Henry Kissinger, or somebody writing under the 90-year-old's name, argues in the Washington Post:
... A wise U.S. policy toward Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other. We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction.
Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia would not be able to impose a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.
Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history. Understanding U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S. policymakers.
Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all sides:
1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.
2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up.
3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.
4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.
These are principles, not prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that not all of them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.
Dr. K would just as soon put World War G off until after his lifetime.
Posts
106 comments:
Regarding point 4, I wonder if a solution along the lines of the Aland Islands would make sense. See for background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85land_crisis
Perhaps the same approach could be used re the Falklands and other disputed territories where language and culture are an issue.
Any reason you think Kissinger might not have written it, beyond his age? Doesn't he still do live interviews where he appears to still be sharp?
Re World War G / World War T: the recently exposed guy behind the GS Elevator twitter handle made a trans joke Thursday and then thought better of it and deleted it. But here's a screen capture of it.
Also, Goldman Sachs mocked him for losing his book contract.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Amazing_Maps/status/441249772935344129
It's GG world.
"Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia. "
Finland ended up paying massive reparations to the USSR that left it impoverished until the 1980s. This despite the fact that it was openly invaded without provocation. The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country, and committed genocide against the ethnic Finns who found themselves on the wrong side of the line. Until 1991 Russia exercised veto power over who was aloud to run in Finnish national elections making it a de facto puppet state.
Ukranians don't want to be stuck under Russian exploitation and autocracy. They want to Westernize, join the EU and get rich like Slovenia, Estonia and the Czechs. The countries that Westernized and joined the EU are about five times richer by GDP per capita than those under the Russian "sphere of influence."
Tens of millions people shouldn't be held under Oriental despotism in the name of "gradualism" when they desperately want to join modern Western civilization. These are peoples' lives we're talking about.
Way too many people on these boards who hold a delusional misguided infatuation with Eastern Orthodox civilization. Whatever the problems are with the West, they're nothing compared to how bad things are in Russia. Anyone who feels different should put their money where their mouth is and move to Belarus.
The problem with the West is not that it isn't richer than Russia, it clearly is; it's that it has now become a death culture, run by crypto-Stalinists whose raison d'etre is the destruction of the white nuclear family. Look carefully at who's who in the EuroBureau.
The wealth, by the way, is largely illusory; a lot of it it is debt, to be loaded onto the shoulders of the next generation who won't actually exist.
The Ukraine is being lured by the promise of living off other people's money (ie Germany), but the price in the long run will have been too expensive: extinction, and flooding of the country by Chechens or other highly reproductive non-whites with an utterly foreign and unassimilable culture.
The Crimea is right to go with Russia, and if the rest of the country can reign in its parasitic impulses, it should also stick with Russia.
Anon.
Kissinger was at the center of world events from 1968-1974. That was 40 years ago. Wonder how it feels to be so far from the center of the action for so long.
Treating "Ukrainians" as though they were a unit is like saying "pets love to swim" and throwing your cat into the river.
They want to Westernize, join the EU and get rich like Slovenia, Estonia and the Czechs.
Do they also want to harmonize their laws and social norms with the EU? Do they also want to hand over immigration policy to the EU? Joining the EU might give you a short term sugar high, but it's a long term dead end.
"Do they also want to harmonize their laws and social norms with the EU? Do they also want to hand over immigration policy to the EU? Joining the EU might give you a short term sugar high, but it's a long term dead end."
If the EU is so awful for post-Soviet states why is it that all the ones that joined ended up far wealthier than their peers? The readers here have such tunnel vision for their pet issues that they actually think Putin runs his country well.
Yes, I get it. The "decadent West" is filled with LGBT obsessions, hate speech codes and illegal immigrants. Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either. But these are much better problems to have than corruption, little to no rule of law or property rights and routine disappearances of political dissidents. Moving away from the Russo-sphere into the arms of the West is worth the tradeoff more than a hundred times over.
Don't think Russian civilization offers some sort of viable model to rejuvenate the West from its liberal political correctness. Trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease. People here are starting to sound like the cultural relativists you find on university campuses. So I will say it:
Wester civilizations, warts and all, is strictly superior than Eastern Orthodox civilization. Period.
>That was 40 years ago. Wonder how it feels to be so far from the center of the action for so long.
He probably put his affairs in order 20 years ago.
Don't think Russian civilization offers some sort of viable model to rejuvenate the West from its liberal political correctness. Trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease.
You don't get it. None of us long for running a nation in the Russian manner. We want our nations back.
You guys want to confront Russia militarily. You want us to take a strong stand against the world's number 2 nuclear power. You want us to chase jihadis all over the world.
Yet you are afraid to confront the very rot taking place in the West. While you think militarily taking on Russia is apparently "doable", you don't think taking on immigration is, nor confronting the cultural rot destroying the West.
We see no point in fighting Russia when the West is crumbling away bit by bit. If you want to fight to save the West, we'd join you. But saving the West doesn't lie in attacking Russia or jihadis. And saving the West sure the heck doesn't involve shipping the majority of industrial production to China.
is strictly superior than Eastern Orthodox civilization
You should thank those Russians and other Orthodox Christians for being a royal pain in the side of the Ottomans. Had those Orthodox, that you don't seem to like, capitulated and converted to islam like your pet Bosniaks, the Ottomans would have headed West and delivered the benefits of diversity five hundred years earlier. The huge Western advances of the past 500 years might not have happened. So please, show a little gratitude.
"But these are much better problems to have than corruption..."
No they are not, because destroying ones nations and ultimately eliminating future generations (because if the future generations are third worlders thats not Westerners) for money, then you can keep your stinking money.
To seriously advocate that the extinction of ones nations is less of a problem than having money problems, I can only say that you are a lunatic. I read in Forbes that Russia will become the biggest economy in Europe by 2020 (yes even bigger than Germany), Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia on the other hand will face the same fate as Britain and France (the countries to first have undergone 3rd world transformation), the end of the nation and ultimately no hope for wealth or stability for the future.
I know you are going to say that its impossible for places like Poland to ever be become like France or Britain, but why exactly ? The EU forces open borders and the EU is very well known to be anti anything that even closely resembles being pro native population. In 1960 Britain was 99% white, in 2060 serious demographic projections show that Britain will be 50% white, Ukraine with its death wish will probably get there by 2060, and again I see no reason why it will not happen if they follow you world view.
DR: "The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country [Finland]"
Correction: It was about 10 % of the total area of Finland. Source: http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luovutetut_alueet (in Finnish, there's a map though).
Also, I'm not sure if "annexing" is the right word (I'm not a native speaker of English). For me, that conjures up images of taking areas rather peacefully.
Giving up these territories was part of the peace treaty Finland signed in 1944, after fighting the Soviets for 4-5 years. The wars against Finland weren't a great success for the Soviets (they wanted to conquer the whole country).
**
DR: "Until 1991 Russia exercised veto power over who was aloud to run in Finnish national elections making it a de facto puppet state."
That's an exaggeration.
**
By the way:
The word "ryssiä" is a Finnish verb that means "to fuck something up" and comes from the ethnonym for the Russians ("ryssä").
Some Finnish expressions:
"A Russian is always a Russian even if you fry him in butter". I.e. Russians don't change (for the better).
