Small Wars Journal

Crimea Twofer

Mon, 03/03/2014 - 7:57am

Crimea, Credibility, and Intervention by Paul Pillar, The National Interest

The Crimean crisis has energized those who wallow in a conventional wisdom that, as Fareed Zakaria noted last week, had already become a familiar theme on the opinion pages. This is the theme that the United States is in retreat, that it is insufficiently assertive, and that this lack of assertiveness is having awful consequences around the world. The crisis is tailor-made to encourage such wallowing, involving as it does a use of armed forces by the successor to the old Cold War adversary. So no time has been wasted by those who complain that soft U.S. policies have brought things in Ukraine to this juncture and who cry for more U.S. assertiveness in response, including saber-rattling with U.S. armed forces.

The conventional wisdom prospers, despite empirically mistaken aspects of it that Zakaria points out, partly because of the difference between punditry and incumbency and the related difference between posturing and policy-making. Pundits can do grand hand-wringing about supposed decline without the hard labor of thinking through which specific alternative options really exist with regard to specific problems and what their specific results are likely to be. It prospers also because of conceptual sloppiness that, as Paul Saunders notes, tends to equate leadership with the use of military force…

Read on.

Crimea: Russia is Harvesting the Seeds Sown in the 1990s by Jeremy Kotkin, The Bridge

This week the Russian Federation, for all intents and purposes, invaded a sovereign country. As difficult as interpretations of the Budapest Memorandum, OSCE convention, and other aspects of international law and norm can be to define, there can be no mistake; Ukraine’s territorial integrity was unilaterally violated and there must be a response. Figuring out the suitable, feasible, and acceptable response must occur and it must occur quickly if it is to have the intended effect. But the decision making process in Washington, Brussels, Kiev, and Strasbourg must be tempered and not reactionary. It must not give in to the calls to conflate, unknowingly or intently, the Budapest Memorandum with NATO’s Article 5. It must not, as ADM(ret) Stavridis or current sitting members of the Obama administration would have it, lash out with punitive and largely unproductive measures or worse yet, counterproductive to longer term strategic interests. Primarily however, rational strategy, both diplomatic and military if need be, must understand history, both recent and older. We must understand what has brought us to the precipice again in Europe and what we can yet still do about it…

Read on.

Comments

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 10:08am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

What could go wrong with so many exercises, seemingly (let's hope!) in perpetuity:

<strong>Finland military exercise causes alarm after being mistaken for after-dark invasion</strong>

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-01/finland-military-exercise-mistake…

I notice the same think tank hangers on and blog/Twitter punditeers that got COIN, the Surge, and pretty much everything else wrong pooh pooh this sort of worry....you can find work doing other things, you know, with your connections and tendencies of servility and sycophancy.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 10:00am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Peter Hitchens smells a rat with the Brexit campaign, at least, the way it has been conducted. I think, I get confused on the details and the devil is in the details.

If you leave, what will be the pressures to recreate certain structures within NATO? Where does your sovereignty go then?

Curious affair.

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2016/06/the-leave-campaign-may-w…

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:57am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

I'd be careful, if I were a Brexiter. It may be that transnationalists will use NATO to affect the same goals as the EU (which happens now too). Your sovereignty may be eroded another way, even more than now, I mean. Careful, careful Brexiters:

<blockquote>The referendum will ask British citizens to cast their ballot to decide whether or not the U.K. should exit the EU after 43 years as a member. The ‘Brexit’ debate has split the U.K.’s ruling Conservative Party, with Prime Minister David Cameron campaigning to remain in the EU but senior officials and former allies in the House of Commons favouring an exit.
.
During a meeting in Warsaw, Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and her Estonian counterpart Taavi Roivas issued a joint plea for the U.K. to remain in the EU, Polish public broadcaster Polskie Radio reports.</blockquote>

http://www.newsweek.com/poland-and-estonia-hope-against-brexit-465749

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:50am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

A curious thing happens when you look up old articles in the immediate 9-11 period. The NATO messaging brigade is out in full force and their greatest concern after the largest terrorist attack on American soil is....NATO and Europe. It's subtle, though, more subtle than I originally imagine, rereading the papers all these years later.

Don't forget what they did to you then, or what a certain cohort will do to you now. None of which protects the people in Eastern Europe. What will happen to their democracies under this pressure?

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:46am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

<blockquote>After leaving the Defense Department, Brzezinski became a Principal at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., providing policy and technical advice to U.S. combatant commands and foreign clients. He left Booz Allen Hamilton after five years, and now heads the Brzezinski Group, which provides similar services: " ... a strategic advisory firm serving U.S. and international commercial clients in the financial, energy, and defense sectors. The Brzezinski Group assists them navigate geopolitical developments, develop and execute market entry and opportunity capture strategies, and manage relationships with government entities."[2]</blockquote>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Brzezinski

Just for self education, that's all. I know it all exists as if on the thinnest most gossamer wings....this very thing we know as human life on Earth.

The Washington Consensus does not have an collective imagination of the type that provides Darwinian safety, if safety can be had in any way. They can't imagine the impossible, it can't happen that the ultimate mistake will happen.

This is their greatest weakness, the inability to imagine possibilities, to live outside the daily world of their practical affairs. They simply haven't the emotional IQ for it. It's a tainted moral universe.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:35am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

<blockquote>Chilling new evidence that Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack has emerged in former classified documents written at the height of the cold war.
.
Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Archer, conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility.</blockquote>

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/02/nato-war-game-nuclear-d…

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 06/08/2016 - 9:33am

A Schengen zone for NATO:

<blockquote>“Right after Crimea we sent out a questionnaire about [border regulations] to each member states, and the results were pretty scary. Some countries needed to recall parliament in order to let NATO units cross their borders. And one country said, ‘we can only have 1,600 soldiers on our soil.’” In reality, that meant that NATO would be unable to use that member state, which the NATO official declined to identify, for passage.</blockquote>

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2016-06-06/s…

Tactical nuclear weapons, pushing aside shared decision making, promoting American NATO generals as a kind independent decision maker on troop movements.

Democracy promotion.

This makes the Line of Control between India and Pakistan look like the most stable place in the world.

How can such behavior be seen as responsible? What madness infects man from time to time?

And we Gen Xers have not done our job. We never really explained what it was like to grow up under this sort of thing, how frightening, how many really worried about war between the US and the former Soviet Union. It polluted many an 80s childhood. Tornado sirens would freak kids out, sometimes, right?

Forgotten. Forgotten history.

I know others my age and generation had the same thoughts as children, but we never shared it with younger folk, or, we seemed to forget about it in the heady days of the 90s and our prosperous early adulthood. Now there simply isn't the "emotional memory" for many to understand how dangerous this is.

Another example of our idiocracy, worse than Trump. Or related.

Our artists can't help us this time around, either. They are lost in their super hero movie world.

What cowardice affects the Washington Consensus and its denizens. Why be afraid? Apart from a few lone voices, it's business as usual.

