The Chicago Tribune considers the interesting question of who was behind Eastern European policy in the U.S. government:
The escalating crisis also raises questions about whether the White House was quick enough to recognize the seriousness of the Ukraine issue and to give it adequate attention.
U.S. officials and other sources said that the State Department, particularly the hard-charging assistant secretary of state for Europe, Victoria Nuland, had for months been raising alarms about Russia's more aggressive posture toward former Soviet states, and Ukraine in particular.
Washington's engagement accelerated after a November 2013 European summit at which Ukraine - along with Armenia - declined under heavy Russian pressure to sign association agreements with the European Union.
"That's when you saw the Americans stepping up," said Damon Wilson, executive vice president of the Washington-based Atlantic Council, and a former adviser on Europe to President George W. Bush.
Nuland, he said, "created U.S. policy really out of very little at the time."
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79 comments:
My eyes must be going: I read that as "the hard-charging assistant secretary of state for Empire".
I take it that "hard-charging" is an American euphemism for foul of mouth and coarse of temperament?
So what exactly constitutes this new hard-charging engagement? It probably has four phases: look away, whimper, roll over and hide under the couch.
Given that the White House just released a picture of Obummer on the phone we are now in stage Whimper.
yeah it mean she shouts and cusses a lot
jewish? Check!
Ivy League degree? Check!
David Brooks gushed over her? Check!
Uses profanity==Strong Woman? Check!
She's a rising star!
This doesn't make much sense for the Jewish conspiracy crowd.
Why would a "Jewish controlled" US government oust Ukraine's leader with the help of neo-nazis, who, it is reported, are attacking jews as we speak.
"“The greatest worry now is not the uptick in anti-Semitic incidents but the major presence of ultra-nationalist movements, especially the prominence of the Svoboda party and Pravy Sektor (right sector) members among the demonstrators. Many of them are calling their political opponents “Zhids” and flying flags with neo-Nazi symbols. There have also been reports, from reliable sources, of these movements distributing freshly translated editions of Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in Independence Square.” (“Anti-Semitism, though a real threat, is being used by the Kremlin as a political football”, Haaretz)
"
I agree on Nuland, but I'm starting to get annoyed with the Russians now... it's one thing to put your own spin on events, it's another to make events up that are easily refutable or contestable(like WMDs)... they put out a false story about a shootout to justify bringing more troops into Crimea and now I see a false story about 600k Russian Ukrainians fleeing eastern Ukraine... I realize the Russians are mad their guy was couped, but he was couped fair and square. It's their fault they didn't stop it.
If the Russia wanted the Ukraine in their new customs union they should have done a better job cultivating that relationship. It seems Russian(and Ukrainians too tbh) operatives and media do a lot to raise tensions between Russians and Ukrainians for political ends... if you want a union then you need to rise about that.
"Poor Ukraine. EU/US only want casual sex, no relationship. Russia wants an abusive relationship."
https://twitter.com/RussiaWatchers/status/440087724125483008
Yes. Aggressive and thick -- but with the writer's complete approval. It's a compliment.
There's a lot of people who at the moment are screaming that we should 'do something'. They're short on specifics, though. What precisely this something to be done happens to be is quite vague. Let's see their blueprint first and then discussion should follow. Perhaps they want a rerun of the Crimean war.
There's always been a lot of incompetence and miscalculation in the foreign affairs of just about any country one can think of. Supposed shrewd operators and great intellects have blundered immensely time and again yet they seem to go on in their careers as though nothing happened. In the popular discourse aimed at the masses everything is reduced to an analogy with kids in the playground: the president must act tough, bullies should be punched in the face, don't be a sissy, can't act scared, and so on. It's all a reckless egging on of the public.
The writers of the article seem to be tribesmen. They always give each other glowing reviews.
Mel Gibson proven right again! :)
"The escalating crisis also raises questions about whether the White House was quick enough to recognize the seriousness of the Ukraine issue and to give it adequate attention. "
What? Five billion dollars for regime change is not "adequate attention"? I think it was plenty! It got the job done, didn't it? OK, so there is a little push-back from Putin who is not going to see his navy base in the Crimea overrun or his soldiers and sailors killed, but other than that, what's their beef?
The Nuland-Kagans have their revolution and their banksta buddies are lined up to move in for a second round of financing to impoverish the people and keep the government from defaulting.
What color is this revolution, anyway? The last one was "Orange". So this one is ... ?
Meanwhile China is moving in to pick up the pieces in Syria. I guess they are not a problem because they are run by bankers, too. Bankers 'n bankers can always get along.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116503/why-12-years-slave-will-win-best-picture-oscars
I find your mode of argumentation extremely obnoxious. If you believe Putin's conduct here is justified please state so forthrightly instead of engaging in a passive-aggressive vendetta.
It's really sad we don't permit the likes of Jim Bakers and George Kennans around anymore to help steer US foreign policy. Is it just nostalgia or were those guys really as non-ideological as they seemed. Certainly compared to this Nuland creature, but any comparison is absurd.
