What Happened in the Ukraine?

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]Aragorn wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
If Mexico came out today and said, “Russia if you invade the Ukraine we will defend the Ukraine at all cost”. How long do you think Russia would laugh?

Now substitute America for Mexico. Does Russia laugh or do they take a step back and think about the consequences of their actions?

What is the difference?

Being strong is well a strong deterrent, but you have to look the part. It’s hard to bluff if you look weak.

[/quote]

I see your larger point, but foreign policy is not often something you should bother bluffing with when stakes are high. Most certainly not in this case.[/quote]

Ukraine isn’t under the protection of US extended deterrence. Through the lens of self interest and realpolitik, why should it be? [/quote]

No, I agree with you. We have no real interests there from a purely practical standpoint, just making a more general point.[/quote]

Well, that is not entirely true. The US has spent over $5 billion in Ukraine in the last 20+ years and does a very small amount of trade with Ukraine, but none of that really warrants the amount of attention the US is giving this. Also, with a new virulently pro-Western government in play that will only help increase trade with the US, so there are some American interests in play, although nowhere near as much, or as tangible of interests as Russia has there.

That being said, the US’s hands are by no means clean in this matter. Here is a transcript of a phone conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt (US Ambassador to Ukraine) where they discuss how they are going to influence who becomes a member of the new government (interfering in the makeup of a foreign government that the US has recognized like this is a violation of international law). They also discuss ways to not have Ukraine join the EU. The US does not want Ukraine to join the EU for the same reasons Russia doesn’t. Namely, if Ukraine joins the EU they will receive preferential trade agreements with the EU to the detriment of trade with the US, but if they do not then the US can try to negotiate better trade agreements with the new government and come out on top.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957[/quote]

Very interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing.

This skit with Liam Neeson on Saturday Night Live was hilarious.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2014/03/09/Liam-Neeson-SNLs-Obama-Take-on-Putin-in-Show-Cold-Open

JUST CAME HERE TO SAY…

FUCK PUTIN!!!

HOPE USA FUCKING NUKES PUTIN!!!

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

We do know the effect of going in before we knew whether or not they had WMD’s. They did not ultimately and our justification for that action was completely lost at that point. We had an opportunity to wait for confirmation before acting and we ignored it.

[/quote]

Here’s the thing, and I know it’s going to sound full retard, but it’s the truth.

Iraq had chemical weapons and I know people that they were used on. You will never hear about it in the news or official acknowledgement by our gov. but people were and are currently being treated for “Gulf War Syndrome” which just so happens to match very closely with the symptoms of having been hit with nerve gas.
[/quote]

That’s a stretch and more likely the result of the use of depleted uranium weapons. So what if Iraq did use VX or sarin nerve agent? People are irrationally afraid of chemical weapons because of how they kill their victims. They get lumped into the WMD category not because of their capability, but by virtue of being unconventional. WMD itself is a political construct that has no place in positivist analysis. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear weapons (CBRNs) is the metric that should be standard terminology.[/quote]

Chemical weapons have always been included in the term WMD.

We didn’t go into Iraq because of the immediate purported possession of nuclear weapons; we went in because of chems and bios. The chems WERE most certainly beyond a shadow of a doubt possessed AND used by Saddam Hussein.

The bios? By their own admission they claimed they had them.[/quote]

We went in there for the most hypocritical, ass-backwards reason possible: your weapons don’t kill massive amounts of people the way they’re supposed to. Who the fuck cares what kinds of weapons Saddam had? As if we’ve never used chemical weapons to kill people. I think our usage of Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam pretty much invalidates any concern we have over people using chemical weapons.

I’ve said it once and I’ll continue to say so. The U.S. going after ANYONE for the types of weapons that someone uses is a farce. Who fucking cares HOW you kill a shitload of people? The biggest weapons of mass destruction ever used in the history of mankind were the two bombs dropped in Japan. Were we wrong to do so? No. Aren’t all weapons supposed to kill as many people as possible?

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Bismark wrote:

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

We do know the effect of going in before we knew whether or not they had WMD’s. They did not ultimately and our justification for that action was completely lost at that point. We had an opportunity to wait for confirmation before acting and we ignored it.

[/quote]

Here’s the thing, and I know it’s going to sound full retard, but it’s the truth.

Iraq had chemical weapons and I know people that they were used on. You will never hear about it in the news or official acknowledgement by our gov. but people were and are currently being treated for “Gulf War Syndrome” which just so happens to match very closely with the symptoms of having been hit with nerve gas.
[/quote]

That’s a stretch and more likely the result of the use of depleted uranium weapons. So what if Iraq did use VX or sarin nerve agent? People are irrationally afraid of chemical weapons because of how they kill their victims. They get lumped into the WMD category not because of their capability, but by virtue of being unconventional. WMD itself is a political construct that has no place in positivist analysis. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear weapons (CBRNs) is the metric that should be standard terminology.[/quote]

Chemical weapons have always been included in the term WMD.

