There are accidents, then there are ‘accidents’. This is definitely in the later category. We are talking about either gross incompetence or a deliberate act here…and at a certain point it becomes moot, since you shouldn’t give the keys to a weapons system like this to someone with the IQ of pocket lint. This plane was flying a known commercial route at freaking altitude. It’s nothing like the US/Iranian shoot down incident.
What “unelected government” are you talking about? Ukraine’s government was elected. Elections were held in Ukraine on 25 May 2014.
It certainly appears that Russia is in violation of that agreement. And the notion that the seperatists are an indigenous “autonomy” movement is a joke.
Now, all those in favor of bombing the Russian forces in Ukraine raise your hands.
Because of course these are Russian forces, all the talk about autonomy and so on is maskirovka.
Anyway, this chart, if accurate, might give some idea of what The Netherlands might do, all by itself: https://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/foriegn-markets.png. Turns out the Russki Oligarchs have been parking a lot of money in banks in The Netherlands.
No, that’s not what the Budapest Memorandum says. It says that each country agreed it would not attack Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal. There was no pledge to defend Ukraine from an attack by another country.
Russia, which also signed this agreement, is clearly violating it (although it’s made dubious claims to the contrary). But the United States and United Kingdom have not.
The memo provides a basis for the non-defaulting parties to take action against the defaulting party, but does not require them to do so. It stops short of an actual military committment.
Note, though, that absent the justification for the non-defaulting parties to act, the memo has no enforcement mechanism for “non nuclear” attacks on Ukraine.
It is still, arguably, “their business”. Just whether or not they decide to take enforcement action is up to them.
This is the 50th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin events. Remember that other time we tried to intervene in a civil war that was none of our business? Probably on the wrong side, at that?
If we want to get *really *technical, I think this would best be served by a highly surgical one-plane, one-hit mission.
A B-2 pass involving 30 JDAMs on a swath of various targets would likely instantly announce American involvement - no other country would be capable of doing that. Bad idea.
But a B-2 carefully and judiciously placing *one *small GBU-39 SDB (Small Diameter Bomb) on the very BUK launcher vehicle that was used to shoot down the Malaysia airliner? That would thoroughly creep the rebels out, while still leaving behind plausible deniability, especially if done at night, where it could be mistaken for the work of saboteurs upon inspection in the morning.
You’re assuming it hasn’t moved since. But [there’s evidence](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/Intercepted calls suggested a Russian SA-11 missile system - also known as BUK - had been transferred to the rebels, Mr Kerry said, and the US had seen a video of a launcher being moved back into Russia after flight MH17 crashed.) that it was trucked right back to Russia… where it quite probably came from in the first place.
Money quote for the TL,DR crowd :
I saw the video (or a video, anyway) myself - a BUK launcher on the back of a flatbed, missing a pair of missiles from its rack, passing by. Presumably shot by a local, but there’s wasn’t any time or geostamp so could be BS. In any event, how the hell should NATO know which SAM shot down the airliner ? These things are not static.
As for hitting “insurgents” in Ukraine in general, and in any capacity whatsoever, I wouldn’t hold my breath - the truth is, everyone and their grandma knows half of them are really Russian soldiers or GRU “advisors” (they’re even supported by Russian artillery batteries for crying out loud, evidently crewed by fucking idjits who post geotagged photos of covert operations to their facebook pages) and NATO sure can’t afford to tickle *that *bear. The US barely has any ground presence left and no armor whatsoever; while European nations have pared down their militaries to a threadbare level thanks to the various financial crises and the notion that the Cold War was it and what with nukes and such land militaries pretty much would never be needed locally any more.
And then you’ve got the issue that Germany is pretty much in bed with Russia economically-speaking : they’ve shut down every nuclear reactor they had after Fukushima (and Germans were always pretty gung ho against nuke power anyway) so much like the US has to tolerate Saudi Arabia and Iraqi allies for the black stuff, Germany is married to Gazprom. So they’re not doing anything to put their economy in jeopardy, and if Germany doesn’t move the rest of the EU won’t either.
The Budapest Memorandum doesn’t really affect the situation on this issue. Any country has justification to assist Ukraine at this point if it wishes to do so. International law recognizes not only the right for countries defend themselves when attacked but also the right for other uninvolved countries to assist in that defense.
But no country is obligated by international law to assist in such a defense. And so far, no country has stepped forward to fight a war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine. And I can’t say I blame them.
My take on this is this will just be an ugly example of real world politics. Russia is clearly in the wrong (despite what some people are saying). But they’re going to get away with it. Putin has apparently decided to rebuild the Soviet empire. None of the former Soviet countries are strong enough to stop him. And nobody outside of these countries sees this as a cause worth fighting for. Putin will catch a lot of diplomatic flack over this but he’s apparently decided it’s worth it. And I think Putin is smart enough that he’ll stop at the old Soviet borders and not provoke a response by going too far.
The one exception will be the Baltic countries which joined NATO. That gives them backup that the other former Soviet countries don’t have. Putin, being no dummy, will let them be. The Central Asian republics also have strategic value to other countries so Russia might hold off on them as well. But I feel Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and the Caucasian republics are all going to end up back under Russian control.
I won’t claim to have never made “you too” argument (I certainly have), but at what point do we stop making excuses for people doing terrible things just because someone else did it before?
The plane was also not ‘at altitude’ but was climbing, and this was all happening when an Iranian gun boat had engaged the Vincennes and the Vincennes was pursuing said gun boat into Iranian waters:
This is not to excuse what happened, nor to deny that there was an attempt at a cover up (that being that the USS Vincennes was indeed in Iranian waters), but the two incidents were nothing alike. The USS Vincennes was in a combat situation, actively pursuing an Iranian gun boat that had engaged it, and in a situation where shots had been exchanged recently and Iran had made threats against oil tankers in their claimed waters and had in the past dispatched fighter planes to harass ships and engaged an air craft that was climbing to altitude rapidly in their direction, while these separatist rebels basically shot at an air craft that was flying at over 30,000 ft on a known commercial route and weren’t exactly under the gun or under a large time constraint or pressure.
So, if your assertion that my claim that these two incidents were similar was a ‘falsehood’, can you show me how they are similar except in the broadest terms?
On the first point, your own cite clearly states that the Iranian was indeed flying “a known commercial route,” exactly like the Dutch plane was. Never for a moment did it go off course.
On the second point, I seem to have been wrong about the Iranian plane being “at altitude” - your Wikipedia link says the plane was going to “climb to 14,000 feet”; the Slate article says it was “ascending through 12,000 feet” when the Americans knocked it down. Thanks for the correction.
Both incidents happened during covert wars: Russia hasn’t officially declared war on the Ukraine, and to my knowledge the U.S. never officially declared war against Iran.
Both seem to have been honest mistakes, in which a civilian target was mistaken for a military target. In both cases, the mistake - while extremely tragic and regrettable - is somewhat understandable in light of the circumstances: As you correctly point out, the U.S.S. Vincennes had been harassed by Iranian gun boats and fighter planes, while in the Ukraine, Kiev’s planes had repeatedly attacked separatist positions.
Some differences: In the Ukrainian situation, the shot was fired not by the Russians, but by their proxies / allies in the region. In the Iranian situation, the shot was fired by the Americans themselves, not by their proxies / allies in the region (Saddam Hussein and the Saudis).
I expect that the situations will be similar in that a shameful attempt of a cover-up will follow this time, too. I don’t expect Putin to pin a medal on Alexander Khodakovsky, though, as the Americans did on Lustig and Rogers…!