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 05/22/2016 - 11:38am

Psychotic:

“To deny adversaries this leverage, or at least reduce it, the Pentagon must studiously think through how the o set strategy can be shaped and imple- mented to deter, discourage and, if need be, control for and respond to adversary nuclear employment. e o set strategy, in simpler terms, must show U.S. adversaries that using nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies would be distinctly unwise and that the <strong>United States has ways and means to defeat (at least in limited terms) and deny the objectives of these opponents even if nuclear weapons have been used. …”</strong>

What of Third Offset Nuclear Weapons? Elbridge Colby, CNAS. (John Batchelor Show blurb)

Third Offset = give us more money

CNAS is a toxic influence. We are so screwed.

https://audioboom.com/boos/4597489-what-of-third-offset-nuclear-weapons…

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 05/11/2016 - 10:49am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

In other words, the US should pay for NATO, get no benefit, but defer to European wishes. The problem with the European and British left is that they are so dominated by thoughts of American imperialism that they ignore the lobbying done by transatlanticists in the US. NATOism is the greatly ignored mover of American policy and European pressure and manipulation of American foreign policy institutions tends to get ignored.

Hillary Clinton and President Obama are simply varieties of NATOists which is why so many commentators miss how they prioritize things. Just look at Zbig and his priorities and think about how those priorities are more or less met by the foreign policy of the two.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 05/11/2016 - 10:45am

Without links:

See what I mean by my previous comment in this thread? Recreating the dynamics of Able Archer 83:

<blockquote>The new need to think harder about limited war, <strong>including limited nuclear war</strong>, implies a need to rethink how to make nuclear threats credible to deter aggression against U.S. allies. These threats have to be made credible because they are not directly related to the protection of the continental United States. Nuclear consultation will be an indispensable tool for this task.</blockquote> - War on the Rocks

THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR CONSULTATION WITH NATO
ANDREAS LUTSCH

The Pakistani military talks about tactical nuclear weapons and we label them lunatic nutbags. But this is supposed to be sane.

The Washington Consensus and its European/British transatlantic counterpart is a cult. A dangerous cult.

War on the Rocks as a platform for discussion is too dominated by its CNAS-Richard Fontaine-John McCain-British academic NATOist milieu.

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 05/01/2016 - 11:04am

Once again, without the links:

What are we doing? Re-creating some of the same emotional dynamics of Able Archer 83, in a kind of loop?

<em>NATO Allies Preparing to Put Four Battalions at Eastern Border With Russia
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense says buildup is response to Moscow’s military activity near the Baltics</em> -
Wall Street Journal

Secretary Carter comes from that whole Fritz Ermarth (Casey and Gates, etc.) world of Star Wars with its proven wrong assessments of the then Soviet Union? They got everything wrong and yet the foreign party establishment bows to the conventional wisdom created by the residua of that foreign party apparatus embedded within Washington.

<blockquote>"The Board is deeply disturbed by the US handling of the war scare, both at the time and since. In the early stages of the war scare period, when evidence was thin, little effort was made to examine the various possible Soviet motivations behind some very anomalous events… When written, the 1984 SNIE's [assessments][3] were overconfident." That estimate, written by veteran Soviet analyst Fritz Ermarth, downplayed the hazards. </blockquote>

The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Declassified-PFIAB-Report (GWU national archives)

Heaven help us.

Madhu (not verified)

Sat, 06/20/2015 - 3:23pm

It's very important for nuclear powers to use sensible language, India and Pakistan. John Kerry would like you to keep the language civil (well, not NATO and Russia, just you two):

<blockquote>Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is a “thug” and a “liar”, one of Britain’s most senior ambassadors has said, as the EU prepares to approve tough new sanctions against Moscow.</blockquote>

<em>Vladimir Putin is a thug and liar, says top British envoy</em> (The Telegraph, from some time back).

Add to this the off-and-on bizarro rhetoric of President Obama and Putin, one ridiculing an entire country's economy, the other nuclear saber rattling while NATO shows off in Eastern Europe.

I know, I know, lurking friend, if you are lurking, it is fairly ridiculous for me to comment on old blog posts, comment after comment, but I am essentially lazy on these subjects and it's easy for me to add a link here instead of creating my own site or writing some small article for a website. For some reason, it amuses me. And, anyway, I always sort of hope some student is reading and somehow gets an idea for a paper or something.

I don't think inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds anymore, I think given the nature of this current moment we sort of can't be, "do as we say, not as we do." It just won't work anymore, if it every worked.

The Chinese even told us to hold the megaphone diplomacy down, although, they had their own reasons. Not a bad counsel, though.

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 02/02/2015 - 11:49am

From Consortium News:

<blockquote>Anyone who dares protest the unrelentingly one-sided coverage is deemed a “Putin apologist” or a “stooge of Moscow.” So, most Americans – <strong>in a position to influence public knowledge but who want to stay employable – stay silent, just as they did during the Iraq War stampede.</strong>
.
In other words, as the United States rushes into a new Cold War with Russia, we are seeing the makings of a new McCarthyism, challenging the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t get into line. But this conformity of thought presents a serious threat to U.S. national security and even the future of the planet.</blockquote>
And
<blockquote>It may seem clever for some New Republic blogger or a Washington Post writer to insult anyone who doesn’t accept the over-the-top propaganda on Russia and Ukraine – <strong>much as they did to people who objected to the rush to war in Iraq</strong> – but a military clash with nuclear-armed Russia is a crisis of a much greater magnitude.</blockquote>

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-n…

Yes, I've noticed. People I'd read for years and had grown to trust now seem afraid to step out on their own. Or perhaps are so caught up in the group fever that they have convinced themselves.

I was much the same in the rush up to the Iraq War, my ignorance and fear and falling into the wrong crowd online all affected how I thought about the world. I believed many stupid things.

I've stopped reading old friends except to occasionally scan an article. On a personal level, I wish all well.

It is sad, though. Not everyone I've read is some newbie without savings looking for a job. There are quite a lot of settled people that might be kicked out of the fashionable crowd but can feed themselves and their families.

Yet....

OTOH, am I saying much about medicine online? When it comes to my profession, I'm pretty quiet, eh?

Can't start a war from my work, though.

Whose stupid idea was it to bring two nuclear powers with a troubled history up so close to one another in a tight security perimeter?

That is the exact language used by some in the "military intellectual" field too, the action intellectuals who have never gotten anything correct.

There is no need for the dreaded appeasement either; proxy wars are countered by good governance and intelligent border work.

When was the last time you saw a really good report on the border? OSCE only puts out bits and pieces and there are many with the technology to map the whole darn thing in Ukraine, you know?

Madhu (not verified)

Tue, 01/13/2015 - 10:24am

Does anyone worry about the following patterns being created in decision makers and the nuclear escalation cascade in terms of NATO abutting a nuclear armed Russia? A mistake has nothing to do with ideology and who has the correct view of the world:

<blockquote>As to what we're going to do about the problem, darned if I know. But for starters the pathology needs to be better understood by the public before anything can be done. Many people don't believe the warnings because they don't know the science behind them. So unsurprisingly laws banning phone use while driving have made little to no difference in preventing people from using their communication devices on the road; you'll learn why in detail from Matt's discussion -- although distracted driving is only one aspect of the problem.
.
By the time the interview ended I was questioning whether the problem should even be termed an addiciton. It seems more a compulsion, which I don't think is quite the same as addiciton, and which isn't under conscious control. The compulsion is grounded in a very necessary survival impulse that's hardwired into our brains. Yet if we don't get control of a compulsion to use portable (and wearable!) digital communication devices, the entire human race will soon find itself in the deadly position of those ancient Greek mariners who were enthralled by the songs of Sirens.</blockquote> "The neuropathology of smart phone use is damn scary," Pundita blog

If the Indians and Pakistanis start trading insults, we worry about their nuclear escalation, but our own leaders don't stop to think how this strange reactive behavior over the internet might work and what we our training our leaders to be, to do, to think....

