…because the West is weak.
And that’s just the way the Democrats, from Madeleine NotSobright to Barack Obama, seem to like it.
Hey, Barack? The 1930s called. They want the UK's foreign policy back. http://t.co/4oUqVKMKxt
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 20, 2014
[Update a couple minutes later]
Putin was changing the map while Europe was fixing the climate.
What fools.
Also, when weak nations provoke stronger ones. Because part of strength is the will to use what power you have.
[Update mid-afternoon]
“It’s like they’re living on another planet.”
As he notes, if Obama’s unwilling to take on the Sierra Club, who should believe that he’ll take on Putin?
[Bumped]
[Late afternoon update]
The real Cold Warriors understood that crushing the Evil Empire of Communism required us to take into account the interests of Russia as a nation. The elder statesmen who won the Cold War, including Henry Kissinger (whose opening to China flanked the Soviet Union), are trying in vain to inject a note of sanity into the clown show that passes for American foreign policy on both sides of the aisle. The Republican mainstream mistook Tahrir Square for Lexington Common, and then mistook Maidan for Tahrir Square. If only we were rougher and tougher, it is claimed, Crimea would be free today. That is just plain stupid; there is no possible state of the world in which Crimea would not be Russian. We had some ability to influence the terms under which it would be Russian, and we chose the worst possible course of action, namely open hostility combined with impotent posturing.
We have an elite that lives in its own virtual-reality world circumscribed by a failed ideology, unable to learn from its past mistakes (or even to admit that they were mistakes) and condemned to repeat the same blunders again and again. They posture at Putin the way a small boy stands up to the zoo lion behind cage bars. The lion, though, is not entirely without alternatives, as the alarming case of Iran should make clear.
It’s folly on every front.
I have yet to see a better analysis than Michael Totten’s on the subject. There are two factors at play. One, control of Crimea (obvious). Two, keeping NATO expansion in check. If Putin can force Ukraine into a situation where it has a disputed territory with Russia then that effectively puts Ukraine out of NATO. And if Ukraine is forced to renounce entirely any claim to Crimea in perpetuity in order to join NATO then that’s still a win for Putin, just at a smaller level.
As long as Ukraine had a Russian military base, they could not join NATO. An “independent” Crimea actually opens the door for Ukraine to join NATO. Was there any talk of kicking the Russian military out of Ukraine?
Wasn’t Cuba part of some Soviet defense pact, and they had a US Navy base there?
Joining NATO and joining whatever defense pact you are referring to likely have different requirements don’t you think?
Only problem with your post, dn_guy is that Cuba isn’t part of NATO.
Let’s see, Putin cut his teeth and survived a career in the KGB. Obama was a community organizer. I can only imagine what Putin thinks every time he sees Obama, but the phrases “putz” and “useful idiot” come to mind. From Putin’s perspective, Obama is the most useful of idiots.
I have yet to hear ANY explanation of how the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Europe was brimming with US troops, when the West was not “weak”, were different from Crimea in 2014. Do you think Hungary fell to Soviet tanks in 1956 because the West was too weak?
In the sense that we weren’t willing to risk a nuclear exchange over it, yes. Do you deny that Madeleine Albright and Barack Obama prefer a world in which the US is less dominant?
And, to get to the real crux of the matter, and what has you leftists peeing yourselves, do you deny that Hillary Clinton also would prefer this world?
So imagine 1956.
There’s the two (dumb, but that’s where we started) choices:
weaker vs. stronger.
There’s no situation where being -weaker- stops the Russians from rolling. It seems obvious that being substantially weaker makes them roll faster, and possibly roll farther.
So… it didn’t fall because the West was too strong. What does that leave? And “Stronger” doesn’t necessarily mean one more tank. You can go from ‘hopeless position’ to ‘mate in one’ with nothing more than rearranging the pieces sometimes.
There is obviously a third choice: the strength of the West doesn’t make a difference for areas which Russia considers within its sphere of influence such as Hungary in 1956 and Crimea today . NATO’s job is to convince Russia that membership in NATO (or being very friendly with NATO (eg Sweden) is incompatible with being within Russia’s sphere of influence, but I think the 20th century demonstrated that the West’s weakness or strength is irrelevant when it comes to Russia dominating neighbors who are not allied with us.
for areas which Russia considers within its sphere of influence
You might want to ask the population in those areas where they would rather be …
Enough with this post-Congress of Vienna attitude. The 19th Century is calling, they want their foreign policy back.
i don’t understand your point. I’m saying that we couldn’t save Hungary in 1956 (or 1949). I know we wanted to, I know they wanted us to, and I’m not suggesting that what happened was right or fair. What are you saying?
