Stalin managed lots of things; like selling Germany steel up until the morning of the German invasion. Churchill famously reminded Stalin of this fact when Stalin went into one of his infamous telegraph tirades demanding more of the Arctic convoys shipping materials from the US and Canada to Britain be redirected to Russia.
Russia did not survive WWII all on its own. It too was a beneficiary of Western aid; both directly via Lend Lease, as well as aid in gaining control of the Trans-Iranian Railroad, and ultimately opening the Second Front with the Normandy Invasion, which finally forced Germany into the nightmare two-front war.
Russia has never been as invincible as it liked to portray itself. Even when it ultimately drove out invaders, the costs were massive.
The United States, via NATO, has underwritten European freedom for six decades. Why should that stop now? It's in the US's interest to keep Europe free and peaceful.
I'm not, at this juncture, suggesting military intervention; not directly anyways. But certainly help Ukraine through military aid defends its sovereignty and integrity seems a good idea, as well as pushing Europe for harsh sanctions.
With Russian units now making incursions outside of Crimea, I think it's only a matter of time before Europe goes along with the US plan for harsher sanctions.
The are a number of questions about the validity of the vote. Considering Crimea's ethnic makeup, 95% approval seems a questionable number. No international observers of any note during a referendum that carves out a chunk of a sovereign state. A sovereign state, I might add, that Russia itself guaranteed the territorial integrity of in the 1990s.
If Russia gets away with this, it will essentially mean that anywhere in Europe where there is an ethnic Russian population of any note, the country in question will be forced to either tow Moscow's line, or risk a Russian invasion to "liberate" the ethnic Russians.
The list of buyers isn't that big either, particularly if full blown sanctions are put in place. I guess China could buy them, but with its own economic slowdown, does it really want to be saddled with more US currency?
As ugly as it may be, fundamentally the US economy is far more capable of absorbing a major blow like this than the Russian economy. But the direct blow wouldn't be that big for the US. For Europe, on the other hand...
The US has been putting an enormous amount of pressure on the EU directly to produce harsh sanctions against Russia, but even the US's most staunch ally in Europe; the UK, is very nervous about "going all the way" and all but shutting down trade with Russia.
The UN vote was a PR stunt. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, so the UN is castrated before the diplomats even have their first cup of coffee. The real sanctions will come when the EU finally admits that Russia isn't leaving Crimea, and worse, is likely eyeing up other parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. Since Europe is one of Russia's biggest buyers of natural gas, such sanctions will hurt very badly.
Wipe out its major cities, and whatever functioning infrastructure remains, it will be heavily damaged and the Russian state will be compromised. Hitler almost managed it, but didn't have the resources to pull it off. Even with Russia's natural protections, Germany came damned close to driving the Soviet regime east of the Urals.
All these war games were played out half a century ago. In an open exchange of ICBMs, both countries, and pretty much everyone in between, gets all but wiped out. That the Russian leadership might hole up in some Siberian outpost is a given, but by the same token the Continental US is a big fucking place too, and you don't think the plans are still on the books to move the Executive, Judicial and enough for the Legislative for a quorum to some undisclosed location?
A major nuclear exchange between Russia and the US would be catastrophic for both countries, and I doubt whatever crawled out of the glowing rubble of such an exchange would much resemble the two nations that went in.
This obsession with "moral standing" is ludicrous. Do you think the British Empire had heap loads of moral standing on September 1, 1939? Do you think the US and the USSR had barrels of "moral standing" hanging around when they joined the fight against the Nazis?
Nations do shit things, sometimes for perceived benefit, or simply out of greed. If we allowed every ill actions we had done in the past hold us back, no one would ever intervene when some other nation state violated the general rules of international conduct?
Russia signed an agreement in the 1990s guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine's nuclear stockpiles. Thus, even excluding any notions of territorial integrity that have been a part of international law since the end of WWII, Russia is in violation of its own treaty with Ukraine.
So yes, it sucks ass that the US invaded Iraq, but do you seriously want the US to sit in the corner and refuse to come out when Russia starts enlarging itself with trumped up referendums, because a decade ago it did a naughty thing?
And therein lies the problem. The US is far better insulated from the blowback of severe sanctions. Europe, because of its heavy reliance on Russian gas, feels much more vulnerable. My understanding is the EU is stalling for spring, when weather will be warmer and demand is lower, so as to spare its citizens the pain of much higher energy prices (or even potential shortages).
Oh come on. Everyone knew Russia was going to be a problem. There was debates during the Clinton years about the amount of aid the US should be sending to Russia, but it was decided it was better to secure former Soviet nuclear stockpiles than to allow bandits and oligarchs to start selling them off for a quick buck.
