Race airplanes right up to the edge of their airspace and without warning just to fuck with them. That was very important and a military necessity.
Also deffo safe for the entire world.
Now they’re the ones doing it, it ain’t right !
Actually, there’s a reason for that, other than messing with them. It has to do with determining their ability to detect an intruder and how far out they can so detect.
A retired navy friend of mine was a CAG on a carrier. He told me it was not at all uncommon for them (Soviet) to challenge the carriers when they were at sea. They wanted to see how far out the carriers could detect the presence of the threat. They had a limit where they responded, (launched aircraft to intercept) but they actually had detected the threat much sooner.
So, rushing a border really does have a purpose.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive ;).
Of course, Putin and his ilk are a good bunch of guys who simply want to be able to dominate all of Eastern Europe like they did in the old Soviet days. No big deal, right?
When you have an evil dictator like him in possession of a nuclear arsenal, it is not unreasonable to go to Z. He just invaded and conquered a neighbor. You’re willing to give him Eastern Europe.
At what point do we stand up to him? Now, when we can do so short of going to war or do we make our first stand when use of force is all but required?
Why was it ideologically valuable to specifically bring Afghanistan into the communist fold? Or would any country have sufficed?
QFT.
“Integrated ally.” It is to laugh.
I think that question is being asked slightly the wrong way. Afghanistan was judged important to thme USSR because a communist government was starting to struggle against an Islamist rebellion. It wasn’t a quest for some ideological purity or objective that led to the invasion, it was the threat to an ideologically aligned neighbor that convinced the Soviets to act. The concern about Islamist rebellion spreading to parts of the USSR was also a real concern.
(I’m not trying to defend the invasion, but just trying to explain it from the Soviet leadership’s POV.)
No, if one had to choose a parallel, he’s more like Mussolini.
A strongman dictator attempting to patch together a romantic vision of a lost empire (and not caring who he harms in the process), with an adoring public believing his bluster and bullshit, and (amazingly) plenty of foreign admirers of his apparent strength and virilty of vision vs. the effete West. All while he crushes domestic dissent.
He even has the whole personal he-man machismo thing going.
For “Eastern Ukraine and Crimea”, read “Albania and Ethiopia” - that is, colonial acquisitions that served to bolster that image, but were economic and political albatrosses, bringing absolutely nothing of worth as loot (but penty of costs, both financial and political).
Another parallel: he is doing all of this on a totally inadequate material and economic base. His state is essentially a one-commodity wonder, and the price of that commodity is … tanking.
http://www.theweek.co.uk/business/oil-price/60838/oil-price-plunge-leads-to-russian-downgrade
Are Eastern Ukraine and Crimea really that worthless to Russia?
Coupled with the political and economic flack it took for Russia to get the Crimea I’d say it’s going to be a net loss, at least in the short and medium term…probably in the long term as well, unless things change drastically. Russia wasn’t doing this for purely economic gain reasons, and I doubt they figured on the sanctions and bad feelings doing their little land grab generated.
- Donetsk is (IIRC) the richest oblast in Ukraine outside of Kiev, Lugansk is still above average. Eastern Ukraine is generally the more prosperous and industrialized part. Hardly Ethiopia or even Albania (though the Ukraine in general is poorer than Russia or Belarus. The Western orientation since 1991 seems to have been great for the country. Not.)
- Russia’s exports are heavily oil and gas based, but that isn’t all they produce: they’re a major industrialized nation, it’s just they produce largely for the domestic market.
- I find it fascinating you’re completely ignoring the feelings of the inhabitants of Donetsk and Lugansk here. You know, the ones who have voted differently than the Galicians in most of the elections thus far, and who tend to have much more nostalgia for Russia and the Soviet era than western Ukrainians do. Isn’t it possible that, you know, they didn’t like the way things have been going, and wanted to secede? And don’t their wishes count for anything?