Nuland is a grotesque horror-show whose motivations and revenge fantasies color everything she does. We would never let an Albanian or Serb tell us what to do about Kosovo, and yet these Nuland types are given free reign wherever they like. How can they be good for the US?
Whatever you want to say about our old-line WASP elite of generations ago, they had a little class.
"Victoria Nuland, had for months been raising alarms about Russia's more aggressive posture toward former Soviet states, and Ukraine in particular. "
In other words: I know what you are thinking and it wasn't Nuland's fault. She warned the world. But nobody would believe that if she overthrew the elected government of Ukraine there would be a reaction from Russia.
"an American euphemism for foul of mouth and coarse of temperament": does it also carry any implication of "bear of little brain"? I ask because there's a decent case to be made that the USA should be trying to coax Russia into an alliance, or at least an entente, or even just an "understanding", on the subject of China.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/27/vivian-kubrick-reclusive-daughter-of-film-great-stanley-turns-up-at-anti-government-alex-jones-rally/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSnHhZ-zO3A
This whole thing is starting to feel like "The Guns of August.". To paraphrase one of my heroes, Otto von Bismarck, the whole of the Ukraine isn't worth the bones of a single American soldier. During the Cold War, Russia (as the USSR), controlled the Ukraine. Didn't' seem to do us much harm. Undoubtedly, some Ukrainians would prefer to live as part of Russia. Others despise the Russians. Best to let them sort it out.
It's obvious that Obama doesn't care very much about foreign policy, so he delegates it to underlings and lets them do what they want. Obama prefers to work on domestic policy and produce such triumphs as Obamacare. On to Belgrade!
"Hard-charging" means "bossy bitch," in this case one who, with no knowledge, experience, planning or consultation with experts or allies, is given a totally free hand to just make up US policy as she goes along.
Why libertarianism is poison. By being individual-centric, it ignores the racial, cultural, and ideological differences & fixations of groups.
In a perfectly libertarian world, each person would only see himself/herself as a free individual, but in the real world, people are social creatures and think in terms of groups. Also, different groups have group differences in many traits. An average Nigerian individual isn't interchangeable with an average Hong Kong individual. Not in sports, not in math.
Some say the West should go for greater immigration to try out a grand experiment of what greater diversity will bring. Maybe it will be good, maybe bad, but we should at least take a chance to find out cuz unless we try it, we won't know for sure.
Well, the answer is already there for those with eyes. If Europe keeps taking more Africans and Muslims, it will become like North Africa and Yemen where the whites, blacks, Arabs, and others are all mixed together. That experiment has been done already. So, is North Africa and Yemen economically and politically better off than Europe? No.
And we don't need an experiment to find out what more mestizo, Indian, and black immigrants from Latin America will produce. The evidence is already in Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, Brazil, and etc. Despite their economic improvements in recent yrs, they are still messy, corrupt, and dysfunctional nations.
So, it should be obvious that US and Europe don't have much to gain by greater 'diversity'. The result of such evidence is plain to see in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Morocco, Algeria, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina(its southern Italian immigrants didn't have wasp elites to show them the way). Even Jews in Latin America and North Africa surely know rule of law is much weaker there, thereby undermining even Jewish achievement.
But idiotic libertarianism provides a BS explanation as to why North Africa and Latin America have lagged. As that neocon whore Niall Ferguson lays out in the series about 'killer apps', it's 'total rubbish' to focus on group differences in race or biology. It's entirely the result of culture and laws. So, if Latin American Indians/mestizos and North African blacks and mulattos all somehow imbibe the Protestant work ethic, rule of law, and consumerism, they're gonna be just like Germany and US. (Yeah, if blacks in Detroit finally read Ayn Rand, they will become Bill Gates and George Soros).
I wonder if Ferguson really believes this or is he just a whore who tries to push his more controversial theories under the mask of PC.
Vicky's triumph was set things in motion, to get the crisis going. But Putin may still end this crisis in a way that Vicky and her clique will hate. He's at least as skillful as they are.
you must be joking, this woman is a national disgrace
Steve's always proclaiming the awfulness of the "Rape of Russia" in the 1990s, but it seems like pretty good policy to me. Yeltsin's Russia was the most benign and safest to the West since any time going back to Ivan the Terrible.
Russia has proved time and time again that it will never give up on its desire to be a great empire. This was true under the Czars, Communists and the modern-day "nationalists." It refuses to follow the German transition of handing international power over to America and keeping to itself while getting rich.
The policy is to keep emasculating Putin at every turn. In Syria, Ukraine, Central Asia. The reality is the US is far and away stronger than Russia. KGB thugs like Putin forget that unless you keep reminding them. Every foreign policy failure chips away at Putin's cultivated image of a strong, resolved leader. And that leads him closer and closer to being perceived as a weak target for the rivals in his mafia state.
A transition back to the Russia of the 1990s should be the central goal of American foreign policy. Russia has vast mineral and energy resources. The optimal situate is for the IMF to structure the economy to make sure the proceeds from those resources are going to oligarchs who will blow them on soccer teams and luxury goods. The Putin alternative is that money funding tank legions that threaten Russia's European neighbors.
Translation, Obama watches Sportscenter all day.