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/17/2014 - 10:20am

Some of the fashionable DC crowd--"journalists", think tankers and assorted hangers on trained like dogs to bark at the baddie of the moment--seem to be rethinking a few things as the rouble crisis continues.

Not for long, I'm sure. Careers and money are not made by thinking things through. Crisis often result from the bad decisions of many parties, not just one.

The stagnation of certain middle class incomes in America post 1990, manufacturing, feelings of middle class insecurity despite a not unreasonable current economy, <strong>the increased likelihood of conflict in the Mid East if there are no other brokers</strong>....yes, thinking things through is not the strong suit of the fashionably PhD'ed. Or, given the money making schemes for certain factions, things HAVE been thought through, just not what is best for the average American or Western European, or Eastern European even. If you need to sell, who shall you sell things to and who will get the contracts?

Madhu (not verified)

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 2:07pm

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Interesting, this is more dangerous and more important yet it doesn't seem as interesting to people. Fascinating and interesting....what does that say about the crowd that reads this journal? Huh.

Madhu (not verified)

Tue, 12/09/2014 - 1:53pm

From 'we have a company line on Ukraine' War on the Rocks ( I like you people A LOT, but I'm not stupid):

<blockquote>Because nuclear weapons appear to take major war and regime change off the table, they promise greater space for smaller powers to conduct proxy warfare, violent provocations, and even limited military operations at lower levels of escalation.</blockquote> THE U.S. NEEDS A MORE TAILORED & DISCRIMINATE DETERRENCE REGIME, Jerry Meyerle (can't embed links today for some reason).

Well, you only have to be wrong once on the whole nuke thing....

I think the most intelligent thing the human race has ever done (the various jostling factions in the EU, Russia, UK, US, the whole messy #HumanDomain of it), and I mean ever, is to draw a tight national security perimeter line right up to the border of Russia, between a nuclear armed US and NATO and a nuclear armed Russia.

That is without doubt the most intelligent strategery that has ever happened since the dawn of time.

Madhu (not verified)

Fri, 12/05/2014 - 11:38am

From a book review on <em>The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain</em> by J.H. Gleason.

I have not read the book and don't know the author (for all I know, there might be a, uh, backstory) but am more interested in the "American diplomat's" assessment, more accurate than anything you all had to back you up intellectually in Afghanistan during our latest campaign:

<blockquote>Though this oversimplifies Mr. Gleason's complex picture; he emphasizes the fact that "during much of the period in question Great Britain's policy was, in the main, more provocative than Russia's" (p.3), and exposes the complete unreality of the "threat to India" by quoting an <strong>American diplomat's report in 1835: "Among the means daily employed to popularize [Russophobia], the preferred views of Russia upon British India have been, however absurdly, held up to excite the ignorant fears of the people" (p. 186). </strong>Mr. Gleason concludes that by 1841 there was "a generally accepted stereotype "of Russian villainy whose existence could be assumed by politicians. <strong>A few evocative phrases would produce immediate hostile reactions (p. 204, 225, 275f)."</strong></blockquote>

The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by J. H. Gleason

Christopher Hill
Science & Society
Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1952), pp. 281-283

Evocative phrases. Even generally sensible milbloggers and others that I have followed over the years have reacted in a way that seems very emotionally programmed, as if there is a kind of Pavlovian response. Very curious.

The point here is not to debate the nature of Russia or Russians, or the affect of British thinking on American elites, but to understand that within our own history we had judgements quite at odds with the fashionable post-war thinking that so dominates our Washington Consensus, a consensus peopled by an erratically and strangely educated yet hugely ambitious elite with almost no real understanding of why they might react to events.

Those are the more innocent. The less innocent are those who think only in terms of a certain kind of forever enemies of great power politics, and were quite willing to sacrifice anything for it. Anything.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 10:32am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

What level of leaky borders is related to corruption in local border forces and armies, particularly at the upper levels? Rhetoric vs. reality.

NATO seems to be playing from a playbook that didn't even work very well during the Cold War, and certainly won't work in this era. Information Operations that exaggerate only make you look exceedingly foolish to the rest of the world which doesn't have the same sort of reporting the American media does. Low key is what is needed, no talk, quiet careful little actions, but that doesn't build budgets or careers or mollify emotionally needy ideologues, looking for meaning in life through "activism." Hey, I've been there, I've so been there. It's not healthy.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 10:23am

I'll try again without the link:

<blockquote>According to Kiev-based defence analyst Alexei Melnik, Kiev's strategy hinges on two objectives: Securing the border to prevent further men, weapons and supplies arriving from Russia, and blocking off rebel-held areas to keep the revolt from spreading. The next stage will be "targeted operations" by special forces to assassinate rebel leaders, Melnik predicted.</blockquote> -Ukraine retakes border crossing from rebels as Poroshenko goes on attack, The Guardian (from July)

Better border control might upset a variety of licit and illicit business interests on both sides of the border? Something is messed up:

<blockquote>This fall, a Help Army unit also reinforced Ukrainian border guards in patrolling and manning checkpoints along Ukraine’s frontier with Russia. The border is just about 50 kilometers from the center of Kharkiv.</blockquote>Ukraine: Kharkiv Volunteers Shore Up Border, Morale, Lobelog

It's not that I want smaller nations bullied by larger nations but the rhetoric surrounding this conflict seems more about pumping up various causes (arms sales, NATO revival, domestic Russian factors, money-making schemes, Eastern European and French and UK and German politics, etc.) than it does about protecting people or protecting national sovereignty.

Even though I know what I am doing won't change anything, I don't like giving up on a topic.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 9:58am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

It's interesting. You'd think people interested in COIN or insurgency or proxy wars or small wars would be interested in this sort of thing, or interested in a wider variety of conflicts.

You all know my complaints on Punjab and Kashmir, but this sort of writing is incredibly interesting too:

https://medium.com/the-bridge/the-oman-djebel-war-1957-59-84a65243895a

That article is filled with gems.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 9:53am

In proxy conflicts and insurgencies, I am told two things matter: governance and sanctuary, often cross-border sanctuary.

Reports in Western papers are always talking about trucks crossing borders, and supply chains for rebels, and then we get stories of shelling urban populated areas and the cutting off of pensions. Pensions are a big topic, and have been for years in Ukraine, especially with the IMF.

