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@MoltkeWarding
Why sugarcoat anything? I'm just going to call it as I see it. It is pretty clear that Russia intends to be an imperialist asshole. If you object to the term "asshole," just know that I'm not intending to be judgmental -- just colorful. As has been repeatedly pointed out (regardless of the fact that it is irrelevant to this topic), there have been plenty of occasions where the US has arguably been the asshole on the world stage.
Besides, I learned long ago that TL is the wrong place to argue with the intent of changing people's minds on anything. That may happen in due course, but that is not why I post.
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On March 11 2014 04:04 Alzadar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 03:57 Sub40APM wrote:On March 11 2014 03:53 Alzadar wrote:On March 11 2014 03:03 xDaunt wrote:On March 11 2014 02:55 Warfie wrote:On March 11 2014 02:40 xDaunt wrote:On March 11 2014 02:21 Banaora wrote:Maybe you would trust this site http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners . For me it's clear Russia fears the expansion of NATO into Ukraine on the long run. I don't know if this is common knowledge but the soviet union has been given garanties by the western allies in the 2+4 treaty of the German re-union that NATO will stop expanding at the German border. This was mentioned lately in a German talk show with Egon Bahr the founder of Germany's new eastern policy in the 70s. Sure you can argue legally that the soviet union does not exist anymore so all treaties with it are not binding. Well as we know NATO expanded into Poland and the Baltic States and is now planning to build a missile defense system there to prevent terrorist attacks from muslim countries (it says). I don't believe this. What Russia is doing in crimea is against international law but countries like the U.S. or Russia only care about this law when it suits them. For example see Grenada intervention by the U.S. in 1983. Please, this is a farce. Who's Russia to say who can join NATO or otherwise ally themselves with the West? More to the point, why exactly should Russia care unless they intend to be assholes and impose imperial control over their neighbors? It's not like NATO has any intention of attacking Russia. While the idea behind this way of thinking is nice enough, that's not how politics work, and probably never will. In west vs east politics the assumption is always worst case scenario it seems. Of course NATO has no intention to attack Russia we might say, but then Russia has no intention of attacking NATO countries, so let's just remove all missile defenses in positions more or less obviously intended to detect strikes from Russia early? So we can argue back and forth whether Russia should care or not, but if we want to keep in touch with reality and facts of today we can be damn sure Russia will care who joins NATO and not, and where NATO places its 'anti muslim' missile defenses - and I don't think it'll change in a very long time. You're talking to the guy who has argued that foreign policy should not be dictated by considerations of morality. Of course Russia cares who joins NATO. Russia has every intention of reestablishing dominance over its former Soviet client states. It can't do that if those client states join NATO. The root problem is that Russia won't relinquish its imperial ambitions and join the West. Russia still wants to be the asshole of the world. Thus, Russia's adversarial relationship with the West is of its own creation. So they can go fuck themselves if they're going to complain about NATO's expanding influence into their backyard. It's Russia's own fault for driving its smaller neighbors into the big wide open arms of Uncle Sam. It's pretty impressive that you are able to acknowledge that NATO has been gobbling up eastern European nations one by one while simultaneously denouncing Russian imperialism. Gobbling up...you mean...allowing independent democratic countries to choose to join a defensive military alliance of other democracies that has kept peace on a continent generally known for bloody warfare? NATO has been officially involved in four wars by my count, none of which involved an attack on a NATO member. So while in theory it is a defensive alliance, it has not actually served that purpose. Claiming the lack of general war in Europe since WWII as a NATO achievement is ridiculous.