Bob-1, go read up on the Congress of Vienna and Spheres of Influence. While your at it got look up the Three Partitions of Poland while you are at it.
Stop being so thick.
The Russians have long coveted Finland, Bob. They even tried to take it, pre-Operation Barbarossa. What kept it from being taken, post-WW2? I gotta think having two Scandinavian members of NATO nearby (Norway, Denmark) had something to do with keeping Soviet troops out of the two non-NATO countries in Scandinavia (Finland, Sweden).
You know the definition of Finlandization: “how to bow to Russia without mooning the West.”
Back then the USSR still existed and in the context of the Cold War it was considered to be the USSR maintaining the status quo in their own turf since these were Warsaw Pact nations. Also the fact is none of those countries shared a border with a NATO country which is not the case for Ukraine today.
i.e. Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania are NATO members bordering Ukraine.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Obama went full Chamberlain and gave those countries to Russia to secure “peace in our time.” He could probably get Putin to sign a piece of paper promising no more territorial ambitions, too. Maybe that’s what Obama was talking about back in 2012 when he said he’d have more flexibility after the election.
Also the fact is none of those countries shared a border with a NATO country
Umm, you’re a little geographically challenged. What about the West German – Czechoslovakian border …..
In Cold War times, East Germany had a border with West Germany and Norway had a border with the Soviet Union. The former border is 20 years gone, but the latter border is still there, only now it’s the border of Norway and Russia.
How does the stopping the protest in Hungary, a then member of the Warsaw Pact, equate to annexing Crimea, that is part of Ukraine, which is no longer part of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact? Further, the US, UK, and France were a bit busy with Egypt blocking the Suez Canal. Perhaps you’re not aware of the open hostility including bombing of Egypt by the US, UK, and France. I guess you can claim the US is currently busy in Afghanistan, but really, Obama isn’t at all busy with Afghanistan. He’s keeping Afghanistan going because he can blame Bush for it. More Americans have been killed in Afghanistan under Obama than Bush, and the press doesn’t care, because Obama’s a Democrat and he doesn’t care. So Afghanistan isn’t a distraction. Obama’s distraction is filling out his NCAA brackets.
If you don’t know about the 1968 riots at the DNC convention days after the Red Army invades Czechoslovakia, then you don’t know your history enough to be even asking these stupid questions, bob!
Why don’t you tell us more about your belief that North Korea truly is a Democratic Republic?
” Perhaps you’re not aware of the open hostility including bombing of Egypt by the US, UK, and France. ”
Well, you gave me a good laugh! Tell us more about the US bombing Egypt.
It’s not widely known that the U.S. had boots on the ground during the Suez Crisis of 1956, but we did. I once worked with a guy who wore a pair of them.
And what was the guy in boots doing?
You can laugh all you want, but we’ve already identified your ignorance and now note your foolishness. If you want an education, I suggest you listen to Gregg below and open a history book for yourself and quit doing stupid things.
Admit it: you thought the US was on the side of the UK and France when you posted.
Anyway, your distraction theory is silly: we couldn’t save Czecholovakia because we didn’t want to go to war with Russia, not because of domestic politics in the US.
The same goes for Hungary. Here’s an analysis of the extent to which the Suez Crisis influenced event in Hungary and vice versa, and I think it can be summed up as “hardly influenced each other at all”: http://www.coldwar.hu/html/en/publications/kecskes_suez.html
I admit I fail to see how the US opposing the UK and France in a conflict over the Suez Canal bolsters your argument.
we couldn’t save Czecholovakia because we didn’t want to go to war with Russia, not because of domestic politics in the US.
Doubling down on stupid, bob? The Domestic Politics were violent anti-war riots outside the DNC convention. Do you know the President at the time was a Democrat? He was so weak, he didnt dare run for his own primary? And your opinion is that this domestic issue, going on literally the same time as the invasion of Czechoslovakia had nothing to do with US lack of interest in war with Russia? I suppose you think Russia’s timing then and now is just coincidental. That’s a massive level of stupid mixed with ignorance in just one of your sentences, bob.