"One Finn equals ten Russians"
Just to give you some idea of the attitudes that are or have been common in Finland towards Russia. Though attitudes have been getting more positive in recent decades, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Kissinger was the real ruler of the US in the 60s and 70s, at least on the Foreign Policy matters.
"Wonder how it feels to be so far from the center of the action for so long."
He hasn't exactly been put out to pasture. It wouldn't be a Bilderberg Conference without Kissinger. The one time I talked to him, it was question and answer time in a packed basketball gymnasium.
DR is an Israeli. He looks at these matters differently.
It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea.
BUT, it was perfectly compatible with the existing world order for the United States to unilaterally annex the Northern Marianas Islands as recently as 1994 after conquering them in World War II from Japan and following a referendum on the same topic.
So it seems this "no annexation by big nations" rule is once again something that only applies to everyone besides the United States. Hence the Russian anger of the hypocrisy of it being piously applied to them Crimea.
"The countries that Westernized and joined the EU are about five times richer by GDP per capita than those under the Russian "sphere of influence."
They also would be richer if they had not joined the EU.
Steve Sailer wrote:
>Henry Kissinger, or somebody writing under the 90-year-old's name...
Steve, I saw Dr. K interviewed on the Charlie Rose show within the last few days ago, and he said pretty much the same things the column says. It's easier to write a column than to answer questions on the fly.
I think he wrote it.
Sure, he's an evil tool of the Rockefeller Establishment and all the rest. But now that he's in his '90s, he's still brighter than the morons in control of both political parties today.
If we have to be ruled by an Establishment, at least we can expect them to find "experts" who aren't morons!
Dr. K is not a moron.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
DR:
I also do not how people are planning to use the countries nearest the Russian border as convenient buffer states caught forever between East and West and held in place by the West, for its protection, in some kind of endless purgatory.
But given the current state of Europe, who within the EU will be able and willing to fund the transition of all of Eastern Europe from second world to first world countries? My guess is there's already a lot of regrets abuot promises already made to the newer and/or weaker members.
The EU people talk about having a complete political and economic union. Why would the richer countries agree to spend so much of their income on others in Europe when they and their own people are not doing so well, either, these days?
Given the masaive debt and new recognition of how precarious the EU's economic set up is for the richer countries, won't they have to face up to the fact that they cannot complete the job they started with Eastern Europe in terms of subsidies?
DR;
Finland ended up paying massive reparations to the USSR that left it impoverished until the 1980s. This despite the fact that it was openly invaded without provocation. The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country, and committed genocide against the ethnic Finns who found themselves on the wrong side of the line
First of all, Finland was a Russian province until 1917. Its not as if Russia was fighting over some scrap of land that had never belong to it.
Finland was invaded by Russia in 1939, but then decided to return the favor in 1941.
The invasion of 1939 was triggered by the demand that Finland cede territory to help protect Leningrad and be compensaated by receiving twice the amount of land in Karelia, a demand that was substantially justified two years later by the Finno-German invasion of Russia and subsequent two year seige of Leningrad. You might recall this seige as resulting in the death around 1 million Russian civilians and soldiers, including President Putin's older brother.
The modesty of the initial Soviet demand can be seen by this map of it and a comparison of it to present borders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet-finnish_negotiations_1939_borderline.png
The USSR annexed 11% of the country (not half) and expelled 12% of the population (but without mass killings or genocide), including most notably the city of Viipuri (Viborg). In their initial demand to Finland to redraw the borders, Viiprui would have remained Finnish and the population transfer would have likewise remained modest. With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, both parties obviously would have been better off agreeing to the Soviet proposal. Finland would actually have grown in size and population, and the Soviets would have improved the defense of Leningrad as desired. Finland would likely have remained neutral like Sweden instead of invading Russia. The punishment meted out in 1940 should be viewed against that background.
The impoverishment of Finland after these wars came first from the war expenditures (and reparations) themselves, but second from the loss of the capital assets of the industrialized Viipuri area, which accounted for 30% of the Finnish economy. Again, that loss was because Finland wanted war instead of a negotiated solution to the security of Leningrad.
As far as a balance of atrocity goes, it is clear that Russia suffered and lost far more in the siege of Leningrad than Finland did in the expulsions from Viipuri.
You really don't know any actual history, do you?
"To seriously advocate that the extinction of ones nations is less of a problem than having money problems, I can only say that you are a lunatic. "
It won't be extinct! It will be a NEW Nation, conceived in Liberty and Dedicated to the Proposition that All Men are Created Equal!
As my favorite Belarus refugee songster put it: God Bless America!
DR said...
Finland ended up paying massive reparations to the USSR that left it impoverished until the 1980s. This despite the fact that it was openly invaded without provocation. The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country, and committed genocide against the ethnic Finns who found themselves on the wrong side of the line. Until 1991 Russia exercised veto power over who was aloud to run in Finnish national elections making it a de facto puppet state.
The official story is that the reparations helped kickstart the Finnish industry after the war. I think there is some truth to that: working under threat is very competitive.
The annexed territory was much less than half of Finland. And almost no one was stupid enough to stay there. A good part of red Finnish immigrants to USSR (who themselves weren't all that numerous) got killed under Stalin before the war. A fact which really helped Finland in the Winter War, as the Finnish reds who lost the civil war 20 years earlier didn't have any illusions about the nature of the opponent. The fact that Stalin had liquidated the better part of Red Army leadership also went a long way.
Right after the war USSR had the kind of power in Finnish politics you describe, but in the '80s? No way. It is true that Kekkonen, president of Finland for 30 years, didn't allow the Moderate party in the cabinet (they first got there in 1987). He wasn't all that bad a president but he only lasted that long because the Soviets made it very clear they would have no one else.
West had Ukraine give up their nuclear weapons. Suckers!
Saddam, Qadhdhafi, (Assad?) and now Ukraine got shafted after giving up their WMDs. I bet Kazakhstan is next.
DR, you are delusional. Romania and Bulgaria are dumps like they always were despite being now in the EU. Look at what is happening in Greece. Youth unemployment in Spain is at 60 per cent. Wealth huh?
Ukraine is an extremely corrupt "country" and it won't become Netherlands even if it joined the EU. If anything, the EU and the Euro will themselves be toast within a decade or so. Every single EU country is balance sheet insolvent (this includes Germany also). Whereas Turkey (though corrupt) has done way better than Greece BECAUSE it is NOT in the EU.
I am not going to "position" Russia as some ideal country that Ukraine or anyone else should become part of. But trying to sell the "EU dream" as anything sustainable smacks of snake oil salesmanship.
DR: "Tens of millions people shouldn't be held under Oriental despotism in the name of "gradualism" when they desperately want to join modern Western civilization. These are peoples' lives we're talking about."
Tens of millions? Heck, there are billions of people living under "despotism" who "want to join the West, God bless 'em. Counting Nigerians, Congolese, Chinese and Mexicans living in despotic poverty and oppression you have a cool billion right there. Why think small?
But tell me: how many does your God say America has to save from sin, degradation, oppression and poverty? And at what cost to American lives? What does He demand of us?
American Puritans used to be happy being an example, a "shining city on a hill".
Their religion of Progress now demands that we be crusaders.
Everything seems to make sense until we get to point four. How does one resolve the ambiguity of having a major, major military base on another country's sovereign territory? Here we just get handwaving.