We didn’t go into Iraq because of the immediate purported possession of nuclear weapons; we went in because of chems and bios. The chems WERE most certainly beyond a shadow of a doubt possessed AND used by Saddam Hussein.

The bios? By their own admission they claimed they had them.[/quote]

We went in there for the most hypocritical, ass-backwards reason possible: your weapons don’t kill massive amounts of people the way they’re supposed to. Who the fuck cares what kinds of weapons Saddam had? As if we’ve never used chemical weapons to kill people. I think our usage of Agent Orange and napalm in Vietnam pretty much invalidates any concern we have over people using chemical weapons.

I’ve said it once and I’ll continue to say so. The U.S. going after ANYONE for the types of weapons that someone uses is a farce. Who fucking cares HOW you kill a shitload of people? The biggest weapons of mass destruction ever used in the history of mankind were the two bombs dropped in Japan. Were we wrong to do so? No. Aren’t all weapons supposed to kill as many people as possible?[/quote]

Sure thing, Bert.
[/quote]

Hey, be flippant about it all you want, push. The bottom line is that I think people are starting to get REALLY sick and tired of the hypocritical bullshit being spouted by this country.

We claim to stand for sovereignty and all that, but that is a complete load of shit. What if Taiwan one day said, “You know what? We’re going to exert our sovereignty and demand that the U.S. remove its massive military presence from our island.” What if South Korea said one day, “Gee, I think it would make more sense for us to allow Chinese troops along our northern border instead of U.S. troops.”

Would we allow them to exert that sort of sovereignty? Of course not. I could handle all of this shit much better if people didn’t continually try to take the self-righteous high road, as if I’m too fucking stupid to realize the staggering double standard involved.

I suppose I’m just sick and tired of hearing certain conservatives rant and rave about how the gov’t can’t fix anything at all, and then turn around and advocate a gov’t-led military response.

And quite frankly, how does ANY of this really affect us at all? What does the Ukraine have to do with the unemployment rate, or income gaps, or manufacturing jobs, or natural gas extraction, or cheaper, better health care, or a stronger education system?

You know what this country reminds me of when this sort of shit happens? It reminds me of one of my students. This student is the nosiest teenaged girl I have ever seen. She can barely write a sentence with proper subject/verb agreement, yet she is CONSTANTLY pointing out everything that everyone else in the class does. Every single day, she raises her hand to basically rat out a student for talking or doodling or whatever, and she’s bombing out of my class because it’s a struggle for her to spell her own fucking name. I just tell her to stop tattling and worry about what she can control and only what she can control.

I think this country needs to do the same. We have all sorts of domestic issues here that need attending to. We spend about half our budget on entitlement programs, most of what’s leftover on a military that is grossly misused, and we stand here telling everyone else how to wipe their asses even though we have shit running right down our own fucking legs.

I’m just sick of hearing about everything that’s wrong in the world and how it’s the U.S.'s responsibility to fix everything. How about spending some time on US for a change? How about fixing everything here first? How about repairing the fucking roads in California and Texas and Kentucky and Massachusetts instead of the ones in motherfucking Fallujah and Tikrit? How about improving the infrastructure of this country instead of those pedophiliac dope fiends over in Afghanistan? How about putting serious effort into improving the education system here instead of wasting money teaching some goat-fucking inbred in the middle of the Swat Valley how to grow better beets or whatever?

Huh??? HOW ABOUT FIXING THE FUCKING UNITED STATES INSTEAD OF STICKING OUR NOSES AND OUR MONEY AND OUR MOTHERFUCKING SOLDIERS INTO EVERYBODY ELSE’S SHIT? HUH, PUSH? WHAT’S THE FUCKING EXCUSE FOR SENDING AMERICANS TO DIE OVER THERE THIS TIME??? ARE YOU GOING TO SEND YOUR FUCKING KID OVER THERE TO GET HIS GODDAMNED BALLS BLOWN OFF OVER SOME GODDAMNED FUCKING WORD LIKE “SOVEREIGNTY”? ARE YOU WILLING TO RISK A FUCKING SHOOTING WAR WITH THE RUSKIES OVER SOME OUTBACK SHITHOLE LIKE THE UKRAINE?

I don’t think you do. In fact, I pretty much know you don’t, especially since you haven’t actually advocated a military response over there. But what happens when/if Putin rolls into eastern Ukraine next? Then what? Will you still be taking the isolationist stance?

