Michael Totten: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Was Easy to Predict
68 Replies to “” I’m surprised that anyone is surprised.””
However what Russia does to keep their only warm water port is really none of our business. north of 60
That’s cold-blooded. Did you learn that in university, in the sixties?
When the dust settles on this, the US should close its bases in Germany and move them into western Ukraine. The country could use the financial boost, and there really is no need for the US to be in Germany anymore.
“Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it.”
Substitute “Russia” for “US” and that sentence actually is no longer retarded.
No, the realities of a long life observing the foolish mistakes governments make meddling in the affairs of other countries where they have no business.
I disagree.
Russia is indeed as much of an existential threat now as they were before Reagan.
Reagan bought us some breathing space and we squandered it.
Thinking the Cold War was over was the main reason we squandered that opportunity.
Instead of slacking off, we should have become so strong that the Russian invasion of Ukraine that is happening now and the Russian invasion of Georgia that happened in 2008 would never have happened.
The US is morally exhausted, fiscally exhausted, politically exhausted, but still has a massive functioning and competent military with tired (boots on the ground) personnel. There is no upper leadership capable of strategic competence free from political corruption. The US has not decisively won a war in over 60 years. They go into battle with no end game other than tactical. Despite that, they successfully carried the defensive weight of the West against the the Soviets during the Cold War. They were successful because they were considered a strong horse but thankfully never had to prove it.
The Russians would have to attack a Carrier Group before there would be any domestic fire in the belly to contemplate a shooting war with Russia. It would be crazy to place one in a position that threatens Putin in the Crimea. Putin is using bravado to secure what he already controls. Let him.
After Bush 43 finished Bush 41’s War the situation actually got worse as now the regional Shiite hegemony has been strengthened. Now it really is another Islamic wasteland, just slightly less retrograde than Afghanistan.
Good summary John.
The US should be more concerned with the economic and eventual political take-over by ever increasing Muslim and Chinese immigrants in their country.
LAS (north of 90), you went to university, sure had me fooled. What a waist of classroom time!!!!
Many of the countries virtually laid to waste during WW2 were rebuilt by the USA after wards. The subsequent failures were lost due to politicking by your leftist brethren. UNIVERSITY, shaking my head here, didn’t know there were “extra stupid” courses offered in any universities in Canada!!!
There’s a little point that everyone’s ignoring, another reason why Totten suggests no one should have been surprised. Russia does not regard the current arrangement in Kiev as being in any way a legal government. It was a de facto coup, an elected government and prime mimister being overthrown by a “mobocracy” as Russians are calling it.
You get no argument from me that Yanukovich was corrupt or anything else you want to call him. Fact remains he was thrown out of office by political coup and not the ballot box. So, Uncle Vlad regards the current government in Kiev as no more legitimate than the US does that of Cuba.
And believe me, the average man on the street in Moscow mostly thinks the chaps running Ukraine these days are just another bunch of jumped up revolutionaries.
Actually John, the US hasn’t won a war on its own since the Spanish-American war in 1901. Oh sorry, there was that one trivial little island they invaded in the Caribbean in the 1980s, and they also managed to get rid of a Central American dictator in Panama.
So no, Oz, the US remaining too strong for anyone to challenge after the Cold War was never going to happen. The US doesn’t have the long term grit to see something through the way the old European colonial powers did in the 19th C.
Personal attacks and confusing me with LAS only shows ignorance, and a profound inability to intelligently discuss the subject objectively.
Try to state your own views clearly if you’re capable of having a cogent opinion on the subject at hand. Otherwise Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform.
You have a nice day now.
Actually John, the US hasn’t won a war on its own since the Spanish-American war in 1901. Oh sorry, there was that one trivial little island they invaded in the Caribbean in the 1980s, and they also managed to get rid of a Central American dictator in Panama.
yup, I couldn’t agree more.
The US hasn’t been involved in a justifiable war since WW2.
The rest have been merely to expand the military industrial complex.
watch the documentary “Why We Fight” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO7-GBRx1xM
“So no, Oz, the US remaining too strong for anyone to challenge after the Cold War was never going to happen.”
I meant all of NATO, not just the U.S., but thanks for taking a stab at it.