You seem to have totally forgotten 9/11
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On March 11 2014 06:16 Skullflower wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 04:04 Alzadar wrote:On March 11 2014 03:57 Sub40APM wrote:On March 11 2014 03:53 Alzadar wrote:On March 11 2014 03:03 xDaunt wrote:On March 11 2014 02:55 Warfie wrote:On March 11 2014 02:40 xDaunt wrote:On March 11 2014 02:21 Banaora wrote:Maybe you would trust this site http://openukraine.org/en/about/partners . For me it's clear Russia fears the expansion of NATO into Ukraine on the long run. I don't know if this is common knowledge but the soviet union has been given garanties by the western allies in the 2+4 treaty of the German re-union that NATO will stop expanding at the German border. This was mentioned lately in a German talk show with Egon Bahr the founder of Germany's new eastern policy in the 70s. Sure you can argue legally that the soviet union does not exist anymore so all treaties with it are not binding. Well as we know NATO expanded into Poland and the Baltic States and is now planning to build a missile defense system there to prevent terrorist attacks from muslim countries (it says). I don't believe this. What Russia is doing in crimea is against international law but countries like the U.S. or Russia only care about this law when it suits them. For example see Grenada intervention by the U.S. in 1983. Please, this is a farce. Who's Russia to say who can join NATO or otherwise ally themselves with the West? More to the point, why exactly should Russia care unless they intend to be assholes and impose imperial control over their neighbors? It's not like NATO has any intention of attacking Russia. While the idea behind this way of thinking is nice enough, that's not how politics work, and probably never will. In west vs east politics the assumption is always worst case scenario it seems. Of course NATO has no intention to attack Russia we might say, but then Russia has no intention of attacking NATO countries, so let's just remove all missile defenses in positions more or less obviously intended to detect strikes from Russia early? So we can argue back and forth whether Russia should care or not, but if we want to keep in touch with reality and facts of today we can be damn sure Russia will care who joins NATO and not, and where NATO places its 'anti muslim' missile defenses - and I don't think it'll change in a very long time. You're talking to the guy who has argued that foreign policy should not be dictated by considerations of morality. Of course Russia cares who joins NATO. Russia has every intention of reestablishing dominance over its former Soviet client states. It can't do that if those client states join NATO. The root problem is that Russia won't relinquish its imperial ambitions and join the West. Russia still wants to be the asshole of the world. Thus, Russia's adversarial relationship with the West is of its own creation. So they can go fuck themselves if they're going to complain about NATO's expanding influence into their backyard. It's Russia's own fault for driving its smaller neighbors into the big wide open arms of Uncle Sam. It's pretty impressive that you are able to acknowledge that NATO has been gobbling up eastern European nations one by one while simultaneously denouncing Russian imperialism. Gobbling up...you mean...allowing independent democratic countries to choose to join a defensive military alliance of other democracies that has kept peace on a continent generally known for bloody warfare? NATO has been officially involved in four wars by my count, none of which involved an attack on a NATO member. So while in theory it is a defensive alliance, it has not actually served that purpose. Claiming the lack of general war in Europe since WWII as a NATO achievement is ridiculous. You seem to have totally forgotten 9/11
Not sure if ironic sarcasm, please confirm.
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Regarding Russian privatisation, from what I understand of the situation, the Russians followed the Czech model of voucher auctioning as the method of popular distribution, but there were two caveats. First, the Czechs implemented the restitution policy, whereby a large swath of public assets were redistributed to historical claimants dating back to 1948, this providing a personal and historical tie to privatised assets, which were less likely to be sold off indifferently. Secondly, while the Czech voucher privatisation model was not a phenomenal socio-economic success for the majority of people, they were still more culturally adept to handle the system than the Russian population were. Most Russians either sold off their vouchers prior to auction, or simply sold their assets once acquired at indifferent prices. The inexperience most of the population had with private stock-holding accounted for a great dilution of actual public ownership. It would have probably been more sensible to cascade the privatisation waves, where state assets are incrementally auctioned off over a longer period of time, rather than having everything placed on auction at once.
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On March 11 2014 06:03 Alzadar wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 05:55 Sub40APM wrote:On March 11 2014 05:53 Alzadar wrote:On March 11 2014 05:42 Ghanburighan wrote:
You guys are insane... The Soviet Union, before it was actually born, preemptively attacked the Baltics to form a buffer against Nazi's who would arrive 20 years later. I've had it, you're just spouting random stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_statesIn any case, Ukraine re-arming itself could make things pretty tense. "Between years of 1918–1920, the bolsheviks tried to establish Soviet republics in the Baltic area. In November 1918 the Red Army conquested Narva. They proclaimed the Commune of the Working People of Estonia, but it was able to function only for a six week.[4] In December, the Latvian communists controlled Riga and proclaimed the Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic. In May 1919, the communist control ended when the city was taken by combined German, Latvian and White Russian troops.[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_of_the_occupation_of_the_Baltic_states#Independence_process Point? Ghanburighan's post suggests he was unaware of the 1940 occupation, which is what I was referring to.