DR said: Ukranians don't want to be stuck under Russian exploitation and autocracy. They want to Westernize, join the EU and get rich like Slovenia, Estonia and the Czechs.
Hunsdon said: All Ukrainians, right? There's a firm national consensus, say at supermajority levels (66 2/3%) that the EU is the way to go?
Wait, there's not?
Then stop saying there is.
DR: These are peoples' lives we're talking about.
Hunsdon said: Yes, and if it goes hot, it's a lot of people's lives we're talking about.
Do you even recognize the contradiction in your argument? You regard Russia as Kipling's Bear that walks like a man, and tell us to keep poking the bear.
You talk about Oriental despotism and savagery, about the hell of fighting against the Russians . . . and then tell us we need to poke at, prod, and humiliate the Russians more.
Are you a follower of the Twelfth Imam, by any chance? Do you want to see the world end in apocalyptic fire? Do you understand the words "throw weight"?
If the EU is so awful for post-Soviet states why is it that all the ones that joined ended up far wealthier than their peers?
Because the ones that joined (Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Baltics, Hungary) were always inhabited by smarter people and already had more developed industrial economies prior to 1939, let alone by 1989. Also, they didn't suffer from subsequent wars (Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Albania), international isolation (Belarus, Moldova), a massive population of Turks (Bulgaria) or hordes of gypsies and institutionalized disorder (Romania).
There is also the matter of mineral wealth in Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, and Czech Republic (and a lack of it in Bulgaria, Belarus, and Albania, for example), proximate and historic ties to Germany in those countries above and also the Baltics, Slovenia, and Hungary that encouraged German capital investment in them, and also intelligent native populations.
On that topic, look at an IQ map of Europe. Ukraine is the holder of the bottom spot with an average around 94. You don't suppose that has anything to do with their lack of economic progress? Even Belarus has leaped ahead of Ukraine. Ukraine's delta downward to the west is the same as Japan's delta upwards, and in total amounts to a standard deviation of difference between Ukraine and Japan. That must be accounted for.
It would also be wonderful if you could explain how Russia has held the Ukraine back economically during the past 23 years, seeing as it has functioned during that time as a fully independent country with its own government and central bank. Especially seeing how Russia, as the leading portion of the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union, was responsible for all of the economic development that took place in Ukraine since the time it was won from the Tatar yoke up to 1991, excepting only Galicia and Ruthenia.
Lastly, since being part of the EU is apparently a magical elixir for becoming wealthy beyond measure, an explanation is certainly in order for how Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland survive without being inside, and why Portugal, Spain, and Greece just can't seem to pull it together despite many decades of EU brotherhood.
"But these are much better problems to have than corruption..."
You don't think that the West has massive corruption? In the US we have trillions of dollars being diverted into Wall Street and the big bankers all created by issuing debt in the name of our children. Oh, the NYT and the Wall Street Journal does not call it corruption, they call it policy and quantitative easing, but corruption on a massive scale is what it is.
Or how about the personnel briefings that the big banks get from the FED or Treasury on policy decisions prior to everyone else getting the news, isn’t the insider trading? They call it creating market leaders.
Mostly in the US we don’t have police asking for bribes from the average citizen, but we do allow the police to call citizens property illegal, even the cash in their pocket and the police keep the money. They just call this civil asset forfeiture.
So just look behind the names and you will see massive and growing corruption
Dave Pinsen said: Re World War G / World War T: the recently exposed guy behind the GS Elevator twitter handle made a trans joke Thursday and then thought better of it and deleted it.
Hunsdon said: Microaggression! Burn the heretic!
Anonydroid at 12:26 AM said: You don't get it. None of us long for running a nation in the Russian manner. We want our nations back.
You guys want to confront Russia militarily. You want us to take a strong stand against the world's number 2 nuclear power. You want us to chase jihadis all over the world.
Yet you are afraid to confront the very rot taking place in the West. While you think militarily taking on Russia is apparently "doable", you don't think taking on immigration is, nor confronting the cultural rot destroying the West.
Hunsdon said: This.
The "decadent West" is filled with LGBT obsessions, hate speech codes and illegal immigrants. Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either. But these are much better problems to have than corruption, little to no rule of law or property rights and routine disappearances of political dissidents. Moving away from the Russo-sphere into the arms of the West is worth the tradeoff more than a hundred times over.
Would you accept a 200% raise in your salary in exchange for getting lung cancer? Because that is the difference between Russian vs. Western types of problems. The West is much richer, but terminally ill. I'm not sure if Russia will survive into the next century, but the West sure as hell won't.
"DR said...
Yes, I get it. The "decadent West" is filled with LGBT obsessions, hate speech codes and illegal immigrants. Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either."
I have seen no evidence from any of your posts that anyone should trust you.
"Way too many people on these boards who hold a delusional misguided infatuation with Eastern Orthodox civilization. Whatever the problems are with the West, they're nothing compared to how bad things are in Russia. Anyone who feels different should put their money where their mouth is and move to Belarus."
You are attacking a straw-man. Most people hereabouts, as far as I can tell, don't particularly care about Ukraine, and don't think it ought to be our business. If you think it is so f**king important to twist the tail of a heavily armed nuclear power over issues that concern them far more than us, then YOU go over there and do something about it.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2014/03/07/obama039s_cool-headedness_is_diplomacy_327242.html
Obama: speak softly and have others speak loudly:
http://www.vdare.com/articles/hillary-hitler-cold-war-ii
Hillary says Putin is Hitler.
A grown-up speaks. About bloody time.
"Perhaps the same approach could be used re the Falklands and other disputed territories where language and culture are an issue."
There are no language and cultural issues on the Falklands, the population is 100% British. Far more British than the population of UK.
Gordo
The Ukraine is being lured by the promise of living off other people's money (ie Germany), but the price in the long run will have been too expensive: extinction, and flooding of the country by Chechens or other highly reproductive non-whites with an utterly foreign and unassimilable culture.
Stop the hyperventilating. Via Russia, Chechens (who are still technically Russian citizens) and other Caucasian/Central Asians already have easy access to Ukraine, and have had for decades. If anything, joining Europe might allow Ukrainians to create more barriers to the East and keep Chechens out. Poland is much richer than Ukraine, and has not been overrun with Turks, Moroccans, Algerians or Nigerians. It will be many decades before Ukraine reaches a level of economic development where it will be attractive to those kind of immigrants. The greater danger is that Ukraine's brain drain to the West will accelerate dramatically and Ukraine will end up like Bulgaria - a hollowed out shell inhabited by pensioners and the left side of the bell curve.
The Finns kicked the Russians' asses in the Winter War, and they hate them with great passion, and they are much more badass and unforgiving than other Scandinavians. Since 1991 there has never been any chance of them doing something they don't want to because of pressure from Russia.
I see no comparison with Ukraine's situation. Although they have good reason to hate the Communists and their successors because of the 1930's famine Stalin imposed on them, they are (except for the Polish/Baltic part in the far west) basically Russian already and don't have a national identity distinct from Russia as the Finns obviously always have had.
I cannot see what the point would be to holding on to the Crimea, or why foreign policy types seem to consider it unacceptable to alter a frontier even when the frontiers in question are quite impractical (see the situation in Yugoslavia, 1987-95). Two million rather restive ethnic minorities in a zone which receives (by some account) subventions in public expenditure are not a net asset.