Oz, NATO is an even bigger paper tiger than the US is. They have to be with the Russians having them by their throats in the form of natural gas pipelines. I guess Merkel is discovering that anti-nuclearism and shutting down reactors has an even larger price than she thought. Was listening to the SecGen of NATO on the news tonight. It’s just the same stuff as was coming from Obama and Kerry. Lots of tough talk to disguise the absence of any action.
For all he’s been criticized by history, Neville Chamberlain had far more spine than any of these. Poland really was the last straw, not a red line drawn with Heinz ketchup.
Where’s Margaret “now’s no time to get wobbly, George” Thatcher when you need her. Instead, the Brits are stuck with limp noodle Cameron. Not that the no-names in the rest of the British government are any better.
N60, there was Korea, but thanks to McArthur’s bumbling in letting the UN forces get so dispersed and spread out, the Chinese counterattack could only succeed. After that, the best achievable was a draw.
And in all of this, let’s not forget that at least part of this disaster is directly at Obama’s door.
1. The military co-operation agreements with eastern Europe have been allowed to slide. He terminated the air defence programs which Bush had negotiated. The other former East Bloc nations, even those who were not former Soviet republics, must now be wondering just how much US guarantees are worth. Same thing happened in 1938. When France and Britain betrayed Czechoslovakia, their military allies fully prepared to go to war against Germany – USSR, Romania, even Hungary, all turned after to make deals with the N*zis. Think Uncle Vlad don’t know all this?
2. The crisis was precipitated in large part by the US publicly getting caught giving encouragement and support to the opponents of Russia’s puppet government. Complete collapse of US communications security, becoming a punchline on evening talk shows. What did Bammy think? That Vlad was just going to let the Community Organizer walk in and organize the place? That the Russians were completely unaware of what Bammy’s dips and his gormless Sec and DepSec of State were up to?
North of 60 doesn’t read anything like the faux libertarian troll LAS.
He has a valid libertarian based opinion and backs it up with reasonable and debatable arguments.
Conservative commenter’s defending the current US foreign policies need to give their heads a shake. You’re living in a Liberal left style romantic fantasy of years gone by, instead of a typical liberal rainbow future fantasy. Roll down your windows and check out your geography a little.
As the US military rolls across the globe in partnership with the elitist ruled EU, controlling the World Bank, the IMF and a multitude of unelected faceless Commissions, it overthrows governments and grinds countries into economic slavery.
In the meantime with Open Borders filling the US and indeed the west with millions of old and newly created enemies, they lock our once and free democratic countries down with massive surveillance systems and militarized police forces.
We need to WAKE UP, and realize that what is happening in the Middle East, Africa or the Ukraine, is none of our business. We need to focus our attentions, and force our governments to fix what’s happening in our own countries first, before we worry about elsewhere.
The world is not a safer place than it was before western meddling; the third world is just as enslaved and just as impoverished as it ever was, meanwhile the west is on the brink of collapse both economically and socially.
We need to WAKE UP, and realize that what is happening in the Middle East, Africa or the Ukraine, is none of our business. We need to focus our attentions, and force our governments to fix what’s happening in our own countries first, before we worry about elsewhere.
exactly !!! Countries fall into the same situation as people do. It’s always easier to complain about the mess in their neighbor’s yard than to clean up their own. We have plenty of problems to address here in N.America before we go telling Russia and Ukraine how to run their affairs.
The prosperity and freedom that exists in the West isn’t the result of isolationist turtling.
There are many alternatives to “isolationist turtling” that don’t involve ignoring history, geopolitics and strategic wisdom and potentially pushing a determined nuclear power into a shooting war in defense of an unstable entity over orphaned geography that has been a continuous long term strategic asset of Russia.
Does anyone here actually think that Obama and Kerry have what it takes to do anything with the US military but retreat. By comparison, Carter would be considered a great CiC.
EBD >
“The prosperity and freedom that exists in the West isn’t the result of isolationist turtling.”
There is a difference between “Isolationism” and “Non Interventionism” as was made clear by Jefferson and Washington.
No one can seriously argue that North America is not the same societies or governments of our WW2 betters. We need to better understand who and where we are today instead of romanticizing a glorious past that no longer exists in the freeloading metrosexual criminals that run our armies.
We are losing our prosperity and freedom a little more each and every day that we continue to focus on the dog & pony shows these clowns feed us. It’s time to rally the troops from the field and clean up our own stink before we continue to share its stain with everyone else around the world.