Wut?!
Anyway, more interesting things are being written:
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On March 11 2014 06:23 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Regarding Russian privatisation, from what I understand of the situation, the Russians followed the Czech model of voucher auctioning as the method of popular distribution, but there were two caveats. First, the Czechs implemented the restitution policy, whereby a large swath of public assets were redistributed to historical claimants dating back to 1948, this providing a personal and historical tie to privatised assets, which were less likely to be sold off indifferently. Secondly, while the Czech voucher privitisation model was not a phenomenal socio-economic success for the majority of people, they were still more culturally adept to handle the system than the Russian population were. Most Russians either sold off their vouchers prior to auction, or simply sold their assets once acquired at indifferent prices. The inexperience most of the population had with private stock-holding accounted for a great dilution of actual public ownership. It would have probably been more sensible to cascade the privatisation waves, where state assets are incrementally auctioned off over a longer period of time, rather than having everything placed on auction at once. I dont know the model of Czech privatization -- that is I dont know whether Czech's had their own version of Red Capitalists the way the Soviet Union had by the late 1980s but one of the major problems in the Russian privatization was that a relatively small clique of people had a relatively large amount of hard currency that they simply swapped for shares -- considering the near collapse of the Soviet/Russian economy in 90-91 the exchange of 'worthless' shares for solid dollars was inevitable. Added to this you had a foreign exchange and central bank that were technically inept -- one allowed well connected members of the elite to engage in massive arbitrage (borrow rubles in the morning, buy USD, allow the inflation to eat the value of the rubles and return the money in the evening while generating massive free returns) or capture the budget of a factory/science center, request funds from the still functioning central planning department, use the money to buy Western computers/other technical imports, have the center then write off the now purchased equipment as worthless and turn around and sell it for hard currency on the black market.
Finally, excluding foreign investors who actually understood how to run businesses in market economies -- even if these investors were limited to a junior role the way various Chinese methods for controlling ownership rights have more or less worked in inviting both a transfer of aptitude and a transfer of technical skills from the West to Chinese brands -- ensured the rise of oligarchs.
And I wouldnt say it was 'sudden', the privatization program is still technically not complete. Major blocks in the oil/gas industry werent made available until the 96 elections when Yeltsin exchanged shares in state owned natural resource industries for hard cash to fuel his re-election campaign from the 1st generation oligarchs. But today most of them are either abroad, dead or pushed back into the background as the new generation of Putin era, state security connected oligarchs rise up. Igor Sechin/Alexei Miller/the guy in charge of RosObornexport have all become a new state-oligarch class through the Putin era.
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On March 11 2014 05:34 Geisterkarle wrote:After the "iron curtain" fell, Russia did everything that was asked for. They stepped down, they took all their military out of eastern Germany, Poland, ... (the USA, British, ... are still in Germany and important bases for coordination of "attacks" in Afghanistan, Irak, ...). And they did it in good will, that the NATO will also step down and they didn't! If someone says, this is "derailing" he doesn't understand, what Russia is going through now! It's all connected! Aside from that: Shit got real: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/ukraine-nuclear/6250815/"Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY."
Considering the fact that russia broke their part of the deal, it doesn't suprise me at all. And to be honest, who can blame them?
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On March 11 2014 05:34 Geisterkarle wrote:After the "iron curtain" fell, Russia did everything that was asked for. They stepped down, they took all their military out of eastern Germany, Poland, ... (the USA, British, ... are still in Germany and important bases for coordination of "attacks" in Afghanistan, Irak, ...). And they did it in good will, that the NATO will also step down and they didn't! If someone says, this is "derailing" he doesn't understand, what Russia is going through now! It's all connected! Aside from that: Shit got real: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/ukraine-nuclear/6250815/"Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY."
Well thats just asking for trouble.