I tried embedding this link and excerpt earlier but it didn't work so I will try it without the link:

<blockquote>Ukraine is home to some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes — at $1.05 per pack — making the country a bonanza for smugglers, whether by glider or more mundane pathways on the ground. Cars and trucks filled with Ukrainian-made Marlboros and Viceroys get waved through border checkpoints by customs guards who seem more than eager to accommodate, for a price. Loads also move by bus and train, bound for other European countries where high taxes make packs cost as much as $5 (Germany) or $10 (United Kingdom).</blockquote> -Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe

<em>Big Tobacco’s Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market
By Vlad Lavrov, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project</em>

I would have no idea what is correct and what is not, but there is something very strange about the way borders are talked about in the West, specifically, American reporting.

Or is this my Rorshach test, where I have to see patterns where none exist? Sometimes a thing just IS?

What's the real deal with the leaky borders?

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 9:41am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

To simplify: People see what they want to see. A Rorschach test.

I'm always writing lists because, in general, I am taught to think of possibilities with the idea that there will be things I cannot understand because medical knowledge is imperfect. Sometimes there are no patterns, or we make patterns because our brains require it. Sometimes we miss patterns, because our brains require it. I dunno.

Madhu (not verified)

Wed, 12/03/2014 - 9:35am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Proxy conflicts and insurgencies when viewed from afar; round and round go the narratives and the ground truth, always difficult. If you were an in an "out" immigrant group during the Cold War, the narratives never talked about anything that you could understand, only one side in a conflict had any real cause for complaint, and you see what you want to see, or you see nothing at all:

<blockquote>For the past four months, Yelena, <strong>83</strong>, has lived in the basement of the Soviet-era House of Culture building with up to 25 of her neighbors from the Petrovka region of Donetsk. The building is ironically located on Lucky Street, less than 10 miles east from where Ukrainian forces are holding a position.

Yelena, who didn’t want to give her last name because she feared reprisal from both the Ukrainians and the rebels controlling the region, ran to the shelter with other neighbors after their streets were hit by shelling in August. She cried when she described how the Russian Orthodox church on her street was hit.</blockquote>

http://america.aljazeera.com/multimedia/2014/11/ukraine-donetsk-dailyli…

<blockquote>While Ukraine's divorce gets ever uglier, the ordinary people of the Donbass focus on survival, on a hand-to-mouth existence, without the means to escape the violence that has torn apart their lives for the last nine months.

One of them, a fragile stooped woman who tells us she is <strong>83</strong>, stands outside the last working Ukrainian bank in Donetsk, as others hammer on its door. Today it too will remain shuttered."I have no money," she says. "I'll probably die because I have nothing to eat."</blockquote>

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-residents-st…

Madhu (not verified)

Tue, 12/02/2014 - 11:22am

You don't have to approve of Putin to see how the seeds have been sown (in many places, Russia and the US, among others) for a new Cold War and how the desire for leadership often means power struggles at the periphery, however periphery is designated (Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, the Pacific "seams"):

<blockquote>Cheney's speech was designed to be provocative, a warning to Moscow not to take good relations with the Bush administration for granted. Two conservative senators, the Republican John McCain and the Democrat Joe Lieberman, have even urged Bush not to attend the summit unless Putin cleans up his act.

<strong>Three factors lie behind the new negativism on Russia: Putin's creeping autocracy; Moscow's international independence; and its growing role as a gas and oil supplier.</srong></blockquote>

Washington's style for overseas regime change is a bit cramped if someone pushes back, yes? And that someone then becomes the devil, even as we work closely with other devils, so to speak.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/comment.russia

This Cold War helps no one, certainly not those in periphery nations. Cheney has very interesting attitudes and relations with the Saudis and I'm not talking the oil connections, there is something a little weird there, isn't there?

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 12/01/2014 - 10:25am

For discussion because emotional ties and habits of mind are complicated things. It's funny, how some people are told to carefully police their emotions toward certain lands of origin when considering American interests, while others are rarely given that advice (and here I mean general categories of immigrants or religions, not any one specific person):

<em>Secretary Pritzkers Emotional Ties to Ukraine</em>

<blockquote><strong>No country today appeals more to the American hero complex than Ukraine: David against the Russian Goliath, the object of Putin aggression for daring to see its future alongside Europe’s free markets.</strong>

BREAK

Penny Pritzker delivered that tough love message in Kiev, the city of her great grandfather’s birth, last week. “President [Petro] Poroshenko said the right things,” the Commerce Secretary, referring to his promise to adopt economic reforms, told me when she returned Friday after stops in Poland and Turkey. “But do they have the will?” That, of course, is a very different question.

Pritzker’s visit may have provided Poroshenko with useful political cover against vested interests protecting the status quo; two of three anti-corruption measures he introduced passed the Parliament. But that’s just a start.

<strong>For Pritzker, the visit packed an emotional punch. The Pritzker family fortune can be traced back to Kiev, where her great grandfather followed his brother’s escape from Tsarist Russia to the United States. The latter, Jewish and a political dissident, was about to be sent to Siberia.</strong></blockquote>

http://fortune.com/2014/10/06/secretary-pritzker-kiev/

During the Cold War, the immigrant group in the West that seemed most pro-Western always had the only legitimacy in any complicated ground conflict according the the Western narrative. Not just the Cold War, obviously. Is it the territorial integrity of Ukraine and European stability that matter most, or are there other emotions involved, in that complicated way even well-meaning people can't always understand? Emotions are one thing, analysis and the sort of analysis that can help a country like Ukraine is a different animal, it needs emotion too, but that emotion should involve something larger than picking one group, and one group only, to love.

Ukrainians of all types should be careful. A certain type of American destroys that which he or she loves the most....Not just Americans fall prey to this, obviously....

To be in an immigrant group that is on the outside of the magic circle is to be ignored, even when the information provided could have helped, really helped, for thirteen, going on fourteen, long years....

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/20/2014 - 10:13am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

I don't get it. The <em>OSCE</em> unable to prevent?

<blockquote>Kanerva's remarks come amid mounting Ukrainian frustration with the OSCE, the main international body tasked with fostering peace in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are battling pro-Russian separatists. Despite the checkpoint mission and a larger special mission launched on the Ukrainian side of the border in March, the OSCE has been unable to prevent separatists from receiving massive amounts of heavy weaponry.</blockquote>

http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-crisis-russia-osce-monitoring-miss…

Well, I'll be, the internationalization and "Kashmir-ization" of Ukraine.

Expanding NATO brings two huge nuclear powers much closer together without any sort of buffer zone. Michael McFaul and similar seem not to understand the nature of accidents which have nothing to do with the moral nature of a cause....

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/20/2014 - 10:02am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

I was partially thinking about the following at War on the Rocks when I wrote my comment:

http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/special-warfare-the-missing-middle-in-…

Am I misreading that article?

The article talks about the tactical versus the strategic and the best success is at the tactical level in Special Warfare so what worries me are the mixed impulses of the American political classes (underscored by our own society's mixed impulses) and the desire to punish nations mixed in with the desire to protect nations. How do we think about this?

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/20/2014 - 9:49am

The following article shows a proxy war on the ground. The powerless always suffer:

<blockquote>There is a genuine animosity among people in Donbass toward the government in Kiev. The National Guard is widely hated; people accuse the army of random shelling. And the withdrawal of benefits and salaries on the cusp of winter has left many in despair. At the same time, people grumble about the inability of the DPR to help them, and lament its lack of basic organization. Some small protests have taken place in towns like Torez, close to where the Malaysian airliner was shot down in July.