Part of being a sovereign nation is being capable of defending oneself. If the Ukraine cannot defend itself adequately against Russia, then there is no sovereignty for us to protect. We essentially invalidated any sort of claim to sovereignty that the Ukraine may have had before they even had sovereignty. We did so when we told them that their sovereignty was dependent on doing what WE told them to do, not what they wanted to do. We told them they could only be recognized as sovereign by us if they rid themselves of their nukes. So what we basically said was, “You can be sovereign, meaning that you determine your own destiny, only AFTER we determine it for you. You can only be sovereign, meaning able to defend yourself, AFTER you have seriously eroded your ability to defend yourself.”

I’m telling you, there are simply a fuckton of people in this country who are STILL pissed off that we never went to toe-to-toe with the Soviets in an all-out shooting war. It’s like all the little wannabe General Jack D. Rippers come out of the woodworks every time something like this happens. You’ve got that dumb fucking whore, Sarah Palin, up in Alaska saying we should practically just nuke Russia now and get it over with. Thank God she didn’t get into the White House. You’ve got Obama threatening economic sanctions, as if punishing Vlad the fucking Potato Farmer for Putin’s transgressions is going to solve one fucking thing in a country whose elections are pretty much rigged anyways. What are economic sanctions going to do? Do they think we can just treat these things like some scene out of “Full Metal Jacket”, as if the Russians are going to proverbially tie down Putin and whack him with bars of soap for fucking over the whole country due to his misdeeds? Are we waiting for Ivan the Cirrhotic Vodka Salesman to rise up in the streets and do something about this? What else do we really expect from economic sanctions? They work about as well a full-fledged shooting war. Just ask Iran. We’ve been crippling them with economic sanctions for years and all it’s accomplished is a cursory conversation at the bargaining table about a nuke program that they have zero intention of ending. And if we respected countries’ sovereignty to the extent that we claim we do, we wouldn’t be demanding to determine the course of Iran’s nuke program.

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Part of being a sovereign nation is being capable of defending oneself. If the Ukraine cannot defend itself adequately against Russia, then there is no sovereignty for us to protect. We essentially invalidated any sort of claim to sovereignty that the Ukraine may have had before they even had sovereignty. We did so when we told them that their sovereignty was dependent on doing what WE told them to do, not what they wanted to do. We told them they could only be recognized as sovereign by us if they rid themselves of their nukes. So what we basically said was, “You can be sovereign, meaning that you determine your own destiny, only AFTER we determine it for you. You can only be sovereign, meaning able to defend yourself, AFTER you have seriously eroded your ability to defend yourself.”[/quote]

Thats because we are benevolent leaders of the free world. {/sarc}

[quote]SkyzykS wrote:

[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Part of being a sovereign nation is being capable of defending oneself. If the Ukraine cannot defend itself adequately against Russia, then there is no sovereignty for us to protect. We essentially invalidated any sort of claim to sovereignty that the Ukraine may have had before they even had sovereignty. We did so when we told them that their sovereignty was dependent on doing what WE told them to do, not what they wanted to do. We told them they could only be recognized as sovereign by us if they rid themselves of their nukes. So what we basically said was, “You can be sovereign, meaning that you determine your own destiny, only AFTER we determine it for you. You can only be sovereign, meaning able to defend yourself, AFTER you have seriously eroded your ability to defend yourself.”[/quote]

Thats because we are benevolent leaders of the free world. {/sarc}
[/quote]

It’s like appointing Philip Seymour Hoffman head of the DEA.

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]H factor wrote:

Putin is not a morally good guy, but I’m not sure I would say Obama/Biden…are either.

[/quote]

Oh good grief.
[/quote]
You got a problem with that?

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:
So getting back to Russia: why do we have to look tough? Why do political questions end up revolving around appearances and concepts like losing face? These discussions always end up using wild west terminology. It ends up being about how we look at the end of the day vs resolving the issue or maybe, better still, letting them settle their differences by themselves. [/quote]

If our goal is stop violence from occurring do you think we have a better chance of achieving said goal if we look weak or if we look tough?

[/quote]
If we ARE smart. [/quote]

Do you trust the U.S. government to be smart?[/quote]
Then why trust it to look strong or weak or make any other decisions?

Besides, the government is only as smart as those who elected it.

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:

[quote]zecarlo wrote:
So getting back to Russia: why do we have to look tough? Why do political questions end up revolving around appearances and concepts like losing face? These discussions always end up using wild west terminology. It ends up being about how we look at the end of the day vs resolving the issue or maybe, better still, letting them settle their differences by themselves. [/quote]

If our goal is stop violence from occurring do you think we have a better chance of achieving said goal if we look weak or if we look tough?

[/quote]
If we ARE smart. [/quote]

Do you trust the U.S. government to be smart?[/quote]

Then why trust it to look strong or weak or make any other decisions?

Besides, the government is only as smart as those who elected it. [/quote]

Personally I think the U.S. government has a better track record of looking strong, not making the smartest decisions, which is why I would trust the gov to do the former rather than the latter.