I take it that "hard-charging" is an American euphemism… --Dearieme
No, it's a flaccid term used by harried "journalists", often in the business press, who don't have the time, energy, or skill to "show-don't-tell". It's actually meant as a compliment.
I'm reminded of Reid Buckley's scathing appraisal of Georgie Anne Geyer's Americans No More, a book he largely agreed with. Miss Geyer larded her prose with laudatory adjectives for those she interviewed, which is one thing in an op-ed or short article, but at book-length was giving poor Reid a headache. Me, too.
Of course, "hard-charging" could also refer to a rapid arrival at credit limits. I don't know if this applies to Vicky*, but it certainly fits her boss and his administration.
*She's gotta be "Vicky" She's no "Tory"!
Russia has proved time and time again that it will never give up on its desire to be a great empire.
That makes it different to America, how?
The policy is to keep emasculating Putin at every turn. In Syria, Ukraine, Central Asia. The reality is the US is far and away stronger than Russia. KGB thugs like Putin forget that unless you keep reminding them. Every foreign policy failure chips away at Putin's cultivated image of a strong, resolved leader.
Big talk, but you can't back any of it up.
they put out a false story about a shootout to justify bringing more troops into Crimea and now I see a false story about 600k Russian Ukrainians fleeing eastern Ukraine... I realize the Russians are mad their guy was couped, but he was couped fair and square. It's their fault they didn't stop it.
Yea, I agree. It reminds me of those stories the US carried about 100,000 Albanians and how the Serbs were rounding them up for the camps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXhaBHGhUOI
Big tough John McCain takes orders from his master.
Lena Dunham's foreign policy.
Good grief looks like the Hasbara has been joined by State department plants.
dearie me, where have you been? Russia has already signed a security and economic pact with China, back in the early 2000s. They updated it and expanded it in 2012.
China also had a deal with the former (pro-Russian) government of Ukraine to lease five percent of its farmland to grow food for polluted China.
They're not likely to be pleased with the new guys going back on that deal.
No. Urban Dictionary definition of Hard-Charging.
"Why would a "Jewish controlled" US government oust Ukraine's leader with the help of neo-nazis, who, it is reported, are attacking jews as we speak.
Because Ukrainian nationalists are weak and Putin is strong. The neocons are playing divide and rule, telling a weaker enemy to attack a stronger one. They also support Al Qaeda against Assad and the Shia. They don't actually like Al Qaeda. They do it because they like their enemies fighting each other.
Countering Russia aggressively in its sphere of influence made more sense when they were meddling in ours. I'm not sure what the point of that is now.
Vicky's triumph was set things in motion, to get the crisis going. But Putin may still end this crisis in a way that Vicky and her clique will hate. He's at least as skillful as they are.
I second that. Putin plays a long hand, whereas Neocons/Zionists are often fanatically driven by revenge for perceived injustices.
"he was couped fair and square."
Huh? A coup is a coup. Vicky Nuland, Soros and their Right Secor pets didn't wait for an election. They didn't even bother rigging an election. They just chased out an elected head of state.
" they put out a false story about a shootout"
How do you know it's false? There's propaganda flying in all directions.
DR:
A transition back to the Russia of the 1990s should be the central goal of American foreign policy. Russia has vast mineral and energy resources. The optimal situate is for the IMF to structure the economy to make sure the proceeds from those resources are going to oligarchs who will blow them on soccer teams and luxury goods.
The central goal of American foreign policy should be creating transnational structures of peace to help the common development of the European world - Vancouver to Vladivostok and Santiago to Sydney, not antagonizing Russians by consigning them to economic and demographic doom under the exploitation of corrupt oligarchs. We need to move beyond a world model that can only picture world power structures with one nation on top and one elite on top of that one nation. The development of civilization depends upon harnessing our best minds from all civilized countries to progress the human condition on the shoulders of those who have come before us, and in this regard, the Russians are key actors because of their resources, smarts, and capabilities.
Germans fought to the bitter end in WWII because of useless propaganda like Kaufmann's "Germany Must Perish" calling for the sterilization of all German men. Lets not make the same mistake with Russians calling for the perpetual debt bondage that Americans each might earn $1000 more per year. It is not in America's interest for any white nation to perish. And with Russia especially if for no other reason than that unlike Nazi Germany, they have nuclear weapons, and strike me that if backed into a corner, they are most likely to lash out to presere their place in the world.
Most Germans had no desire to fight to the bitter end. When possible (e.g., Walther Wenk), they tried to make their way to the west to surrender to US troops. Among the most gung-ho bitter enders in Berlin were foreign SS volunteers from France and Norway.
"dearie me, where have you been? Russia has already signed a security and economic pact with China, back in the early 2000s. They updated it and expanded it in 2012."
Then American diplomacy should be concerned with persuading the Russians to renege on it. Hell, remind them that they once signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, and much good it did them.
Germans fought to the bitter end in WWII because of useless propaganda like Kaufmann's "Germany Must Perish" calling for the sterilization of all German men
That, and fear of another Versailles treaty. The Allies were damn brutal to Germany after WWII - but this time they spared Germany the humiliation and economic agony of Versailles.