While Ukraine's divorce gets ever uglier, the ordinary people of the Donbass focus on survival, on a hand-to-mouth existence, without the means to escape the violence that has torn apart their lives for the last nine months.

One of them, a fragile stooped woman who tells us she is 83, stands outside the last working Ukrainian bank in Donetsk, as others hammer on its door. Today it too will remain shuttered.

"I have no money," she says. "I'll probably die because I have nothing to eat."</blockquote>

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-residents-st…

I talk a lot about cross border support to the Kashmir and Punjab insurgencies (and Afghanistan) around here, but there would be little situation to support initially had local issues not festered, and even if you don't buy that a more competent government might field a more competent military.

I'm always being told that the best research shows proxy wars and insurgencies have to do with internal governance first, and sanctuary or cross-border support second. But that never seems to be the conversation with Eastern Ukraine. Why are we so eager to turn that region into Afghanistan circa 1980s?

Do we want to help these fragile nations, or bleed and box in the Russians? Or are we afraid if we can't have an expanded NATO, that is a sign of American decline and loss of global leadership?

Look at a map, look at our size, look at our population, look at our hemispheric dominance, and look at our Pacific coast. That is dated NATOist thinking but I guess too many Americans are emotionally attached to the idea of being a European power.

I do not understand the border situation at all, and I mean the non-rebel held areas. I just don't get it.

Karzai has this interview on a Polish radio station, is it? Polish soldiers served in Afghanistan and watched a complicated proxy conflict on the ground. What do those young soldiers think, how do they think NATO got it or didn't get it on the ground there (understanding the situations are different in important ways and situations are contingent).

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:51pm

A shorter comment since I seem to confuse people:

If we rush to make Eastern European states (NATO and non-NATO alike) into front-line states in a security competition with Russia, we may end up doing to them what happened to Pakistan during the early Cold War, reforms and changes in governance that need to take place may not take place because the impetus for changing how one thinks about the world just isn't there. Someone will push you into a corner, or you will think that you can always get bailed out by the IMF or whatever.

Think hard, friends in Ukraine and elsewhere. Look at the history of developmentally weak states in the early part of the last Cold War security competition and ask yourself if this is the place you want to put yourself. Fault is not the correct word, I think, instead, what multiple factors brought us to a crisis state and how can it be reversed?

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 12:10pm

Let me try this without the link and see if it works:

<blockquote>A decree posted on the president's website said all state companies, institutions and organizations should end their work within a week and "evacuate workers, with their permission, [and] where possible remove property and documents."

The ruling, which formally asks parliament to revoke the "special status" of the regions, also suggests Ukraine's central bank take measures to close down all banking services in certain parts of separatist-held areas, including card operations.</blockquote>

Moscow Times

On the one hand, I understand the desire to cut off funds for an insurgency, on the other hand, this is a bit like when all those security service people were fired and then what were they going to do in the East, for jobs I mean?

Security without development doesn't make sense but this is different from third party COIN because this is about internal governance and not an outside party.

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:58am

There is an interview in The National Interest that might be of interest:

<blockquote>Former Georgian foreign minister and current chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Georgian parliament Tedo Japaridze is a close observer of these events.</blockquote>

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/tni-interview-the-legacy-mikheil-sa…

In it, he makes the point that a sort of bait or trap was set and the Georgians under Saakashvili unfortunately took the military bait and attacked. What interests me is how we Americans likely reinforced certain Georgian attitudes that only helped further wandering into a trap, just as I am afraid we are doing the same with Ukraine today.

So the point isn't that it is the fault of the Americans for expanding NATO or that Russia is hell-bent on domination, instead it is about good governance and the role security policy takes within good governance, it is informed by the larger whole if it is good policy and governance.

It's so strange, often the very people in DC that would most like to help a certain region or country end up harming it, it's as if the very emotion that causes the interest prevents a calm assessment of the situation.

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 11/17/2014 - 11:46am

I posted the following in another thread but it belongs here too, because the parallels in some sense are quite striking when examining the Western attitudes toward crisis and crisis states (I've edited a bit from the other comments section):

<blockquote>William Easterly once made similar comments to Nancy Birdsall regarding the phenomenon of development aid preventing good governance in the comments section at the Guardian!

This matters for the situation in the Ukraine too because the West--and many of the most hawkish supporters of Ukraine--is now in the process of hurting Ukrainian economic development because it is caught in a security competition with Putin and that is hurting the developmental state to install a militarist strategy.

In this space, the tradition of empathy that is at the corner stone of a certain idea of Special Forces eliteness is in one sense counterproductive, because the empathy only extends toward the security narrative and fails to take into account the larger societal picture. Mirroring, in short, mirroring that is one factor among many in preventing the needed reforms and rethinking that needs to take place.</blockquote>

I hear a lot about Putin-the-KGB-snake here but then I wonder how much is it that people care about Poles or Ukrainians or Georgian or Lithuanians and how much is the desire to punish that will only hurt the very people caught up in the process. In order to protect their own sovereignty, the Ukrainians have many internal reforms to make and instead of improving the situation for the military or the Border Forces, they are caught in a certain kind of targeting strategy that is hurting their own people in the East too, and then one wonders what this is all really about, the egos of men (or women), or actually providing help to people that need it.

This is also the problem with the "but if NATO hadn't expanded, it would have been harder for border states," because it shows me that people haven't done their homework. There were many other plans for defense of these states discussed during the 90's, quite robust plans too.

Madhu (not verified)

Fri, 11/14/2014 - 12:18pm

War on The Rocks has the following in its weekly roundup:

<blockquote>Julie Ioffe and Linda Kinstler explain that the West is tired and bored with Ukraine, while Europe is reluctant to extend its embrace to a penniless, conflict-ridden country.</blockquote>

http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/weekend-reading-november-14-16/

I think the very rhetoric that Ioffe and others have used has contributed to this process. It's not so much boredom as wariness and that is what happens when over-the-top rhetoric and the desire for crusades as an activist overtake quality analysis. Russian actions are a concern, there is clearly a complicated proxy conflict going on, yet in describing everything in the most simplistic and hyperbolic ways, Ioffe and others undercut their own credibility. Activists are rarely good analysts, diplomatic, planners, etc., of any kind.

Ever read a young person's CV these days, for any job really? Our educational system and our larger culture so valorizes activism that we've forgotten other people are important too in maintaining a healthy society.

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 10:34am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Was this the article where Yatsenyuk talked about how a wall would allow the free movement of people to the West, meaning, essentially, that Ukraine would tap into the European Union with its borderless ethos and internal migration regimes? Or am I thinking of something else? Well, I don't have a subscription and probably read the whole article as link from Real Clear Defense or something like that.