Leland,
About the Suez Crisis: you brought it up, because it was happening at the same time as the Hungarian uprising, and you imagined we were busy bombing Egypt alongside our usual allies, so we couldn’t help in Hungary. While we were busy pressuring the UK & France & Israel to back off, there is no evidence that our involvement in the Suez Crisis played any role in the decision to not intervene in Hungary. Our behavior in the Suez Crisis was _consistent_ with our behavior regarding Hungary: Eisenhower wanted to avoid war with the USSR, despite the fact that the US wasn’t at all “weak” in the way that Rand claims Obama is “weak”.
About Czechoslovakia: My argument is that it didn’t matter who the President of the United States was. If Nixon had been President, if Goldwater had been President, it wouldn’t have mattered. The timing doesn’t matter. Any time the Czechs and Slovaks or anyone else under Soviet oppression were going to attempt something like Prague Spring, the Soviets were going to stop it. Ask Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski why he did what he did in the 1980s, ask the people of Vilnius what happened on the very late date of January 1991. As our host is fond of saying of the Soviets: it is who they are and it is what they do. Our “weakness” or “strength” has never been a factor.
So your argument bob is while there was a disagreement between the US, France, UK over Egypt nationalizing and blockading the Suez Canal with Israel invading the Sinai; the US was in a strong geo-political position to put pressure on the Soviet Union, who was quelling a local uprising in Warsaw Pact state? I think your argument is absurd, no matter how you try to embellish my statements.
My argument is that it didn’t matter
Yeah, we understand that’s your argument, but you fail to make good points to back it up. Just because you want to argue that position doesn’t make your points anymore valid. At best, you have managed to bring up several events that shows the Soviet Union and Russia have often taken advantage of US geo-political weakness, which is exactly contrary to your argument.
“I have yet to hear ANY explanation of how the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Europe was brimming with US troops, when the West was not “weak”, were different from Crimea in 2014. Do you think Hungary fell to Soviet tanks in 1956 because the West was too weak?”
You haven’t heard an explanation because to all sensible people who understand history, the two situations are not remotely the same.
We all have limited time available and so we are not going to spend it beating down endless straw men.
The key difference is that in Hungary and Czechoslovakia there were pro-democracy uprisings that deserved to be saved, and yet the West couldn’t do anything despite its strength. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, brave people fought losing battles against Soviet tanks, and we still couldn’t do anything. In Crimea, there was essentially no resistance at all, and yet somehow they lost because we were “weak”.
You have no argument. You just have snark about mom jeans.
Let’s just state the obvious, there is more than one factor in Russia’s decision to invade Crimea. Our perceived weakness under Obama is one. Another is that Crimea is important to Russia and they already had troops there. There isn’t much that can be done and Obama wants to do something to get back at Russia. So far, the world has little appetite helping Crimea or Obama stroke his ego.
“. Our perceived weakness under Obama is one. ”
Why do you think this? I see no evidence at all. I keep bringing up cold war history to demonstrate that Russia’s behavior toward its immediate neighborhood has not been influenced by our strength, nor has it been it been influenced by who happens to be President of the United States. Similarly, our (lack of) reaction to Russia’s oppression of its European neighborhood has not been a function of our strength, nor a reflection of who the President is.
(Also: blink once if you find Leland humorous.)
Why do you think this?
Because it is true.
I see no evidence at all
Because you are an idiot.
I keep bringing up cold war history
Your argument consists entirely on Russia and Soviet Union has done this in the past. That’s the entirety of your argument. When I and many others pointed out that sure they have, and each time the US was weak. You’re response is ad hominem attacks such as:
(Also: blink once if you find Leland humorous.)
It’s not very clever or compelling, but from you, it is the standard fare.
We can walk through each of the times that the Soviet Union oppressed its neighbors. It is a long list. Each time, we can find something going on in domestic politics here in the United States, or, if we’d rather, we can find something going on in our foreign affairs, and then we can claim that the USA was therefore weak or distracted.
In science, this is called a “just so story”.