The West didn't intervene in the Prague Spring, and they won't likely directly intervene now. Ukraine isn't worth the pain of open warfare.
Beyond that, the US has been for weeks now trying to push for vast overarching sanctions. It's the EU that lacks the backbone. For full sanctions to really work, it has to be both the US and the EU.
A few ICBMs aimed at key Russian cities and I'd say the Russian state is in serious trouble.
This is why no one did it during the cold War, and why no one will do it now. It's just posturing, more likely for the benefit of any Russians who might be thinking that Putin may have bitten off more than he can chew.
How would Russia survive it better when it relies upon energy exports to keep its economic ship afloat? Guess what the first victim of a major economic slowdown is...
Have you thought about the costs to Russia? Such a mass sell off would indeed slaughter the price of the dollar, and thus would cut the value of Russia's greenback reserves enormously. Sure the US and the rest of the global economy would be in agony, but Russia would have cut off its own nose despite its face.
Russia is not some infinitely powerful state. By and large, it's a petro-state, and any move that causes precipitous global economic decline will do it significant damage in the process.
Human culture existed for thousands of years before copyright, and during that long expanse there has been no lack of music, drama, prose, poetry, painting and sculpture. Strangely enough "content creators" did make a living.
They seem pretty certain now that plane flew for five to seven hours and they seem to have a very general idea of possible flight paths. The question of immediate concern was this a theft for the purposes of a mass murder of 230+ people, or to gain a large jet for some other purpose.
Because of course we can just keep doing what we're doing forever...
I don't know what's more pathetic; your belief that the universe can be forestalled by your ideology, or your tacit belief that our civilization is protected from the consequences of its action by magic.
Translation: I'm a Redmond shill trying to sound reasonable, but I can't help but make blatantly pro-Redmond statements like "significantly better than a comparative Tablet OS"
Do you have any fucking shame? More importantly, do you think we're fucking idiots that we don't recognize you for who you are?
Metro has a low market share; as in most users are happy with the classic desktop, and RT devices are such an insignificant market share that why would anyone bother developing for it? Besides, there are enough common UI toolkits for Linux and Windows that I doubt there's that much additional support involved.
Face it, Metro is a dismal failure on every front.
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Stalin managed lots of things; like selling Germany steel up until the morning of the German invasion. Churchill famously reminded Stalin of this fact when Stalin went into one of his infamous telegraph tirades demanding more of the Arctic convoys shipping materials from the US and Canada to Britain be redirected to Russia.
Russia did not survive WWII all on its own. It too was a beneficiary of Western aid; both directly via Lend Lease, as well as aid in gaining control of the Trans-Iranian Railroad, and ultimately opening the Second Front with the Normandy Invasion, which finally forced Germany into the nightmare two-front war.
Russia has never been as invincible as it liked to portray itself. Even when it ultimately drove out invaders, the costs were massive.
The United States, via NATO, has underwritten European freedom for six decades. Why should that stop now? It's in the US's interest to keep Europe free and peaceful.
I'm not, at this juncture, suggesting military intervention; not directly anyways. But certainly help Ukraine through military aid defends its sovereignty and integrity seems a good idea, as well as pushing Europe for harsh sanctions.
With Russian units now making incursions outside of Crimea, I think it's only a matter of time before Europe goes along with the US plan for harsher sanctions.
Hawking radiation?
The are a number of questions about the validity of the vote. Considering Crimea's ethnic makeup, 95% approval seems a questionable number. No international observers of any note during a referendum that carves out a chunk of a sovereign state. A sovereign state, I might add, that Russia itself guaranteed the territorial integrity of in the 1990s.
If Russia gets away with this, it will essentially mean that anywhere in Europe where there is an ethnic Russian population of any note, the country in question will be forced to either tow Moscow's line, or risk a Russian invasion to "liberate" the ethnic Russians.
The list of buyers isn't that big either, particularly if full blown sanctions are put in place. I guess China could buy them, but with its own economic slowdown, does it really want to be saddled with more US currency?
As ugly as it may be, fundamentally the US economy is far more capable of absorbing a major blow like this than the Russian economy. But the direct blow wouldn't be that big for the US. For Europe, on the other hand...
The US has been putting an enormous amount of pressure on the EU directly to produce harsh sanctions against Russia, but even the US's most staunch ally in Europe; the UK, is very nervous about "going all the way" and all but shutting down trade with Russia.
The UN vote was a PR stunt. Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council, so the UN is castrated before the diplomats even have their first cup of coffee. The real sanctions will come when the EU finally admits that Russia isn't leaving Crimea, and worse, is likely eyeing up other parts of southern and eastern Ukraine. Since Europe is one of Russia's biggest buyers of natural gas, such sanctions will hurt very badly.