You're right. This doesn't sound like the Henry Kissinger we all know and "love."
Kissinger was the real ruler of the US in the 60s and 70s, at least on the Foreign Policy matters.
Kissinger displaced William Rogers as the principal architect of American foreign policy some time around the end of 1969 and held office as staff director of the National Security Council or Secretary of State for the next seven years. Both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and their crew had some serious issues with Kissinger's approach, so he was not ruling much after that. Nixon was not without his own opinions on foreign affairs. Gerald Ford would have been more deferential on policy questions, but shuffling through various memoirs and accounts leaves the distinct impression that Kissinger could never play the sort of manipulative games with Ford that he could with Nixon.
I haven't heard the words 'Munich' 'Chamberlain' or 'appeasement' trotted out yet and it's been more than forty-five seconds since this situation started. What gives? Hillary has run true to form though with her jejune invocation of the infamous Austrian. That's the former Secretary of State and presidential aspirant demonstrating her nuanced approach to world affairs.
I can only say that you are a lunatic. I read in Forbes that Russia will become the biggest economy in Europe by 2020
Only if they have annual growth rates in real gdp in the range of 9% per year. Ain't gonna happen.
@dave pinsen, I think Steve was joking, saying that the Kissinger here sounds wiser than the Dr. K of 40 years ago.
Closer to home, WWT news:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2014/02/15/21473641.html
Only the tabs are paying attention to this. The cnews article take the POV that he was a straight dude who "claimed" to be trans.
Maybe he was genuinely an autogynephile, who also loved attacking womyn?
Sadly, only poor & vulnerable womyn will suffer. I wouldn't mind if the progs and rich who brought this plague on us were made to pay for their stupidity.
If some solution based on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.
Wait a minute: "...time for that will come soon enough"? What's he saying, we're merely deferring some sort of military confrontation?
DR said . . .
If the EU is so awful for post-Soviet states why is it that all the ones that joined ended up far wealthier than their peers?
The privatization in, say, Hungary, mostly involved giving people back the property that the Commies had stolen from them and distributing ownership in formerly state-run enterprises reasonably equitably.
The privatization in, say, Russia and Ukraine, involved permitting property to be looted by a tiny group of ethnic aliens (Jews in Russia; Jews and Tatars in Ukraine). The latter method of privatization seems not to have worked out too well.
One difference between Ukraine, which is a basket case, and Russia, which is not, is that in Russia the looting was partially reversed. Reversing the looting in Ukraine is not on the agenda of the EU.
The readers here have such tunnel vision for their pet issues that they actually think Putin runs his country well.
Putin runs his country vastly better than Yeltsin did. Putin runs his country better than any of the plausible alternatives to him would. Given the challenges, Putin runs his country reasonably well. Russia is improving rapidly under Putin's rule. This is not tunnel vision; this is just an appraisal of the easily-available facts.
Here is a fun fact to go with the boring ones I provided earlier. If you look at the number of minutes it takes the average worker to earn enough to buy a Big Mac, it has declined in Moscow from 74 minutes in 2000 to 18 minutes in 2012.
The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country [Finland]"
If you include Karelia (which is by now mostly populated by Russians) it's still probably less than third. But most of Karelia was never part of Finland, probably Russia is the first organized state to ever have held that territory.
There is a collection of western-based oligarchs running around creating color revolutions so they can loot the countries concerned. These oligarchs might be allied to US official policy but they are not controlled by it.
While this is the case Russian policy has to be primarily directed at doing what is necessary to defend against the oligarchs. Official US policy is a side issue.
Ukranians don't want to be stuck under Russian exploitation and autocracy. They want to Westernize, join the EU and get rich like Slovenia, Estonia and the Czechs. The countries that Westernized and joined the EU are about five times richer by GDP per capita than those under the Russian "sphere of influence."
Which "Ukrainians" are you talking about? Among the "Ukrainians", a significant proportion is against Russia, and a significant proportion is pro-Russia.
And among the proportion which is against Russia, a significant number of them are against the EU.
Dr. K's prescriptions seem one-sided. What would Putin get out of the deal, really? "Removing ambiguities about Sevastopol" isn't reassuring. Nor is the final sentence in the excerpt. Putin would be expected to give up Ukraine and Crimea and hope for the best regarding Sevastopol, all in exchange for avoiding a conflict that Kissinger says is inevitable anyway?
Yes, I get it. The "decadent West" is filled with LGBT obsessions, hate speech codes and illegal immigrants. Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either.
Don't think Russian civilization offers some sort of viable model to rejuvenate the West from its liberal political correctness. Trust me, the cure is far worse than the disease. People here are starting to sound like the cultural relativists you find on university campuses. So I will say it:
Wester civilizations, warts and all, is strictly superior than Eastern Orthodox civilization. Period.
I don't think you do get it, since you're a pro-immigration, Jewish supremacist as your other comments reveal:
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/petition-against-reactosphere.html#9198657079988924578
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/07/petition-against-reactosphere.html#560251665778896979
In all honesty I thought the man was dead.
Does anyone else, after reading ISTEVE articles on the rape of Russia, to the WWG rhetoric, to our current events, feel now that what the U.S. did to Russia after the Cold War is decently analogous to what the Allies did to Germany with the treaty of Versailles?
They disbanded the Warsaw Pact, and then we in turn expanded N.A.T.O. Countries that Russia needs close ties with for stability (Ukraine, Gerogia) is given "color revolutions," all reeking of State Department and NED money.
Any ally Russia has, we seek to bomb if we cannot politically undermine them. When we're done bombing Serbs, or threatening to bomb Syrians or Iranians, we settle on funding Pussy Riot.
They were in an economic nightmare, and we sent western "advisers," like Andrei Shleifer to give bad advice and pocket dirty money on the side. Marc Rich types get pardoned by Clinton, and crooked Khodorkhovsky gets a hero's treatment by the U.S. media.
I wonder how much of the U.S. chutzpah comes from delusions of grandeur by Soros, Nuland, and neocon types who think they're exacting vengeance upon the reincarnation of the Czar for all those awful pogroms, or something.
"The USSR annexed over half the territory of the country"
It was actually several percent of the territory. For those who don't remember, DR is an avid proponent of drug legalization. If his posts on world affairs aren't scaring you into sobriety, nothing will.
"Until 1991 Russia exercised veto power over who was aloud to run in Finnish national elections making it a de facto puppet state.
That's the only reason why race replacement started later in Finland than in Western Europe. If Gorbachev never came to power in Moscow, Finland would still be monoethnic today.
"Ukranians don't want to be stuck under Russian exploitation and autocracy. They want to Westernize, join the EU and get rich like Slovenia, Estonia and the Czechs."
Even the Right Sector guys aren't as dumb as that. They're against the EU. To them it means cultural filth and third-world immigration. Only the neocon puppet parties in the Ukraine want to be in the EU.
"Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either. But these are much better problems to have than corruption, little to no rule of law or property rights and routine disappearances of political dissidents. "
The main reason that the neocons are opposed to Putin is that he's fought corruption. He did that by taking political power away from the oligarchs and by scaring them into stealing less. He scared them by jailing one and chasing another out of the country. That is the source of the current neocon-Russia conflict.
The Ukraine is still being run by the oligarchs. That's why it's doing worse economically than Russia and that's why the US government is backing the Kiev government.
