Well he certainly has me fascinated with his insights by which of course I mean I will no longer read his posts.
A fascinating post from before the Georgia invasion of South Ossetia:
It links to the Nation Magazine. Who here does not respect the Nation Magazine?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/newreply.php?do=postreply&t=717050
Oh, that totally justifies what Putin is doing in Crimea. Or something…
Meanwhile, those poor, beaten down Russian Speakers in Crimea continue to demonstrate who vulnerable they are to Ukrainian oppression:
No wonder Putin needs to rescue these folk!
Here we see how John Mace’s method works. John Mace’s arguments cannot be argued against because he assigns a false motive to anyone who presents any convincing points of the existence of a reality such as the US/West’s ‘encirclement of Russia’ policies that began under Bill Clinton.
This was not presented to “justify’” Putin’s current actions in Crimea. It is to point out some very serious and forthright commentary that explains why the relationship between Russia and the West keeps bringing us to the recurrent brinksmanship crises of propaganda wars from both sides. That is mostly what this it… a propaganda war from both sides … and I am quite certain that both sides are certain everything is the other side’s fault.
Mace appears to be in that camp that considers everything must be Putin’s fault as demonstrated his with empty and pointless reply (below) that denies there is an argument that is valid in the excerpts also shown below. Mace declares everything to be a Pro-Russia excuse or justification-making for the improper actions of the Russian Federaation.
Mace cannot get beyond this snarky level of discussion for his subtle but sustained denial that the US/West’s ‘encirclement of Russia’ policy actually exists.
When Mace comes out for sanctions/penalties against any nation including our own, that has admittedly and unjustifiably committed an act of aggression against another nation’s sovereignty and internal affairs we could then believe that Mace has an equal and fair perspective on what the US/West does in its interests and what Russia does in its interest. It would be good to see Mace turn away from bias and prejudice in forming an opinion on events like this being discussed.
Yess indeed we all should know there will never be penalties for what the West does… But wouldn’t it be better for the world overall if super-powers had to pay a huge monetary fine whenever they act militarily in violation of international law. It could be like speeding laws. The faster you go the higher the fine.
Let’s say you invade a nation illegally and tens of thousands of its residents are killed or maimed or have their property destroyed. This world court could levy a fine of $100 bn for every ten thousands of innocent victims that are killed in an unjustifiable war. That includes wars where the aggressor nations claims to be victims of faulty intelligence.
You know, But officer my speedometer is broken.
But in the absence of a world court such as that we have the reality of the world as it exists today. The super-powers can veto any punishment for a violation of any law they break could be inflicted… so we have the unclear and one-sided methods of sanctions and boycotting big meetings and the like.
What all sides should do (we citizens of the world) is have and keep some perspective on the egregiousness of the violations and I do not see the West’s perspective as nothing but one-sided in a two-faced game they play with the former Soviet Union since Bill Clinton started it.
An Excerpt from Post #939’s link to The NATION and John Mace’s empty and pointless response:
Pfft. You post some article and say it’s interesting. What makes it interesting? We all know that Putin is running scared because he sees his former Soviet Allies looking westward. We don’t need you to tell us that.
And, so what? That still doesn’t give him the right to invade a sovereign country and try an split parts of it away and into Russia, which is what this thread is about. Some of us are not fooled by Putin, though, and don’t go around trying to hand-wave away Western concerns since the US did some bad things in the past.
Oh, and here’s some “interesting” reading to help you get past the simplistic notion that this all boils down to Russian speakers vs Ukrainian speakers, and that Putin has to somehow come and save the day for the former:
In not arguing that Putin is doing this to save the day. Try again.
If Russia has lost the war what are you complaining about? All this panic and handwringing, bitching and moaning about Putin taking back all the former Soviet States is for what? Georgia has moved on I believe toward Closer ties to the EU and the West. I suppose that means he lost that war too.
If true, perhaps they learned from these Molotov Cocktail throwing angels of democracy from last January?
Watch them in action:
http://www.demotix.com/news/3721744/pro-european-protesters-attack-police-kiev#media-3721600
On this thread RickJay accuses Putin of manufacturing a crisis:
So now I read that, according to RickJay, Putin is ‘manufacturing crises’ to justify war. But looking back to 2008, also according to RickJay Putin was not manufacturing a crisis when it justifiably responded to Georgia’s offensive military assault on South Ossetia killing Russian Federation Troops and innocent civilians.
And Rickjay knew… (but was not defending Putting) **what caused the problem **back then and the West’s inability to deal with or contain it.
Here is the meat of what RickJay wrote:
*"…but this problem was started YEARS ago, not last week, by **the ridiculous overexpansion of NATO from what it was supposed to defend *to trying to defend who the hell knows what.?
Here’s the full paragraph where he wrote it:
Full text here: Is Russia determined to be an empire again? - Great Debates - Straight Dope Message Board
I and others here are not 'defending Putin’s actions now in Crimea… but it is fair to say that the attempts by the West to ‘encircle of Russian territory’ and the ridiculous overexpansion of NATO eastward has certainly contributed to the problems in Ukraine.
I’m not defending Putin, but he’s a victim of the West’s accepting the justified fears of former Soviet Block/Warsaw Pact countries. He’s depraved on account he’s deprived. Goodness, Gracious, that’s why he’s a mess*. We should a social worker over to help him with his Social Disease.
*Courtesy of West Side Story.
Can’t argue… make Joke!
