two for bathing in said ignorance. Colossally entertaining though. laugh

Mr Whippy

29,040 posts

241 months

Saturday 7th March 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
I take it that war is actually ok then.

And that being drafted to fight and die for something you may not believe in is ok too?


Great. Fascism slips back into the Eastern European countries and they end up acting no better than communist Russia did towards their people, all in the name of defending themselves from the evil Russians hehe

Dave

QuantumTokoloshi

4,164 posts

217 months

Monday 9th March 2015
quotequote all
A thought provoking look at divisions appearing within NATO, over the Ukraine situation.

Germany Has Had Enough With US Neocons: Berlin "Stunned" At US Desire For War In Ukraine



While Russia's envoy to NATO notes that statements by the deputy head of NATO testify to the fact that the leaders of the bloc want to intervene in Russia’s internal politics, and are "dreaming of Russian Maidan," Washington has a bigger problem... Germany. As Der Spiegel reports, while US President Obama 'supports' Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either with sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda."

This is the view of Russia’s permanent envoy to NATO:

“The speech in Riga demonstrates the concern about Russia’s democracy and internal policy. At last, now we know that NATO has a dream, and this dream is a Maidan in Russia,” Aleksandr Grushko said in comment that was tweeted through the Russian representation office in the alliance.



Grushko referred to the words of NATO's deputy secretary general, Alexander Vershbow, who had told a conference in the Latvian capital Riga that President Vladimir Putin's "aim seems to be to turn Ukraine into a failed state and to suppress and discredit alternative voices in Russia, so as to prevent a Russian 'Maidan.'" Both officials used the Ukrainian word ‘Maidan’ to describe a string of protest actions that eventually turned into mass unrest and the ousting of the legally elected president and parliament.

And as Der Spiegel reports, The Germans are not happy.

Breedlove's Bellicosity: Berlin Alarmed by Aggressive NATO Stance on Ukraine

US President Obama supports Chancellor Merkel's efforts at finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. But hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin's approach. And NATO's top commander in Europe hasn't been helping either.

It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn't holding perfectly, but it was holding.

On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again "upped the ante" in eastern Ukraine -- with "well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery" having been sent to the Donbass. "What is clear," Breedlove said, "is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day."

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn't understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn't the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove's numbers have been significantly higher than those in the possession of America's NATO allies in Europe. As such, he is playing directly into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove's comments as "dangerous propaganda." Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove's comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

The 'Super Hawk'

But Breedlove hasn't been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Indeed, US President Barack Obama seems almost isolated. He has thrown his support behind Merkel's diplomatic efforts for the time being, but he has also done little to quiet those who would seek to increase tensions with Russia and deliver weapons to Ukraine. Sources in Washington say that Breedlove's bellicose comments are first cleared with the White House and the Pentagon. The general, they say, has the role of the "super hawk," whose role is that of increasing the pressure on America's more reserved trans-Atlantic partners.

A mixture of political argumentation and military propaganda is necessary. But for months now, many in the Chancellery simply shake their heads each time NATO, under Breedlove's leadership, goes public with striking announcements about Russian troop or tank movements. To be sure, neither Berlin's Russia experts nor BND intelligence analysts doubt that Moscow is supporting the pro-Russian separatists. The BND even has proof of such support.

But it is the tone of Breedlove's announcements that makes Berlin uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO -- and by extension, the entire West -- in danger of losing its credibility.

There are plenty of examples. Just over three weeks ago, during the cease-fire talks in Minsk, the Ukrainian military warned that the Russians -- even as the diplomatic marathon was ongoing -- had moved 50 tanks and dozens of rockets across the border into Luhansk. Just one day earlier, US Lieutenant General Ben Hodges had announced "direct Russian military intervention."

Senior officials in Berlin immediately asked the BND for an assessment, but the intelligence agency's satellite images showed just a few armored vehicles. Even those American intelligence officials who supply the BND with daily situation reports were much more reserved about the incident than Hodges was in his public statements. One intelligence agent says it "remains a riddle until today" how the general reached his conclusions.

Much More Cautious

"The German intelligence services generally appraise the threat level much more cautiously than the Americans do," an international military expert in Kiev confirmed.

At the beginning of the crisis, General Breedlove announced that the Russians had assembled 40,000 troops on the Ukrainian border and warned that an invasion could take place at any moment. The situation, he said, was "incredibly concerning." But intelligence officials from NATO member states had already excluded the possibility of a Russian invasion. They believed that neither the composition nor the equipment of the troops was consistent with an imminent invasion.

