I'm kicking myself today. Last week, I nearly started a forum to predict an invasion a la Georgia of Ukraine. I decided not to.

But, tell me: does the pseudo-saber-rattling of President Obama scare anyone? Does anyone look more oblivious to reality than Kerry, with the possible exception of his boss? Did the "reset button" Hillary presented her Russian counterpart have any effect?

The damage Obama and Co. have done to this country and to others (off the top of my head: Ukraine, Poland, Georgia) is incalculable--and it's early they still can do more damage.

A tweet from reporter, Stephen Hayes:

Admin officials tell CNN's Barbara Starr this is an "uncontested arrival" not necessarily "an invasion" and that this distinction is "key."

If it wasn't disgraceful and tragic, it would be funny.

Remember when Obama scoffed at Romney's suggestion that Russia was a strategic enemy? After all, he scolded, "The Cold War is over."

Well, Mr. Obama, it WAS over. Your pathetic weakness and mealy-mouthed nonsense may indeed have reignited it. There is no red line you won't watch be ignored, no burden you are willing to carry, and no credibility in anything you imply that might punish Russia. No one--at all--believes you.

Read all of the speech for yourself, but don't miss the one line editorial after the President's declaration of ignorance:

What a pitiful president. What a pitiful man. What a pitiful fool.

Yes, but what does that say for the people who voted for him?

So, Palin called this?

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin warned that if Senator Barack Obama were elected president, his "indecision" and "moral equivalence" may encourage Russia's Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

Palin said then:

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next.

For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.

We're to understand that Obama is brilliant and Palin is a fool . . . it seems the conventional "wisdom" is wrong again.

It would be lovely if we could discuss foreign events of some magnitude without it all being about US politics, and in particular one of our community's obsession with blaming Barack Obama for everything bad that ever happens anywhere.

There is much to talk about regarding Ukraine, but the above is pretty much the worst starting point for a rational discussion.

danivon wrote:It would be lovely if we could discuss foreign events of some magnitude without it all being about US politics, and in particular one of our community's obsession with blaming Barack Obama for everything bad that ever happens anywhere.

There is much to talk about regarding Ukraine, but the above is pretty much the worst starting point for a rational discussion.

Of course. No reason to discuss the embarrassing performance of "the leader of the free world."

Since he's been in office, is the US more respected?

Is the relationship with Russia better?

Where has Obama made the world a better, safer place? Is it too much to hold hi. To what he said?

Stop waiving your Pom-proms and display some objectivity

If Obama was the proximate cause of the problems in Ukraine, you may have a point. But he is not, and there is far more to it than the US policy.

I am not cheerleading, on the contrary - can you possibly look at the issue without bringing your ODS into it? This is about Ukraine, Russia, the EU...

Unless you believe the paranoid rantings of the deranged who comment below the line in the left wing press, who would have us believe that anything bad happening anywhere in the world is a secret CIA plot, then you have to conclude that the US is only a very peripheral player in this. Ukraine is a deeply divided society that's being pulled two ways by Russia and the EU. This crisis has been a long time in the making and the fault lies primarily with the Europeans, who should have known better than to interfere in Russia's backyard when they didn't have anything to offer the Ukrainian people. Obviously Obama has to say something, but he didn't instigate this and it's not like he can just go to war with Russia.

What we have to understand is that the Russians really care about Ukraine, whereas deep down we don't give a damn. It was incredibly foolish for the EU to blunder into Ukraine making offers that they could never really follow through with, raising the hopes of the people in the west of the country and then stoking the crisis by offering unquestioning support to the protest movement. Ukraine is none of our business. There's absolutely no way in the world that it will ever be allowed to join the EU. When Poland joined it caused major problems for existing members, can you imagine what might happen if a country of 45 million people with a GDP/head about a third of Poland's were to join ? It's a non starter and always was. I honestly don't understand why we were ever involved in the first place. Russia was never going to stand back and allow a region that it considers to be part of it's traditional heartland sign up to align with a geopolitical rival.

Crimea is not a historically Ukrainian region. It was re-assigned to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in the 50s but this was little more than an arbitrary stroke of the administrative pen. 58% of the population are ethnic Russians who consider themselves to be Russian first and Ukrainian second. Crimea was a part of Russia for over 300 years and prior to that it was occupied by the Tartars, many of whom still live there. It's only been a part of an independent Ukraine since the 90s, and there's been talk of secession in the past. It isn't like Russia is just invading a hostile territory here.

This whole issue is enormously complicated and we'd do well not to make any further mistakes. I don't think it's that easy to identify who the right and wrong parties are here.

