Russia Threatens War If Sweden Joins NATO

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

Neither has the US. Iraq was a complete pack of lies. Saddam was in fact a client of the US. The US is all over Asia and moving its NATO alliance east. And lately with Syria its nothing but provocation that Russia has clearly had enough of tolerating.

If only I'd thought to put "European" in my post. Wait, I did.

I respect well established borders.

Nice. Clearly Putin doesn't.

However borders drawn up in a power vacuum with haste need a moratorium.

Or some respect for minorities. Because it's a given that there will be mixing. So perhaps we should drop the "blut-und-boden" thinking and accept the 21st century fact there will be people of different cultures living among us?

Anyway, if you're hunky-dory with the annexation of Czechoslovakia, I suspect we won't see eye-to-eye on much.

[Packard fan]

This I'll say: fences and borders CAN make good neighbors between different cultures. NOT "races" but cultures. Germany and Poland in 2015 are more alike than the US and Mexico are today. All 4 places have different languages and so on. But there's no gate between Germany and Poland because both countries don't "need" it anymore. OTOH: Mexico does need to be fenced off till it gets its act together, which may never happen with the drug cartels.

[gwynedd1]

Originally Posted by Dane_in_LA

If only I'd thought to put "European" in my post. Wait, I did.

I see you decided to make side remarks loosing all sense of decorum. Ya punked out, Son. You need to be pretty witty to carry on like that.

and uh, you mean like since the break up of Yugoslavia? Europeans were sending arms to my long lost relatives. And its also the case that Keiv took the fighting to the East.

Source:

How West Let Croatia Sneak Arms - tribunedigital-chicagotribune

An Italian magistrate said the smuggling was so rampant that directors at Rome's Cinecitta movie studios who thought they were importing old Soviet tanks for their film sets saw the weapons head instead to Croatia.
"I am convinced there are forces that do not want us to make any headway or investigate this smuggling," said Romano Dolce, assistant attorney general of the city of Como in northern Italy.

See where Putin gets his ideas?

Nice. Clearly Putin doesn't.

Well established borders don't turn into war zones immediately when they are drawn. That was the case in Gerogia. Ukraine was all but a hot war since 1990s. Their politics was based on it form the beginning. It never worked which was why the Maiden protest happened. The country never worked. It never will until its broken up into small enough and homogeneous regions to support republican government.

Or some respect for minorities. Because it's a given that there will be mixing. So perhaps we should drop the "blut-und-boden" thinking and accept the 21st century fact there will be people of different cultures living among us?

I will count you among the many who cannot tell the difference between a melting pot and Balkanization. When a few families move in they essentially blend in. When a hundred thousand move into an area with irreconcilable differences with their neighbours, its Balkanized.

However I see that it is consistent with your rigid, rule based line of thinking. You figure we have many cultures and people live among many different cultures and therefore its always good. I sort of think a pork barbecue next to a mosque might have compatibly problems if both cultures are not assimilated into the US ideal of governance.

The Hmong in St Paul or Sudanese in Omaha clearly come at a cost. The only chance of success is to limit the number, and more importantly, part of a much bigger state swamping any local rivalry. In larger numbers and without a central state it would be chaos beyond all recognition. That little segregation problem in the South would have been a bloody hot war if it were not part of the US. That's Asia without Moscow.

Anyway, if you're hunky-dory with the annexation of Czechoslovakia, I suspect we won't see eye-to-eye on much.

I see you have entered the factually vacant and pointless bickering phase typical of weak arguments. I say for a third time my problem was with my own state's use of propaganda tactics. However the map justifies the means as you say.

I am hunky-dory with the break up of Czechoslovakia though. Why was that ignored in Ukraine when the East asked for it 1993?

Speaking of that "well established borders", after WWI they were arranged at Versailles, more or less stabbing Germany in the back . That it resulted in some 60 million deaths. Good cartography though.


I think there needs to be a moratorium on newly created states, not maintaining the the state at all costs.

You don't which I guess you suppose to be some greater good.


To each his own but do try to maintain some civility.

[WIHS2006]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

I think there needs to be a moratorium on newly created states, not maintaining the the state at all costs.

The world has waaaaaay too many failed nations and I think it's a major cause of instability and tensions. The biggest geopolitical disaster of the post 1945 world was not the fall of the USSR as Putin claims but rather decolonization. We created all these nations that simply cannot stand on their own.

Now, I am NOT opposed to Russia annexing Crimea or even all of Ukraine. I just believe it needs to occur under a free and fair referendum. When the United States annexed the Northern Mariana Islands in 1978 we dident send a carrier battle group to Saipan and say "ok now we're in charge now", the islands were under a US administered UN mandate (aka "Trust Territory") and so we worked with the UN to create a democratic process that presented the islanders with various different choices including independence and they choose integration with the US as a US territory so they can enjoy a status similar to their neighbors in Guam.

[Goinback2011]

Has anyone of the armchair cold warriors been following the Ukraine news? Since the coup, it has become a failed state, with a worthless currency, escalating food and commodity prices and government corruption surpassing previous corrupt leadership. People are demonstrating and starving. And this is in Western Ukraine. The East is being attacked. It's everything one could expect from an Obama- led foreign policy intervention.

America has no business intervening there or restarting the Cold War.

[Dane_in_LA]

Originally Posted by gwynedd1

To each his own but do try to maintain some civility.

Yeah, I have this weird propensity for getting hot under the collar when people brush off warfare as justifiable as long as someone is willing to stand along the march route and shout "Hurrah!".

Just one personality flaw among, I'm sure, many.