The experts contradicted Breedlove's view in almost every respect. There weren't 40,000 soldiers on the border, they believed, rather there were much less than 30,000 and perhaps even fewer than 20,000. Furthermore, most of the military equipment had not been brought to the border for a possible invasion, but had already been there prior to the beginning of the conflict. Furthermore, there was no evidence of logistical preparation for an invasion, such as a field headquarters.

Breedlove, though, repeatedly made inexact, contradictory or even flat-out inaccurate statements. On Nov. 18, 2014, he told the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that there were "regular Russian army units in eastern Ukraine." One day later, he told the website of the German newsmagazine Stern that they weren't fighting units, but "mostly trainers and advisors."

He initially said there were "between 250 and 300" of them, and then "between 300 and 500." For a time, NATO was even saying there were 1,000 of them.

The fact that NATO has no intelligence agency of its own plays into Breedlove's hands. The alliance relies on intelligence gathered by agents from the US, Britain, Germany and other member states. As such, SACEUR has a wide range of information to choose from.

Influencing Breedlove

On Nov. 12, during a visit to Sofia, Bulgaria, Breedlove reported that "we have seen columns of Russian equipment -- primarily Russian tanks, Russian artillery, Russian air defense systems and Russian combat troops -- entering into Ukraine." It was, he noted, "the same thing that OSCE is reporting." But the OSCE had only observed military convoys within eastern Ukraine. OSCE observers had said nothing about troops marching in from Russia.

Breedlove sees no reason to revise his approach. "I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis," he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO's intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn't always match assessments made by individual nations. "It is normal that not everyone agrees with the assessments that I provide," he wrote.

He says that NATO's strategy is to "release clear, accurate and timely information regarding ongoing events." He also wrote that: "As an alliance based on the fundamental values of freedom and democracy, our response to propaganda cannot be more propaganda. It can only be the truth."

The German government, meanwhile, is doing what it can to influence Breedlove. Sources in Berlin say that conversations to this end have taken place in recent weeks. But there are many at NATO headquarters in Brussels who are likewise concerned about Breedlove's statements. On Tuesday of last week, Breedlove's public appearances were an official item on the agenda of the North Atlantic Council's weekly lunch meeting. Several ambassadors present criticized Breedlove and expressed their incredulity at some of the commander's statements.

The government in Berlin is concerned that Breedlove's statements could harm the West's credibility. The West can't counter Russian propaganda with its own propaganda, "rather it must use arguments that are worthy of a constitutional state." Berlin sources also say that it has become conspicuous that Breedlove's controversial statements are often made just as a step forward has been made in the difficult negotiations aimed at a political resolution. Berlin sources say that Germany should be able to depend on its allies to support its efforts at peace.

Pressure on Obama

German foreign policy experts are united in their view of Breedlove as a hawk. "I would prefer that Breedlove's comments on political questions be intelligent and reserved," says Social Democrat parliamentarian Niels Annen, for example. "Instead, NATO in the past has always announced a new Russian offensive just as, from our point of view, the time had come for cautious optimism." Annen, who has long specialized in foreign policy, has also been frequently dissatisfied with the information provided by NATO headquarters. "We parliamentarians were often confused by information regarding alleged troop movements that were inconsistent with the information we had," he says.

The pressure on Obama from the Republicans, but also from his own political camp, is intense. Should the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine not hold, it will likely be difficult to continue refusing Kiev's requests for shipments of so-called "defensive weapons." And that would represent a dramatic escalation of the crisis. Moscow has already begun issuing threats in anticipation of such deliveries. "Any weapons deliveries to Kiev will escalate the tensions and would unhinge European security," Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia's national security council, told the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on Wednesday.

Although President Obama has decided for the time being to give European diplomacy a chance, hawks like Breedlove or Victoria Nuland are doing what they can to pave the way for weapons deliveries. "We can fight against the Europeans, fight against them rhetorically," Nuland said during a private meeting of American officials on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference at the beginning of February.

In reporting on the meeting later, the German tabloid Bild reported that Nuland referred to the chancellor's early February trip to Moscow for talks with Putin as "Merkel's Moscow stuff." No wonder, then, that people in Berlin have the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military's ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. "We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations," said one Berlin official.

