Month: March 2014

Quote of the Day on the Ukraine

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Courtesy of Ian Welsh:

I will be frank: the West needs to stop fomenting these revolutions.  Russia is not going to allow NATO to creep up to their border without taking action.  You’d have to be crazy to think that Russia was going to allow the Ukraine, including Crimea, to become part of NATO, and yes, that was the West’s (or rather, America’s) endgame.  (The Europeans think the Americans are crazy to be baiting the bear like this.  But the Europeans need Russian natural gas.)

He also notes that since 1991, the official public spending on changing the Ukraine’s government has been 5 billion dollars.

By comparison in 2010 California Senate race Barbara Boxer Spent $29,537,796.00, and Carly Fiorina Spent $21,521,397.00, for total spending of $51,059,193.00, (Link), and California’s population is 37,253,959, so the spending was $1.37 per person.

So if you took the $5 billion that was spent over the last 23 years on the 44,573,205 residents of the Ukraine, you get $4.88 per person per year.

And this is in a place where the media market for the whole country has got to be considerably less than that of the Bay Area.

And BTW, much of this money is going to the Neo-Nazi Svoboda party and its accompanying Pravyi Sektor militia, which payed a large role in the current revolution.

OK, I Don’t Have Any Special Insights, But Here are My Unspecial Insights On the Ukraine

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First, as in Georgia, the Russian operation was well considered and well executed. This was a tougher job than was done in Georgia, because as I noted at the time of that invasion, there was months of Georgian preparation for their attack on Sough Ossetia, and the Georgian military had been completely penetrated by the Russians, so the Russian forces had months to prepare.

In this case, it was all pulled together in about 1½ weeks:

At first, it wasn’t clear who exactly the armed men were—spotted at airports in Sevastopol and Simferopol overnight on Feb. 28. But on March 1, the Russian senate unanimously approved a request from Pres. Vladimir Putin to use the military “on the territory of Ukraine pending the normalization of the social and political situation in that country.”

 The operation was already underway. Russian forces had launched a coordinated takeover of key sites, including airports, government offices, television stations and the two land routes connecting Crimea to the rest of Ukraine.

 Someone sabotaged Ukrtelecom, which provides phone and Internet service to the peninsula.

Well executed, and John Kerry, aka the Clown Prince of Foreign Policy, has a response that is jaw dropping in its hypocrisy:

Secretary of State John Kerry made the round of Sunday shows this morning to condemn Russia’s “incredible act of aggression” in Ukraine, warning Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the country faces harsh economic sanctions from the international community.

 “It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

 But in the seriousness of the situation, the irony of Kerry’s next comments may have gone missed. ”You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” he said.

Yes, that WAS his talking point of the day.

Meanwhile, the Ukranians are mobilizing their military, and a member of their interim government, and a member of the right-wing Svoboda party, Mikhail Golovko, is suggesting that the Ukraine will restore its nuclear arsenal.

Needless to say, this is a complete mess, and there are not a lot of lessons learned at this point.

The only one that immediately comes to mind is that the EU’s hasty moves toward expansion work against its viability and continued existence.  (The start of this crisis was the rejection of an EU deal intended to lead toward Ukrainian accession)

I Take One F%$#ing Day off From Blogging………

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And Putin occupies the Crimea.  The news gods mock me.

Seriously, I’ll have more on the the turmoil around the Black Sea later, but because my kids were in a play, Once Upon a Mattress (Natalie was the Nightingale of Samarkand, and Charlie was in the pit orchestra) over the last two days, I’ve not blogged.

It was a nice production of a rather indestructible play. 

Asacia, who played the female lead Winnifred, cracked some ribs on Thursday, but she could go on, and so could the show.