If fifteen international projects are funding border equipment, where is it? Isn't an invasion the time to step up the pace? I don't get it. I just don't get it.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/yatsenyuk-ukraine-receiving-fin…

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 9:58am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Maybe the brouhaha about Sikorsky and divvying up Ukraine has some merit in thinking about subconscious motivators by many "sides"?:

<blockquote>Pinchuk is the primary funder and organizer of the conference we’re attending—he’s a powerful, rich Ukrainian who, we’re led to believe, is bringing together powerful political-types “to contribute to the effective integration of Ukraine into key international systems.” And he’s a Jew, in a country once known for pogroms and attempts to purge the Jewish people, which itself might be the greatest sign that Ukraine is more integrated than ever before.

It’s called the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, and it’s primarily being held in the beautiful White Hall at the Livadia Palace, where Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill met to divvy up Europe toward the end of World War II. The big round table they gathered around is in the foyer—freeing up space in the White Hall for the global elites, wannabes, and press—far more numerous today than in 1945.</blockquote>

http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/Pinchuk

Power is power, and the powerless suffer. Ever thus.

<blockquote>On October 20, the U.S. Web site Politico wrote that Sikorsky had claimed that Putin had offered Poland a plan to divide Ukraine.

"Some of my words were interpreted in an exaggerated way. I confirm that Poland is not involved in annexations," Sikorsky wrote on Twitter.

"I also remind you that Vladimir Putin publicly called Ukraine an artificial state at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008," he added.</blockquote>

http://www.unian.info/politics/998683-sikorski-denies-putin-offered-pol…

Scheming from many different parties (oligarchs, even) that has now backfired on many different parties?

Madhu's proxy, insurgency and counterinsurgency model: narratives fight and fight and fight it out, while ground truths are much harder to discern.

Many lessons in the insurgency-they-would-not-study-in-the-way-it-could-be-studied.

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 11/13/2014 - 9:35am

Wow. The poor Ukrainians. They really are being "Kashmir-ized" --in a sense-- and many internal and external parties are contributing to this phenomenon: Russia, NATO, European/Eastern European nations aspiring to be local or European hegemons, various internal parties.

Every time the US wants more sanctions, the news of an invasion hits the American papers. It's an obvious enough pattern, except that most people don't really pay attention, or allow their passions to carry them away, so the patterning works in its imprinting on the American people.

Brennan and acolytes really can't do anything but 'offensive operations' and targeting in terms of visualizing strategy and transmitting this to allies.

Or perhaps they can. Budgeting follows threats, except, if anyone was really interested in territorial sovereignty, this would be one of the first places to pay attention.

<blockquote>“The idea is not just to build [these trenches], but do so in a way that the [Russian] border patrol knows that we will defend ourselves,” said Makarova, who has been volunteering at the border since last February. “We want them to know that they [Russians] will not be met here with open arms.”

For regular army troops stationed in the area, Sunday visits by volunteers can provide a welcome diversion from a tense, yet dreary routine: the border around Kharkiv has been quiet since the outbreak of upheaval in eastern Ukraine, yet the potential for trouble is high, and troops remain on alert.

Dmitry, a 19-year-old soldier, said volunteers were making critical contributions. Without them, he suggested, the fighting capacity of the Ukrainian army would be greatly diminished. The army is still not able to provide all its soldiers with some basics, and volunteers are making up the difference. “There are no uniforms, no bullet-proof vests, no equipment,” he said.</blockquote>

http://www.lobelog.com/ukraine-kharkiv-volunteers-shore-up-border-moral…

I wonder if the Ukrainians can escape the traps being set for them? I sincerely hope so.

Madhu (not verified)

Sat, 08/23/2014 - 11:20am

If Russia is such a dire threat that it requires the stationing of missiles and NATO to redouble its efforts, then why the desire to sell them products?

<blockquote>Poland has made a formal request that the EU take Russia before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to overturn its ban on EU food and vegetables.

Reuters reported on Tuesday (19 August) that Poland’s economy ministry had sent a written request for a legal challenge to EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht.

The move is expected to be confirmed by agriculture minister Marek Sawicki and economy minister Janusz Piechociński at a press conference on Wednesday (20 August).

Moscow slapped the one year ban on many food and agriculture imports from the EU, along with the US, Canada, Australia and Norway earlier this month in retaliation against EU sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Poland is likely to be one of the countries hit hardest by the ban. Last year, it exported more than €1 billion of food to Russia, which is its fourth largest market after Germany, the UK and France, with its apple growers, who export around half of their crop to Russia, the main victims.</blockquote>

http://euobserver.com/news/125295

I am sorry, but the rhetoric versus the reality does not instill confidence. Germans are chided for their desire to trade, but this is okay?

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 08/17/2014 - 6:28pm

What is Gen. Breedlove smoking? What happened to all that awesome border training and money the Ukrainians have been getting for the past decade or more?

<blockquote>U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said although NATO had no plans to intervene in non-NATO member Ukraine, NATO countries in eastern Europe needed to start preparing for a possible threat from "little green men" - referring to soldiers in unmarked uniforms.

"The most important work to prepare a nation for the problem of 'little green men', or organizing of Russian (speaking)population, it happens first. It happens now," Breedlove said in an interview published online by German newspaper Die Welt.

"How do we now train, organize, equip the police forces and the military forces of (allied) nations to be able to deal with this?" he said, according to a transcript of his remarks in English provided by NATO.

"If we see these actions taking place in a NATO nation and we are able to attribute them to an aggressor nation, that is Article 5. Now, it is a military response," he said.

NATO's mutual defense clause says an attack on one member state is considered an attack against the alliance as a whole.

The Ukraine crisis has dragged relations between Russia and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War and set off a round of trade restrictions that are hurting struggling economies in both Russia and Europe.

NATO has taken a series of steps to reinforce its military presence in eastern Europe since the crisis began. Longer term measures are expected to be agreed at a NATO summit in Wales in September.</blockquote>

Unbelievable. NATO is such a disaster, in Afghanistan and in Europe. Completely incompetent. They are going to start a hot war between the US and Russia, if the geniuses aren't careful.

And for what?

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-respond-militarily-crimea-style-infiltration…

That's it. Someone with MS shouldn't read about these things, and I can't take it anymore. What a waste, every time I spend any time reading about our alliance structure and the Generals meant to manage them, I just end up in a bad mood. (Not really, because why worry about something over which you have no control?) Go for a run, Madhu, run away from the Borg....

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 08/17/2014 - 5:45pm

I still don't get it. Does everything the NATO proxies within the EU touch turn into dust?

<blockquote>The EU Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine was established in response to the joint letter from the Presidents of Moldova and Ukraine dating from 2 June 2005 calling for additional EU support for capacity building for border management, including customs, on the whole Moldova-Ukraine border, including the border between Ukraine and the separatist Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova, because the Moldovan border authorities are unable to be present there.

On 7 October 2005, a Memorandum of Understanding on the Border Assistance Mission was signed between the European Commission and the governments of Moldova and Ukraine. The official opening ceremony of the EU Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine took place on 30 November 2005.</blockquote>

All this time and effort and money, and, yet....

Must I turn into a mini-intelligence agent for everything because as an American citizen I can't rely on anything in the media or government?

http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/moldova-and-ukraine-…

Yes, who wouldn't be thrilled with this kind of activity on their border with an economic bloc that plays hardball? NATO or its proxies can't fight their way out of a paper bag but they sure are expansive, greedy and never leave anyone alone, EVER.