If we could do that much, we’d indeed have the light of Liberty to share again.
However what Russia does to keep their only warm water port is really none of our business. north of 60
That’s cold-blooded. Did you learn that in university, in the sixties?
When the dust settles on this, the US should close its bases in Germany and move them into western Ukraine. The country could use the financial boost, and there really is no need for the US to be in Germany anymore.
“Everyplace the US meddled ended up worse off for it.”
Substitute “Russia” for “US” and that sentence actually is no longer retarded.
No, the realities of a long life observing the foolish mistakes governments make meddling in the affairs of other countries where they have no business.
I disagree.
Russia is indeed as much of an existential threat now as they were before Reagan.
Reagan bought us some breathing space and we squandered it.
Thinking the Cold War was over was the main reason we squandered that opportunity.
Instead of slacking off, we should have become so strong that the Russian invasion of Ukraine that is happening now and the Russian invasion of Georgia that happened in 2008 would never have happened.
The US is morally exhausted, fiscally exhausted, politically exhausted, but still has a massive functioning and competent military with tired (boots on the ground) personnel. There is no upper leadership capable of strategic competence free from political corruption. The US has not decisively won a war in over 60 years. They go into battle with no end game other than tactical. Despite that, they successfully carried the defensive weight of the West against the the Soviets during the Cold War. They were successful because they were considered a strong horse but thankfully never had to prove it.
The Russians would have to attack a Carrier Group before there would be any domestic fire in the belly to contemplate a shooting war with Russia. It would be crazy to place one in a position that threatens Putin in the Crimea. Putin is using bravado to secure what he already controls. Let him.
After Bush 43 finished Bush 41’s War the situation actually got worse as now the regional Shiite hegemony has been strengthened. Now it really is another Islamic wasteland, just slightly less retrograde than Afghanistan.
Good summary John.
The US should be more concerned with the economic and eventual political take-over by ever increasing Muslim and Chinese immigrants in their country.
LAS (north of 90), you went to university, sure had me fooled. What a waist of classroom time!!!!
Many of the countries virtually laid to waste during WW2 were rebuilt by the USA after wards. The subsequent failures were lost due to politicking by your leftist brethren. UNIVERSITY, shaking my head here, didn’t know there were “extra stupid” courses offered in any universities in Canada!!!
There’s a little point that everyone’s ignoring, another reason why Totten suggests no one should have been surprised. Russia does not regard the current arrangement in Kiev as being in any way a legal government. It was a de facto coup, an elected government and prime mimister being overthrown by a “mobocracy” as Russians are calling it.
You get no argument from me that Yanukovich was corrupt or anything else you want to call him. Fact remains he was thrown out of office by political coup and not the ballot box. So, Uncle Vlad regards the current government in Kiev as no more legitimate than the US does that of Cuba.
And believe me, the average man on the street in Moscow mostly thinks the chaps running Ukraine these days are just another bunch of jumped up revolutionaries.
Actually John, the US hasn’t won a war on its own since the Spanish-American war in 1901. Oh sorry, there was that one trivial little island they invaded in the Caribbean in the 1980s, and they also managed to get rid of a Central American dictator in Panama.
So no, Oz, the US remaining too strong for anyone to challenge after the Cold War was never going to happen. The US doesn’t have the long term grit to see something through the way the old European colonial powers did in the 19th C.
Personal attacks and confusing me with LAS only shows ignorance, and a profound inability to intelligently discuss the subject objectively.
Try to state your own views clearly if you’re capable of having a cogent opinion on the subject at hand. Otherwise Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform.
You have a nice day now.
Actually John, the US hasn’t won a war on its own since the Spanish-American war in 1901. Oh sorry, there was that one trivial little island they invaded in the Caribbean in the 1980s, and they also managed to get rid of a Central American dictator in Panama.
yup, I couldn’t agree more.
The US hasn’t been involved in a justifiable war since WW2.
The rest have been merely to expand the military industrial complex.
watch the documentary “Why We Fight”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO7-GBRx1xM
“So no, Oz, the US remaining too strong for anyone to challenge after the Cold War was never going to happen.”
I meant all of NATO, not just the U.S., but thanks for taking a stab at it.
