As Russia devours Ukraine, President Obama's decision to stall missile defenses for Poland looks more and more reckless.
Let's go back to 2009, in the heady days when President Obama was sworn in and his advisers were eager to hit "the reset button" with Russia. The "reset button" was self-congratulation masquerading as a bold new idea. Just because the occupants of the White House had changed, didn't mean Russia's long-term interests had. The "reset button" mentality assumed that personalities, not interests, drive nations.
Still, Vladimir Putin was shrewd enough to spot a naďf at the poker table and upped the ante. Team Obama was happy to oblige and indefinitely delay the Bush Administration's move to deploy ballistic-missile defenses to Poland and Czech republic.
What prompted the Bush Administration to promise billion-dollar defense systems to Poland? A surplus of Cold War fervor? A parting gift to defense contractors? Hardly. It was Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia (using a similar rationale that Putin would later repeat in Crimea). That invasion also prompted a divided Polish parliament to vote firmly to accept the new defensive shield.
What stopped the Russians from devouring Georgia? America's willingness to supply Poland and other allies with defensive weapons. Team Obama didn't seem to absorb the two lessons on the blackboard that year: Russia is hungry for new (old) lands and that missile-defense, which limits Russia's influence in Europe, is the best way to deter them.
Once Obama delayed deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe, Putin knew he had a free hand to reassemble the old Soviet Union piece-by-piece. Invading his neighbors would now be cost free.
While the Obama Administration fretted that missile defenses might disturb Russia's willingness to negotiate (exactly the worry liberals raised in the 1980s when Reagan funded missile defense efforts), the Poles began spending tens of billions to develop their own multi-layered missile defense system, known as the Tarcza Polski or "the shield of Poland."
The Polish build-up was triggered by the American stand-down, as Polish leaders made clear. Then-Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski explained his government's rationale in an August 2012 interview: "Our mistake was that by accepting the American offer of a shield we failed to take into account the political risk associated with a change in president. We paid a high political price. We do not want to make the same mistake again."
Even as Poland made painful austerity cuts in other parts of its budget, its military spending--in all categories--climbed rapidly. By 2014, Poland's defense spending was at its highest level in its history. No one is Poland had to guess why. Many Poles remember the day when Russian tanks drove out in the early 1990s and have feared their return ever since.
To recap: the Obama Administration's decision on missile defense did not deter Russian aggression, alienated a key ally (Poland) which decided to go it alone and signaled to the world that America is an unreliable partner. Quite a trifecta.
To recap: the Obama Administration's decision on missile defense did not deter Russian aggression, alienated a key ally (Poland) which decided to go it alone and signaled to the world that America is an unreliable partner. Quite a trifecta.
Now, bizarrely, the Obama Administration to trying to sabotage Poland's worthy missile-defense effort by failing to champion the one American missile defense system that could be fielded rapidly.
Poland has four finalists for its "tier three" defenses, which will protect it against medium-range ballistic missiles. Warsaw will make a decision in the coming weeks.
One of the contenders is a French-led consortium, which is most costly of the four options, and another is an Israeli system, which is the cheapest but utterly untested. The two middle options are American and here is where the Obama Administration plays an unhappy role.
The leading American contender is Raytheon's Patriot system.
Defense Industry Daily, a trade publication, calls it "the most widely deployed and proven option, with zero development risk, a set path to integration with American units already on Polish soil and a massive installed global base that guarantees long-term upgrades and support."
Qatar, Turkey and other nations placed billion-dollar orders for the upgraded Patriot system in the past year. Hint: The Obama Administration isn't strongly endorsing this one.
The other American system is MEADS, an advanced system that lost the U.S. Defense department as a customer. Too many delays, cost overruns and technical failures--even for the Pentagon. While touted as technologically superior to Patriot in many ways (including its 360-degree radar), MEADS is untested, over-budget and years away from deployment. The German and Italian governments, its main supporters, seem to be keeping it on life support as a jobs program and as a sop to their industrial unions.
MEADS would be a gift to Putin because it cannot be deployed for many years and may not even work. MEADS would ensure that Putin can continue to cast an outsized shadow across Europe, which now has no defenses against its missiles. Remember, the way you use missiles is not by launching them, but by letting defenseless nations know that you could. Google "Finlandization" if this seems like an unlikely Russian strategy.
Yet the Obama Administration sits on the sidelines. Why? Perhaps precisely because it will leave Poland unprotected for years--and thus be less "antagonistic" toward Russia. Thus would Obama's original "no missile defense for now" decision stand.