If you see how US and Israel reacted to Iraq and Iranian nuclear programs,just imagine how would Russia react to its neighbor getting nukes which could be used against it.
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On March 11 2014 03:37 Acertos wrote:The amount of Russian propaganda was small and has already mostly vanished. What he talks about are sites like TheGuardian where alot of comments and commentators are relaying the russian propaganda and this method of justificating the invasion. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/10/ukraine-crisis-us-crimea-referendum-putin-ambassadorEven if TheGuardian is a center left journal that with some of its lectors like to bash on the US, it's totally hallucinating. There are thousands of comments for every single piece of news on the Ukrainian crisis, all relying the same arguments and leading to the same sites. So I will sum my observations and speculations on these comments: -it seems there is an abnormal number of comments on each ukr related thread on theguardian -the majority of the comments are pro russian while it s still a uk journal -most of these comments are badly written so they arent from natives nor educated people (sorry but usually awful english = awful ideas) -some comments are repeated in response to different pro ukr comments and some commentators participate alot in a single piece of news -the likes are on the pro russian comments and the numbers of likes are extremely high -most of the commentators are newly created and don t even have photos Now maybe I am paranoiac but I have been reading theguardian on the net for a long time and I don t think most of its users would bash on the US or the West like that. Even the term West isnt used by western people, it s strange to think the Eu can be grouped with the US with the same interests. Maybe some pro russian are doing this heavy propaganda for free or perhaps they are paid but to me it looks extremely artificial and it all comes down agaim to the same dangerous pro russian nationalism.
there have been numerous reports of pay-per-post for pro-Russian posts on a variety of internet sites, including youtube, news sites, msg boards. I have heard of a fee 11 rubles per post (around 0.3 dollars).
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Here's someone advocating that the US Pivot to Russia in the same way many in this thread claim the US had for the past two decades.
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The land of freedom23126 Posts
On March 11 2014 07:05 Ghanburighan wrote:Here's someone advocating that the US Pivot to Russia in the same way many in this thread claim the US had for the past two decades.
"So the United States needs a new game plan for managing Russia."
I lol'd hard to be honest.
Whole article seems like that columnist really like his country and his work.
In other words - it's ridiculous, especially, Kosovo's paragraph.
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On March 11 2014 06:46 Ghanburighan wrote:Interesting article, I thought about copying parts of it, but really only works as a whole: Russia has already lost the war
The NYT has a poor record of premature "victory" declarations.
April 12, 2005:
Ukraine's most pressing international challenge will be to manage the relationship with Vladimir Putin's Russia. Putin strongly backed Yanukovich, and Russian-led election monitors attested to his victory in the first runoff. Putin spent four days in the week before the first-round vote promoting Yanukovich in lengthy press interviews and public meetings. Kremlin image-makers played a crucial role in advising and directing the Yanukovich campaign, and the Yushchenko camp believes Russia spent several hundred million dollars to help Yanukovich win. Yushchenko's victory is thus a humiliating defeat for Putin and a setback for Russia's hegemonic inclinations.
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Kind of interesting to see mention of propaganda comments, I have seen so many people on norwegian websites being pro-russian lately, to be honest I find it kind of surprising.
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On March 11 2014 06:47 Liman wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 05:34 Geisterkarle wrote:After the "iron curtain" fell, Russia did everything that was asked for. They stepped down, they took all their military out of eastern Germany, Poland, ... (the USA, British, ... are still in Germany and important bases for coordination of "attacks" in Afghanistan, Irak, ...). And they did it in good will, that the NATO will also step down and they didn't! If someone says, this is "derailing" he doesn't understand, what Russia is going through now! It's all connected! Aside from that: Shit got real: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/ukraine-nuclear/6250815/"Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY." Well thats just asking for trouble. If you see how US and Israel reacted to Iraq and Iranian nuclear programs,just imagine how would Russia react to its neighbor getting nukes which could be used against it.
invade it? perhaps foment some kind of referendum of some sort that 'legally' justifies the invasion? perhaps declare everyone in kyiv is a fascist nazi?
