Nah, I emailed Tel Aviv and told them to put out the word to let him off the hook.
In context, you said there was a collapse of law that let fascists takeover. Then the fascist government inexplicably arrests fascists. In context, you are a schizophrenic debater. keep that in “mind”, as it were.
This isn’t meaningfully true for most of Europe. Ukraine is one of the most dependent, but the others are not. The lack of Russian supply would mean they’d need to spend a lot of money to buy gas elsewhere, but since the EU countries are comparatively speaking some of the wealthiest in the world they could absorb those costs (but would not want to do so.) Short term a supply shortage could certainly occur as energy contracts and delivery doesn’t happen overnight, but there’s an EU requirement to stockpile a certain amount of gas and the most recent mild winter in Europe has allowed for a pretty good stockpile to accumulate.
Not to mention cutting off energy exports to Europe would mean the complete economic collapse of the Putin state, an end to his power in Russia and economic ruin for his people. He could impose the equivalent of the 1970s gas crisis in the U.S. on Europe in exchange for imposing the Great Depression on Russia, not exactly a realistic scenario.
Ukraine though, is quite dependent on Russian gas and since they actually haven’t really been able to pay for it Russia would really be losing much by turning off the gas to Kiev.
The West should have sent its usual observers. But there are many other problems with the referendum. Not least the timeframe. I think some or most of those issues could have been dealt with satisfactory if the West had engaged Russia in a constructive way rather that what was done instead.
On a related note, I wonder what Kerry thought would be the outcome of how they chose to tackle the situation. It appears that it has been singularly badly construed or executed to help resolve the situation in any realistic manner. For instance, did he think issuing Putin with an ultimatum would in any way be helpful to a solution? Or was resolving it not high on the list of important matters? Perhaps the US administration has written off Crimea and is now thinking of the next move, trying to present Russia with such a high price that it’ll think trice before trying to annex other regions?
What an embarrassing post. I wonder if this vein of anti-Western ideology that has caused so many people to reflexively support warmongering autocrats at every turn was prevalent in the pre-WWII era with people like you blaming France, Britain etc for Hitler having no choice but to invade the Sudetenland, annex Austria etc etc.
NATO and Europe bear immense blame in that they were too slow and too meek to expand to include Ukraine. Russia however bears all the blame for being lead by a warmongerer who does everything he can to crush internal dissent and who clearly dreams of rebuilding the Soviet Empire. No one but Putin is to blame for invading a sovereign country.
Maybe there could have been a more constructive route, but Russia is basically barring most observers from the area so you can’t lay that on the West.
I’m typically on board for bashing Kerry and Obama but I see no real reason to have focused on a “proper referendum in Crimea.” The international community is rightly outraged and the illegal invasion for pure territorial greed because we haven’t seen that in Europe, literally since World War II. There’s a reason people who usually like to avoid the hyperbole (and risk of the retarded “Godwin rule”) are actually saying this has “shades of 1939” and etc.
Crimea was lost the day Yanukovych was legally impeached (legally and justly–disregard the ramblings of people that say it was illegal when it was desired by the will of the people and executed by Parliament, the fact that maybe some aspects of the constitution weren’t followed precisely is irrelevant as that’s the case for how all constitutions are executed.) Why engage in a bunch of BS to " validate the referendum?" Crimea wants to be part of Russia, and honestly who cares? Crimea costs Kiev $1.1bn/year and will be the poorest part of the Russian Federation requiring large subsidies to prop up. I think Kerry/Obama are correct to not care too much about the referendum in Crimea or making it “valid” because they (properly) recognize Crimea is a lost cause and it doesn’t matter because Crimea essentially belongs with Russia.
What’s important is we have a warmonger who runs the world’s second largest nuclear power and one of the largest military powers. Kerry/Obama should be focused on how to convey to Russia that there is a point where over-zealous expansionism would lead to the direst situation in Europe since WWII and most likely outright war. For example if this emboldens Putin to move into parts of Poland or the Baltic Republics I’m like 90% sure the United States would be involved in either outright war with Russia or a proxy war with Russia that would turn that part of Europe into a bloodbath.
That seems far-fetched that Putin would dare strike at actual NATO members, but who knows, no one expected him to just invade Crimea either. Putin actually used to rule by consensus, and he had a large circle of advisers in the Kremlin who presented him with dissenting opinions. All evidence now is that is no longer the case, the Defense Minister and the Foreign Minister of Russia were both basically uninvolved with this decision and in the case of the Foreign Minister he was clearly as surprised as the rest of the world in the first few days of this. What does that say about decision making in the Kremlin and about Putin? What it says is he’s not operating normally, is no longer looking for advice and consent and could frankly be entering a dangerous period where he’s drunk on the power he’s cemented at home and prone to engage in the kind of megalomaniacal misstep that historically can only happen when you have an unaccountable autocrat in power (see: Austro-Hungarian Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, etc.)
Well, you’re little on the hawkish side for me, but I agree that’s an embarrassing post. How can you lay blame on the West for taking in allies who see an autocratic regime eying them? “Sorry guys, we promised the bully we wouldn’t be your friends”. My god.
*eta: no way was Yanukovych legally impeached. It’s indefensible. You can argue it was “right”, but no way legal and it gave the Russians an awesome excuse. Stupid fucking move.
Seems to me it emerges from a profound difference in worldviews. Western civilization views political power as fundamentally resting on legitimacy with the public, and held in trust for them. Laws mediate the transfer of power. Although politicans certainly try to get away with a lot, if shenanigans toching that principle come to public attention it is frequently career-ending.
So when the Ukrainian president orders the murder of public protesters, he is seen to lose the legitimacy his power fundamentally rests on. When the Ukrainian public and parliament impeach the president, he has lost his legitimacy.