It is not in America's interest for any white nation to perish.
How "white" is Russia, really? If you mean physically white, then yes. (But the same could be said about Chechens, Albanians, Armenians, Turks, even Arabs.) But culturally Russia has a ways to go to reach even Japanese levels of "whiteness".
I remarked on an earlier iSteve post about the way Ms. Nuland combined the virtues of ignorance, condescension, and aggressiveness when speaking on-the-record about Egypt's Arab Spring.
That KGB intercept recently featured on YouTube seemed to indicate that her wisdom is as deep as it is wide.
America's foreign policy Team is certainly a sight to behold. How wonderful to reap what they have sown on our behalf.
"not antagonizing Russians by consigning them to economic and demographic doom under the exploitation of corrupt oligarchs"
People here act as if Vladimir Putin has presided over some sort of Russian Renaissance. Russia's already consigned to economic and demographic doom. Just look at its birth rates. Look at the fresh all-time lows the Russian ruble keeps hitting. Look at Russia's shrinking exports and rising dependency on imports. Putin's selling out his country's economic future just to make sure the Kremlin's sphere of influence doesn't shrink by a tiny sliver.
The economy's just as mismanaged under Putin as Yeltsin. The only difference is today oil's $100/barrel instead of $15/barrel. Unlike China, Russia has completely failed to develop anything resembling a real economy. Russia has no economy whatsoever besides natural resources, it produces nothing at all. Without energy and minerals it would have Sub-Saharran African levels of economic development.
If Russia wanted to become developed and civilized it could. But its leaders would have to suppress their thuggish Slavic tendency for five minutes to maintain at least the facade of the rule of law. They can't because they're too greedy, short-sighted and macho to stop stealing.
Just because the Russians have the same skin color as Westerners doesn't mean they share any of the same interest or culture. They're far East of the Hajnal line and consequently failed to develop any of the social characteristics that led to the flourishing of Western European civilization. The East Asians are far closer to Westerners in values than the Russians.
Whether it's the Czars, the Communists, Yeltsin or Putin, Russian leaders always steal from the people. So it's only a matter of where we want that stolen money to go. Under Putin the bulk of that money goes to military buildup and energy market manipulation which threatens Russia's neighbors and the West. Comparatively things were much better for the West under Yeltsin. if Russians are going to steal better for them to spend the money on Dom and coke instead of MIGs and tanks.
Ultimately we should be working in concert with the Chinese to repopulate the resource rich Siberian regions with East Asians. First this weakens the Kremlin and makes the West safer. Second this will help accelerate resource contained Asian tiger growth rates, which both stabilizes intra-Asian conflict in the region and benefits the US economy
I must say this is rather amusing.
As far as I can remember, the Jewish kids I grew up with had an attitude to Ukraine not unlike Woody Allen's.
In the 80s, mention Ukraine and you didn't hear of the Great Famine or some such among Jewish kids. It was always those stinking cossacks, the pogrom thugs, the Nazi collaborators.
But today, them children of the Cossacks are poor darlings, the new freedom fighters.
PS. Someone should photoshop McCain in cossack outfit and hat.
http://www.arco-iris.com/George/images/ural_cossack.jpg
Just stick McUkraine's face onto it.
McCossakc.
http://thelexicans.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/yul-brynner-as-ramses.jpg?w=377
Putin the Pharaoh.
Let my people go!!!
Or the gay god will rain locusts down on Russia.
"hard-charging" may be a compliment when applied to a marine but to a diplomat?
in the context i'd say it was a very "nuanced" comment.
"Just look at its birth rates."
Yes, drastic collapse during the oligarch's looting phase and improving slightly since then.
"Russia has proved time and time again that it will never give up on its desire to be a great empire."
... which is why Russia sold Alaska.
... which is why Germany attacked Russia and not the other way around.
... which is why the USSR gave up and ended the iron curtain and broke apart.
... which is why Russia did nothing about Yugoslavia.
Russian imperialism must have things backward.
Russian imperialism has always been around Russia itself and some peripheral areas. As for eastern europe, it never would have fallen into Russia's trap had it not been for HItler's invasion and then FDR's willingness to let Stalin have it.
The only reason why Russian imperialism took on a globalist scope in the 20th century was the communist bug, and Russians didn't come up with Marxism. Another people did. Eventually, Russians cast it off.
Though Assad is no saint, he seems somewhat saner than the some of the rebels who are downright crazy in Syria. And do we want a massacre of Christians that will follow the fall of Assad?
What happened to Christians in Iraq as the result of the invasion? What happened to Libya?
Did Russia create all that mess?
Will neocons and liberal globo-Zionists take responsibility for all the mess they caused?
They are kissassacks now.
"Yes, drastic collapse during the oligarch's looting phase and improving slightly since then."
Russia's TFR has gone up from about 1.2 to 1.7 under Putin. And it's still going up. His is the only government in the entire white world that's paying women money to have more children.
"They are kissassacks now."
All the cossacks are actually in eastern Ukraine and Russian-held northern Caucasus and Siberia. Galician Banderites are kissing ass now. The descendents of the Cossacks have stayed true.