Wipe out its major cities, and whatever functioning infrastructure remains, it will be heavily damaged and the Russian state will be compromised. Hitler almost managed it, but didn't have the resources to pull it off. Even with Russia's natural protections, Germany came damned close to driving the Soviet regime east of the Urals.
All these war games were played out half a century ago. In an open exchange of ICBMs, both countries, and pretty much everyone in between, gets all but wiped out. That the Russian leadership might hole up in some Siberian outpost is a given, but by the same token the Continental US is a big fucking place too, and you don't think the plans are still on the books to move the Executive, Judicial and enough for the Legislative for a quorum to some undisclosed location?
A major nuclear exchange between Russia and the US would be catastrophic for both countries, and I doubt whatever crawled out of the glowing rubble of such an exchange would much resemble the two nations that went in.
This obsession with "moral standing" is ludicrous. Do you think the British Empire had heap loads of moral standing on September 1, 1939? Do you think the US and the USSR had barrels of "moral standing" hanging around when they joined the fight against the Nazis?
Nations do shit things, sometimes for perceived benefit, or simply out of greed. If we allowed every ill actions we had done in the past hold us back, no one would ever intervene when some other nation state violated the general rules of international conduct?
Russia signed an agreement in the 1990s guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine's nuclear stockpiles. Thus, even excluding any notions of territorial integrity that have been a part of international law since the end of WWII, Russia is in violation of its own treaty with Ukraine.
So yes, it sucks ass that the US invaded Iraq, but do you seriously want the US to sit in the corner and refuse to come out when Russia starts enlarging itself with trumped up referendums, because a decade ago it did a naughty thing?
And therein lies the problem. The US is far better insulated from the blowback of severe sanctions. Europe, because of its heavy reliance on Russian gas, feels much more vulnerable. My understanding is the EU is stalling for spring, when weather will be warmer and demand is lower, so as to spare its citizens the pain of much higher energy prices (or even potential shortages).
They may be at times corrupted by it, but if you look at actual state-controlled media outlets in countries like Russia, there's no comparison.
Oh come on. Everyone knew Russia was going to be a problem. There was debates during the Clinton years about the amount of aid the US should be sending to Russia, but it was decided it was better to secure former Soviet nuclear stockpiles than to allow bandits and oligarchs to start selling them off for a quick buck.
The West didn't intervene in the Prague Spring, and they won't likely directly intervene now. Ukraine isn't worth the pain of open warfare.
Beyond that, the US has been for weeks now trying to push for vast overarching sanctions. It's the EU that lacks the backbone. For full sanctions to really work, it has to be both the US and the EU.
A few ICBMs aimed at key Russian cities and I'd say the Russian state is in serious trouble.
This is why no one did it during the cold War, and why no one will do it now. It's just posturing, more likely for the benefit of any Russians who might be thinking that Putin may have bitten off more than he can chew.
How would Russia survive it better when it relies upon energy exports to keep its economic ship afloat? Guess what the first victim of a major economic slowdown is...
Have you thought about the costs to Russia? Such a mass sell off would indeed slaughter the price of the dollar, and thus would cut the value of Russia's greenback reserves enormously. Sure the US and the rest of the global economy would be in agony, but Russia would have cut off its own nose despite its face.
Russia is not some infinitely powerful state. By and large, it's a petro-state, and any move that causes precipitous global economic decline will do it significant damage in the process.
Human culture existed for thousands of years before copyright, and during that long expanse there has been no lack of music, drama, prose, poetry, painting and sculpture. Strangely enough "content creators" did make a living.
They seem pretty certain now that plane flew for five to seven hours and they seem to have a very general idea of possible flight paths. The question of immediate concern was this a theft for the purposes of a mass murder of 230+ people, or to gain a large jet for some other purpose.
Because nature has shit loads of fusion reactors all over the planet that go critical all the time.
So you don't think using resources at sustainable levels has merit, or not doing so will eventually lead to depletion and potential collapse?
Survival of H. sapiens != survival of civilization
Because of course we can just keep doing what we're doing forever...
I don't know what's more pathetic; your belief that the universe can be forestalled by your ideology, or your tacit belief that our civilization is protected from the consequences of its action by magic.
Maybe they're one and the same view.
Translation: I'm a Redmond shill trying to sound reasonable, but I can't help but make blatantly pro-Redmond statements like "significantly better than a comparative Tablet OS"
Do you have any fucking shame? More importantly, do you think we're fucking idiots that we don't recognize you for who you are?
Metro has a low market share; as in most users are happy with the classic desktop, and RT devices are such an insignificant market share that why would anyone bother developing for it? Besides, there are enough common UI toolkits for Linux and Windows that I doubt there's that much additional support involved.
Face it, Metro is a dismal failure on every front.