It is time to take a hard look at Team Obama's assumptions about Russia and about missile defense, both of which seem mired in liberal Cold War criticisms.
Russia likes to say that missile-defense systems are threatening to Russia--and, in a way, they are right. Missile shields threaten Russia's regional ambitions, but not its safety.
The Obama Administration takes Russian complaints at face value and pretends that the Russians are simply misguided about what missile-defense systems do. A shield is inherently defensive, they say, and cannot be confused with a sword. As if the Russians, who have their own missile defenses, do not know this.
But the Obama White House refuses to hear what the Russians are really saying: A shield is a barrier to Russia's ambitions to reassert its control over Poland and other formerly captive nations. If Eastern Europeans do not have to fear Russian troops or missiles, thanks to NATO membership and missile shields, that means demands from Moscow take on the same importance as demands from Berlin.
That's why the Poles are spending billions of their own zlotys to build their own missile shield. They want to ensure that a historically dangerous neighbor (Russia) acts like a normal country, just like Poland's other historically dangerous neighbor, Germany.
Strangely, the Obama Administration worries more about Russia's fears than Poland's. Why?
The only way to transform Russia from a would-be regional threat to a normal country would be to take away its extraordinary powers over Europe. European energy independence, missile shield and a robust NATO would trim Russia's claws and change its behavior.
Unfortunately, the Obama Administration can't see the tremendous historic opportunity that lies at its feet. More accurately, Obama pays lip service to the idea of limiting Russian imperial ambitions but is adamantly against anything that might do anything about the situation. Same as Germany and France, which fund and arm Russia's military. And the Russians can pretend they're fighting back against "Those Homosexuals in the EU" while they use EU weaponry against Ukranians.
Putin's slow-motion invasion of Ukraine is exactly the catalyst needed to wean Europe from energy dependence on Russia, forge opinion for missile defense and modernize NATO. Without Putin's aggression, no American president could ever get the Europeans to act collectively and rapidly. This idea would work better if we could put Ukraine where France is and put France where Ukraine is.
Yet the Obama Administration is too busy trying to appease the Russian bear to see an opportunity to tame it.
A proven missile defense for Poland is a vital first step. Let's hope the Obama Administration comes to realize what the Poles already know.
Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain ||
05/16/2014 10:32 ||
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#1
Fond thingys to remember iff the Hard Boyz take over Russia's nukes, followed by China's + India's + ... ...???
[Newsmax] Before we plunge ourselves into Cold War II, it would behoove us to remember what Russia under Putin means to our geopolitical calculus.
Putin's Russia is still supplying the U.S. with its only means of transportation to the international space station, the one area where the two nations still enjoy a close working relationship. But the latest crisis in U.S.-Russian relations prompted Moscow to announce that this crowning achievement of Russian-U.S. cooperation would end in 2020. The original agreement was good through 2024.
The space station is a football field-sized, $100 billion multinational achievement made up of interlocking modules from U.S., Russian, Japanese, and European segments.
Since the forced retreat of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011, NASA relies on Russia to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), continuously inhabited since Expedition I docked in 2000. Subsequent flights and dockings are scheduled through 2015. The last para is obviously OBE. I'm not keen on Newsmax, but thought this worthy of a read.
#1
Im a big fan of space but...
NASA's manned program has held us back since the shuttle compromises in the late 70s made the shuttle the primary cargo lift vehicle instead of the taxi it was intended to be.
NASA controls have and continue to limit private enterprise in Earth orbit.
ISS is a works program designed to keep Russian scientists busy and hasn't worked in that respect. Whole thing is planned to be deorbitted in next 5 years anyway.
[WeeklyStandard] In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have turned t*ts-up with most of these being suicides. The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China's elite is likely tied to the anticorruption campaign being led by Chinese president and party general secretary Xi Jinping.
As the noose tightens, U.S. intelligence ought to make clear to those Chinese within the government elite that there are safe havens in the West--as long as they are willing to cooperate.
#3
Reportedly one of the problems for the Chinese leadership is that everybody's lied so much about loans, production, figures, corruption and such, that even they have trouble figuring out what's going on. Their fear of a "lost the mandate of heaven" scenario and they start getting even more "peasant revolts" than they are having now, and outside forces taking advantage of the turmoil and moving in on them is real.
Posted by: Pearl Borgia1889 ||
05/16/2014 11:54 Comments ||
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#4
So then they decided to drop a drilling rig on Vietnam?