Meshing ourselves with Brussels forever-and-ever is such a big strategic mistake for Americans....not making an isolationist argument, either, but simply saying there are other ways to relate to Europe. If staying in supposedly prevents conflict, how come we cause so many?

Madhu (not verified)

Thu, 08/14/2014 - 12:45pm

I remain perplexed by the conversation (missiles in Poland! A revived NATO! Sanctions!) when the following is the case:

<blockquote>When Reuters visited this section of border in late July and early August, two Russian border guards emerged from bushes and waved the reporter away. "It's better not to drive here", one said.

The guards denied that armored personnel carriers or tanks had crossed into Ukraine along the rough track.

A kilometer away, on the outskirts of the Russian town of Donetsk, caterpillar treads have left white marks on the roadside.</blockquote>

http://news.yahoo.com/russias-border-ukraine-fighters-military-gear-mov…

Why is Kiev so uninterested in Border control if this is an unconventional fight, an unconventional proxy affair?

I have a hard time taking anything seriously by any of the grandstanders of NATO or otherwise. What game is being played on the American people this time?

But borders and their nature are never a strong suit of the American Foreign Policy Apparatus, whether Syria or AFPak or our own.

Madhu (not verified)

Sun, 07/27/2014 - 1:49pm

What could go wrong with sending more arms or money into this, whether from the Russian side or the American/NATO/EU side:

<blockquote>Ukraine’s coalition collapsed after two parties quit during a months-long pro-Russian insurgency in the nation’s east that downed a Malaysian Air jet last week.

The UDAR and Svoboda parties said they’d leave the government and seek a snap parliamentary ballot, according to statements today on their websites. Under the constitution, the former Soviet republic has 30 days to form a new coalition or it must call early elections. The existing cabinet will remain in place in the meantime.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s government, took over the country in February after pro-European street protests prompted Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. Yanukovych’s successor, billionaire Petro Poroshenko, had pledged to call parliamentary elections this year.</blockquote>

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/ukraine-coalition-government-c…

Good job with the billions in democracy promotion, Freedom House and USIP and Dept. State and whatever else. Everything you touch turns to gold, Ms. Nuland! Why didn't I skip med school and get a BA from Brown and move to DC and play policy wonk for hire!

NATO is just the best, we Americans should totally and forever be subservient to Brussels when we aren't busy trying to be a hegemony through NATO all while pissing everyone else off. Let's keep paying for all of it even when the EU gobbles up more and more trade.

Say, it isn't China that is our main trade competition in Africa, Africom! That would be good ole Europe.

Aw, I know there is nothing I can do and DC has got its favorite postings back, the Middle East and Asia are a drag but telling Europeans in nice European nations what to do is such a nicer way to make a living than actually doing real work.

And gee whiz, it's nice to have the Cold War back, isn't it American Army generals! It's like Christmas. No more worrying about winning wars, just ceremonial money spending!

Madhu (not verified)

Tue, 06/17/2014 - 2:13pm

This piece, "British Views on NATO Enlargement" (from 1997, I believe) can be read along with Jill Russell's latest posts at Kings of War:

http://www.nato.int/acad/conf/enlarg97/sharp.htm

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2014/06/what-does-a-committed-strategic-relati…

As uncomfortable as this subject is--that of NATO and the "special relationship" and how it needs to adjust itself for this century--we have to think about it.

But Stephen Walt has written about this, yes? The fact that we are moving away from each other, Europe and the US.

The long term trends are this way, although in the short term the 90's era nostalgia of a Hillary Clinton will continue to hold onto these relationships in a 20th century way, should she become president.

Shame really, we need to readjust--not end--these relationships.
If I haven't been spending as much time on milblogs lately, it's because I have become more interested in the larger context which I think matters more in the long run.

(Yes, yes, I have tried to write something but other things take precedence over my self-education on this subject, Dave :) Who knows? Maybe it will be something more tailored in its way for a medical journal. That would be more to my liking.... :) )

Madhu (not verified)

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 1:47pm

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

So the way this works is that you string people along with promised EU membership and you use it to gain advantage in trade, for domestic partisan reason, to keep the Americans less or more interested, depending on your pecking order in the big three (France, Germany, Britain) or if you are a northern, eastern, or southern European state. Russian threats, while real, are useful for some to extract monies, realize national greatness goals, etc. This combines with American transatlaticism, to which many are wedded for personal and ideological reasons.

If this seems like a particularly bad day to discuss these things, I think it is the only honorable thing to do.

It's simply not true that there is no "Europe" when it comes to defense. It's simply not true. This is a construct that serves various agendas.

Madhu (not verified)

Fri, 06/06/2014 - 1:01pm

Let me try this again:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/should-nato-growa-…

<blockquote>One of those alternative policies has been on Talbott’s desk since early May, in the form of a draft of the article by Dean, with the endorsement of a group of retired senior State Department officials, now numbering eighteen, prominent among them former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Navy, and Ambassador at Large Paul H. Nitze, whom Talbott, in an earlier incarnation, eulogized in The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace, one of the books cited to identify him in The New York Review. Other leading signatories of the letter to Secretary Christopher endorsing this alternative policy are former Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, former Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany Martin J. Hillenbrand, and Ambassador Matlock. Johnson and Matlock also served as ambassadors to Czechoslovakia and Hillenbrand as ambassador to Hungary, and among their co-signatories are two former ambassadors to Poland and former ambassadors to Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania, as well as two former Directors of Policy Planning for the State Department, a post also held by Nitze early in his career. A copy of this letter is appended. (At a news conference in Washington organized by the Arms Control Association on May 17, former Ambassador to the USSR Arthur A. Hartman, Matlock’s predecessor, also declared his opposition to NATO expansion.)

The common elements of the alternative policy endorsed by these critics are simple: accelerate full membership of the European Union and its nascent defense arm, Western European Union (WEU), for the East-Central European states now in the process of qualifying to join those bodies, while maintaining NATO’s “Partnership for Peace,” to which those states, together with Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, all belong. WEU is at a formative stage and is not viewed as a threat by the Russians, while NATO will always remain in their eyes what it was designed to be: a military alliance directed against the Soviet Union and now, by inheritance, against Russia.</blockquote>

European and Transatlantic power politics are sublimated within NATO and the EU, so that I wonder if the US is always aware of how our quest for European hegemony is being hollowed out by alliances trying to confuse us with threats, when, really, they are using the US to pursue other goals within the alliance; money politics, jockeying for position, etc.

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 10:24pm

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

<blockquote>Following Helvey's training, OTPOR launched a massive recruiting campaign. The regime retaliated, beating and arresting scores of activists within a few weeks. Many recalled Helvey's advice not to respond violently to these attacks. The sight of police abusing young nonviolent demonstrators helped to swell OTPOR's ranks into a movement of 70,000 activists. Prominent athletes, representatives of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and even judges joined in. To move the elderly away from their support of Milosevic, OTPOR took up pensioners' causes. They sent flowers to the military on Army Day. Such tactics recruited sympathizers in numbers that would not be apparent until the final days of the regime, when soldiers and police stood by while massive crowds stormed the Serbian parliament.
Iraq

Almost a year after the successful nonviolent Serbian Revolution of 2000, a seminar began planning to oust the Iraqi dictatorship through similar means. It was offered by the Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Freedom House, and the US Institute for Peace, and was followed by a session in Washington in May sponsored by the Iraqi Democratic Institute and Freedom House. Here Helvey's military experience helped persuade skeptical Iraqi exiles that nonviolence is a viable approach.