(cross-posed with Sass)

The roots of this go way back.

Firstly to Russian Imperial expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries - the Crimean Tatars had a Muslim country aligned to the Ottoman Empire, but eventually Russia conquered the Crimea and pushed the Ottomans out. Russian colonists were planted there. The Crimean War was a significant development. Later, Stalin expelled many of the Tatars from Crimea, and they now are a minority in their homeland. Crimea is part of Ukraine, but dominated by ethnic Russians (and the home of the Sevastopol naval base where Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based).

Ukraine itself has a strange history with Russia. The area was the base of the Kievan Rus (a precursor of Russia), but while Russia coalesced around Novgorod and later Moscow, the Ukraine came under the control of Poland-Lithuania (with the Tatars ruling the southern coast). The Cossacks fought for independence from Poland. They failed, and instead ended up doing a deal with the Russians which left Western Ukraine under Poland and the East under Russia. The Cossacks were supposed to accept Russian rule, but the Cossacks would often side against Russia (eg in the 1709 war with Sweden and Poland). When Russians won that war, it was devastating for the Cossacks and also for Poland. Over the next century Polish lands were annexed by Russia (and Prussia and Austria) and so Ukraine came under Russian control, completed when the Tatars were conquered.

The tsars had always promised the Cossacks autonomy, but never gave it, and nationalism rose in Ukraine - as in so many other places - as a distinct identity separate from Russian.

At the end of WWI, and following the Bolshevik revolution, there were several Ukrainian separatist movements (and the Western Powers tried to establish Ukraine as a new country). During the ensuing Civil War and the Russo-Polish war, Ukraine was a complex battleground. Part or all of It had been controlled by Ukrainian Socialists, the White Army, Poland, Anarchists, and a resurgent 'Hetmanate'. Eventually the Soviets won control over most of the country, with western parts being carved up into Poland and Czechoslovakia.

During the 1930s, Ukrainian nationalism became even stronger. Before Stalin, the Soviets allowed regions to promote local culture, but Joe was more of a centraliser and so suppressed Ukrainian identities. The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists also arose in the Polish western region in response to Polish oppression. The disastrous famine in the USSR in the 1930s increased bitterness among the locals toward Russia, as it was exacerbated by policies to move food to other parts of the USSR.

When Stalin and Hitler invaded Poland, the almost the whole of Ukraine came under Soviet control. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, most Ukrainians were on the side of the Soviets, but there was a significant number who took the other side - probably opportunistically rather than ideologically, and the OUN faction leader Bandera was pro-fascist but spent many years imprisoned by the Germans. As the war was fought all the way through Ukraine and back again, the land was devastated.

After the War, Ukraine was a pretty autonomous part of the USSR - it had a seat in the UN for some time. But over time Russians were moved in and Ukrainians became a smaller majority (and other ethnicities such as Bessarabians, and Germans were forced out.

When the USSR was dissolved, Ukraine joined with Russia and Belarus in founding the 'Commonwealth of Independent States', but never actually joined the organisation. Instead it became fully independent and then went into a deep recession - worse than many other post-Soviet states. It was stabilised - politically and economically - under Leonid Kuchma who was President from 1994-2005.

And then it all went horribly wrong again. Kuchma didn't stand for re-election, and the country was split down the middle between the PM, the pro-Russian Yanukovich and the main opposition leader and former PM, the pro-Western Yuschenko. The election was rigged in Yanukovich's favour, Yuschenko was poisoned (allegedly with Russian involvement), but the Kievans and other Ukrainians challenged this in the 'Orange Revolution'. Yuschenko won a re-run of the election, and Yulia Tymoshenko was his first PM.

However, the 'Orangists' soon fell apart - Tymoschenko was sacked and replaced with the old adversary Yanukovich. While Tymoshenko won a parliamentary election in 2007, it relied on a coalition that was fragile, and there were constitutional crises through to 2010, when Yanukovich was able to win the Presidency against a disparate opposition.

His bloc did well in the Parliamentary elections as well, and Tymoshenko was prosecuted for corruption and put into jail.

All through this time there were massive tensions with Russia over political influence/coercion and gas trade. Several major pipelines from Russia to Europe pass through Ukraine, and the Ukrainian gas company were diverting some of the gas for their own use and not paying for it, while Russia tried to use gas prices to blackmail Ukraine.

Yanukovich had said he wanted to unite the country, and also to move towards joining the EU. He also tried to centralise power and got the Constitution changed to increase his power. But as soon as an agreement with the EU for Association was made (the first step towards joining), he refused to sign. It seems that there was pressure from Putin not to, and that's where the protests really began last year.