Crimea was poorer than the rest of Ukraine when it was part of Ukraine. Tourism, for The Black Sea, is the main “industry.” The situation did not improve there under Putin. Crimea was, in some ways, a drag on Ukraine. It will be a drag on Russia, as well. If, magically, issues of sovereignty and nationalism could be erased from this, there are those in Ukraine who would happily wave good-bye to Crimea. They’d be content to let Moscow deal with the poverty and not think of Crimea as anything but a potential vacation spot.
So far, absolutely. For the foreseeable future.
Of course, eastern Ukraine is not yet an “acquisition” but is rather “independent republics”. Snerk.
So – in your opinion, Eastern Ukrainian oblasts aren’t really “independent republics” that Russia is simply “supporting” with men, money and propaganda, but loot for Russia to exploit, for its own financial gain? Any you expet the loot value of that gain to outweigh the treasure Russia has expended on it, plus the impact of sanctions?
Interesting.
They can get used to the fruits of economic autarky, then. Worked for North Korea.
I said nothing about the “feelings” of the inhabitants of those oblasts because they are irrelevant to the analysis of Putin. The notion that Putin is simply good-heartedly responding to the “feelings” of Eastern Ukrainians for no selfish reasons is so very, very absurd, I’m sure you would not willingly put it forward as an argument (or would you?)
So differently, in fact, that they managed to cast more ballots than there are inhabitants in Sevastopol (amidst a ton of other rampant, almost casual shenanigans) !
I mean, an 89%+ voter participation achieved when only 30-40% of people actually went out to vote, that’s efficiency and civic fervour we should emulate.
Forgot to add: yet another parallel with Mussolini, albeit more humerous/cosmetic: the Russian economy, these days, has the same GDP as Italy, these days… http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Italy/Russia/Economy
To be fair, he’s talking about the eastern Ukrainian oblasts, not Crimea.
Sevastopol isn’t in Donetsk or Lugansk.
No, you’re misreading me. (In fairness, it’s probably my fault for riffing off peopl’s posts with whom I agree in part and disagree in part).
The implication has been made that 1) Russia is going to annex Donbass, 2) Donbass is poor and will need to be subsidized by Russia, therefore 3) this is going to be a mess. I disagree with both premises 1) and 2), but I doubt I’m going to convince you that Donbass is going to remain free, so I was simply making the point that even if you don’t believe that these are independent republics, they’re actually not that poor. I suspect that Brussels is going to lose more money subsidizing Galicia than Russia loses by subsidizing Donbass.
Since you’re asking directly, here’s what I believe. I like the kind of order- economically socialist/communist, neo-soviet, communitarian, antiliberal, and Christian- that the leaders of the DNR and LNR say they want, and therefore I support their efforts to become independent countries. I’m going to oppose anyone who threatens their sovereignty, whether it’s Brussels, Kiev or Moscow. I don’t believe that Russia is going to annex the Donbass- I think they gain more by having it as a friendly client state. If they do end up annexing the Donbass, though, I promise you that I’ll be freaking out and expressing outrage about it quite as much as the rest of you are doing here.
That’s the thing: unless they annex these “Republics”, or otherwise extract some sort of rent from them, they cannot gain in any material sense from their “independence”, which the Russians have spent a fortune - in both treasure and in political capital - on securing.
In short, assuming you are correct, the parallel with Mussolini holds - he’d pursuing empire for romantic and not rational acquisitive reasons; his country will not gain in a material way from his ‘empire’. Just as Mussolini’s Italy did not gain materially from his acquisitions in pursuit of a modern “Roman Empire”. [Amusingly, as posted above, the economies of Russia and Italy are about the same size!]
Everyone knows that, economically, Crimea - which Putin did “gain” - is an economic basket-case, existing on welfare from whoever owns it, plus tourism.
OTOH, if Putin started to extract heavy rent from these oblasts - enough to make Russia’s support “worthwhile”, economically - the inhabitants of these places will soon regret having anything to do with the venture.