If Putin hadn't fought corruption in Russia, the US government would have been friendly with him. As it was with Yeltsin.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2575467/Did-better-Scarlet-Johansson-Natalie-Portman-Bill-Clinton-Celebrities-SAT-scores-revealed-amid-controversy-regrading.html
I mentioned above the undeniable fact Finland would still be monoethnic if Gorbachev had never come to power in Moscow.
Steve, how can you mock other writers' delusions if you cannot admit something as obvious as the above, if you are unable to let go of your own delusions, admit unpleasant-to-you truths?
Those other writers, for example the people who deny the reality of racial and gender differences, the people who say that diversity is strength, etc. simply have different delusions from you. You're not any braver or more objective than they are. The average writer is neither rich nor Machiavellian. The sincerity of your delusions doesn't distinguish you from them and it's unclear that you've sacrificed any material comforts by opposing their particular delusions. As I've said, the average mainstream journalist isn't rich.
"Yes, I get it. The "decadent West" is filled with LGBT obsessions, hate speech codes and illegal immigrants. Trust me, I'm not too sympathetic to these things either."
Trust him.
Kissinger doesn't think this area is worth fighting for. West Europe is the important area for him. Yet even than was not worth all out war; his advice to Reagan was never be the one to use nukes. The problem back then was the USSR would have rolled over NATO in Europe without nukes. Now Russia couldn't win any kind of war.
Britain is basically run for the benefit of London hyper-capitalism which wants cheap services hence immigration. There are already plenty of Ukrainians working in construction in Britain. With western links Ukraine will slowly implode from migration of young people to W Europe just as is happening in Poland. Russian capital flight is mainly in the City of London, where Russian gangsters not pals with Putin have fled. Those visa restrictions hurt the elite but keep people at home. Nobody wants to spend their life in Russia, falling out with the West isn't Russia's secret demographic strategy, but it may work that way.
The main reason that the neocons are opposed to Putin is that he's fought corruption.
Some of you are descending into self-parody.
Gordo: "There are no language and cultural issues on the Falklands, the population is 100% British"
Precisely, which is why I cited the Aland Crisis. The Aland Islands are 100% Swedish, yet they worked out a way to keep everyone happy. Read up on it.
It's not so strange that Kissinger would still write good prose at the age of 90. The late Jacques Barzun and George Kennan were able to do it, and 90-year-old John Lukacs recently came out with his quite respectable short history of the twentieth century. I guess the interesting question is whether guys like Kissinger have good genes, or if there is something about constantly reading and being interested in history and the events of the world that makes one lucid into very old-age. Or if - as you like to say - it is a case of the glass being both half-empty and half-full, or in this instance a genetetic predisposition and the good habit of voraciously reading.
at this point it should be clear that joining EU is a long term death sentence.
As for Putin, like it or not he is the defacto leader of Europe and the West. Yes, Russia is beset by ENDEMIC corruption of which Putin is the worst kind.
The (mostly) Jewish Oligarchs who originally looted Russia in conjunction with Organized Crime and elements of the KGB were bad; worse is the complete absence of rule of law, contracts, security, and so on for ordinary people and low level businessmen. No small business can operate at a profit without attracting take overs by the sharks large and small attached to Putin and the KGB.
Worse than stealing from the top is systematic stealing from the bottom; the latter means no one at the bottom can possibly rise up save a few thug-politicians.
But like it or not, Putin is the only "Western" leader (belief in Christianity, non-Islamic/African/Chinese/Indian culture, modeling on Rome, etc) in the very loosest sense that exists in the West.
America is just becoming Northern Mexico. That's all we will ever be now. Britain and France are Africa on the Thames and Seine, with Italy being that on the Tiber.
Putin has serious multicultural problems, he has refused to name Islam the problem and expelling them as the cure; because he has imperial ambitions in the Central Asian area. Putin must come to grips with the fact that he cannot save Russia and have a Central Asian Empire, and to get the birth rate up he must make average family life affordable, and men more important and thus sexy enough for Russian women to want to bear their kids.
Average guys when the lose their importance in life, women go on baby strikes. The Pill, Condom, anonymous urban living, rising female income, and status all make this worse; but that is the heart of it. Why have a baby with an icky beta male who doesn't excite your lady parts when you can have sex with Alphas? But if most guys are important, and more important than the average woman, no baby strike because they became far more Alpha.
Putin does not get that. He's in denial, as natural Alphas often are. And his leadership of the West when it cries out for leadership has been of the Tony Soprano thugocracy variety.
"The problem back then was the USSR would have rolled over NATO in Europe without nukes..."
If the post-WWII USSR had done that, European Civilization would have been saved. There was no third-world immigration of cultural rot in Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. Steve, I understand that it would be painful for you to admit that during the Cold War the US fought for most of the things you hate, but it's true. You mock other writers for not willing to admit painful-to-them truths, but you hold on to your own pleasant delusions in the face of mountains of contrary evidence.
You decry what you correctly term the rape of Russia, but you never admit that the Cold War was always fought to make something like that possible. You noticed that the CIA promoted abstract non-art while the post-WWII USSR promoted realism, but the inference you drew from it was so twisted that "Occam's butter knife" would be too generous a word for it. Occam's boomerang? As I remember, you still managed to include some snark at the KGB in that post.
You noticed that Poland and Finland did better than Western European countries on those student achievement tests, but the inference you drew was again incredibly complicated and full of twists. And this is from the guy who lectures other writers on the Occam's Razor. The simple, obvious reason why Poland is doing better than Britain or France on student achievement tests is that it has many times fewer third-wordlers. And that is so because there was no third-world immigration in the Soviet block. To the extent that Finland was influenced by the USSR, it also benefited from that effect.
The great proponent of Occam's Razor couldn't see that commonality between Poland and Finland. He had to invent some complicated point about nationalism and who knows what else instead. The simple truth would have hurt too much. Well, the PC people you always mock feel the same things about PC. They're emotionally invested in it. It would be painful for them to abandon it. And they also have hamster wheels in their heads.
The privatization in, say, Hungary, mostly involved giving people back the property that the Commies had stolen from them and distributing ownership in formerly state-run enterprises reasonably equitably.
Actually, that was quite a small portion of privatization in Hungary. A lot of privatization was assets being sold for cash to the highest bidder, which unfortunately still involved knock-down prices, and it was often not very beneficial for the country. For example the Hungarian sugar industry was apparently bought out by foreign competitors who within a decade closed down the sugar refineries and started importing their stuff from their foreign refineries. Another great portion was management buying out the assets, sometimes in a very non-transparent way. (The biggest Hungarian bank was acquired by funny "US funds" based in the Bahamas, it's an open secret that the CEO and his executive business partners are behind those funds.)
So it was mostly foreigners buying at knock-down prices, and insiders buying up assets at (surprise) knock-down prices.
If you include Karelia… it's still probably less than third. --Reiner Tor
When I lived there in the 1980s, Finns compared their country's outline to a happy dancing maiden, but now missing an arm (Petsamo) and a leg (Finnish Karelia). This map suggests a mastectomy in addition to a double amputation, but the total lost appears to be less than a quarter.
I have plenty of gratitude for what the Orthodox did to defeat the Ottomans, and would have even more if they would more often recognize the Poles, Hungarians, Austrians, Croats, etc., who died in that same effort. But Ukrainians also fought the Ottomans.