I don’t believe your second statement is even remotely true.

[quote]NickViar wrote:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/michael-scheuer/russia-annexing-crimea/[/quote]

Thanks for that. It’s a very interesting write up from someone who isn’t just some random yahoo.

Well, the referendum in Crimea is just over one day away so I thought we should discuss the vote and possible outcomes. The first option is to secede and join the Russian Federation and the second is to restore the 1992 Crimean Constitution and remain part of Ukraine, which would make Crimea even more autonomous then it is now. I was hoping for an option to secede and become an independent nation, but that did not happen. It would have had the best chance for this situation to not end in war with Ukraine and Russia, although if more incidents in Donetsk occur an occupation becomes more likely. Crimea could have become a subject of the Russian Federation later anyway, but I think that after being independent they would have decided to stay independent.

As to the legality of this referendum, this is a very interesting topic with many grey areas that serves to point out major hypocrisy on both sides. I will start by saying that this referendum does indeed violate the Ukrainian constitution (Article 73), but then again so does the new government set up by the protestors (Articles 103 and 69, among others). Many of Yanukovych’s actions, such as imprisoning his predecessor also violated the Ukrainian constitution (Article 105). Here is a link to the Ukrainian constitution for anyone who is interested and can read Ukrainian:

http://www.president.gov.ua/content/chapter03.html

What the protestors should have done when they ousted Yanukovych was keep their heads down and make no radical policy or positional changes until they held elections and this whole situation could have been avoided, but that didn’t happen so we have one group who has blatantly violated the Ukrainian constitution accusing the other of violating the Ukrainian constitution and the precedent has now been set that that the Ukrainian constitution doesn’t really matter all that much. Not that I would particularly care all that much what the Ukrainian constitution says regarding secession. I am a firm believer in the right of people towards self-determination. If a people want to form their own country, then nobody should have the right to stop them.

Now for the really funny part of this: the cries of the West about this violating international law (it doesn’t), and the rebuttal of Russia that it does not. This is essentially a mirror of Kosovo, except that with Kosovo it was Russia maintaining that their declaration of independence was illegal and the US and most of the rest of the West claiming that self-determination was an inherent right of all people no matter what. The hilarity has not been lost on me.

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:
Well, the referendum in Crimea is just over one day away so I thought we should discuss the vote and possible outcomes. The first option is to secede and join the Russian Federation and the second is to restore the 1992 Crimean Constitution and remain part of Ukraine, which would make Crimea even more autonomous then it is now. I was hoping for an option to secede and become an independent nation, but that did not happen. It would have had the best chance for this situation to not end in war with Ukraine and Russia, although if more incidents in Donetsk occur an occupation becomes more likely. Crimea could have become a subject of the Russian Federation later anyway, but I think that after being independent they would have decided to stay independent.

As to the legality of this referendum, this is a very interesting topic with many grey areas that serves to point out major hypocrisy on both sides. I will start by saying that this referendum does indeed violate the Ukrainian constitution (Article 73), but then again so does the new government set up by the protestors (Articles 103 and 69, among others). Many of Yanukovych’s actions, such as imprisoning his predecessor also violated the Ukrainian constitution (Article 105). Here is a link to the Ukrainian constitution for anyone who is interested and can read Ukrainian:

http://www.president.gov.ua/content/chapter03.html

What the protestors should have done when they ousted Yanukovych was keep their heads down and make no radical policy or positional changes until they held elections and this whole situation could have been avoided, but that didn’t happen so we have one group who has blatantly violated the Ukrainian constitution accusing the other of violating the Ukrainian constitution and the precedent has now been set that that the Ukrainian constitution doesn’t really matter all that much. Not that I would particularly care all that much what the Ukrainian constitution says regarding secession. I am a firm believer in the right of people towards self-determination. If a people want to form their own country, then nobody should have the right to stop them.

Now for the really funny part of this: the cries of the West about this violating international law (it doesn’t), and the rebuttal of Russia that it does not. This is essentially a mirror of Kosovo, except that with Kosovo …[/quote]

Except that in Kosovo, there was clear evidence of Serbian ethnic-cleansing, murder, and some would say genocide on a scale to invite the abhorrence of most of the civilized world. Whereas in Crimea…not one person harassed, expelled, murdered, or bludgeoned…until Russian troops arrived, en masse, in disguised uniforms.

Not quite the clearest mirror, eh, Professor?

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]Dr.Matt581 wrote:

…I am a firm believer in the right of people towards self-determination. If a people want to form their own country, then nobody should have the right to stop them…

[/quote]

Well, at least we know you’d have worn a grey uniform from 1861 - 1865 if you’d been around back then and living in the USA.

Interesting.[/quote]

No, no, he is referring to Chechens in this century…or is it Georgians in 2008…all so confusing…