Nuland Diplomacy

Nuland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year's presidential election, is an important voice in US policy concerning Ukraine and Russia. She has never sought to hide her emotional bond to Russia, even saying "I love Russia." Her grandparents immigrated to the US from Bessarabia, which belonged to the Russian empire at the time. Nuland speaks Russian fluently.

She is also very direct. She can be very keen and entertaining, but has been known to take on an undiplomatic tone -- and has not always been wrong to do so. Mykola Asarov, who was prime minister under toppled Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, recalls that Nuland basically blackmailed Yanukovych in order to prevent greater bloodshed in Kiev during the Maidan protests. "No violence against the protesters or you'll fall," Nuland told him according to Asarov. She also, he said, threatened tough economic and political sanctions against both Ukraine and the country's leaders. According to Asarov, Nuland said that, were violence used against the protesters on Maidan Square, information about the money he and his cronies had taken out of the country would be made public.

Nuland has also been open -- at least internally -- about her contempt for European weakness and is famous for having said "fk the EU" during the initial days of the Ukraine crisis in February of 2014. Her husband, the neo-conservative Robert Kagan, is, after all, the originator of the idea that Americans are from Mars and Europeans, unwilling as they are to realize that true security depends on military power, are from Venus.

When it comes to the goal of delivering weapons to Ukraine, Nuland and Breedlove work hand-in-hand. On the first day of the Munich Security Conference, the two gathered the US delegation behind closed doors to discuss their strategy for breaking Europe's resistance to arming Ukraine.

On the seventh floor of the Bayerischer Hof hotel in the heart of Munich, it was Nuland who began coaching. "While talking to the Europeans this weekend, you need to make the case that Russia is putting in more and more offensive stuff while we want to help the Ukrainians defend against these systems," Nuland said. "It is defensive in nature although some of it has lethality."

Training Troops?

Breedlove complemented that with the military details, saying that moderate weapons aid was inevitable -- otherwise neither sanctions nor diplomatic pressure would have any effect. "If we can increase the cost for Russia on the battlefield, the other tools will become more effective," he said. "That's what we should do here."

In Berlin, top politicians have always considered a common position vis-a-vis Russia as a necessary prerequisite for success in peace efforts. For the time being, that common front is still holding, but the dispute is a fundamental one -- and hinges on the question of whether diplomacy can be successful without the threat of military action. Additionally, the trans-Atlantic partners also have differing goals. Whereas the aim of the Franco-German initiative is to stabilize the situation in Ukraine, it is Russia that concerns hawks within the US administration. They want to drive back Moscow's influence in the region and destabilize Putin's power. For them, the dream outcome would be regime change in Moscow.

A massive troop training range is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine near the Polish border. During Soviet times, it served as the westernmost military district in the Soviet Union. Since 1998, though, it has been used for joint exercises by Ukrainian forces together with the United States and NATO. Yavoriv is also the site where US soldiers want to train members of the Ukrainian National Guard for their future battle against the separatists. According to the Pentagon's plans, American officers would train the Ukrainians on how to use American artillery-locating radar devices. At least that's what US Army in Europe commander Lt. Gen. Hodges announced in January.

The training was actually supposed to start at the beginning of March. Before it began, however, President Obama temporarily put it on hold in order to give the ceasefire agreement reached in Minsk a chance. Still, the hawks remain confident that they will soon come a step closer to their goal. On Tuesday, Hodges said during an appearance in Berlin that he expects the training will still begin at some point this month.

Edited by QuantumTokoloshi on Monday 9th March 08:52

Cobnapint

8,628 posts

151 months

Monday 9th March 2015
quotequote all
scherzkeks said:
Cobnapint said:
The idea that war generates money is the oldest wives tale in the book. The fact is, it literally, costs a bomb.
One point for ignorance, two for bathing in said ignorance. Colossally entertaining though. laugh
The only good thing to come from wars like WW2 was the short term increased employment.

Bad things were a shattered infrastructure, lots of dead servicemen/women/members of the public, severe war and post-war austerity/rationing.

The only people to gain financially from war are the arms manufacturers/dealers when stocks are replenished. This costs money - this means increased government spending - this means government debt - this means a financial cost to the general public in the way of increased taxes or severe austerity.

Where's your mystery winning formula that makes that scenario so funny...?

Cobnapint

8,628 posts

151 months

Monday 9th March 2015
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