The original comment was in reply to a specific insult directed at Orthodox Christians, not Catholics. Hence, I did not feel the need to defend the others you mention. But whenever I hear a polack joke, I always make a point to stick up for them.
Close to a century ago you had all these left-wing Jews pounding their fists on behalf of "good old Uncle Joe" and telling everyone not to believe the American lies about what was happening over there. Now, it’s a bunch of right wingers acting as the self-appointed PR office of the 3rd Rome, all because Putin...
There is a difference. Back then the supporters of the USSR actively advocated on behalf of their client by infiltrating our government. They also advocated for positive US assistance to the USSR.
Today, those who look fondly upon Russia do so from afar, without infiltrating our government on her behalf, and with the simple desire that the USA provides NEITHER positive nor negative support. We only wish for the USA to leave Russia alone.
Observer:
Precisely, which is why I cited the Aland Crisis. The Aland Islands are 100% Swedish, yet they worked out a way to keep everyone happy. Read up on it.
Except that the Aland Islands were a Finnish possession by treaty and inhabited by Swedes, while the Falklands are British possession and inhabitated by Britons. Argentina was not even a real country until 1862, since it was not united with its capital city until then, while the Britons had claimed the Falklands and ettled them long before that time. The "controversy" over the Falklands is a manufactured bunch of nonesense aiming at the expulsion of the Britons and the repopulation of the islands with Argentine Spaniards.
Anon:
The Finns kicked the Russians' asses in the Winter War
Yeah, right. What an ass kicking. Is this the ass-kicking that lead to Russia seizing 11% of the landmass, expelling 12% of the people, and seizing 30% of the economic assets of Finland?
If Finland administered a few more ass-kickings like that to the Russians, there wouldn't be any Finland left.
You do realize that in a war between a few million people and a couple hundred million people who is going to win every time? Especially if the couple hundred million are willing to occupy and expel?
Does anyone else, after reading ISTEVE articles on the rape of Russia, to the WWG rhetoric, to our current events, feel now that what the U.S. did to Russia after the Cold War is decently analogous to what the Allies did to Germany with the treaty of Versailles?
No, of course not.
Let me quote Spnegler
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/IB21Ag02.html
Putin and his comrades will employ all the guile and violence at their command to delay the decline of European Russia. The Europeans are the emasculated remnant of a fallen civilization; for better or worse, the Russians still are real men.
Putin is playing a Great Game in Central Asia, comparable in scope to the long duel with Britain during the 19th century, but with a difference: Russia's object is no longer imperial, but existential. America's blundering about its borders in the form of "color revolutions" in the republics of the former Soviet Union is an intolerable form of interference.
"Putin is a serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history"
that should be: "on Russian premises."
Today, those who look fondly upon Russia do so from afar, without infiltrating our government on her behalf, and with the simple desire that the USA provides NEITHER positive nor negative support. We only wish for the USA to leave Russia alone.
Yeah, they do so from very, very afar, with apparently little to no familiarty with actual Russians and how they live their lives. (I see the same naivete among some of the pro-immigration crowd, who think that every illegal coming across the border is a dyed-in-the-wool social conservative.) To the extent that a Russian is any more family-oriented or faith-centered than the typical Pole, (or Spaniard, or Frenchman or Italian) for that matter, I have yet to see the evidence.
And one can work for the betterment of Russia (and against the anti-extinction policies of Obama and the EU) without endorsing Putin or kicking Ukrainians when they're down. I have no desire for the US to meddle there either, and I am as outraged as anyone by the likes of Nuland's shenanigans (and for the record, the new "rulers" of Ukraine were foolish in not following their impeachment laws to the letter in removing Yanukovich, and choosing instead to oust him illegally), but that doesn't change how I feel about Putin's policies or about the "light shall come from the East" enthusiasts among the American right. Yeah, I get it that the Uncle Joe hagiographers were on the left, but in terms of delusional thinking, and the kind of unrealistic expectations that inevitably costs lives, there's far too much similarity there.
"Putin is playing a Great Game in Central Asia, comparable in scope to the long duel with Britain during the 19th century, but with a difference: Russia's object is no longer imperial, but existential. America's blundering about its borders in the form of "color revolutions" in the republics of the former Soviet Union is an intolerable form of interference."
Russia's goal is to recolonize what the Greeks called Aryanna -- modern day Kazakhstan. Central Asia was populated by white, Indo-European people stretching back deep into pre-history. Then Mongolian peoples diplaced them. Russia took it back but the process was arrested by communism. Like Israel, Russia is playing a really long game.
"Russia took it back but the process was arrested by communism. "
Sheer ignorance. Khruschev took it back during his Virgin Lands Campaign. That campaign settled huge numbers of Russians and Ukrainians in northern Kazakhstan. It made agricultural land from the steppe. After the abolishment of the Soviet Union a lot of the Russians have fled Kazakh rule, leaving the area.
To summarize: there was a Russian advance in that area under Khruschev and a partial retreat under Yeltsin.
By the way:
The word "ryssiä" is a Finnish verb that means "to fuck something up" and comes from the ethnonym for the Russians ("ryssä").
Some Finnish expressions:
"A Russian is always a Russian even if you fry him in butter". I.e. Russians don't change (for the better).
"One Finn equals ten Russians"
Just to give you some idea of the attitudes that are or have been common in Finland towards Russia. Though attitudes have been getting more positive in recent decades, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
------------------------
Simo Hayha comes to mind...
Wow. Kissinger's mother lived to 97 and his father to 95. He could be with us for a good while yet.
It's a pity Brzezinski's star seems to have faded a little recently (and surprising, given that he has become significantly more hawkish with time while Kissinger has become significantly more doveish - most of what he says in this article seems highly sensible to me). I was always kind of fascinated by the baleful influence of these two wizened old European wizards playing global chess from their adopted ivory towers in Washington. A kind of deadly Statler & Waldorf.
"Yeah, I get it that the Uncle Joe hagiographers were on the left, but in terms of delusional thinking, and the kind of unrealistic expectations that inevitably costs lives, there's far too much similarity there."
Whatever the banking mafia / neocons want - support the opposite.
It won't do any good as they've already fatally poisoned the West but a little revenge is better than nothing.
They disbanded the Warsaw Pact, and then we in turn expanded N.A.T.O. Countries that Russia needs close ties with for stability (Ukraine, Gerogia) is given "color revolutions," all reeking of State Department and NED money.
The National Endowment for Democracy has an annual budget of $50 million and a four-digit clientele. Doesn't buy a whole lot of subversion.
Interesting that everyone on this board seem to fancy that foreign publics can be molded like playdough by the Foreign Service and sundry NGO personnel.
"Art Deco said...
The National Endowment for Democracy has an annual budget of $50 million and a four-digit clientele. Doesn't buy a whole lot of subversion."
They also operate in countries where a dollar goes a lot further, and they have assistance by self-funded NGO's, like Soros' various front organizations.
"Interesting that everyone on this board seem to fancy that foreign publics can be molded like playdough by the Foreign Service and sundry NGO personnel."
What do you think those organizations exist for?
Whatever the banking mafia / neocons want - support the opposite.