Oz, NATO is an even bigger paper tiger than the US is. They have to be with the Russians having them by their throats in the form of natural gas pipelines. I guess Merkel is discovering that anti-nuclearism and shutting down reactors has an even larger price than she thought. Was listening to the SecGen of NATO on the news tonight. It’s just the same stuff as was coming from Obama and Kerry. Lots of tough talk to disguise the absence of any action.
For all he’s been criticized by history, Neville Chamberlain had far more spine than any of these. Poland really was the last straw, not a red line drawn with Heinz ketchup.
Where’s Margaret “now’s no time to get wobbly, George” Thatcher when you need her. Instead, the Brits are stuck with limp noodle Cameron. Not that the no-names in the rest of the British government are any better.
N60, there was Korea, but thanks to McArthur’s bumbling in letting the UN forces get so dispersed and spread out, the Chinese counterattack could only succeed. After that, the best achievable was a draw.
And in all of this, let’s not forget that at least part of this disaster is directly at Obama’s door.
1. The military co-operation agreements with eastern Europe have been allowed to slide. He terminated the air defence programs which Bush had negotiated. The other former East Bloc nations, even those who were not former Soviet republics, must now be wondering just how much US guarantees are worth. Same thing happened in 1938. When France and Britain betrayed Czechoslovakia, their military allies fully prepared to go to war against Germany – USSR, Romania, even Hungary, all turned after to make deals with the N*zis. Think Uncle Vlad don’t know all this?
2. The crisis was precipitated in large part by the US publicly getting caught giving encouragement and support to the opponents of Russia’s puppet government. Complete collapse of US communications security, becoming a punchline on evening talk shows. What did Bammy think? That Vlad was just going to let the Community Organizer walk in and organize the place? That the Russians were completely unaware of what Bammy’s dips and his gormless Sec and DepSec of State were up to?
North of 60 doesn’t read anything like the faux libertarian troll LAS.
He has a valid libertarian based opinion and backs it up with reasonable and debatable arguments.
Conservative commenter’s defending the current US foreign policies need to give their heads a shake. You’re living in a Liberal left style romantic fantasy of years gone by, instead of a typical liberal rainbow future fantasy. Roll down your windows and check out your geography a little.
As the US military rolls across the globe in partnership with the elitist ruled EU, controlling the World Bank, the IMF and a multitude of unelected faceless Commissions, it overthrows governments and grinds countries into economic slavery.
In the meantime with Open Borders filling the US and indeed the west with millions of old and newly created enemies, they lock our once and free democratic countries down with massive surveillance systems and militarized police forces.
We need to WAKE UP, and realize that what is happening in the Middle East, Africa or the Ukraine, is none of our business. We need to focus our attentions, and force our governments to fix what’s happening in our own countries first, before we worry about elsewhere.
The world is not a safer place than it was before western meddling; the third world is just as enslaved and just as impoverished as it ever was, meanwhile the west is on the brink of collapse both economically and socially.
We need to WAKE UP, and realize that what is happening in the Middle East, Africa or the Ukraine, is none of our business. We need to focus our attentions, and force our governments to fix what’s happening in our own countries first, before we worry about elsewhere.
exactly !!! Countries fall into the same situation as people do. It’s always easier to complain about the mess in their neighbor’s yard than to clean up their own. We have plenty of problems to address here in N.America before we go telling Russia and Ukraine how to run their affairs.
The prosperity and freedom that exists in the West isn’t the result of isolationist turtling.
There are many alternatives to “isolationist turtling” that don’t involve ignoring history, geopolitics and strategic wisdom and potentially pushing a determined nuclear power into a shooting war in defense of an unstable entity over orphaned geography that has been a continuous long term strategic asset of Russia.
Does anyone here actually think that Obama and Kerry have what it takes to do anything with the US military but retreat. By comparison, Carter would be considered a great CiC.
EBD >
“The prosperity and freedom that exists in the West isn’t the result of isolationist turtling.”
There is a difference between “Isolationism” and “Non Interventionism” as was made clear by Jefferson and Washington.
No one can seriously argue that North America is not the same societies or governments of our WW2 betters. We need to better understand who and where we are today instead of romanticizing a glorious past that no longer exists in the freeloading metrosexual criminals that run our armies.
We are losing our prosperity and freedom a little more each and every day that we continue to focus on the dog & pony shows these clowns feed us. It’s time to rally the troops from the field and clean up our own stink before we continue to share its stain with everyone else around the world.
If we could do that much, we’d indeed have the light of Liberty to share again.