“Panic in Moscow is hard to spot, but even from 6000 miles away, it’s easy to smell, and the metallic stink of fear is rising off the palace offices of the Russian executive as if from the gurneys in a cancer ward on the morning of an operation.”
Tom Nichols, “Why the Russians Are Panicking Over Flight 17,” The Federalist
President Obama will ask Congress for another $1 billion to improve security in Europe against the threat from Putin. I have no problem with this.
What I do have a problem with is how little the Europeans do for themselves. NATO’s members promised in 2006 to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their militaries, but of 28 members, only Britain, Greece, and Estonia, besides of course the U. S., have met that low standard. Everyone talks about the great trains and inexpensive health care in Europe. Well, that’s because they spend next to nothing on defense, relying too much on us, while our infrastructure is falling apart. If they’re so worried about Putin, they need to stop building their houses of straw and sticks, while we get stuck providing the bricks.
I’m especially looking at you, France. While the French can’t be bothered to defend themselves (again), they also won’t cancel their $1.6 billion sale of warships to Putin. So they make our job tougher and more expensive. You know, Mesdames et Messieurs, it’s your damn continent. We just come over now and then (like 70 years ago today, when our soldiers got slaughtered on your Normandy beaches, while you all hung out in cafes in Paris) to save your sorry behinds.
President Obama has ramped up the sanctions on Russia for its intransigence on Ukraine — he’s added 7 more government officials and 17 companies to the list.
I think he’s right to save the “big guns” of sanctions on entire sectors of the Russian economy for an actual invasion of eastern Ukraine.
Secretary of State John Kerry said today that Russia “has refused to take a single step in the right direction” to defuse the crisis in Ukraine.
Time to forget more talks and apply more sanctions.
“U. S. to Hold Teeny Tiny Military Drills in Poland and Estonia”
Adam Chandler, The Wire
In our defense, I would say that Estonia is a teeny tiny country.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan has joined the governments of Syria and Venezuela in recognizing Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Why are we still giving this guy billions of dollars and letting our sons and daughters die for him? Talk about thick as thieves — Putin and Karzai are quite a pair.
“In the end, Mr. Obama did not see how the pro-Western revolution in Ukraine that toppled a Moscow ally last month would look through Putin’s eyes.”
Peter Baker, “3 Presidents And a Riddle Named Putin,” NYT
Since under the NATO treaty, an attack on any of the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) is considered an attack on the United States, I went back to see how the Senate vote (May 8, 2003) went to admit those countries to NATO.
People, it was 96-0. As if they were naming a post office. No one seems to have thought about if we really want to go to war over the Baltic States.
What troubles me most is that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were part of the old Soviet Union, and not simply Warsaw Pact countries like Poland or Bulgaria. I see a distinction between adding former Warsaw Pact nations to NATO and adding former republics of the USSR. The latter strikes me as in-your-face overreach, NATO on the Russian border, designed to infuriate the Russians and perhaps come back to bite us on the tush.
Okay, we “won” the Cold War, but there’s winning smart and winning dumb. The Treaty of Versailles was winning dumb. Expanding NATO as far as we did may have been winning dumb too.
Okay, here’s a weird one for you. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, is blaming Crimea on Edward Snowden: “He’s actually supporting, in an odd way, this very activity of brazen brutality and expansion of Russia.”
Oh, please — If Snowden were still toiling away quietly for the NSA in Hawaii, Pootie-Poot would still have taken Crimea.
Ukraine’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyk has signed the “association” agreement with the European Union that Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign, leading to his ouster and Russia’s seizing of the Crimea.
It is just a political agreement, not a trade agreement, so it’s a long way from Ukraine’s actually joining the EU.
Embattled Farmers 