#6
Confucius says, when house divided draw attention outwards. :-)
It's a grab for resources, not attention. The costs are trivial, assuming (probably correctly) that Uncle Sam doesn't get involved and start some combination of a trade embargo and a naval war that deposits tens of billions in military hardware on the seabed. Unless Vietnam decides to go to war with China over the rig (by resorting, among other things, to unlimited submarine warfare against Chinese shipping), the cost to China is likely to be minimal. Vietnam just got its first sub in December 2013, so it's unlikely to be doing much more than training.
#1
You go, girl! When I'm old and senile, I won't back down either (cue Tom Petty music), no matter what those young whippersnappers say.
A less charitable interpretation is that this lawyerly parsing over the ambassador not being murdered in the 'murdered' sense of murdered is only an attempt to score political points and to keep The Narrative from being contaminated with actual events. In which case, you are evil.
#4
Between 125 and 150 gunmen, "some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants," are reported to have participated in the assault. Some had their faces covered and wore flak jackets.The Weapons they used during the attack on the embassy included rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), hand grenades, AK-47 and FN F2000 NATO assault rifles, diesel canisters, mortars, and heavy machine guns and artillery mounted on gun trucks.
If we shared Eleanor Clift's warped perspective we would assume that CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty also died on the roof of the CIA annex after "inhaling" mortar rounds and sucking down a few RPG rocket blasts.
#6
Is there any leftist/Democrat anywhere that does not deserve the title of "Despicable"?
I can remember the days of Scoop Jackson and Daniel Moynihan. I didn't agree with everything they said but I could respect them and agreed occasionally. Today I can not think of a single one.
#7
...there are still decent ones out there by the thousands who unfortunately are 'low information' types who still think its the party of Truman rather than Lenin. They're starting to become the great 'die off', so the party needs 10 million more to make up the difference in the shame elections. Looks like some House Trunks are going to help them.
#9
During the uprising jihadists were called rebels. After the embassy attack terrorists were called rioters. Perhaps, now its fitting murderers be called vandals.
Stevens I believe was sodomized as well. Now I don't know about Eleanor and her friends at the Daily Beast, but I don't think even jihadists would sodomize a corpse.
[DAWN] ISLAMABAD: Retired Captain Mohammad Safdar, member of National Assembly and the son-in-law of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , has been accused of not paying attention to the proceedings of the Assembly, while he just sat and chatted with his fellow politicians.
During his stay in the House, on Thursday, the MNA did not even bother to go through the question-answer booklets or the agenda of the day, which kept lying on his desk undisturbed.
Throughout his presence on his allotted seat, he kept engaging in conversation with people sitting around him.
Perhaps, it was Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's expected appearance in the National Assembly session which brought Mr Safdar to the house. Otherwise, he is not regular in attending the assembly sessions.
Mr Safdar, who won the National Assembly seat from his home town of Mansehra ...a city and an eponymous district in eastern Khyber-Pakthunwa, nestled snug up against Pak Kashmir, with Kohistan and Diamir to the north and Abbottabad to the south... , has only been assigned the membership of a committee which the prime minister has constituted to review the development schemes carried out under public sector development programme over the last five years, unlike his wife Ms Maryam Nawaz Sharif, who is steering the Pakistain Mohammedan League-Nawaz's signature youth loan programme as the chairperson.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] THE problem with forgotten areas and expedient deals is, among things, that they inevitably slip back into the news -- and often in a way that is worse than the original problem. Mangal Bagh ...a former bus driver, now head of the Deobandi bandido group Lashkar-e-Islam and the Terror of Khyber Agency... , leader of the Lashkar-e-Islam, a myrmidon-cum-criminal group from the Bara region of Khyber Agency, is flexing his muscles once again. This time he has given an ultimatum to local people in his strongholds in the Bara area to either enrol their children in a specific madressah by Eid or pay a fine of Rs400,000. By now, the besieged natives of Mangal Bagh's strongholds have become familiar with the warlord's Death Eater demands that range from a ban on shaving beards to mandating a prayer cap be worn by all males.
