Are we on the verge of World War III ?

[HanoiVillan]

47 minutes ago, Awol said:

 

Trying to bring Ukraine into the EU and NATO was a hubristic provocation to be sure, but Ukraine is still a sovereign state entitled to organise its external relationships as it chooses.

Of course, but we didn't have to agitate for them to join NATO. 

[villakram]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Of course, but we didn't have to agitate for them to join NATO. 

Or support a coup! 

Edited October 27, 2016 by villakram
edit: all the silly whitespace

[villakram]

2 hours ago, Awol said:

Why is NATO putting troops into Eastern Europe? Is it the fact Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, annexed Crimea then invaded and continues to this day a war in Eastern Ukraine?

Maybe the fact Russia has formed 3 new Rifle Divisions (45-55,000 soldiers) and based them up against the Baltic states? 

Or maybe the fact the Russian airforce is illegally penetrating the airspace of the Baltic states, Sweden and the Nordic countries on a near daily basis in a transparent attempt at intimidation?

Then there's the cyber attack against Estonia, the kidnap and abduction of Latvian security officers from inside their own country, the transfer of new tactical nuclear missiles into Kaliningrad.. and on it goes. 

Russia has changed the borders of Europe by force for the first time since WW2 and ripped up the post war peace settlement. The seriousness of that has been down played in the media but it's fundamentally challenging the security architecture of Europe. NATO  troops are now in Eastern Europe at the host government's request, because they are afraid.

Trying to bring Ukraine into the EU and NATO was a hubristic provocation to be sure, but Ukraine is still a sovereign state entitled to organise its external relationships as it chooses.

Blaming the pattern of behaviour above on the Americans and the West doesn't seem to have any logical basis at all.

Factually incorrect Awol.

Georgia: They moved first and got squished. They may have been provoked but they screwed the pooch big time. This may have been in no small part due to their alleged belief that NATO/US would cover their interests/asses. Of course, the Russians knew this too, but changing facts on the ground is hard, e.g., Israel/Palestine.

Kaliningrad: Russia moves it's armed forces around inside it's own borders. Since when do we get to say what happens inside other countries. The US has nuclear weapons stationed all over Europe. Should Russia just do nothing while a military alliance whose explicit strategic objective is the containment/defeat of Russia, makes aggressive moves on its border. Now, one could argue about why the hell does Russia own Kaliningrad, but that's a different question entirely.

Ukraine: It was a coup. It should not have been, as the legal process was being followed until suddenly and for somewhat mysterious reasons it wasn't. This is black and white. Are we ok we Coup's now? Or is it only in nations with strategic importance and/or resources. Given the coup, and the geo-strategic importance of Crimea, any other action would have been willfully negligent leadership by Putin/Russia.

Borders: Are you serious or some sort of paid troll? E.g., Yugoslavia. 

Syria: Geopolitical ally being undermined by their geopolitical nemesis. It should be noteworthy that China has decided to side with the Syrian sovereign in this case.

Putin is no angel in any sense whatsoever, but to see the actions of Russia purely as anything other than strategically realistic and sensible is blinkered and willfully naive thinking.

The Asian landmass is once again returning to the center of power. This is the normal order of things as power is proportional to the number of humans (which are a proxy for resources). The classical west must look in from the outside here and the US in particular are not at all happy about this as the DOD "thinkers" still live in cold-war US pre-eminence land.

Edited October 27, 2016 by villakram

[Awol]

6 hours ago, villakram said:

Factually incorrect Awol.

Okay...

Quote

Georgia: They moved first and got squished. They may have been provoked but they screwed the pooch big time. This may have been in no small part due to their alleged belief that NATO/US would cover their interests/asses. Of course, the Russians knew this too, but changing facts on the ground is hard, e.g., Israel/Palestine.

Georgia did not invade Russia, if you have other evidence it did then please share.

Quote

Kaliningrad: Russia moves it's armed forces around inside it's own borders. Since when do we get to say what happens inside other countries. The US has nuclear weapons stationed all over Europe. Should Russia just do nothing while a military alliance whose explicit strategic objective is the containment/defeat of Russia, makes aggressive moves on its border. Now, one could argue about why the hell does Russia own Kaliningrad, but that's a different question entirely.

Yes Russia can move its armed forces as it wishes within its own borders, but pushing 50,000 men up against the border of the Baltic states in the context of its other actions and threats (mentioned in my first post) is very aggressive. 

For NATO to respond by putting a symbolic footprint on the ground to show solidarity is a minimalist gesture the alliance has to make so as to reassure the threatened members.

Quote

Ukraine: It was a coup. It should not have been, as the legal process was being followed until suddenly and for somewhat mysterious reasons it wasn't. This is black and white. Are we ok we Coup's now? Or is it only in nations with strategic importance and/or resources.

It would have been better if the Ukrainians had sorted out their domestic troubles by constitutional means I agree, but they were still the domestic affairs of Ukraine. By and large it was the protesters being killed by the security forces that led to the flight of the deeply corrupt President Yanukovych. 