The problem is that the pro-Russian side is quite united - there are many Russians in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and a fair number of Ukrainians who prefer to associate with Russia. The opposition are divided. There are liberals, nationalists, fascists, Muslims and socialists. The communists oppose both Yanukovich and the new government. The elected government has been ousted, and while we may see the new one as 'better', it is not legitimate and faces many problems to assert its rule.

Russia may seem like the aggressor, but they will argue that they are supporting an elected government against a coup, and the rights of ethnic Russians in a neighbouring state.

I'm not sure that the EU should be given the blame here, Sass. Or at least not as much as you suggest. Yes, the EU has been involved - but Ukraine (even under Yanukovich) has been making noises that it wants to join. In a similar way to Georgia, there is a much greater internal pro-EU sentiment that is annoying Russia than any EU 'interference'.

It's complicated by Ukraine (and Russia) also being members of the Council of Europe, which is dominated by EU nations and the EU, and which is concerned with things like the rule of law and human rights (both of which appear to have been at risk in Ukraine) as well as harmony and co-operation between all members.

And the protesters were not just being ignored or quietly ushered away - they were being killed by security forces and potentially other more shadowy groups. Of course the EU should not ignore that sort of thing, and it does undermine the legal legitimacy of a government when it is shooting its own people and suppressing protests. That is what escalated the Euromaidan movement from demonstrations to violence.

I don't agree that it was impossible for Ukraine to ever join the EU either. Difficult, yes, and not imminent, but I think you overstate the issues from the last enlargement - there has been a fair amount of migration within the EU, but that is not what caused the financial problems, it just stokes up the xenophobes but generally it actually seems to be overall better for rich and poor countries alike to have open markets and regulated free trade.

Sassenach wrote:Crimea was a part of Russia for over 300 years and prior to that it was occupied by the Tartars, many of whom still live there. It's only been a part of an independent Ukraine since the 90s, and there's been talk of secession in the past. It isn't like Russia is just invading a hostile territory here.

Only about 230 years, and most of Ukraine was part of Russia before that (as Russia invaded the Tatar lands and Crimea from Ukraine). While Crimea is very different from Ukraine, the Tatars are supportive of the new government as they really don't like the Russians at all (seeing as the past 200+ years has been a pattern of them being pushed out / expelled and Russians planted in so that the Tsars / Soviets could exert control, that's not a massive surprise). Crimea and Ukraine were combined under Russian rule, Crimea has been part of the Ukrainian SSR since 1919, and so they are not completely different.

But I do completely agree with this:

Sassenach wrote:This whole issue is enormously complicated and we'd do well not to make any further mistakes. I don't think it's that easy to identify who the right and wrong parties are here.

Yep. For people who think that the new government and it's are the good guys, some of the nationalist protesters who put them there have associations with anti-semitism: Ukrainian nationalists strive to shake off allegations of anti-Semitism - Haaretz (I recommend you read the full article). The fault line in Crimea is between Russians and Tatars, and when both demonstrated against each other a few days ago, some of the Tatars were chanting "Ukraine! Allahu Akbar!" in response to Russians goading them about the Berkut (the violent riot police): Russia puts military on high alert as Crimea protests leave one man dead

Based on the ethnicity and loyalty of the population, it seems like Ukraine is really 2 different countries and should be split up. The Crimea and east is primarily ethnically Russian whereas western Ukraine is filled with Ukrainians. It seems like Czechoslovakia (or Austria-Hungary for those of you whose geography is based on the Diplomacy board). I think you would maximize the population happiness by splitting the country in 2. However, western Ukraine has no desire to give up the Crimea, and these split ups always create new headaches for the minorities within the minority regions.

Russia is going to flex its muscle and Europe and Obama are going to flex their vocal chords. I have no idea what is going to happen next.

Doctor Fate wrote:Stop waiving your Pom-proms and display some objectivity

Really? You're calling for objectivity? Really?

danivon wrote:But I do completely agree with this:

Sassenach wrote:This whole issue is enormously complicated and we'd do well not to make any further mistakes. I don't think it's that easy to identify who the right and wrong parties are here.

Yeah, that's right. And while Obama may bluster about consequences, it's little more than that; the cause and solution to what's going on the Ukraine has little to do with the US.

Ray Jay wrote:Based on the ethnicity and loyalty of the population, it seems like Ukraine is really 2 different countries and should be split up. The Crimea and east is primarily ethnically Russian whereas western Ukraine is filled with Ukrainians.

Crimea is distinct from the East, and while there are majorities of Russians in the East and Ukrainians in the West, there are significant minorities in the same places.