The Gulf War and the subsequent containment efforts against Iraq, says Helvey, "only dealt with a symptom of the problems posed by Saddam Hussein. It did not solve the problems of regional security, instability, genocide, and tyranny. Since the war ended, tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens have been killed. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent keeping Saddam's aggressive desires in check, and the regime remains unstable."
No to Saddam

Helvey's strongest supporter at the May strategy session was Ismael Zayer, whose campaign was called "No to Saddam." Zayer advocated a counter-referendum to match Saddam's planned October referendum. Unfortunately, his effort was not assisted by other countries and only thousands of Iraqis took part - far short of the millions he had hoped for. Zayer bravely continues working for the nonviolent defeat of the Iraqi dictatorship. He met with European human rights activists and parliamentarians, asking them to send election monitors to future Iraqi elections and to support nonviolent regime change in Iraq, in an approach called "The Third Choice."</blockquote>

http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v19n2p10.htm

And no one thought about the precedents being set, how this might be abused, or what backlash or disorder you might raise up?

This is not my place. Forgive me blog friend carl, I am genuinely sorry for my previous comments, but SNL is correct. I don't just need a fortnight away from this place; I should never return.

What a world.

Madhu (not verified)

Mon, 04/21/2014 - 10:02pm

This letter to the editor from 2008 (in The Washington Post) is interesting in light of Jeremy Kotkin's article in War On The Rocks:

<blockquote>I didn't find Robert Kagan persuasive when he said that what Vladimir Putin, now Russian's prime minister, has to fear from NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia is only democracy, not a military threat ["Ideology's Rude Return," op-ed, May 2]. Mr. Kagan echoed President Bush on the subject in writing, "NATO is less provocative and threatening toward Moscow today than it was in [Mikhail] Gorbachev's time."

Both columnist and president are wrong. Mr. Putin sees the world around his immediate frontiers in a strategic sense of military options. NATO forces are in his face from Murmansk to the Baltic states, Romania and Turkey. Kyrgyzstan, while not in NATO, is certainly an American client with its large U.S. military airfield and staging area at Manas, near the capital. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have pledged to the U.S. various forms of direct military cooperation.

Think about Mr. Putin's reduced military options in backing up Russian policy if Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. Mr. Putin could not be clearer on this point: Russia will not tolerate further NATO expansion eastward. He has stated that to any media outlet that will listen. He has shown his seriousness on this point with stepped-up Cold War-style flights by his Tu-95 Bear bombers over our ships at sea and near Alaska and Great Britain.

We risk a major confrontation by disregarding Mr. Putin's "red line" on this subject.</blockquote>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05

I’ve been digging through Congressional testimony, op-eds, letters to the editors and so on from the 90′s to the present. The number of warnings is amazing. Everyone from Phyllis Schafly to the late Senator Wellstone.

Note, recognizing the complicated multifactorial nature of the current Ukraine crisis is not the same as being an apologist. We have a form of unconventional warfare being practiced on the Ukraine by Russia; and we have a complicated form of political warfare being practiced in the Ukraine by the US, UK, EU and so on. The whole-of-it matters for understanding.

I don't buy the Gene Sharp/USIP/Helvey/NED line. Even if well-meaning, it is picking and choosing politicians within a system which is not democracy promotion. It is violating sovereignty. If done incorrectly, it can add to instability.

I am struck by the one-factor nature of much of the analysis here, the one factor being the presence or absence of the American military. It's too simplistic a formulation and yet is trotted out every time on many a milblog, etc.

Outlaw 09

Tue, 03/18/2014 - 11:08am

To add to the previous comment---if one also listened intently to the Russina he used he in effect displayed arrogance and disdain towards the West and especially the US--this was a dying superpower once again trying to reassert itself onto center stage.

The serious question that the WH has to answer and they know the answer---can one go forward with Russia on the Syrian adventure or the Iranian adventure---my answer based on Putin's own words is a no and that seriously changes the entire complexity of those two issues.

Next question would be in the face of the US/UK and their inability to ensure that a security treaty signed between them and Russia over the Ukraine is not being honored and then the inability of those two countries to enforce that treaty--brings Israel into an interesting place.

Do they trust their security to the US and the international community or for that matter do they trust Palestinians to honor the agreements who have had Russian support in the past?

Really do no think so.

This goes to not really understanding who we are dealing with---this was a translation headline carried by the WP just a few minutes ago;

"Putin says Russia won't take more of Ukraine"

Yes that was buried in his speech ---but then he did a qualifier statement about three minutes later in the speech which in fact declared that he had the moral right/ability to protect all Russians leaving it open ended as to where, when, and how many Russians he needed to defend--when news agencies report on speeches they need to inherently understand the tone, use of the foreign language, and target audiences.

Outlaw 09

Tue, 03/18/2014 - 9:35am

For those that think the Crimean move by Putin was all about "spheres of influence" needed to hear the actual Russian being spoken by Putin especially when he in Russian stated that he will use his power to defend all Russians (voice emphasis-- "on all Russians") from "mistreatment of their language and culture".

If one does not fully understand that it is actually all about the reestablishment of the former SU first in Georgia, then Moldavia and now Crimea---should rethink and restudy the old Cold War concept of "spheres of influence". Heck even Mexico could make an argument to protect San Antonio TX.

In effect he argued a double standard approach going forward---he was highly agitated about NATO coming in the Ukraine "threatening Russia", but did not utter a word about Hungary, Poland and the Baltics who are in NATO and on his borders and have Russian ethnic minorities "who when he wants to declare" "mistreated Russian minorities needed defending" he in theory can openly now move into those countries.

The not to subtle threat is now in the open---the rebuilding of the former SU in it's old boundaries.

This is effect now a fully established Doctrine going forward.

The soft power diplomatic approach is now fully dead and the only response can in effect be an economic war since the military potion is off the table.

The only thing that will get his attention is Germany fully going to the economic card which there are now voices demanding inside Germany.

This is what happens when soft power discards the future use of a military power projection as part of diplomacy which virtually disappeared in Europe 10 years ago as US leadership "assumed" there was "peace" in Europe.

Who would have believed in the 21st century boundaries will be redrawn based now on culture/ethnicity/languages---welcome to the next 365 hot spots in the world as Putin has now shown the way forward for other countries to follow in his footsteps.

carl

Tue, 03/18/2014 - 11:21am

In reply to by Madhu (not verified)

Madhu:

I am having some trouble figuring out what you are trying to say but near as I can tell it is variation on the very old argument that Putin is cross with us and conquering territory because we provoked him by not being nice enough. The only way you can fully test that position is to yield completely to his wishes. If you're wrong, eventually you will run out of Poles and Latvians to sacrifice and the hangman will come for you. If you're right, everything will be hunky dory. You are betting on the character of a KGB killer. I think your odds poor.