Yet, the more interesting story is how and why Mangal Bagh continues to survive, if not thrive. While not quite a good Taliban, he has played all sides against each other to ensure his own existence and demand. To the army-led security establishment, his usefulness comes from his claim that he is acting as a bulwark against the outlawed TTP, sections of which have moved into non-Mangal Bagh-controlled regions of Bara in recent times. To the TTP, he presents himself as a tactical ally who can keep the army at bay because of his good relations with them. Meanwhile, ...back at the laboratory, Igor and Oleg were discussing what the quickest way might be to deal with the monster... he continues to indulge in new businesses and fights, including with some Afghanistan-based TTP elements in an alleged row over who controls lucrative drug smuggling operations. Yet, while Mangal Bagh may be a canny survivor, the more important question is overlooked: how does it serve Pakistain's interests to have a criminal gang leader who uses rabid religiosity to thrive? Mangal Bagh and his scheming are just a microcosm of a problem wherein the state either actively collaborates with or turns a blind eye to dangerous elements in a bid to secure short-term peace or simply avoid conflict. What though about the population that Mangal Bagh terrorises? Surely, if a state abdicates its responsibilities for long enough and cedes control to local thugs, winning back the local population will become all that more difficult. The impunity with which Mangal Bagh operates ought to be unacceptable, but sadly it is not.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2014 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] WEDNESDAY'S high-powered huddle in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... to discuss the ongoing law-enforcement operation in the metropolis was little more than rhetoric. Not much emerged regarding any concrete step the state may have taken to pacify the city. Presided over by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ... served two non-consecutive terms as prime minister, heads the Pakistain Moslem League (Nawaz). Noted for his spectacular corruption, the 1998 Pak nuclear test, border war with India, and for being tossed by General Musharraf... , the meeting brought together the highest echelons of the country's civilian and military leaderships, with former president Asif Ali Zardari in attendance, while the army chief and DG ISI also sat in. Should Karachi's citizens really expect to see visible changes in their security situation? While the meeting was told that the law enforcers were being given the latest gadgets to fight crime and that illegal SIMs were being shut down, it is also true that since the operation began last September, the drop in crime and violence in Karachi has hardly been discernible. No doubt, certain troubled areas such as Lyari ...one of the eighteen constituent towns of the city of Karachi. It is the smallest town by area in the city but also the most densely populated. Lyari has few schools, substandard hospitals, a poor water system, limited infrastructure, and broken roads. It is a stronghold of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party. Ubiquitous gang activity and a thriving narcotics industry make Lyari one of the most disturbed places in Karachi, which is really saying a lot.... have been quiet. But street crime and assassinations continue. Even on the day the meeting was in session, a man was bumped off reportedly on sectarian grounds. In fact, sectarian killings have been occurring on almost a daily basis over the past few days.
Karachi's vortex of violence is complex and multi-layered and only a continuous, multi-pronged effort can bring lasting peace to the city. At one level, politically backed criminals continue to operate in their respective areas of influence, indulging in crime ranging from extortion to murder. At another, sectarian killers operate in the metropolis with impunity, while a free rein is given to organised groups and individuals carrying out street crimes, terrorising citizens through muggings and kidnapping for ransom. Is the prime minister even aware of the level of street crime in Karachi? The situation is so bad that the majority of people do not file a report with the police when their wallet or mobile phone is snatched by armed thugs.
Far from lasting peace, what the operation has produced in Karachi is an uneasy calm that continues to be punctured by a variety of violent incidents. No one can seriously say that due to the efforts of the last few months the metropolis is on the road to stability. For example, how many killers, extortionists and kidnappers have been enjugged Drop the rod and step away witcher hands up! and sentenced so far? The problem is, unless the law enforcement and prosecution systems are strengthened so that criminals are caught, prosecuted and punished, no operation will be a success. This must be a continuous process, not limited to a few months or weeks. A dedicated, honest police force, aided by paramilitaries where need be, coupled with a strong legal system, can turn things around. But for that to happen, the state needs to show sincerity of purpose while all stakeholders -- political parties included -- must play by the rules and let the law take its course.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2014 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[WeeklyStandard] In little over a year, close to 60 Chinese officials have turned t*ts-up with most of these being suicides. The strong suspicion is that this epidemic of mysterious deaths among China's elite is likely tied to the anticorruption campaign being led by Chinese president and party general secretary Xi Jinping.
Between 125 and 150 gunmen, "some wearing the Afghan-style tunics favored by Islamic militants," are reported to have participated in the assault. Some had their faces covered and wore flak jackets.The Weapons they used during the attack on the embassy included rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), hand grenades, AK-47 and FN F2000 NATO assault rifles, diesel canisters, mortars, and heavy machine guns and artillery mounted on gun trucks.
a city and an eponymous district in eastern Khyber-Pakthunwa, nestled snug up against Pak Kashmir, with Kohistan and Diamir to the north and Abbottabad to the south...
