Michael Totten on Putin’s motives
This seems reasonable to me:
Putin has a strategy. And it’s working.
What he most fears is that Ukraine might join NATO, removing yet another buffer state between himself and the West and kiboshing his plans for the Eurasian Union, a euphemism for a 21st century Russian empire. (Does anyone seriously believe Kazakhstan will be an equal partner with Moscow?)
Keeping his former Ukrainian vassal out of NATO will be easy now even if a militant anti-Russian firebrand comes to power in Kiev. The Crimean referendum””whether it was free and fair or rigged is no matter””creates a disputed territory conflict that will never be resolved in Ukraine’s favor. It will freeze and fester indefinitely. There isn’t a chance that NATO would accept a member that has a disputed territory conflict with Russia. No chance at all. Ukraine is as isolated as it could possibly be from the West without getting re-absorbed into Russia entirely.
Putin did the same thing to Georgia in 2008 when he lopped off the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and he did it for the same reason.
A similar dynamic fell into his lap in Moldova, the poor and battered country east of Romania. The far eastern Slavic region of (Latin) Moldova declared independence after the Soviet period and calls itself Transnistria.
The world does not recognize the existence of a state called Transnistria, which is perhaps just as well. It’s still basically Soviet. The hammer and sickle are right there on the flag. Its first president, Igor Smirnov, groomed himself into a dead-ringer for Vladimir Lenin.
Putin couldn’t care less about what happens in Transnistria, but he keeps Russian troops there because they ensure Moldova stays out of NATO.
That’s not one, not two, but three times Russia has pulled this stunt since the end of the Cold War. Putin is doing it to Ukraine because it worked in Moldova and Georgia.
Western analysts and pundits ALWAYS get russia WRONG!!!
from day one in 1916 to today, they NEVER ever get it right or include what would inform…
why do we believe the disenformation about our own people but not the information about others
FISKING…
hope its short, or else procrustes will come and use his sickle and cut me down, and pound me with the hammer of censorship.. intended or not… (dead is dead accident or not, right?)
FIRST MISTAKE:
Putin has a strategy. And it’s working.
Putin is not the brains, he is the body. he is part of a COLLECTIVE and does NOT act alone… he acts alone to execute the plans of the collective and the goals…
putin is part of a LONG RANGE PLAN that people been talking about since the 50s or so…
its like watching the building of a Gothic Cathedral 3/4 through… you misattribute the plan to the man you see, not the men that died when the plan was made, or the men who are not born yet, who take up the plan.
the whole thing is a bad analysis..
but since refutation takes longer than the analysis, and i will be cut off, i will keep it to myself mostly
however..
why is it ok to understand the idea of a country as a buffer when talking about russia and putin, but when talking about george bush and the one country line in the sand that woudl have been turkey, iraq, iran, afghanistan, pakistan, india?
oh… cause when they do something its real
when we do something its not real and you have to disbeleive and so on… at least till one of them tells you what to think, and since no one looks up stuff, you think what they want you to think not what is actually real!!!
anyway..
how do i know this is a long range plan?
It was commerade Stalin that set this up!!!!
who came up with the idea of pemanence by destroying 1/3 of the population and artificially creating enclaves that then, without throwing them out, would leave a reserve?
remembver they all thought in biological terms. so what did commerade stalin do? give each sattelite an innoculation and created a cist… if the country was under the countrol of russia, the cyst would be in remission as it would be granted benefits over redsidents
if the country was taken, then the antibiotic of the soviet would be removed and the cysts would fester. they would infect, and then could be used to regain the country…
[edited for length]
i give up
you cant refute in short – so i will just note the past from 2012 when i tried before!!!!!
ok. delete my post replace it with:
its a crappy analysis, take my word for it
and pretedn that i made a great case
which is kind of what we do with everything else
i guess its easier to just say, ok, this is right
and then who cares… than to waste my time passing on info that gets cut down as its more important to be short than it is to be correct
which is interesting…
how ya gonna get out of the maze if you value short wrong answers over long correct ones that you can verify? maybe thats why your not out of the maze after almost 10 years? and still dont get it?
do you all remember this NEO NEOCON thread?
Is the left terrified… [and the email above said yes, putin is terrified… i dont know how, since i saw this comming like a parade on a sunny day down the only main street in town… if you didnt, then question your focus!]
before they were going to take care of the ukraine, they had to make sure to put nukes back in cuba… and in south america…
they helped put obama in office and helped him get his second term…
do a bit of reseach and you will find where the chess pieces are and how they moved them into place FIRST
ie. you move the rook into place to guard an empty position, then move the other piece in place
you cant attack the thing unless you remove the guard first
and if you dont realize the innocuous move is setting the guard, you will be suprised later when its used. and your hands are tied.
NEO NEOCON: May 25th, 2010
The continuing saga of Al Megrahi
http://neoneocon.com/2010/05/25/the-continuing-saga-of-al-megrahi/
nope… never mentioned whats coming
but then again, i can see past the end of my nose…
Moldova is actually closer in its 20th Century history to East Prussia than Georgia.
Moldova is of Stalin’s creation. He snapped it off of Romania at the same time he was crushing the Baltic states and hiving off eastern Finland.
Adolf found Stalin’s Moldova conquest entirely unnerving. He sent of a demarche — pointing out that Germany had vital interests in Romania. (Ploesti oil)
Stalin had crushed the Romanian Army with his offensive.
It was an ‘own goal.’ Bucharest, not previously all-enthralled with Adolf, suddenly found Nazi Germany an all-important ally. Stalin had unified the Romanian polity the same way that Tojo unified America for FDR.
Previously, Bucharest had been getting its military goods from the Skoda Works in Czechoslovakia — a card-carrying member of the French alliance.