But there is a better way. We can’t be scientific, but we can read history. In particular, we can read the first person accounts of the events written by the participants. They often won’t agree. But listening to what they have to say is better than telling just so stories. In the United States, presidential libraries are an excellent source of information, including information which is quite critical of the president in question. SInce 1991, historians have been able to find out much more about what was going on on the Soviet side, and we’ve heard from many Soviet political and military leaders about their perception of events.
I’ve been looking in the Eisenhower and the Johnson presidential libraries for any connection between our response to the Soviets and either the Suez crisis or the 1968 DNC. You could do the same.
Finally, you are in the unfortunate position of needlessly accusing me of not knowing history while simultaneously claiming that the US bombed Egypt. If you want to call people idiots, at least don’t be one yourself.
“Why do you think this? I see no evidence at all.”
Let’s see. Obama is gutting the military by reducing the number of troops in the Army and Marines while also cutting the number of ships we have and reducing their effectiveness by delaying repairs. This is after unilaterally reducing nuclear weapon stockpiles and removing missile defense assets. Obama is intentionally trying to send a message of a weakened and isolated United States.
He started off his term with an apology tour and his administration and party have been denigrating our country’s role in the world since the country’s inception. Obama isn’t a man apart, if you want to know what he thinks just look at what other progressives think.
Now, you are trying to tell me that Obama’s actions, attitude, and ideology play no part in how other countries view what our country will do under Obama’s leadership or in planning their own future. Everyone else isn’t as stupid as the Obama administration.
“Now, you are trying to tell me that Obama’s actions, attitude, and ideology play no part in how other countries view what our country will do”
No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m making a claim specifically about Russia and Eastern Europe.
I’m saying Russia, in particular, hasn’t been influenced in the past by who the president was or how strong or weak we were when it decided to dominate a (non-us-allied) neighbor in Eastern Europe, and I see no reason why that isn’t still true today. We know Russia’s motivation: WII was a scarring experience; and we know why Russia isn’t concerned about our military posture: Russian leaders know they care more about a number of their neighbors than we do. Our troop levels and other aspects of military preparedness don’t matter to Russia, because every Russian leader knows that we won’t militarily intervene for specific non-allied countries and zones that Russia considers within its sphere of influence. Expanded NATO membership is, among other things, a signal to Russia about what places we do care about.
And as I said to Leland, this doesn’t have to be something we need to guess about. We can read what various American, Russian, and Eastern European decision makers have said, quite candidly, about the issue.
And the protests in Ukraine were not pro-democracy?
As for Crimea, the guy who claims to be the Crimean Leader is a mafia thug (with really bad sense of style in the 90’s) who got 4% of the vote during the last election there. Only this time he had unmarked “local forces” with guns to help him.
European person: your replies to my comments makes you sound like you are having a debate with me, but I keep failing to find anything we disagree about. Of course the protests in Kiev were pro-democracy. Yes, the Crimean leadership is illegitimate. I’m not sure what we are supposed to be debating.
“In the sense that we weren’t willing to risk a nuclear exchange over it, yes.”
So, in other words, in 1956, we had just the right amount of weakness, presuming you agree that we shouldn’t have risked a nuclear exchange over it. (I’ve talked to Hungarians about this, both in Budapest and in the US, and I’ve never met one who thought that we should have risked a nuclear exchange.) I assume you agree.
So, why are you writing the West is weak now with respect to Crimea? Seems to me that you and I agree that, with respect to Crimea, the West has the same amount of weakness it had in 1956: the right amount.
—-
I will answer your question, but I don’t quite see how it is connected to Crimea or the West being too weak. Presidents George H W Bush, Clinton, George Bush, and Obama, as well as Secretary Albright & Secretary Clinton all prefer to work in international coalitions and favored getting UN approval when possible. When George H W Bush talked about a New World Order, that’s what he was talking about. Note that Bush wanted to include Soviet troops in the liberation of Kuwait.
( See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world_order_(politics)#The_Gulf_War_and_Bush.27s_formulation )
Seeing the bullet holes still in the walls in Budapest was blood curdling, by the way. I really wish we could have figured out a way to help without risking nuclear war.
When George H W Bush talked about a New World Order, that’s what he was talking about.
That didn’t mean he wanted a militarily weaker US, as Albright, Obama, Kerry et al do.
That didn’t mean he wanted a militarily weaker US, as Albright, Obama, Kerry et al do.