Right. The Ukrainians can go hang for all anyone cares -- hey, for that matter, why not toss Poland and a chunk of Czechoslovakia in along with Crimea, to sweeten the deal? Because in the end, all that really matters is that we annoy as many Jews as possible. Got it.
With the 20/20 vision of hindsight, both parties obviously would have been better off agreeing to the Soviet proposal. Finland would actually have grown in size and population, and the Soviets would have improved the defense of Leningrad as desired. Finland would likely have remained neutral like Sweden instead of invading Russia. The punishment meted out in 1940 should be viewed against that background.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact did not concern Sweden, whereas Finland was designated to the USSR. With the wisdom of hindsight one can also check what good concessions did to Estonia: 25% of population killed; annexation to the USSR and massive deportations that started already before any military action. That lost 25% was replaced with Russians and then some. They're still there, again almost 25% of the population.
And it's quite obvious that Stalin wouldn't have passed the opportunity to annex Finland as a warm-up for the real thing, regardless of agreements. Just add up the objective, the opportunity, and complete disregard for anything but raw power.
About Leningrad: Finland was in the position to shell the city and harass supplies from the lake. It did neither, despite German pressure.
Interesting that everyone on this board seem to fancy that foreign publics can be molded like playdough by the Foreign Service and sundry NGO personnel.
Said Victoria Nuland.
@Art Deco
"Interesting that everyone on this board seem to fancy that foreign publics can be molded like playdough by the Foreign Service and sundry NGO personnel."
It works more through maximizing existing conflict and division.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Revolution
"By the end of 2000, the amount of NGOs estimated to be in Georgia numbered around four thousand."
"Georgia's weak economy allowed these NGOs, who were often partially foreign funded, to pay decent salaries that would not have been available in working for the Georgian state.[12] As early as the Summer of 2002, there was great concern amongst the leaders of Georgia's most influential NGOs that Shevardnadze was not prepared to relinquish power voluntarily, and that other ways to remove him from power might be necessary....Before the Rose Revolution, a large network of NGOs with foreign financial support already existed in the country that could later coordinate protest."
The comments section on most of the British press have been really caustic and derisive. The journalists calling for "action" against Russia have just been laughed at.
When I post on normal, US sites the comments are deleted almost immediately and they do not contain foul language.
Why is this?
Also, there seems to be some kind of software used to screen do comments for personal abuse.
The Chinese-American programmer who wrote it was obviously not versed in British or New Zealand colloquialisms so, if you want to be abusive I recommend you use British English.
One of my interlocutors called me a knob-jockey. I am British, but that particular term of abuse was new to me.
I'd rather live in a corrupt 100% white country then a non-corrupt, white + black + brown + yellow country. That's just how I feel. Having all of my neighbours, co-workers, people I wait at the bus stop with, etc, all look, sound and speak like me, IS WORTH SOMETHING to me.
In any case Switzerland is not a member of the EU. It is one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. It also has tight controls on immigration and has enjoyed peace for 200 years. The EU is no panacea.
"I'd rather live in a corrupt 100% white country then a non-corrupt, white + black + brown + yellow country. That's just how I feel. Having all of my neighbours, co-workers, people I wait at the bus stop with, etc, all look, sound and speak like me, IS WORTH SOMETHING to me."
Right. And a diverse non-corrupt country is like the tooth fairy. It doesn't exist.
Also, a corrupt homogeneous country is easier to reform than a corrupt diverse country.
The nation can come together to reduce corruption whereas a diverse nation has a hard time coming together for anything.
For example, if we try to do something about black or brown corruption, we hear complaints of 'racism'.
But 100% white is too much. We need a few negroes to sing and dance, few mexers to make tacos, and few chinese to make chop suey.
A lot has been made of the USSR and Russian leadership transplanting ethnic Russians into the Baltic States, Finnish territory, Ukraine, etc. over the years so as to water down and influence the locals in service to Moscow.
Neocons, instead of worrying about confronting Russia, why not reevaluate your support for keeping the pipeline of immigration open from Mexico. Isn't there some lesson to be learned about allowing too many nationals from a neighboring country, especially one that harbors resentment over territorial disputes?
Art Deco said: Interesting that everyone on this board seem to fancy that foreign publics can be molded like playdough by the Foreign Service and sundry NGO personnel.
Hunsdon said: Gee, you sound like Whiskey saying that advertising doesn't work. Hmmm.
HA said: Right. The Ukrainians can go hang for all anyone cares -- hey, for that matter, why not toss Poland and a chunk of Czechoslovakia in along with Crimea, to sweeten the deal? Because in the end, all that really matters is that we annoy as many Jews as possible. Got it.
Hunsdon said: Any evidence that the Bear is about to gobble up the Czech Republic and Slovakia (since there is no more Czechoslovakia), along with Poland?
Any reason that the US should go to war to prevent that, if it is the case, when we weren't willing to do it in the middle 20th century?
http://news.yahoo.com/western-countries-alarmed-libya-slides-towards-chaos-080340892.html
It works more through maximizing existing conflict and division.
See the Baltimore Sun, 9 September 2002. The money quote:
"Shevardnadze's approval rating hovers at about 9 percent; his party received less than 1 percent of the vote in municipal elections in the spring. The 74-year old president's remaining source of popularity, many Georgians say, is the fear that when he leaves, things will become much worse."
Existing conflict and division does tend to be rather intense when you stuff the ballot boxes big time, which Shevardnadze's crew did in November 2003.
Anon:
And it's quite obvious that Stalin wouldn't have passed the opportunity to annex Finland as a warm-up for the real thing, regardless of agreements.
Well, then why didn't he? He fought a war with them over the rejection of his modest demands and defeated them, leading to the imposition of the drastic peace on them that saw him swallow up much more land, deport 12% of the population, and take a huge chunk of the industrial base.. If Stalin thought annexing the whole country was necessary, as he felt with increasing the buffer between Russia and Nazi Germany, surely he would have done so.
About Leningrad: Finland was in the position to shell the city and harass supplies from the lake. It did neither, despite German pressure.
Did Finland send in food and ammunition in or let Russians out to escape the siege through the northern lines? Obviously not. They are as guilty of the deaths of the over a million in Leningrad as the Germans on the south.
Finland took the pious and moralistic position that it would help Germany in the war by reinvading the lands it lost, but would not advance further until the Germans had mopped up the Soviets. After that was done, Finland would be very glad to annex its brother Finns in Karelia and retake Leningrad lost 200 years prior per the German plan, and assist with the exploitation of the Kola Peninsula.
"The National Endowment for Democracy has an annual budget of $50 million and a four-digit clientele. Doesn't buy a whole lot of subversion."
That's ridiculous. Even in American politics it's surprising how far a few million dollars can go.
"Does anyone else, after reading ISTEVE articles on the rape of Russia, to the WWG rhetoric, to our current events, feel now that what the U.S. did to Russia after the Cold War is decently analogous to what the Allies did to Germany with the treaty of Versailles? "
It's analogous in the sense that the deal the Russians were expecting or hoping for was rather different to the deal they actually got.
That's ridiculous. Even in American politics it's surprising how far a few million dollars can go.
Rubbish. A man cutting checks in Washington cannot subvert the government of Georgia for $50,000 clams, which is what the average recipient of NED's largesse receives in a given year. You people need to quit letting your imagination run riot.
(While we are at it, the two U.S. Senators from New York have spent $47 million on their recent campaigns while facing feeble opposition).
