Actually: you describe my understanding of the situation very accurately. While I agree with Governor Palin's quip on FOX news last night that "Vladimir Putin wrestles bears while President Obama wears Mom Jeans" , I am not so certain Russia is the villain. Ukraine's new, interim government came to power via a coup, not a Constitutional election. All indications are that the ethnic Russian minority as well as Russia's naval bases in the Crimea were in jeopardy.
From a larger, geopolitical perspective, Russia has a reasonable, legitimate interest in having free access to the Mediterranean, and then to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. I would not oppose renegotiating the current treaty regime that allows Turkey to control access. I am also alienated enough by Turkey's betrayals to be bothered very much by the idea of Russia seizing those straights. If the US is not there to challenge them, England, France, Itally and Germany are not going to do anything about it. Too bad for Turkey. Israel might interfere, but given the way Obama has been screwing the Israelis they might be Russia's ally.
kiddmeier wrote:Hello there, Tenshinai. Missed exchanging thoughts a lot these past months. I see you keep in shape.
About Turkey, I think nameless is somewhat right, on a very deep level, even if not for the reasons he thinks he is, and certainly not the way he thinks he is.
You as a Swede familiar with history must know Russia's history better than most. The russian empire's desire to possess or at least controll the Marmara straits is at least 300 years old - the minimum in the form of controlling the access through the Bosforus of potential enemy ships is an obvious strategic need. But then again it has always beed oposed /often forcefully/ by the french and the english, espesially by the latter and especially after the digging of the Suez cannal. So one has to have in mind that the possibility of taking possesion or applying a more serious level of control over the straits will always be present in the mind of any russian statesman deserving of the name - as any other possibility of strenghtening his/her own country's stretegic situation.
Of course. But there are some fundamental flaws with what he said.
First of all, while Russia certainly would LIKE to have that control over the entry to the Black sea, they have gotten along well enough in recent years that there is currently no real motivation in Russia to try to TAKE it, and Turkey certainly does not show any inclination to change their policies in regards to how it handles transit.
Secondly, if Russia really was desperate to take control of the area, wether it is under USAs "protection" or not isn´t by itself going to determine wether something happened.
It´s nearby for Russia, and very much NOT nearby for USA or NATO.
Only Greece could really be expected to have a real chance to seriously assist, and well, Greece is one of the reasons for why Turkey has a large army in the first place!
How many years in the last 2 decades have there NOT been any skirmishes between Greece and Turkey? 3 i think? Even if you only count when there have been deaths due to said skirmishes it´s still less than half the years of those 2 decades.
Thirdly and most importantly however, the simple fact that Russia utterly and totally does NOT want to get into a war with Turkey, regardless US "protection" or not.
Turkey is essentially a nightmare for any potential attacker, with large parts of the country being very complex terrain, and a military with decent training, experience and equipment and that knows how to exploit said terrain.
There´s a lot of babble about Afghanistan being a horribly troublesome place, well Turkey would be worse, probably much worse.
And Russia is well aware of that.
kiddmeier wrote:The only way this may happen is if Turkey goes down in a severe crisis and threatens to implode - which, even if not entirely impossible is not gonna happen any time soon, if at all.
Pretty much yeah, and even if that happened, i think it is still unlikely with a Russian intervention ( much less an outright landgrab ), unless of course any chaos spills over into the Russian Caucasus region.
If that happens it becomes an "internal" matter and then it could end up almost anywhere.
kiddmeier wrote:Now the potential loss of its most important Black sea naval harbor is an entirely different bag of cats. Even excluding for the purpose of this particular argument all other reasons Russia has for intervening in Ukraine, Sevastopol in and of itself is a sufficient enough argument - a vital strategic need in very close proximity to its own borders. Russia cannot afford to lose the harbor and equally cannot afford it to be in possesion of a potentially hostile state. Not gonna happen. They lost Odessa already.
It should also not be forgotten that the Crimea area is historically Russian, not Ukrainian, and that it has one of the more outspokenly pro-Russian populations in Ukraine as well.
kiddmeier wrote:Russia has been pushed around on the international stage way too much in the last two decades.
My friend has almost become resigned over the repeated stupidity of EUSA, pushing NATO membership into what was USSR itself?
And doing it as carelessly as has been done? It´s like begging for something to happen.
Again and again rejecting offers of cooperation from Russia, as if they have to really grind it in that they still reason like "oh yeah, we can´t work with you because you´re still the enemy".
The foreign minister here, Carl Bildt is a perfect example, instantly when anything involves Russia, he becomes almost rabid in his lack of objectivity.
It was for example extremely embarassing several years ago when he incidentally during a visit in Russia sort of accused them of being behind some of the submarine intrusions in Swedish waters...
Problem was that as "proof" he was referring to sonar recordings that had already been analysed and found to have
nothing to do with submarines at all, and the fact that it happened during the Soviet era.
Epic fail.
And that is the big mistake people keep doing, Russia isn´t the USSR. Though it´s funny how some americans still call them "the commies", when Russia today is far more capitalist than USA is.
kiddmeier wrote:The thing with russians one has to bear in mind is - they do not brake when pushed, they will bend further and further, until you reach a certain point and they snap back with force. Now that reverse movement may brake them, but even if so they will take as many of the pushers with them as they can, and there will be no such thing as innocent bystanders.
While i certainly see your point, i think you should also remember that Russia by default isn´t an outwardly aggressive nation, but has a ridiculously long history of getting invaded, something that strongly colours their foreign politics and actions.
Last time Russia, even including USSR, actually STARTED a war was the attack on Finland in the winter war.
For good and for bad, the country is big enough to essentially have everything they need within even its diminished borders, which has led to some hints of isolationism, but the history has caused a LOT of paranoia to become firmly entrenched.
And with EUSA fiddling around in Ukraine, especially by supporting neonazis? Hell yeah, Russia is going to go boinkers!
Expecting anything else is like expecting USA to applaud and cheer on the USSR causing communist coups in Canada and Mexico during the 1980s.
kiddmeier wrote:Me, I live on the other side of the Black sea from them and I really, really do not want to find myself under that back snap.
Smart.
Still, i don´t really expect Russia to be the primary danger in the current situation, at least not unless someone else does something stupid.
The problem is that there is a clear risk of ending up with a Ukraine that becames the next Yugoslavia style breakup, ie., messy.
Or potentially, we could end up with Ukraine going quietly facist. That would really not be fun, just when we´re seeing Polish rightwing extremeism finally fading a bit, having one of Europe´s largest nations going
officially and intentionally with parties like Svoboda, it would not bode well for the future.
kiddmeier wrote:I see you keep in shape.
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