Russia, it seems, do not follows this paradigm.
No, I’d say he was legally impeached to the best of the ability of Parliament. If he had not fled the country the various other steps would have been followed, but you can’t easily do the steps that are supposed to come after the Parliamentary vote when the guy ran away because he wanted to avoid responsibility for some 80 deaths and what I can only guess is hundreds of millions of dollars he stole (his house is estimated to have cost over $75m and he’s never had any legal source of income that could possibly account for the assets.)
But Parliament properly voted to remove him and had the necessary thresh hold, they didn’t realistically have the ability to do the rest since he fled the country–as did many of his supporters in Parliament. Their lack of presence actually made several parts of the proper impeachment proceeding constitutionally impossible. In times of crisis a country has to do the best it can, the legal argument about Yanukovych is akin to arguing about whether say, Norway or France perfectly followed their constitutions in recreating their states after the Nazis were driven out. Those situations are such a mess that sometimes you just have to start acting.
In the context of what was going on in Ukraine, where the President and enough members of Parliament just run away I think having the vote they did was the limit of their ability to comply with the constitution and thus perfectly legal to my mind. Because above any constitution the leaders of a country have a duty in times of crisis to keep the country from imploding, and deciding the Ukraine no longer had a valid legislature or President because the President and some of his parliamentary allies had fled would be against the basic contract between governments and people, that supersedes any constitutional text.
I believe what most of the Yanukovych/Putin apologists are going off on is the Ukrainian impeachment procedure requires an initial impeachment vote (sort of like in the United States, and that did happen I believe) then further steps like an investigation, a form of trial, review by the court, and finally his removal. Several of these steps though actually require, arguably, more than just a supermajority of members of parliament “present” but actually require 3/4ths of the “constitutional membership” of the parliament. Since so many had fled, those voting for removal actually could not meet this threshold.
I would compare the fall of Yanukovych to the fall of James II, when he fled (just like James did when he fled London and threw the Great Seal of the Realm in the Thames) it can be seen as an abdication. Just like the English Parliament and the Scottish Parliament were correct to declare the throne vacant and recognize new monarchs so too was the Ukrainian Parliament. It was an extraordinary circumstance.
What I find odd is some of the same group that are such sticklers for Ukrainian constitutional law aren’t sticklers for Russia abiding by treaties it has signed with Ukraine, international agreements it has signed with other powers and etc. In fact many justify Putin’s actions as “necessary due to exigent circumstances and the plight of ethnic Russians” [manufactured falsehood btw] while denouncing Ukraine for naming a new President in a way not 100% in compliance with the literal text of their constitution after the sitting President ran away and too many members of Parliament fled with him to even enable them to resolve the issue constitutionally.
FWIW where things are now, we need to stay out of Ukraine. Obama was correct to deny military aid. If Putin doesn’t just go ahead and conquer the rest of Ukraine we can look at giving them military protection down the road when the situation is less dire. But we could have pulled Ukraine into NATO or the EU much faster, but the West drug its feet.
What I advocate now is creating a trip wire, and an obvious one, in places where we would actually fight a war with Russia if they were to go there. Since any such war could turn nuclear it’s in everyone’s interest for it never to happen. During the Cold War our forces in Germany never were sufficient to stop a Soviet offensive, but they were there as a trip wire. If the Soviets wanted to conquer Western Germany or further, they had to kill thousands of American soldiers to do it, which means war with the United States which both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. understood could and probably would go nuclear.
Poland is one of America’s most important allies in Europe these days in terms of military affairs and etc, I think it’s time they get some American military bases. The Baltic Republics are much less important, but as countries that are actually in NATO I think we would ultimately go to war to protect them if their sovereignty was violated, which to me means we need a physical presence there as well.
It doesn’t have to be a massive presence, just enough to serve the trip wire purpose. And as we have drawn down in Afghanistan we do actually have spare capacity to do this–and I’d advocate shifting some bases out of Germany where they don’t serve too much of a purpose (aside from being a convenient way point for certain long range activities en route to other parts of the world.)
I’d also advocate some “slap in the face” type sanctions against Putin similar to the Magnitsky Act, since we could repeal them later on down the road pretty easily if things normalized. As for Crimea, I’d take the stance that as long as Ukraine does not recognize Crimea as legally part of Russia we shouldn’t either, but there’s no reason that puts a complete stop to U.S./Russian relations. We’ve not recognized South Ossetia or Abkhazia for example and Russia has, and that allowed for us to have normal dialogue with the Russians. We also had opened relations with the PRC for awhile before we abandoned the position that Taiwan was technically China, and we were still able to engage in diplomacy with China. I’d just accept Crimea will be a sticking point for awhile but not a reason to have no diplomacy at all. I actually suspect Ukraine might pass legislation or something legally recognizing the legitimacy of Crimea’s leaving Ukraine within the next year of so.
Well in Canada you can’t just remove the Prime minister in a hectic afternoon whether he’s there or not. Istm that proper procedures were not even considered.
For good reason, but if Canada was in a state of near anarchy and the Prime Minister fled the country under suspicion of criminal acts to evade responsibility I could see a James II solution being pretty valid.
A warmongerer? And you term my post embarrassing?
How about if he fled ahead of an angry mob?
Is it fair to say the country was in a state of near anarchy because a violent protest was happening in the capital? Or did I miss something?
BTW why is it that people bereft of other arguments always turn to Hitler? There should be a word for it.
You mean “a phrase” not “a word.”
Anyway, agreed.
Why the constant references to Hitler and the ignoring of people like Stalin and Ivan Grozny.