#1
The government also expects a large minority of demobilized FARC fighters to return to crime. ThatÂ’s what happened when 30,000 anti-leftist militias agreed to disband in 2006. The government studied that development intently and has a number of new ideas to avoid the recidivism.
Ooooh Ooooh! I know! How about "kill them"?
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/17/2014 13:10 Comments ||
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The original article is good, but I wanted to emphasize this particular bit in the comments:
It's a fair question and deserves a straight answer.
Basically, I think the Ukraine is tactically lost. But it is lost because Obama is strategically losing. If he can repair that weakness by:
1) going all out in energy development and taking steps to facilitate the export of natural gas to Europe;
2) removing hostaged issues like the supply line to Afghanistan and the Iranian and Syrian negotiations;
3) removing the impositions which prevent economic dynamism; and
4) building advanced defense systems.
Then he will win the strategic game and in due time, Putin will withdraw. Win the strategic war and you can pick up the islands at leisure.
If you want more pressure, lean on Cuba or Venezuela. Venezuela for preference. If you bring more energy online Russia weakens.
All of this would have been familiar to Ronald Reagan or George Kennan. None of this is rocket science. The only reason Obama can't think of it is that he believes he's too smart to learn from those old fools; that the ideas which spring to his mind, are for that reason, incomparably brilliant, even when they downright imbecilic.
All you really need to get back the Ukraine is let America be America. I imagine we're about three years away from even being able to head back in the right direction.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain ||
04/17/2014 14:13 ||
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#2
Count, as with everything this regime (Zero's) has done since day 1 the question is; "How do you define win?"
In any area, but particularly foreign affairs, if your goal was to reduce the USA to 2nd tier status and support socialism, what would you do differently from Zero's policies?
I hope I'm wrong but historians may look back and say this was the start of World War III
We are soon to face a bleak choice. We can chose to surrender any responsibility we have to protect Ukraine and the Baltic states -- almost certainly Putin's next target -- from further Russian incursion. Or we can mount a last-ditch attempt to deter Russia from furthering its imperial ambitions. And the crowd we have now running the show from our side will, undoubtedly and after initial inept jockeying towards "a last-ditch attempt", overswing the pendulum.
#4
The Ukraine is very likely in 'Emergency Triage Level' BLACK (terminal). Strategies and resources would be better spent with the region's newer NATO members.
I too am concerned about a regime "last-ditch attempt and overswing."
#5
Per the Cuban-American treaty the US "shall exercise complete jurisdiction and control" over Gitmo while recognizing "the continuance of the ultimate sovereignty of the Republic of Cuba".
If the US declared Cuban sovereignty over the territory null and void and annexed the territory there would be zero change in the de facto political status.
Still such a move would send a clear message to all political actors in the world.
It would link the Budapest Memorandum and US guarantees not to invade Cuba, the annexation being a restrained reaction to Russia's Crimea move.
Russia and her allies would be put on notice. The risk of escalation would be minimal.
#10
OK, how is Ukraine the heart of the West? I was gonna try to read this article but you lost me right there.
If you look at this situation from the Russian point of view, they've been invaded from the West at least three times in the previous two centuries. They had one hell of a time with Napoleon who actually sacked and burned Moscow. They lost vast tracts of territory to Kaiser Wilhelm and then there was Hitler. Can you blame them for being paranoid?
Sure, Stalin was as bad as Hitler if not even worse. And Putin is obviously cut from the same cloth.
But the Warsaw Pact was a buffer zone. It gave them a little bit of time and space in case it happened again. I don't believe their army is all that powerful. It never has been. If Hitler hadn't been overextended he would have conquered Russia.
Now we're talking about bring NATO right up to the Russian border. I think Putin has a great fear of allowing that to happen.
#12
And those bases were just randomly located, not put up for containment reasons precisely because Russia did want war at the time most of those bases were built. Cute graphic though.
Having said that we have provoked by extended NATO and such provocation against a powerful ex-enemy who was not entirely beaten but more or less conceeded was abject stupidity. Started back in the 90s but nobody has really had a reasonable Russia policy since the wall fell.
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