You keep ascribing motives to Obama et al with absolutely no evidence.
“You keep ascribing motives to Obama et al with absolutely no evidence.”
There’s plenty of evidence Obama et al want a weaker military. They provided it themselves. To think otherwise is to believe in pixie dust….as they do.
Other than things he’s said and done.
Um Dave… To educate you… The week before Russia moved on Crimea, Obama announced a 1/8th cut in the size of the US Army, and other cuts to the Navy and Air Force.
Oh, and to head off any remarks… You might like the military force reduction, but you can’t reasonably claim the reduction makes the military stronger.
In Point of Fact, Bush-41 wanted a militarily weaker US, and he slashed US Military spending.
It’s one of the reasons, Conservatives hated him.
http://nationalpriorities.org/media/uploads/publications/talking-about-military-spending/chart_1.jpg
So, in other words, in 1956, we had just the right amount of weakness, presuming you agree that we shouldn’t have risked a nuclear exchange over it.
No, we were too weak, in that we had allowed the Soviets to get nuclear weapons (thanks to people like the Rosenbergs).
Maybe you know more about the Soviet nuclear effort than me: do you think that the Soviets could have created nuclear weapons without any spies from the West helping? I thought that was the general consensus. If so, how were we going to stop them? Bombing their centrifuges?
Of course they could have created their own weapons. It might have taken them longer that is all. The original A-bomb was just a piston slamming a chunk of uranium against another chunk of uranium. Do you really think they couldn’t come up with that on their own? Granted the plutonium bomb designs were a lot more advanced. Yet did you see how long they took to reverse engineer the Teller-Ulam hydrogen bomb design? I never heard about that particular design being leaked and Sakharov figured it and they got their own version up and running in 3 years after the large scale test in the Pacific made it obvious the US had a new bomb design.
The US did not have centrifuge separation technology back then. So yes the Soviet Union had better uranium separation technology.
The didn’t reverse engineer the Teller-Ulam design, they went for a less mass efficient layer cake design. Then, once the cold war was over, Democrats starting handing out aspects of our bomb designs like lollipops.
didn’t reverse engineer the Teller-Ulam design, they went for a less mass efficient layer cake design
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDS-37
No. They did try the layered cake design first but then they independently came up with the Teller-Ulam design. 3 years after the Ivy Mike test.
Um Bob, the issue isn’t whether they could have developed a bomb on their own. The issue is they just recently acquired and were building an arsenal for which we didn’t know their intent to use. If it took an additional 10 years to develop on their own, then they wouldn’t have had an atomic bomb in 1956. Heck, just 5 years longer could have changed 1956.
I doubt it would have taken them a whole decade extra to come up with a nuclear bomb. Perhaps they would have used uranium bombs instead of jumping directly to the more efficient plutonium designs. Their main issue was they did not have a bomb delivery mechanism. That only changed after they cloned the B29 Superfortress i.e. the Tupolev Tu-4. That entered service around the same time they did the RDS-1 test.
What in 1956, China had nuclear weapons too.
All it takes is a decent pool of physicists and a willingness to spend some money.
I shouldn’t have left out President Reagan. Reagan was the last president to make me really nervous, but I liked his strategic arms reduction efforts, and I liked how he offered to share SDI technology with the Soviets.
Please don’t suppose I’m trying to be snarky, but I think I could genuinely respond to your question with a reference to the Reykjavík summit and then ask “Do you deny that Ronald Reagan preferred a world in which the US was less dominant?”
I commented before I saw your answer.
I’m sure that Reagan would have preferred that the US have a nuclear monopoly. That option wasn’t on the table. And I’ll bet that Obama doesn’t want that.
I bet you’re wrong, but how should either of us really know? But it is a fact that Reagan and Obama are both on record as being interested in a world without any nuclear weapons.
Also, see this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=LCk6D0VBpYIC&pg=PA182&lpg=PA182&dq=ronald+reagan+monopoly+nuclear+weapons&source=bl&ots=iCSZnbVfH3&sig=fdzxqAeAjC7zdkqnwJD97amU4Uc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=O18rU66gJMb4yAGu6YDoBA&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=ronald%20reagan%20monopoly%20nuclear%20weapons&f=false
But it is a fact that Reagan and Obama are both on record as being interested in a world without any nuclear weapons.
