War in Europe ?

[LarryW]

(All this is JMHO, and I know what value that has. Still...)

The view from the doorstep of Russia is different from that of the WH. My way of reading history says it's a 50-50 chance at best, and when it comes to the safety of this fair land those are shitty odds. What is Golf Boy and Pinhead doing about it? Zip point shit. Would anyone rule this out?

War in Europe: Putin has invaded Ukraine. Is it hysterical to prepare for total war with Russia? Or is it naive not to? (By Anne Applebaum)

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a..._war_with.html

WARSAW, Poland—Over and over again—throughout the entirety of my adult life, or so it feels—I have been shown Polish photographs from the beautiful summer of 1939: The children playing in the sunshine, the fashionable women on Krakow streets. I have even seen a picture of a family wedding that took place in June 1939, in the garden of a Polish country house I now own. All of these pictures convey a sense of doom, for we know what happened next. September 1939 brought invasion from both east and west, occupation, chaos, destruction, genocide. Most of the people who attended that June wedding were soon dead or in exile. None of them ever returned to the house.

In retrospect, all of them now look naive. Instead of celebrating weddings, they should have dropped everything, mobilized, prepared for total war while it was still possible. And now I have to ask: Should Ukrainians, in the summer of 2014, do the same? Should central Europeans join them?

I realize that this question sounds hysterical, and foolishly apocalyptic, to American or Western European readers. But hear me out, if only because this is a conversation many people in the eastern half of Europe are having right now. In the past few days, Russian troops bearing the flag of a previously unknown country, Novorossiya, have marched across the border of southeastern Ukraine. The Russian Academy of Sciences recently announced it will publish a history of Novorossiya this autumn, presumably tracing its origins back to Catherine the Great. Various maps of Novorossiya are said to be circulating in Moscow. Some include Kharkov and Dnipropetrovsk, cities that are still hundreds of miles away from the fighting. Some place Novorossiya along the coast, so that it connects Russia to Crimea and eventually to Transnistria, the Russian-occupied province of Moldova. Even if it starts out as an unrecognized rump state—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “states” that Russia carved out of Georgia, are the models here—Novorossiya can grow larger over time.

(Cont.)

Vlad wants to destroy NATO credibility altogether. De-tooth the cat. He has Belarus in his pocket and an isolated Russian enclave in Kaliningrad. He's going to take eastern Ukraine. The bigger question is where will he go and what will he take next? JMHO but I don't think there's an organization in DC ready to deal with this scenario. No, and not DoD either.

[Remington Raidr]

where's my gubmint check, dude?

[Sohei]

He wants to go back to "Cold War Motherland" boundaries and make "Putingrad" the capital city.

[ddoering]

Right now Nato is leaderless because we don't have a plan. What time is tee-off?

[ddoering]

He certainly has surrounded himself with incompetence.

[akv]

Putin is a turd, a great deal of his predecessors were significantly worse turds and did much worse things to the Ukraine including genocide, the US has never seen enough self interest here to care much in the past, what has changed?

It's a raw deal for the Ukranians, they have my empathy, but they are not NATO, if the Tatars even fart across NATO borders it will be a war that ends Putin and he knows it, even Golfie Boy concerned with his legacy, could duck that. With the US distracted by GWOT he took the opportunity to reclaim areas they were losing after the Soviet Collapse. We took advantage of Russian weakness to push NATO borders significantly east did we not?

They say con men are the most paranoid people with good reason, they know what's out there. This ex KGB thug knows the score. Russia's economy is a one trick oil pony and they are losing population so fast their economy will plunge. They are also embarrassed since they were #2 once. All nations want territory buffers between themselves and military powers, we are no different. Would we tolerate Russian armor 300 miles from DC? The Ukraine is also a huge food source for Russia. Putin is just trying to hold on to a deteriorating Russia. The Ukraine could go the route of Chechnya type guerrilla war which could also end Putin. So could a drop in oil prices, or any number of things.

My $.02 the reduction of US armor in Europe should be reversed just in case he really is a nut, otherwise just sanction the tar out of him. As an American it's also not a horrible thing Western Europe might be spooked into once again increasing their own military spending and capability instead of whining about the Americans who defend them. This American money is better spent on the US economy or ending ISIS. A safe haven for well funded Islamists is unacceptable as 9/11 tragically demonstrated. Finally Putin is the devil we know in a very bad place...