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On March 11 2014 06:46 Ghanburighan wrote:Interesting article, I thought about copying parts of it, but really only works as a whole: Russia has already lost the war
I liked that article, its heartening to remind ourselves that, at least, the vast majority of Ukraine is turning away from Russia. I don't know what will happen in Crimea, but I can only imagine that over the coming months and years, people will start to realize that the talk of fascists and genocide was completely made up, and that Ukraine will likely become a struggling, but functional state that respects all cultures as it always has. I hope the people in Crimea see past all the Russian propaganda and actually visit Kiev  . I feel like, in this interconnected age, it should be really hard to maintain some kind of statist control over the media. I mean I guess it works in North Korea, but Crimea is clearly not the same. I just hope they have a legitimate referendum and not a Russian style 'election'
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On March 11 2014 07:19 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On March 11 2014 06:47 Liman wrote:On March 11 2014 05:34 Geisterkarle wrote:After the "iron curtain" fell, Russia did everything that was asked for. They stepped down, they took all their military out of eastern Germany, Poland, ... (the USA, British, ... are still in Germany and important bases for coordination of "attacks" in Afghanistan, Irak, ...). And they did it in good will, that the NATO will also step down and they didn't! If someone says, this is "derailing" he doesn't understand, what Russia is going through now! It's all connected! Aside from that: Shit got real: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/10/ukraine-nuclear/6250815/"Ukraine may have to arm itself with nuclear weapons if the United States and other world powers refuse to enforce a security pact that obligates them to reverse the Moscow-backed takeover of Crimea, a member of the Ukraine parliament told USA TODAY." Well thats just asking for trouble. If you see how US and Israel reacted to Iraq and Iranian nuclear programs,just imagine how would Russia react to its neighbor getting nukes which could be used against it. invade it? perhaps foment some kind of referendum of some sort that 'legally' justifies the invasion? perhaps declare everyone in kyiv is a fascist nazi?
Much worse i suppose.Bombing etc.
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Russian Federation410 Posts
One video, taken on March 7th, caught my attention:
Russian troops moving about ~24 large rocket containers.. I assume they are for the S300 AA (SA-10).
As far as I understand, Ukraine and Georgia were "lost" over a decade ago, probably in the late 90s. Putin is just trying to salvage something.
If Russian economy doesn't get destroyed by all the upcoming sanctions, I expect other (richer) Eastern-Ukrainian regions to "declare autonomy" in the coming years, especially in the wake of upcoming spending cuts.
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On March 11 2014 13:01 Go0g3n wrote:One video, taken on March 7th, caught my attention: Russian troops moving about ~24 large rocket containers.. I assume they are for the S300 AA (SA-10). As far as I understand, Ukraine and Georgia were "lost" over a decade ago, probably in the late 90s. Putin is just trying to salvage something. If Russian economy doesn't get destroyed by all the upcoming sanctions, I expect other (richer) Eastern-Ukrainian regions to "declare autonomy" in the coming years, especially in the wake of upcoming spending cuts.
Since those regions are controlled by local oligarchs, why would they exchange the relatively weak Kyiv government for Putin's Russia where they get gobbled up by Igor Sechin?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/03/06/how-putins-desire-to-restore-russia-to-great-power-status-matters/
Seeing the Ukraine crisis through the lens of status anxiety has two important implications moving forward. First, we should not be surprised that Russian policy seems insensitive to costs and risks. Much of the international relations literature on international social status suggests that status matters to states because it matters to leaders for social psychological and domestic political reasons (see, among others, here, here, here, here, and here). Defending honor, responding to insults, avoiding humiliation, and building prestige are intangible values that are difficult to incorporate in a cost-benefit analysis. And history (and recent scholarship) shows that states have at times pursued these values at the expense of economic and security interests.
Second – in contrast to much recent commentary (like this, this, and this) – if Russian interests in Ukraine do involve status claims, then the United States and the West must be very cautious in their response. My research shows that obstructed status claims can facilitate shifts toward deeply revisionist foreign policies in snubbed actors. Widespread perceptions that a status “glass ceiling” is blocking a state from a status category to which it aspires make it difficult for elites to justify moderate foreign policies, and relatively easy (and more politically beneficial) for them to justify aggressive ones.
The rise of perceptions of status immobility, for example, play an important role in the
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EPT