".. which is why Russia sold Alaska.
... which is why Germany attacked Russia and not the other way around.
... which is why the USSR gave up and ended the iron curtain and broke apart.
... which is why Russia did nothing about Yugoslavia."
…which is why Russia invaded Finland, one of the most peaceful and pleasant countries in the history of the world, without provocation and exterminated half the country.
…which is why Russia organized Communist coups in the free, democratic and certain quite post-German Eastern European states in 1948 and 1949.
…which is the Red Army slaughtered and raped their ways through peaceful Chinese peasants in Manchuria
…which is why the USSR attacked Nazi Germany first
…which is why Tsarist Russia mobilized first in World War I
…which is why Nicholas I was the first European power to break the peace of the Congress of Vienna in the Crimean War for want of territorial expansion.
The only reason that Russian imperialism never extended further afield is because the Russians are so drunk, disorganized and thuggish that they lost or at best barely scraped through every single major conflict with a big boy power. So they resort to pushing around and bullying the tiny countries and minorities surrounding them. Had China not developed nuclear weapons in the 1960s rest assured that Beijing would be another zone in Putin's "sphere of influence."
Do the readers here have such a man crush on Vladimir Putin that they're trying to read some sort of insane revisionist theory about a peaceful Russian history? I would love for you to go tell the families of the Lithuanians, Czechs and Hungarians who were crushed under Soviet tanks about how Russia just peacefully decided to let the Soviet Union break up.
Better yet go and see the atrocities the Russians committed on the people under their dominion. Visit the KGB museums in Eastern Europe and tell me just how nice the Russians are. Then realize that the president of Russia is a former KGB agent or how mass-murdering Stalin has a 40% approval rate, and blather on about how all that brutality is in their past along with Communism.
Bar none Russia is the most dangerous country in the world today. And bar none Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man to be in charge.
DR:
I have to thank you for so ably stating the western elitist position on Russia. No one can have any mistake of what it is after such a clear exposition.
Unlike China, Russia has completely failed to develop anything resembling a real economy.
China is a slave labor economy being used to "green" the western world by taking over much of its dirty manufacturing. Russians have too much dignity to place themselves in such a role.
Russia has no economy whatsoever besides natural resources, it produces nothing at all.
Natural resources are the basis of all modern economic production. If a country does not have them, it must import them and focus its country upon exports to pay to obtain them - see Germany and Japan. Where God's bounty lies beneath the feet, a simpler course is possible - extraction.
Without energy and minerals it would have Sub-Saharran African levels of economic development.
You say this of the only country in the world with a credible manned space program. A country capable of producing civilian and military aircraft on its own, and a leader in computer programming, mathematics, metallurgy, and engineering, and a source of western artistic culture such as high literature, ballet, and symphony. There are few European countries that can match this, so to call it equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa but for oil and gas is ridiculous.
If Russia wanted to become developed and civilized it could. But its leaders would have to suppress their thuggish Slavic tendency for five minutes to maintain at least the facade of the rule of law.
Russia is developed and civilized, as evidenced by any quick visit to the country.
Just because the Russians have the same skin color as Westerners doesn't mean they share any of the same interest or culture. They're far East of the Hajnal line and consequently failed to develop any of the social characteristics that led to the flourishing of Western European civilization. The East Asians are far closer to Westerners in values than the Russians.
The Russians don't share entirely the same culture - they are Orthodox instead of Catholic. I would reject the idea that the Chinese and Japanese are somehow more akin to us than Russians are though. No one with friends among both groups could think such a thing. See for example Steve's constant articles about Asian cheating rings.
DR cont:
Whether it's the Czars, the Communists, Yeltsin or Putin, Russian leaders always steal from the people. So it's only a matter of where we want that stolen money to go.
You are quite arrogant to assume it is up to us to decide how Russia's economy operates and its money is distirbuted.
Under Putin the bulk of that money goes to military buildup and energy market manipulation which threatens Russia's neighbors and the West. Comparatively things were much better for the West under Yeltsin. if Russians are going to steal better for them to spend the money on Dom and coke instead of MIGs and tanks.
Above you were telling us of the Russian's utter incompetence. If they are so incompetent as to be the equivalent of the Congolese but for having oil, then surely their military build-up is no threat, but in fact a benefit, as military production is a net waste on economic growth seeing as it is sunk funds with no productivity.
Ultimately we should be working in concert with the Chinese to repopulate the resource rich Siberian regions with East Asians. First this weakens the Kremlin and makes the West safer. Second this will help accelerate resource contained Asian tiger growth rates, which both stabilizes intra-Asian conflict in the region and benefits the US economy
For the longest time, American patriots recognized the direst threat to our country was the multitudes of China and India simply overwhelming our numbers, hence the Asian Exclusion acts. Now you think we should encourage the invasion and genocide of Russian Siberia and its repopulation with Sino-Mongols in the interests of handing over vital resources to the functioning of modern western civilization to the hands of inscrutible and cruel Asiatic despots? I suppose you think this will be a good idea because you think we can always keep the Chinese under our thumb?