Who wouldn’t? It’s a wonderful fantasy. But in the real world, where Reagan lived, if you don’t think that Reagan would prefer a nuclear monopoly, and the Evil Empire not have nukes, you don’t understand him at all. That would be part of what “we win, they lose” was all about.
Reagan dreamed of a world without nukes. Obama dreams of a world where all the nukes are Muslim or Communist. A normal American President would consider that his worst nightmare, but to Obama it’s a wonderful dream.
Reagan’s dream of a world without nukes was subsidiary to his dream of a world without the Soviet Union.
“Who wouldn’t? It’s a wonderful fantasy. But in the real world, where Reagan lived”
Was that before or after he got Alzheimer’s?
Before, you moron.
Even a person with old timers can have their lucid moments. One wonders when dn guy will have his?
So when did Reagan get Alzheimers?
Based on your comments here, I’d guess after you did.
2014 isn’t like 19-whatever. The players and conditions are different. It is useful to look at the past but don’t expect things to play out exactly the same way of for leaders to have the same motivations. Obama is no Kennedy or Reagan. He isn’t even as good as a Bush, either one, on building coalitions.
Building coalitions doesn’t mean it is safe for us to gut the military and withdraw into isolation. These things make building a coalition harder and reduce our influence in shaping a coalition. This is especially true when Obama’s goal is to be weak.
My biggest critique is that President Obama . . . talks . . . too . . . much.
If I were President, I would not be saying much of anything right now. When questioned about various agreements — the Ukraine nuke thing, NATO, the whole U.N. thing about shifting borders — I would recite the standard boilerplate.
When pressed on what I would do about such things, I would say “in consultation and coordination with our British and European allies and Near Eastern allies (cough, Turkey, cough) who have the largest stake in this matter, all options are on the table” and then say nothing. I would not badger or scold or threaten or impose sanctions or nothing.
As I said, the President talks too much . . .
Yes, he talks too much, and makes empty threats.
And unfortunately, people with real-world experience, especially people with Putin’s background, know that those who talk don’t know or aren’t doing. If someone is doing something either clandestine or strategic, they sure as heck don’t want to alert anyone to it, and often the things they do say are just filler to cover for the things they aren’t talking about but are actually doing.
The stupidity of electing a community organizer is that they broadcast anything they’re even thinking of doing, so as to drum up support. It’s why Obama constantly tries to spike the football even if he just gets it across the 50 yard line. If he’d tried to lead in WW-II, he’d have taken time out from blaming Hoover for Pearl Harbot to crow about the brilliance of his D-Day plan – on June 5.
I agree with most claims on the article. But the whole thing dismisses much of the history with little good reason.
France has that much nuclear electric capacity because they decided after the 1970s oil shock that they needed to be as self-sufficient as possible regarding energy generation. This was another reason behind their massive funding of high-speed rail and other transporation methods which do not require petroleum. Japan had much the same policies in place and so do other countries: South Korea, Finland, etc.
Germany gave up on investing in nuclear power after Chernobyl and has had a long term policy of closing down reactors and not funding R&D. While there have been divergences on occasion the long term strategy regarding has not changed. Merkel promised increased nuclear energy production when she originally came to power but she kept backpedalling afterwards. Fact is Germany has large brown coal deposits and that is the main electric generation source.
The need for natural gas today is due to several factors. Natural gas was cheap in the 1990s and a lot of countries, including the US, took advantage of that to replace peaking petroleum burning power with natural gas power plants. Natural gas power plants were quick and cheap to build so they provided a good way to address the energy generation gap back then. As natural gas prices increased in the late 1990s/early 2000s a lot of countries started using renewables, including wind power, as a way to extend the useable service life of natural gas power plants while decreasing the amount of natural gas required on a daily basis. However systems like district heating, widely used in Northern Europe, still require large amounts of natural gas in the winter.
The main issue with wind power IMO was the way it was funded. Instead of the State or power generation companies building the windmill farms the States, not interested in spending a lot of money on long term loans to build infrastructure, agreed to buy any generated wind power at a fixed rate for a period of 20 years or more. Any difference between that fixed price and the retail price was supposed to be coughed up by State subsidies.
I would say that next to State loans to shore up failed banks the renewable subsidies are the main cause of deficits in Europe at this moment.