If Stalin thought annexing the whole country was necessary, as he felt with increasing the buffer between Russia and Nazi Germany, surely he would have done so.
He certainly could have done so, but it wasn't obvious back then. Talk of western intervention, spring thaw coming up at some point. Perhaps he did a cost-benefit analysis and decided he had blown enough resources at the war. Ultimately, of course, it was a mistake.
Towards the end of the WW2 (Continuation War) Finnish territory wasn't as important as it was during the Winter War, Germans were on the retreat for good. And after D-day the race to central Europe was on.
Did Finland send in food and ammunition in or let Russians out to escape the siege through the northern lines? Obviously not. They are as guilty of the deaths of the over a million in Leningrad as the Germans on the south.
Finland took the pious and moralistic position...
Look now, I'm not interested in blame games. Just wanted to put it straight that there was no "Scandinavian option" for Finland, only the Baltic one.
Art, you obviously calculated the $50 million budget by multiplying the "average grant" of $50,000 by 1000, stats you took from NED's faq. Yet congress alone contributed over $100 million to the NED in 2011, and the NED also receives private funding. Perhaps $50,000 is the modal grant, ie, they fund a bunch of small fry NGOs but also pay big bucks to NGOs that can really deliver. Who knows what the nature of these "NGOs" is? Maybe they exist as thinly disguised fronts for funneling cash to preferred politicians. Does that really strike you as so outlandish?
c. 4000 NGOs active in Georgia prior to the Rose revolution.
Art Deco said...
Rubbish. A man cutting checks in Washington cannot subvert the government of Georgia for $50,000 clams, which is what the average recipient of NED's largesse receives in a given year. You people need to quit letting your imagination run riot."
Who says that NGOs in Ukraine only got that much? Who says they didn't get multiple grants? Who says the grants were'nt leveraged with money from other sources? And who says that the money doesn't go farther in a 2nd world country?
You can keep peddling your line of rubbish - bald assertions in the absence of any fact - but not many people here are going to believe you.
You can keep peddling your line of rubbish - bald assertions in the absence of any fact - but not many people here are going to believe you.
My bald assertions consist of quoting the NED budget and the mean disbursement per client, something none of the conspirazoids on this board can be bothered to do.
A country with 45 million people in it has tremendous inertia. The notion that Carl Gershman gets them up and running with his check-writing operation is nutty. (Why not cut a few checks and unload Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua? Mighty opaque those neocons.) Why not at least stick to historical events which could have been effected by a two-digit sum of people if you're going to trade in this sort of tripe?
Yet congress alone contributed over $100 million to the NED in 2011,
NED distributes most of their federal appropriation to one of four 'core institutes' (associated with the AFL-CIO, the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, and the Democratic Party respectively). Two of the four do not distribute grants. In FY 2011, Congress earmarked $18,000,000 for miscellaneous grants.
Did Finland send in food and ammunition in or let Russians out to escape the siege through the northern lines?
Finland considered sending food to Leningrad to relieve mass starvation, and would have, if they had enough food to spare, and the transport. Nor would the Germans lend any of their own trucks and trains for this. Finland was not one of the breadbaskets of Europe, and the Finns had to think of themselves first. (That's right, Marx and Engels. There is this little bourgeois thing called self-preservation.)
My bald assertions consist of quoting the NED budget and the mean disbursement per client
You quoted the NED faq and made a back of the envelope calculation based on it.
You are demeaning the term "conspiracy" by throwing it around so loosely. How can it be a "conspiracy" to claim that the NED does its job, which is to undermine regimes it deems insufficiently democratic?
Silver,
1. You can look at the Appendix to the Budget of the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2011. It earmarks a baseline of $18 million for miscellaneous grant recipients and offers a general advisory that most of the appopriation is to go to the core institutes. NED's board has some discretion about how they distribute their largesse, but most of it goes to the core institutes. Two of the four core institutes have a grant facility and two do not.
2. NED and the core institutes operate worldwide. There is not much likely to be concentrated in any one place. Less than 1% of this world's population lives in the Ukraine.
3. The core institutes work on their own book, which includes a mess of technical advice for people organizing trade unions, trade associations, and political parties.
4. You're all remarkably incurious about the sources of actual political conflict in the Ukraine and instead retreat to rather fanciful speculations that it's a function of Victoria Nuland's machinations or Carl Gershman's machinations (while repeating outright lies about the course of events). Nuland is a career FSO whose mostly worked in P.R. Gershman's a foundation exec. The notion that the pair can make or unmake foreign governments is flabbergasting.
5. There's nothing that compels any of you to have strong opinions about any of this or to take sides (much less to take the part of an antagonistic foreign government). You're doing this for yourselves.
"Hunsdon said: Any evidence that the Bear is about to gobble up the Czech Republic...along with Poland? Any reason that the US should go to war to prevent that...when we weren't willing to do it in the middle 20th century?
Apparently, on planet Hundson, being against Russia's gobbling up points West is equivalent to the conviction that the US should to go to war to prevent that. If others came to believe that all geopolitics is reducible to such simple dichotomies, it would be a messed up world indeed (and to the extent they *do* believe that, well, it would certainly explain a lot about the troubles we've seen.)
In any case, whenever said Hundson chooses to descend from his lofty orbit and re-enter the real world, we can discuss a more practical midway solution, along with more rarefied topics of where the rights of a Ukrainian rank in comparison to those of a Pole or Czech in the 30's.
Art, you are remarkably condescending for somebody so laughably off the mark about my views. I mean, "less than 1% of this world lives in the Ukraine." Uh, thanks.
Now look, it's obvious you've been googling about for statistics, so you'll forgive me if I don't immediately bow to your authority on the subject of the NED. You can view the following link and explain to me why I should disregard the clearly stated information contained therein.
As for having strong opinions on Victoria Nuland or the Ukraine, you have got to be kidding; I could scarcely care less about any of it. I have commented because it's topical, but I am very far from any sort of Putin or Russia admirer, please.
That the NED exists to undermine governments it deems insufficiently democratic is self-evident - there's no other reason for its existence. This does not mean I necessarily disagree with its activities, nor does it mean that it is necessarily successful in its activities, nor does it mean that if it is successful it is the deciding factor.
Lastly, just because I am of the opinion that you, personally, are a disgraceful liar when it comes to racial issues it does not mean I am automatically part of, er, "those people," if you follow my drift.
HA said: Apparently, on planet Hundson, being against Russia's gobbling up points West is equivalent to the conviction that the US should to go to war to prevent that.
Hunsdon said: Two separate questions were raised; they did not merge into one.
HA: In any case, whenever said Hundson chooses to descend from his lofty orbit and re-enter the real world, we can discuss a more practical midway solution, along with more rarefied topics of where the rights of a Ukrainian rank in comparison to those of a Pole or Czech in the 30's.
Hunsdon: Admittedly, my main concern is tamping down the apparent desire of neocons to poke the Russian bear to the point of "two minutes until midnight."
I'd have preferred to have seen Ukraine continue, perhaps with peaceful protests in Maidan Square, until the elections previously scheduled.
I am not a shill for Russia. I do not hate Ukrainians. Hell, I don't even hate Poles!
I do doubt that putting newer, fresher oligarchs in charge of Ukraine will better the lives of most Ukrainians.
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