Galician Banderites are kissing ass now. The descendents of the Cossacks have stayed true.
You mean Halychnia(n) Banderites. Galicia is a part of Spain.
DR:
Bar none Russia is the most dangerous country in the world today. And bar none Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man to be in charge
Above, you stated Russia, but for oil underfoot, was the equivalent of Angola or Nigeria in both the quality of its people (because they did the horrible thing of marrying at 21) and its economy. No one thinks Nigeria and Angola pose any threat. Why are you so afraid of a bunch of backwards ninnies as you think the Russians are?
…which is why Russia organized Communist coups in the free, democratic and certain quite post-German Eastern European states in 1948 and 1949.
You mean the Soviet Union that was led by a Georgian ruler?
which is why Tsarist Russia mobilized first in World War I
This had nothing to do with imperial ambitions. Russia's mobilization was not about taking territory, but defending the Kingdom of Serbia, fellow Slavs and Orthodox Christians, from Austria-Hungary.
the Russians are so drunk, disorganized and thuggish that they lost or at best barely scraped through every single major conflict with a big boy power. So they resort to pushing around and bullying the tiny countries and minorities surrounding them.
Unfortunately, that sounds like an apt description of the USA.
I would love for you to go tell the families of the Lithuanians, Czechs and Hungarians who were crushed under Soviet tanks about how Russia just peacefully decided to let the Soviet Union break up.
You keep conflating Russia with the USSR. They are not the same.
Bar none Russia is the most dangerous country in the world today. And bar none Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man to be in charge.
Wow, I thought Iran was the most dangerous nation in the world. I guess we can stop with the nonsense about bombing Iran.
BTW, suppose Russia and Iran were the most diabolical nations on Earth. What is the point of doing the heavy lifting to eradicate them when we are losing our nation at home? This is what I never get about neocons.
And why is it that we are told it is impossible to control our border, or even force people to self-deport, but confronting the second largest nuclear power on Earth is not a problem?
It was either nuanced or poorly-chosen, but it isn't a euphemism for "foul of mouth and coarse of temperament".
Too much speculation.
Russia is winning.
DR:
The only reason that Russian imperialism never extended further afield is because the Russians are so drunk, disorganized and thuggish that they lost or at best barely scraped through every single major conflict with a big boy power.
Having People's Fuhrers that were incompetent or worse never helped Russia either. Stalin was so paranoid of his own army that he gutted it to the point of uselessness, and then wondered why Hitler invaded.
So they resort to pushing around and bullying the tiny countries and minorities surrounding them.
Bully, that's right. Russia is no more than a great big mega-bully with its same old sanctimonious whine about how being raped and tortured by Hitler and his Krauts justifies worse atrocities. Russia / USSR was barely able to defend itself in 1941 thanks to its demented 1939-41 jihad against capitalists.
Had China not developed nuclear weapons in the 1960s rest assured that Beijing would be another zone in Putin's "sphere of influence."
Good point.
I would love for you to go tell the families of the Lithuanians, Czechs and Hungarians who were crushed under Soviet tanks about how Russia just peacefully decided to let the Soviet Union break up.
Another common tactic: Russia disowning its totalitarian past in a dishonest hypocritical manner.
"It was Lenin's fault, or Stalin's fault, or the Jews, etc."
Lenin and Stalin was just two men, and the Jews (communists, actually, there is a difference) were and are a very small minority. Where would they be without their willing Great Russian executioners? There were plenty of them, both fanatical ideologues, and power hungry opportunists.
It was really too bad there was no opportunity to de-communize Russia, in the same way as Germany was de-Nazified.
Bar none Russia is the most dangerous country in the world today. And bar none Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous man to be in charge.
Russia = Iran or North Korea with nukes and huge goose-stepping sieg-heiling armies. The crude Russian form of imperialist nationalism, combined with the anti-life cancer of communism, was - and still is - an explosive mixture.
Too bad nobody is Machiavellian enough to tell Putin, "Do what you want in Ukraine, but close your eyes when we install a friendly government in Venezuela. We could use the oil.
Man I go out of town for a few days and the race hatred breaks out something fierce. Oh, look, it's DR with his charming view that what America really needs right now is to launch a campaign to exterminate Russia.
Well, nothing new there, I suppose.
No matter what, Americans will have war, and any old war will do.
I'm persuaded by the view that there is something in our national character that makes us spoil for a fight, at least when we have the upper hand (or think we do). Peace doesn't sit well with us. "War is a force that gives us meaning," as leftie Chris Hedges wrote; and rightie H.L. Mencken wrote:
"Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase, and scotching of bugaboos. The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting 'Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!' It has been so in the United States since the earliest days. The whole history of the country has been a history of melodramatic pursuits of horrendous monsters, most of them imaginary: the red-coats, the Hessians, the monocrats, again the red-coats, the Bank, the Catholics, Simon Legree, the Slave Power, Jeff Davis, Mormonism, Wall Street, the rum demon, John Bull, the hell hounds of plutocracy, the trusts, General Weyler, Pancho Villa, German spies, hyphenates, the Kaiser, Bolshevism. The list might be lengthened indefinitely; a complete chronicle of the Republic could be written in terms of it, and without omitting a single important episode."
