Ukraine: military (Aug '14 to mid-June '15) closed

[Dayuhan]

This seems a strange and self-defeating move, if true, simply because it hurts a lot more people in Russia than outside of it. The last thing most governments would want to sanction is their own imports of cheap food. People will overlook many things in the grip of nationalism, but the stomach is pretty close to home.

https://ph.news.yahoo.com/russia-ban...231321612.html

Russia bans all U.S. food, EU fruit and veg in sanctions response; NATO fears invasion

MOSCOW/DONETSK Ukraine (Reuters) - Russia will ban all imports of food from the United States and all fruit and vegetables from Europe, the state news agency reported on Wednesday, a sweeping response to Western sanctions imposed over its support for rebels in Ukraine.

The measures will hit consumers at home who rely on cheap imports, and on farmers in the West for whom Russia is a big market. Moscow is by far the biggest buyer of European fruit and vegetables and the second biggest importer of U.S. poultry....

... U.S. poultry has been ubiquitous in Russia since the early days after the Soviet Union, when cheap American chicken quarters sold at street markets were called "Bush's legs" after the president.

On the invasion side, I'm starting to wonder about the point at which it might be advisable for the Ukraine to call a pause, offer a safe return for Russian fighters and a limited amnesty for local rebels, and even offer a degree of local autonomy... obviously not the kind of autonomy Putin wants, with the east having veto power over foreign policy and other features that would give Russia control, but a substantial carrot. Offering Russian Ukrainians the kind of linguistic and cultural recognition that the French enjoy in eastern Canada might be a start, and could be managed without seriously compromising Ukrainian sovereignty.

The idea is not to give in, of course, but to offer enough of a carrot to undercut any Russian contention that peacekeeping forces are necessary. Obviously this is not a move that the US or the EU can take, the Ukrainians have to be on board and up front.

Dayuhan---rouge yes if the following comment is valid---when Russia annexed the Crimea they used the NATO/US response to both Kosovo and Libya as examples of no UN cover and the West running amok --so they will use the same argument hey the UN did not go along with us and we now will use exactly the same arguments the West used before when they did not use the UNSC--Russia tends to forget that in both countries there had been an ongoing irregular fight that Russia blocked all UN actions on.

If selective interpretation if rules and precedents makes a rogue state, there's a lot of rogue states out there.

I don't see how terms like "rogue" (still less "rouge") are really very useful. Does the term get us any closer to a strategy to get the Russians to stop doing what they're doing?

Dayuhan--here is the problem Russia/Putin are having---they want an urgent UNSC meeting on humanitarian reasons in the Ukraine and quote they ar in contact to the ICRC about the problem with the Ukrainians terrorizing proRussians in Donetsk.

THEN along comes their own irregulars and captures three ICRC reps and their drivers and the DNR actual Russian leader Girkin in a voice intercept says thrown them in a hole--check the link for the voice intercept.

Seems like Putin cannot control the ghosts he called up.

Yes, we see this, we see the contradictions and inconsistencies, and we see that Putin has got himself into a corner. What do you think the US should do about it at this point?

The problem with this thread is that Outlaw is making the running and offering his take on the situation given the facts (and his career experience) at his disposal... and there are a few Obama apologists chirping from the bleachers.

Actually I have yet to see Outlaw make a concrete statement of what he thinks the US did wrong, what he thinks should have been done instead, and what he thinks the US should be doing now. Haven't heard that from you either.

I don't think the US government's course has been ideal, but I don't see what other realistic options they had under the circumstances. I don't think a Republican administration would have played it much differently under the circumstances.

What is clear is that Russia would not have attempted what they have - in annexing Crimea and invading eastern Ukraine - unless they were sure they would get away with it.

Nobody is ever sure. They obviously believed they would get away with it enough to take the risk. In Crimea they were right. In the Eastern Ukraine maybe not so right, remains to be seen.

Putin correctly assessed the US ability to influence the EU to the extent of presenting a unified front against the aggressor is a thing of the past.

A thing of the past? What past is that? When has the US ever had the power to dictate policy to Europe? If a "united front" is dictated by one party, it's not a united front. The united front of the cold war, to the extent that it existed, was not dictated by US influence, it was there because the US and Europe had similar perceptions of the threat and how it could be countered.

Putin correctly believed that if he grabbed Crimea fast enough he could impose a fait accomplii before the US and the EU could work through their disparate agendas and come up with a response. That worked for him. In the Eastern Ukraine he apparently believed that he could get the same result gradually, through proxies. That doesn't seem to be working out so well.

While the incremental sanctions may be having some effect as they are increased they are a day late and a dollar short in preventing the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of eastern Ukraine (and the shooting down of a commercial airliner). That I suggest how the reaction to Russian actions should be assessed. Will they lead to the restoration of the pre-invasion status quo with appropriate reparations?

We have no way of knowing if any alternative policy would have prevented any of these things. Assessing what might have been is at best speculative, especially when nobody seems willing to say what would have been a better (and realistically practical) course of action.

I don't think it's likely that the status quo ante will be restored in any exact way. Whether or not the new status quo favors Russia remains to be seen. If they gain Crimea but see the rest of the Ukraine end up in firmly pro-Western hands that is hardly a win.

Once this has been achieved steps should be talken to ensure Russia is in no position to repeat this terriorial aggression ever again.

What do you think those steps should be?