It seems like Czechoslovakia (or Austria-Hungary for those of you whose geography is based on the Diplomacy board).

Czechoslovakia is roughly Bohemia & Galicia from the Diplomacy map (although 'Galicia' is largely in the Ukraine today).

I think you would maximize the population happiness by splitting the country in 2. However, western Ukraine has no desire to give up the Crimea, and these split ups always create new headaches for the minorities within the minority regions.

Which does challenge your assumption that it would be like Czechoslovakia splitting. It could be more like India/Pakistan splitting, or Yugoslavia.

Russia is going to flex its muscle and Europe and Obama are going to flex their vocal chords. I have no idea what is going to happen next.

Yep. A lot is down to what Russia and the people in Ukraine are prepared to do or not do. Little that the EU or US can say will affect it either way.

Thanks for the history lesson--Sass and Dan. It's a complicated situation but that does not mean that we allow Russia a free hand to do what it wants. Severe economic sanctions against Russia are appropriate if they intervene militarily in the Ukraine (like cutting off imports of Russian oil). Ukraine is a sovereign country, with a long history of wanting to be free of Russia, and allowing Russia to use military force without repercussions would be wrong and encourage future Russian aggression against countries it feels are within its orbit. Justification of Russia going into Ukraine because of concerns about Russians who live there sounds too close to the situation in pre world war II when Germany's stated justification for wanting to intervene in Czechoslovakia was the Sudeten Germans . Let's not be too understanding of Russia's position here--they have no right to use military force.

danivon wrote:If Obama was the proximate cause of the problems in Ukraine, you may have a point. But he is not, and there is far more to it than the US policy.

This is so weak. I didn't say he caused the problems. However, Chamberlain didn't cause the problems in Poland either. There are many times when someone doesn't "cause" the turmoil, but they can do something to either prevent or stop it. President Obama has little credibility on the international stage and, because of that, Putin didn't have to think twice before doing what he wanted to do anyway.

I am not cheerleading, on the contrary - can you possibly look at the issue without bringing your ODS into it? This is about Ukraine, Russia, the EU...

I can look at it without looking at Obama at all. However, I can also examine his actions and comments. That's what i did. If you weren't a cheerleader, you might have the fortitude to acknowledge his weak performance.

Sassenach wrote:Unless you believe the paranoid rantings of the deranged who comment below the line in the left wing press, who would have us believe that anything bad happening anywhere in the world is a secret CIA plot, then you have to conclude that the US is only a very peripheral player in this. Ukraine is a deeply divided society that's being pulled two ways by Russia and the EU. This crisis has been a long time in the making and the fault lies primarily with the Europeans, who should have known better than to interfere in Russia's backyard when they didn't have anything to offer the Ukrainian people. Obviously Obama has to say something, but he didn't instigate this and it's not like he can just go to war with Russia.

Nothing to offer the Ukrainian people? Nothing?

Then, why are there some Ukrainians who want better relations with the EU?

Obama does have to say something. However, he could try harder not to say something so lacking in credibility.

What we have to understand is that the Russians really care about Ukraine, whereas deep down we don't give a damn.

"Care" is an interesting choice of wording.

This all seems like a "sphere of influence" sort of argument. We don't have a strategic interest in Ukraine, therefore we should leave it to Russia. What if the Ukrainians don't agree?

Ukraine is none of our business. There's absolutely no way in the world that it will ever be allowed to join the EU. When Poland joined it caused major problems for existing members, can you imagine what might happen if a country of 45 million people with a GDP/head about a third of Poland's were to join ? It's a non starter and always was.

Fiscally, I agree. Of course, I think the EU still has some issues to shake out, but that's not really germane to the Ukrainian issue. However, clearly, the EU doesn't need another weak sister.

I honestly don't understand why we were ever involved in the first place. Russia was never going to stand back and allow a region that it considers to be part of it's traditional heartland sign up to align with a geopolitical rival.

"[Ukraine] would never be allowed to join the EU." "Russia was never going to stand back and allow . . ."

So, Ukraine's self-determination means nothing? What really counts is what Russia will permit?

In realpolitik terms, I get it. But, doesn't this seem like Cold War, Iron Curtain, "thank God I don't live in the shadow of the Soviet Union" thinking?

It isn't like Russia is just invading a hostile territory here.

Right. It's only a sovereign nation that didn't ask Russia to invade. I think there's a term for that.

Here's a wild notion: what about Russia negotiating for this, instead of invading?

This whole issue is enormously complicated and we'd do well not to make any further mistakes. I don't think it's that easy to identify who the right and wrong parties are here.

I think Russia is clearly wrong, but you can have your opinion.