That didn't & still doesn't justify the subsequent and ongoing Russian invasion of the country. 

Quote

 

Given the coup, and the geo-strategic importance of Crimea, any other action would have been willfully negligent leadership by Putin/Russia.

You have the nerve to call me a troll and then write that tripe in the same post?! Invading, annexing and incorporating the territory of another country into your own isn't prudent or fair do's, its changing the borders of Europe by force. That is not, by any measure, 'okay', it is unique in post WW2 European history & a very worrying precedent.

Quote

Borders: Are you serious or some sort of paid troll? E.g., Yugoslavia. 

Former Yugoslavia was a series of civil wars that saw one state broken down into its historical component parts. No terroritory was annexed from FRY's neighbours.

Crimea is the one and only example of occupation - annexation - incorporation in Europe since WW2. If you know of another please name it? 

Quote

Putin is no angel in any sense whatsoever, but to see the actions of Russia purely as anything other than strategically realistic and sensible is blinkered and willfully naive thinking.

The Asian landmass is once again returning to the center of power. This is the normal order of things as power is proportional to the number of humans (which are a proxy for resources). The classical west must look in from the outside here and the US in particular are not at all happy about this as the DOD "thinkers" still live in cold-war US pre-eminence land.

I appreciate that in the minds of some westerners just about any current problem is attributable to Washington and any historical one to the British Empire.

I'm happy to disagree & debate with you/them on that view but no need to call each other names, particularly when you follow it up with historically incontinent 'facts'. Yugoslavia.. lolz.

Edited October 28, 2016 by Awol
Spelling

[maqroll]

The US just sent 5,000 Marines to Norway...This won't kick off soon, but give it ten years. War is coming.

[OutByEaster?]

4 hours ago, Awol said:

Yes Russia can move its armed forces as it wishes within its own borders, but pushing 50,000 men up against the border of the Baltic states in the context of its other actions and threats (mentioned in my first post) is very aggressive. 

For NATO to respond by putting a symbolic footprint on the ground to show solidarity is a minimalist gesture the alliance has to make so as to reassure the threatened members.

I think you have your chicken and egg in the wrong order here - NATO (the US in blue helmets in this case) has been moving progressively East over a number of years and building troop presences in Eastern Europe since Gorbachev agreed to give up East Germany. The Russians will claim, with some justification that they have been forced into defending their borders.

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t would have been better if the Ukrainians had sorted out their domestic troubles by constitutional means I agree, but they were still the domestic affairs of Ukraine. By and large it was the protesters being killed by the security forces that led to the flight of the deeply corrupt President Yanukovych. That didn't & still doesn't justify the subsequent and ongoing Russian invasion of the country. 

 

Well, that depends - if you factor in that the situation in the Ukraine was largely a standard CIA engineered coup to remove a democratically elected leader and replace him with a more pliant right wing government in order to move economic control of the country West, then I think it goes some way toward justifying the subsequent and ongoing Russian invasion of the country - the Russian's will claim, with some justification that they were supporting a destabilised neighbour in order to defend their borders and attempt to bring some order to the region.

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Invading, annexing and incorporating the territory of another country into your own isn't prudent or fair do's, its changing the borders of Europe by force. That is not, by any measure, 'okay', it is unique in post WW2 European history & a very worrying precedent.

You're right, it's not by any measure okay. Changing and incorporating other countries by force is a dangerous and unacceptable act. Changing them by subversion, economic pressure, politics, orchestrated disruption and control of resources is I suppose more acceptable I guess.

Quote

I appreciate that in the minds of some westerners just about any current problem is attributable to Washington.

I think it's fair to place responsibility for a number of the global political problems currently happening at the door of the nation that is pushing an agenda of global control. The project for an American century, for permanent global hegemony, for the removal of any threat to American trade dominance - this isn't a myth, it's not a conspiracy, it's accepted US policy. That comes with natural tensions in regions that are seeking any other sort of approach. Is it not fair to say that the problems with our changing world are to some extent the problems of the nation that is changing that world?

There's an awful lot of finger pointing at nations showing their dangerous psychotic aggression from inside their own borders whilst plucky brave us try to defend the freedom of people in Baltimore and Milton Keynes with massive military bases thousands of miles from the homes were keeping safe and free.

Now that doesn't mean that Putin isn't a semi-psychotic potentially dangerous madman, it doesn't mean that Assad isn't a brutal backward leader, but it does mean that the way in which those things are presented to us is almost entirely dependent on how the aims of those semi-psychotic brutal leaders fit in with the aims of the free world/free market. 

 

[villakram]

12 hours ago, Awol said:

Okay...

Georgia did not invade Russia, if you have other evidence it did then please share.

Yes Russia can move its armed forces as it wishes within its own borders, but pushing 50,000 men up against the border of the Baltic states in the context of its other actions and threats (mentioned in my first post) is very aggressive. 