If you look at the comments sections of Yahoo! News stories that relate the latest from Russia/Ukraine, you will see - not the heartening comments against international military interventionism that were predominant during the past few years (such as: "It's none of our business!") - but bellicose, war-drum-pounding ejaculations of truly mind-boggling jingoism instead. The Cold Warriors merely went into hibernation. They're back now (unlike John "We are all Ukrainians now" McInsane, who never went away). The "plain people," as Menck styled them, are hollering for interventionism, spoiling for war.
Since the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts are defunct, we have been in that most dangerous condition - that of being without an active enemy. The local Russian dust-ups are a godsend from this perspective. Finally "the tonic of a serious moral adventure," as The New Republic said of WWI at the time, may be in the offing.
Of course we're led by the nose into these things, but my focus is why we allow ourselves to be. The explanation must be better than the fact that much of our modern national economy is built on military activity, military contracting and so forth (as the commenter "Whiskey" tried to tell us for years).
But fear not. The US will opt for WWC, IMO, and not WWR, if only because China's military, at present, is no match for the US's.
It is worth keeping in mind throughout these proceedings that Ukrainian language and Ukrainian identity are an invention out of wholecloth from the last 125 years and coming out of Polish dominated Austrian Galicia and intended to cause division inside Russia.
Prior to that time, no one had ever spoken a language called Ukrainian, no one called themselves Ukrainian or claimined a Ukrainian ethnicity, and there was no place or subdivision or country called Ukraine.
What now passes for Ukrainian language is a sort of pidgin-Russian heavily influenced by Polish loanwords and phonetics, and spoken as a dialect of Russian inside the Galicia, Volhynia, Vinnytsia, Zhitomir regions dominated by the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth and Polish nobles from 1350 to 1790/1940 and that was part of the religious Union of Brest that created the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Ukrainian language exists in a continuum of basically mutually comprehensible East Slavonic dialects which in a circle are Russian, Surzhyk, Ukrainian, West Polesian, Belarussian, and Trasianka before coming back to Russian.
People who now call themself Ukrainians prior to 1890 called themselves Rusyns as opposed to "Rossians" or "Russians". Anyone with any intelligence will notice that ethnonym is identical to Russian. The "Ukrainians" in Transcarpathia, the part of Ukraine ruled by the Kingdom of Hungaria and Slovakia up until 1945 still call themselves Rusyn, not Ukrainian, and the ones who emigrated to the US and Canada in the late 1800's seem blissfully unaware of the "Ukrainian" language used in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, as they have their own particular Church, the Byzantine Catholic Church coming out of the Union of Uzhorod. They use Old Church Slavonic in their liturgy, not Ukrainian.
Properly then, Ukrainian should be thought of as a political party promoting separate identity from Russia coming out of Austrian Galacia, and opposed to the Russophile Party looking towards Russia, and the Ugro-Rusyns in Transcarpathia. These same divisions are still present in Ukraine.
A number of interesting articles on this topic from the time before political crorectness are found in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia and 1907-1913 Britannica, prior to the time when Ukrainianism had become normalized. For example on the creation of the Ukrainian "language" out of the Russian dialect of Galicia:
"It is quite similar to the Russian language of the Russian Empire (sometimes called Great Russian), bearing about the same relation to it as Lowland Scotch does to English, or Plattdeutsch to German, and rather closer than Portuguese does to Spanish. The Ruthenians (in Austria) and Little Russians (in Russia) use the Russian alphabet and write their language in almost the same orthography as the Great Russians of St. Petersburg and Moscow, but they pronounce it in many cases very differently, quite as the French and English might pronounce differently a word written the same in each language. This fact has led in late years to a recension of the Russian alphabet in Galicia and Bukowina by the governmental authorities, and by dropping some letters and adding one or two more and then spelling all the words just as they are pronounced, they have produced a new language at least to the eye."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06744a.htm
And:
"The Ruthenian language is very close to the Russian and both are descendants of the ancient Slavonic tongue which is still used in the Mass and in the liturgical books. The Ruthenian, however, in the form of its words, is much nearer the Church Slavonic than the modern Russian language is. Still it does not differ much from the modern Russian or the so-called Great Russian language; it bears somewhat the same relation to the latter as the Lowland Scotch does to English or the Plattdeutsch to German."
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13278a.htm
"Ukrainian" then, is simply a more primitive form of Russian left with less development out of Slavonic, unsurprising as it was spoken by Polish dominated peasants as opposed to an independent and culture producing state which would require new words, and that when those new words were required, they were borrowed from the dominant Polish culture.
In another interesting article about Ruthenians (since Ukrainians had not yet normalized their new name), the Catholic Encyclopedia states:
"They occupy in Russia the provinces or governments of Lublin (Poland), Volhynia, Podolia, Kieff, Tehernigoff, Kharkoff, and Poltava, in Russia"
Notice that this range excludes the entire Russian speaking area Ukraine from Odessa to Donetsk, including Crimea.