The funny thing is all these investments in renewables like wind and solar are useless without a peaking power plant to cover any renewable generation shortfalls. This is usually done using the pre-existing natural gas power plants. So the whole thing does not work without that component. The alternative, if you want to keep using renewables, is to invest a lot of money on pump-storage hydro which is something a lot of countries in Europe are attempting to avoid doing since it will cost even more money they cannot easily get right now.
The solution for Germany would be to build more nuclear or coal power plants. I would not be surprised if that is what will end up happening. A lot of countries in Eastern Europe already have some amount of nuclear energy generation. The big issue is winter heating which traditionally is done in those countries using natural gas for economic reasons. France is not interested in doing natural gas prospection using hydraulic fracturing despite having large deposits of it in their territory but many of the Eastern European members of the EU have large deposits has well. I would suspect those countries will be the first in the EU to use this technology in the large scale and they are the main consumer of Russian natural gas to begin with due to historical ties to the USSR natural gas pipeline network.
As for the whole talk about weak states fighting strong states blahblahblah. Guess what:
– the US fought the British Empire in the US War of Independence and it won.
– the state of Qin unified China despite the state of Chu being much larger than it.
Guess how Qin did it: they annexed everyone else first and left Chu for last. Guess how Hitler did it: he invaded Czechoslovakia first and used its resources, including a large automotive industry, to invade Poland and France afterwards. Guess how he won the Battle of France: his enemies had more tanks but did not have a uniform chain of command and their tactics sucked. Fact is Germany had worse tanks either in quality or quantity than the allies during the Battle of France. In the end it did not matter since they could just bomb them with Stukas.
NATO nations have more hardware than Russia but how much of that is deployable right now and can be adequately supplied? Not a lot I bet. Even back during the Cold War when NATO had a lot of tanks parked in the border at West Germany the Warsaw Pact always had more tanks available. NATO made that up with quality and the threat to use nuclear weapons in case of invasion.
Ukraine supposedly has 90K people in its military forces. Yet how many could they put to the field when Russia invaded them? Also imagine Russia annexes Belarus and Ukraine and rolls their armies back into their their fold again using their oil&gas wealth to equip them properly? Then how are they supposed to be stopped? One of the largest tank factories back when the USSR was around is located in Ukraine. The Malyshev Factory delivered 320 T-80UD tanks between 1997 and 2002 to Pakistan. Most of them were refurbished tanks but the main reason they stopped production is lack of money not technical ability. Antonov is also located in Ukraine.
NATO should be increasing the readiness of its military forces and pushing more troops towards its Eastern borders. Oh and I mean more than sending 6 fighters to Poland.
Also imagine Russia annexes Belarus
Please check your sources, Russia ALREADY stations forces in Belarus. They just beefed up (24 more ) the number of Russian Su-27SM3 (Flanker) in Baranovichi at the airbase just south of the city.
Don’t forget the PT-91 Twardy, the Poles know how to domestically upgrade T-72s to NATO standards.
Not everyone is waiting for NATO to decide, Poland and Lithuania have restarted the establishment of the LITPOLUKRBRIG (the Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian brigade). The command being based in Lublin, Poland, it exists, just needs some final agreements signed and troops assigned.
Yes, NATO significant numbers of troops should be moved forward to the Bug and Niemen Rivers.
The second wave of financial sanctions still doesn’t go far enough.
I know Russia stations troops there. Belarus is all but annexed by the Russian Federation. The main states that Russia will be interested in annexing into the Federation will be Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Yeah Poland has a decent military industry in terms of tanks, artillery, etc. The question once again is how much their army can spend to keep itself at high readiness levels. How many troops they can really put to the field. Then there is the air force. Fact is the Russians have a lot more hardware they can actually use.
I do hope they send those air defense systems to Poland earlier rather than later.
News coverage in Poland has been wall-to-wall Ukraine since early February. The US/Western Media has been VERY LATE to the party.
Having been forcibly divided four times in the last 250 years, Poland is pretty committed in increasing their military. Remember Poland is one of the few NATO members meeting the target spending (% of GDP) on the military.