For NATO to respond by putting a symbolic footprint on the ground to show solidarity is a minimalist gesture the alliance has to make so as to reassure the threatened members.

It would have been better if the Ukrainians had sorted out their domestic troubles by constitutional means I agree, but they were still the domestic affairs of Ukraine. By and large it was the protesters being killed by the security forces that led to the flight of the deeply corrupt President Yanukovych. 

That didn't & still doesn't justify the subsequent and ongoing Russian invasion of the country. 

You have the nerve to call me a troll and then write that tripe in the same post?! Invading, annexing and incorporating the territory of another country into your own isn't prudent or fair do's, its changing the borders of Europe by force. That is not, by any measure, 'okay', it is unique in post WW2 European history & a very worrying precedent.

Former Yugoslavia was a series of civil wars that saw one state broken down into its historical component parts. No terroritory was annexed from FRY's neighbours.

Crimea is the one and only example of occupation - annexation - incorporation in Europe since WW2. If you know of another please name it? 

I appreciate that in the minds of some westerners just about any current problem is attributable to Washington and any historical one to the British Empire.

I'm happy to disagree & debate with you/them on that view but no need to call each other names, particularly when you follow it up with historically incontinent 'facts'. Yugoslavia.. lolz.

 

Sorry, I wrote the troll comment in exasperation at your text. Maybe a smiley rather than trollface might have helped make my intentions clearer. However, you do have a very pro-neocon viewpoint.

Further to the  @OutByEaster? comment above, have a read of the article below. That this actually got published in Foreign Affairs is quite something.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russia-fsu/2014-08-18/why-ukraine-crisis-west-s-fault

"According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine."

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but that should be dependent on some data/logic/facts etc. Sure in the strict sense no outside power annexed any of Yugoslavia, but the war over territory and the demarcation of borders via force that occurred there is very similar, and from what I remember Kosovo didn't appear into existence by the power of fairy dust. 

And start with the wiki page regarding Georgia. They moved first. Yes, I think it's quite clear that they were provoked, but given President Saakashvili's obvious wooing of NATO... once again, what would you expect Russia to do? I personally find the current employer of Saakashvili to be quite enlightening. Governor of Odessa, Ukraine, what a talented guy!

[villakram]

9 hours ago, maqroll said:

The US just sent 5,000 Marines to Norway...This won't kick off soon, but give it ten years. War is coming.

Is Europe occupied?

or maybe this should be at what point do we start to realize or consider that Europe is occupied?

[maqroll]

North Korea just fired a missile over Japan. The entire country was ordered to seek immediate shelter. The NK's have taken it to a new and much more dangerous level now. If WW3 comes, Asia will be a primary battlefield. Indonesia is the most  populous Muslim country in the world, ISIS is in the Philippines, Duterte is a provocative madman as well, India vs China and Pakistan, Tribal war in south central Asia...All of a sudden Vietnam looks like a safe place to be.

[Rugeley Villa]

I think it's all willy waving personally, but one day it could all go off. I'll take refuge up Cannock chase if the day comes.

[hogso]

29 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

I think it's all willy waving personally, but one day it could all go off.

I agree, and if it does go off, it'll go off hard. There will be so much build up that the eventual release will go everywhere. Possibly even cover the entire world.

[Rugeley Villa]

3 minutes ago, hogso said:

I agree, and if it does go off, it'll go off hard. There will be so much build up that the eventual release will go everywhere. Possibly even cover the entire world.

Would we be safe 

[Demitri_C]

I think those that dismiss this are burying their head in the sand. It's sadly looks like it could erupt

[hogso]

13 minutes ago, Rugeley Villa said:

Would we be safe 

I don't think so, no. Each and every one of us could end up with it all over our faces.

[Rugeley Villa]

11 minutes ago, hogso said:

I don't think so, no. Each and every one of us could end up with it all over our faces.

Dads Army rise again.

[villa4europe]

59 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I think those that dismiss this are burying their head in the sand. It's sadly looks like it could erupt

I don't doubt it could but I don't get the notion of "world war" 

im not sat here concerned that within a couple of years I could be conscripted and off fighting Russians or Chinese in a country I've never heard of

if there is a conflict I think it'll be between professional militaries, it'll be North Korea destroyed quite quickly and then back to peacocking, as long as the yanks don't try and take up military positions in North Korea I don't see it going much further than that

[Xela]

I hope there isn't a war... I haven't been to Tokyo or Seoul yet...

[trekka]

It's OK should it turn out to be all out war being the nuclear kind.  I've seen various highly informative motion pictures on the subject - It all turns out well for everyone concerned.

Also one to look up is "Threads".  Those people in Sheffield had lovely lives following a nuclear attack. 

[mjmooney]

When I was a little kid (height of the cold war), I thought that a nuclear bomb was a "new, clear" bomb - much safer than the old sort.   

[Rugeley Villa]

You brummies are ok anyway you've got the Zulus looking after you.