Another interesting article on the Rusyns, and the minimal differences between them and the Russians can be found here.
http://lemko.org/lih/slivka.html
This article discusses how recently some terms of differentiation have been created.
For example, the Church of thr Rusyns was only named the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church in 1942.
"It was either nuanced or poorly-chosen, but it isn't a euphemism for "foul of mouth and coarse of temperament"."
I think it is - or could be seen to be so - when applied to a diplomat but not a big thing.
.
"Russia's TFR has gone up from about 1.2 to 1.7 under Putin. And it's still going up."
Yeah I knew it had gone up but too lazy to check the details.
"His is the only government in the entire white world that's paying women money to have more children."
Which is the most important bit of information about him.
.
Wandering round the internet reading comments I get the feeling the more supremacist of YKW hate Russians/Slavs even more than they hate Germans or Persians. Quite an eye opener - unless it's just anger at things going wrong?
DR said...
People here act as if Vladimir Putin has presided over some sort of Russian Renaissance. Russia's already consigned to economic and demographic doom.
Here is a link to Russian GDP per capita. It's growth has been impressive. There has also been a recent rebound in fertility. There has been a gigantic decline in the poverty rate. Unemployment is low and decreasing.
To summarize: Putin has presided over some sort of Russian Renaissance.
Hideously, for DR, the benefits of this Renaissance seem to be flowing, at least in part, to, you know, actual Russians.
Black Death said...
It's obvious that Obama doesn't care very much about foreign policy, so he delegates it to underlings and lets them do what they want. Obama prefers to work on domestic policy and produce such triumphs as Obamacare. On to Belgrade!
Oddly, Whiskey is right about something. Obama has had dick to do with his domestic agenda as well: Obamacare was outsourced to Congress, for example--and cribbed from Mitt Romney to boot.
He's lazy. He does nothing. He's always done nothing.
If you look at the comments sections of Yahoo! News stories that relate the latest from Russia/Ukraine, you will see - not the heartening comments against international military interventionism that were predominant during the past few years (such as: "It's none of our business!") - but bellicose, war-drum-pounding ejaculations of truly mind-boggling jingoism instead.
Part of it is that the Russians have some real hardware. People want to see a war with some real hardware. Random militants with AK-47s in the desert just isn't that exciting. People want to see opposing tanks battalions going at each other and stuff.
"If you look at the comments sections of Yahoo! News stories that relate the latest from Russia/Ukraine, you will see - not the heartening comments against international military interventionism that were predominant during the past few years (such as: "It's none of our business!") - but bellicose, war-drum-pounding ejaculations of truly mind-boggling jingoism instead."
I think the two are related.
The outburst of anti-war sentiment on the internet during the attempt to bounce people into a war over Syria has led to a concerted attempt at astroturfing newspaper comment sections over Ukraine.
I get the feeling the more supremacist of YKW hate Russians/Slavs even more than they hate Germans or Persians
I love Slavs, even Russians, and mostly for that reason I hate communism. Yeah, I know, the Cold War is over, but too many remnants of communism linger on in the Kremlin.
"Anonymous said
DR:
You say this of the only country in the world with a credible manned space program. A country capable of producing civilian and military aircraft on its own, and a leader in computer programming, mathematics, metallurgy, and engineering, and a source of western artistic culture such as high literature, ballet, and symphony. There are few European countries that can match this, so to call it equivalent to sub-Saharan Africa but for oil and gas is ridiculous."
DR appears to harbor some kind of ethnic grievance which he dresses up in disinterested prose. Why any of the rest of us should be so hostile to his bugbears as he is is beyond me. If is so anxious for war with Russia, I invite him to parachute into that country, and carry his war to his enemy himself.
maybe DR is just a paid hasbara troll.
anon:
"I realize the Russians are mad their guy was couped, but he was couped fair and square. It's their fault they didn't stop it."
They probably feel that taking advantage of the Sochi Olympics to steal one of their clients was cheating. But it was nearly inevitable the neocons would seek revenge for Putin's keeping us out of war with Syria.
Frankly, I think this is the first time I've seen Putin get pwned, and I think he's angry. And I think he may be dangerous when angry.
Simon in London said...
"Frankly, I think this is the first time I've seen Putin get pwned"
Maybe. Personally if I was him I'd want Crimea as officially part of Russia and south and east Ukraine as either part of Russia or as a client buffer state (the whole of Ukraine is too fractious and too much trouble imo).
If that was so how could he get it? I think he'd need EUSUK to overplay their hand first.
I wonder if Ferguson really believes this or is he just a whore who tries to push his more controversial theories under the mask of PC.
The sad thing is he probably does believe it. After all, he married a black woman. True believers are a much more difficult case than mendacious race-deniers. At least the mendacious race-deniers know they're lying, meaning that at some point they could change tack and start telling the truth. True believers can't do that.
That said, you are being too racially deterministic. None of those countries' cultures today is what it was 200 hundred years ago. Based on assessments of how those races perform in western countries, what their cultures will be 200 hundred years from now is indeed likely to be something significantly better. That may not mean much to you, but it's a cause for some degree of optimism rather than outright pessimism.
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