Are you making fun of RickJay’s 2008 understanding of the problem Russia had with Georgia of that year?
*"…but this problem was started YEARS ago, not last week, by **the ridiculous overexpansion of NATO *from what it was supposed to defend to trying to defend who the hell knows what.?
You’ve done an excellent impression of someone who is.
I’d also point out that your reference to my post back in 2008 about the Georgia crisis… well, missed the point there, and in rather spectacular fashion.
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Ukraine isn’t part of NATO. Ukraine even before Yakunoyvich was elected was lukewarm, at most, about full partnership in NATO, and the Maidan protests weren’t about joining NATO. We can all see, and rather plainly, that this isn’t about NATO expansion. It’s about money, plain and simple; Russia wants Ukraine in its trade bloc, and that wasn’t the way it was going to go after the ouster of the pro-Russia President.
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The fact that NATO has overexpanded, a position I continue to believe, doesn’t excuse in any way Russia’s disgraceful actions with regards to Ukraine, a smaller and weaker country it’s basically stealing land from.
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Most importantly, my point in 2008 - which you can plainly read if you look at the whole post, not just the bit you snipped out - is not that NATO was making itself too strong, but that it was making itself too weak. I don’t believe Russia has anything to fear from a weakened NATO. I don’t think Russia has anything to fear from a STRONG NATO as long as Russia doesn’t attack first. That we have weakened NATO may explain their aggressiveness but doesn’t excuse it, nor does it place the blame for Ukraine on anyone but Russia; like a bully, they’re stealing things from people they think cannot defend themselves, and like a bully, they’re quicker to try it when they think the strongest kid in the schoolyard won’t involve himself.
The point I was making to Sam wasn’t that we were doing anything bad to Russia. There’s not a hint of that in there. It’s that NATO was doing bad things to its existing membership.
No, I’m pointing out how ridiculous your argument is.
We mean ol’ Americans should have known that not bruising Putin’s ego was much more important than dealing with the very real concern countries like Estonia had about being reabsorbed into the Workers’ Paradise. What do they know, having been part of that noble experiment for 50 or so years?
Alternatively, Putin could have shown his neighbors that he was actually interested in transforming Russia into a liberal democracy. He chose not to, and that has nothing to do with us.
So go ahead and tell us you’re not making excuses for Putin while you… make excuses for Putin. Like I said, some of us are not fooled by Putin, but prefer to offer the countries in Eastern Europe an opportunity to look to The West without fear of reprisal from anti-democratic authoritarians like Putin.
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According to the Ukrainian Constitution in force today (the 1994 one), article 73 states that territorial changes are decided by all-Ukrainian referendum. No regional referendums/plebiscites are allowed by the Ukrainian Constitution.
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There is no law in Crimea, whether local or Ukrainian, that allows any kind of binding referendums, or controls their conduct or process. When asked today during the press conference on what laws the Crimean Parliament is basing its call for and conduct of the referendum, the Parliament’s spokesman refused to answer.
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Russian Constitution would not allow Russian government or Parliament to accept Crimea into Russia. According to the Russian Constitutional law (see http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102073629) the only way a territory can be accepted into Russia is by mutual agreement between Russia and the state to which the territory belongs (in this case, Ukraine). Obviously, no such agreement is forthcoming. More so, the initiative for the acceptance of such a territory into Russia has to come from the aforementioned foreign state - that is, Ukraine, and, explicitly, not from the territory itself.
So, the upcoming joke of a “referendum” seems to be triply illegal.
Yeah, but the West has done illegal things in the past so it’s OK. That’s how the argument goes, right? 
Hasn’t a lot of this rapid expansion of NATO into the former East Bloc countries come at the instigation of the Eastern European countries itself? It’s not so much that there’s some Western plot to “encircle” Russia as it is that countries like Poland, the Baltic countries, the former Czechoslovakia, etc are worried about Russian power due to their history with Russia and are trying to protect themselves?
It’s not that I don’t understand why Russia is worried, but there’s a certain kind of nasty irony in the whole thing.
Re: Point 2. I agree. That is what many of us have been trying to tell you. It is not an excuse for violating law. It is a verifiable condition that in Putin’s eyes is perceived as a threat to Russia which leads him to not care (as the West at convenient times does not care) about violating international law. You have thus confirmed in 2008 and today that the NATO over-expansion into shaky former Soviet Republics is ridiculous. And I agree with you so much in that it is almost ridiculous. But the good kind of ridiculous.
Re: Point 3 Here is where your entire scheme of ostracizing Vladimir Putin false a part in the context if real world super power politics. You as in biased and subjective ‘you’ DON’T THINK Putin/Russians have anything to fear from an over-expanded NATO up against Russian Federation borders. That’s a ‘don’t think’ that has no validity at all.
Russian fears about NATO’s ridiculous over-expansion explicitly played when a Wannabe NATO jerk from NYC law launched an attack that killed Russian Federation peacekeepers. Thank God you were right and Georgia had not joined NATO. The EU report says Russia was justified to defend its soldiers and the autonomous Russians in South Ossetia from a would be NATO client state.
And another thing RickJay, you said your point to Sam was that ‘we’ were not doing anything bad to Russia with respect to Georgia’s military aggression to take South Ossetia.
Is deliberate firing of missiles and sending tanks to kill Russian Federation soldiers without armored units at the ready to defend themselves, ‘doing something bad’ to Russia?