The Polish Defense Ministry, in Nov 2013, acquired 119 tanks from the German Army. These include 105 Leopard 2A5 tanks and 14 2A4 variants. Meanwhile, the Polish military is aiming to overhaul the 128 Leopard 2A4 tanks it already operates. Polish Land Forces operate some 900 MBTs (PT-91 Twardy and 2A4/5 Leopards)
The Polish Air Force has three squadrons of F-16C/D. Their pilots are very good, most cut their teeth as glider pilots when they were young. So they have the most modern Air Force in Eastern Europe.
Since Russia has openly violated the 1994 agreement which disarmed the Ukraine of nuclear weapons, it seems to me Ukraine is fully justified in rearming themselves.
When is a state NOT justified in arming themselves?
I will respond to your non sequitur
Ukraine is morally justified in rearming themselves with nuclear weapons to protect themselves from further aggression from the larger nation of Russia.
But if the United States had lived up to it’s agreement and protected the Ukraine from Russian aggression than the Ukraine would not be justified in rearming themselves with nuclear weapons.
If anyone imagines Putin is going to content himself with just picking off Crimea, see if you can find footage of the ceremony held in the Russian Parliament when Putin signed the act formally annexing that unfortunate province. I saw a few seconds worth of such footage run as the background to a story on Fox this morning. The Russian parliamentary deputies were all standing. The music being played for the ceremony was the old Soviet national anthem.
That is the Russian anthem now. They had several contests to replace the Soviet Anthem but they ended up giving up. They only changed the lyrics.
Speaking of changing lyrics, maybe we should roll ours back to the original:
To Anacreon in Heav’n, where he sat in full glee,
A few Sons of Harmony sent a petition;
That he their Inspirer and Patron wou’d be;
When this answer arrived from the Jolly Old Grecian;
“Voice, Fiddle, and Flute,
No longer be mute,
I’ll lend you my name and inspire you to boot,
And besides I’ll instruct you like me, to intwine,
The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus’s Vine.”
Next thing to look for is whether or not Putin starts applying pressure on Obama from a number of different directions. This will tell us whether or not Putin is inside Obama’s OODA loop….
Which I’m pretty sure he is, given that Obama is still trying to provide an off ramp to the car that’s in the lead at the Indy 500. Obama is busy trying to get his Model T started.
News coverage in Poland has been wall-to-wall Ukraine since early February
Indicating they still have some adults in charge. Instead of sending billions to the Ukraine which will end up in Putin’s hands… We should start sending military equipment to Poland (lend lease) although it may already be too late. I don’t like McCain much, but for this crisis he would have been the right man.
The EU is looking to do a block buy of Russian Gas to force the price down and to remove leverage from Putin’s hands (currently it is country-by-country and he would try to give sweetheart deals to some to act as a wedge). The EU is looking to add Ukraine to the block buy to reduce the unit cost to Ukraine by $150 (which is quite significant).
As for being the adults in the room, two Sundays ago the Polish PM invited the leaders of all political parties in Poland to a meeting. They talked for 2.5 hours and all came out with a unified framework on how to deal with the Russian threat. Realize these political leaders personally dislike each other, but for the good of Rzeczpospolita Polska (e.g. The Republic of Poland) they put aside their differences.
Also, the Lithuanian – Polish relations have been strained over a number of issues including the status of the Polish minority in Lithuania. The good news is that again, Putin’s adventurism has caused these disagreement to be set aside and a unified front to be formed.
It’s already too late for the Ukraine and many others in the near abroad.
The only question now is how much will we lose due to inaction?
What was news coverage of Hitler in the 30s like?
Does it end with all of our major cities nuked? We need to get real.
Wasn’t the whole theory of Right Wing Internationalists that “Trade Partners” never go to war.
So we should increase trade with China and Russia.
Sounds like that theory isn’t holding up.
DN-Guy,
I think the more important consideration is that Russians (and their quasi-allies, the Serbs) don’t have the proper respect for McDonalds:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_peace_theory#.22Golden_Arches_Theory_of_Conflict_Prevention.22
In all seriousness, you might read the entire article, not just the Golden Arches portion.
Putin took Crimea because he knew he had an excellent chance of getting away with it…and he wanted it.
Putin was correct. Putin got away with it.
China, Russia, NoKo, Iran all know that they have more freedom of action if the US is weak, indecisive, and in a Mom-jeans phase. Like all reasoning people they will make hay while the sun shines.