To Outlaw 09 RE: Ukraine
My understanding of special forces operators is that they are able to shoot accurately in battle, despite the physiological conditions that affect the gross and fine motor skills of most soldiers. Yet your ad hominem is wide off the mark.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
Apparently the Russians decided that association with the EU wasn’t worth it.
But were the Ukrainians who rejected the EAEU and Russian incentives in favor of association with the EU fully aware of the process and its conditions?
Given the transfer payments from some EU members to others, remittances from EU member citizens and illegal migrants alike, Greek profligacy and the eventual bailout, and the reluctant back-stopping of the PIGS economies, Ukrainians can be forgiven if they believed that the EU’s streets were paved with gold, and the ten years and twenty-one points were more a nudge-nudge wink-wink type of arrangement.
Yawn. You aren’t in the U.S., so what are you “currently seeing”, exactly? The Russians and Chinese are excellent coders as well. Who was it that created Olympic Games/Stuxnet? Who was it that infiltrated the Chinese Communist Party’s meetings via malware? Did the Ukrainians paralyze Russian infrastructure or was it the other way around?
Then provide some figures and sources, including links. All of the GDP per capita PPP, constant dollars and overall growth is publicly available. Ukraine’s economy is a basket case, and has only seen growth as part of a recovery from 2014. Ukraine’s grain hasn’t been strategic since the 1950s. Khrushchev had to buy wheat from Canada, remember, when the “Virgin Lands” initiative failed, but I’m sure you’ll have an excuse for that.
I haven’t had the ‘I support whatever country is taking on Russia’ attitude since I was 18-years old. I regret that Operation Unthinkable wasn’t launched, but I can understand why it wasn’t. In hindsight, were Patton and MacArthur so wrong?
In 2008, I was rooting for the Georgians to bleed the Russians white, rather than embarrass themselves, which they did (fortunately, the Iraqi Army surpassed their record in 2014). It was further embarrassing to learn that Saakashvili was the aggressor and that the Georgians started off committing clear war crimes. The lessons of that war were obvious: SAMs, SAMs, ATGMs, and more SAMs. But instead of spackling Poland and the Baltic republics with Patriots we have the useless BMD/EPAA to protect Central Europe from Iran.
What of the nationalism of Khmelnitsky or Bandera? The latter was closer to Hitler than Franco or Mussolini. What about Trump again? Why the attachment to America’s Christina Kirchner?
The Orange Revolution collapsed into corruption, and Yuschenko awarded “Hero of Ukraine” status to Bandera and his fellow criminals before he left power. My concerns about Ukrainian nationalism developing in dark ways are neither unjustified nor unreasonable given Ukraine’s history, and the inability or unwillingness of Ukrainian nationalists to come to terms with it. At present it is too early to tell in what direction it will develop.
Despite the Ukrainian nationalists’ historical antipathy for Poles and Jews, it was in precisely those parts of Ukraine under Polish rule and with large Jewish populations, that the Ukrainian nation – culturally, linguistically and religiously – was able to establish itself. Perhaps Bandera and his admirers should “inform” themselves?
The Poles, East Germans, Czechs, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians and Romanians used non-violent resistance to win their freedom from the local Communists and the Russians. The Ukrainians were merely given independence.
Galeotti and Goble are agreed that if Putin is ousted and replaced by true Russian democracy, it will most probably be an illiberal one. Don't get your hopes up. Yet unlike Ukraine today, a civil war in Russia will throw into doubt the effective C2 of the world's largest, if not most effective, nuclear deterrent.
Ukraine’s industries in Donbas were dependent upon Russian energy inputs and the Russian market. They are completely noncompetitive when separated from the Russian military-industrial complex.
How is Trump enabling Russia? Arguably Obama did much more to enable Russia, and even Bush did nothing when Russia occupied parts of Georgia.
You gave up your U.S. citizenship, right? Paid the tens of thousands of euros, right? You no longer pay taxes to the IRS, right? Shouldn’t you be focusing on more important matters, such as taking in some migrants and enabling Merkel? Or demanding that Poland proscribe the PiS? Or bring up the status of Kaliningrad?
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