Officialdom was, until then, infuriated with the Nazis for such little items as stealing 149mm (Skoda) howitzers — bought and paid for in advance — equipping the SS Division Totenkopf with them and such. (!) Yes, that was the Waffen formation entirely raised from SS-Totenkopfverbé¤nde murderers. Big money was involved, and the (missing and stolen) howitzers were a huge factor in the Romanian defeat. Artillery, as ever, was the backbone of the defense — and without these Skoda weapons the Romanians were utterly out classed. And Stalin knew it.
So Stalin drove the Romanians into Hitler’s orbit when ordinary circumstances would’ve kept that nation neutral — very much like Turkey — dancing on a tight-rope to stay out of the impending bloodbath.
The Germans continued to steal heavy weapons from ALL of their allies on the Eastern Front. This was the primary, most immediate, reason why they lost the campaign. The Hungarian, Romanian and Italian formations found that none of their heavy weapons were making it through the German supply network! The Germans kept blaming the Russians for the missing stuff. (all lies, of course)
When push came to shove, the Russians simply rolled over the Axis Allies. Most formations didn’t even have a SINGLE anti-tank gun! That’s what happened to the Hungarians on day one of Operation Uranus — that destroyed 6th Army at Stalingrad.
%%%
At wars end, Stalin pushed out the natives of BOTH Moldava and East Prussia. Both locations were turned into garrisoned territories. The new immigrants were 100% White Russians. The effect is to cut off both the north and the south from the West.
Napoleon would’ve termed the tactic as “a foot on far.” Stalin studied Napoleon quite a bit. (I wonder why?)
The Crimea is now a third piece of this perimeter strategy.
Moscow can never get enough cowed belligerents.
As for Georgia starting the dust-up in 2008: how to explain that everything went pear-shaped within weeks of Putin’s completion of a military rail head running south to his critical trans-Caucasus tunnel.
“The mainstay of the [South Ossetia] economy is the Roksky tunnel under the main Caucasian range, which is a major route for smuggling goods in and out of Russia. ”
Gee, the timing!
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/south-ossetia-5.htm
It just so happened that a Russian armored formation was to hand. Plus… the 76th Guards Air Assault Division… made re-famous all over again when it took over the Crimea.
It was able to make an eight-hour trip in under two-hours. Pretty slick, no?
Monopoly v chess [Game theory in Ukraine]
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/game-theory-ukraine
i have an advantage, i made it through my russian chess stage when i was a kid at the manhatten chess club (the same place josh went to… i used to go with the photographer Maurice Seymore who took puctures of the russian ballet and played chess (he was incredible, as was my dad).
heck.. even kaspersky is commenting on whats going on and getting frustrated.
Putin plays chess Lasky style.
and unless you every played against that, you would never imagine that you CAN play like that.
i used to love the Latvian Gambit
but i found chess too limiting and not much fun…
being a profesional mathemetician who writes code in research computing, i prefer Go now. MUCH harder.
and i do a lot with game theory too..
and lots of other stuff… but no one cares
Crimea Through a Game-Theory Lens
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/crimea-through-a-game-theory-lens.html?hpw&rref=business&action=click&module=Search®ion=searchResults%230&version=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fquery.nytimes.com%2Fsearch%2Fsitesearch%2F%3Faction%3Dclick%26region%3DMasthead%26pgtype%3DHomepage%26module%3DSearchSubmit%26contentCollection%3DHomepage%26t%3Dqry407%23%2FCowen%2Fsince1851%2Fallresults%2F1%2Fallauthors%2Fnewest%2F&_r=0
love the link, dont you?
real friendly..
anyway… they are going to be wrong as they refuse to look at anything older than a few years.
leaving 80% of the equation out, wont let the other 20% of the equation pan out to a valid answer other than sheer luck…
the game theory concept as its applied here is usingbig terms and concepts WRONGLY applied, and is much like the peple who trade options using nothing but chart patterns… (chartists)
no short of analysis and such, but all from a false marxist view of history that is not even correct for marxist view of history, let alone realize tehre are others
There are some other good pieces on the situation at Via Media. Scroll down.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/
I wish we had someone competent in our own government. This is a bit more important than basketball winners. It is so obvious that Obama hasn’t thought ahead about Putin’s plans and is incapable of trying to head things off.
There appears to be further confirmation of Artfldgr’s assertion that Putin is establishing naval bases outside its borders.
Russia Seeks Several Military Bases Abroad — Defense Minister
There does not appear to be however independent confirmation of Putin’s statement in 2012 that he had directed the emplacement of mobile strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba. Of course, Obama wouldn’t mention it and if true, Putin may be satisfied with the quiet threat, while he establishes new bases in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
As for Totten’s assertion that Putin is entirely opposed to Ukraine joining NATO, that is well established.
However regarding;
Once new Ukrainian elections are held, what would prevent covert discussions and a basic framework established between Ukraine and NATO for Ukraine’s membership in NATO and then announcing its formal recognition of Crimea’s ‘independence’? Other than nationalistic pride I see no reason why Ukraine might not say goodbye to the Crimea, agree with its “independence” and immediately join NATO.
That might neatly neutralize Putin’s move in the Crimea.
NATO is underwhelming, a mere shadow of its former self, and no longer even a soft threat to the Russian bear. The only threat of NATO was always American military power, and that has been bled away into toothlessness. NATO is Obama in blue: all bluster. The only thing we have left is nuclear, and we will not use that, period.
“The only thing we have left is nuclear, and we will not use that, period.”
Not quite, our options are now binary. We still have verbal bluster.
There are a few things to remember about Russian nationalists like Putin. One is that they are paranoid about being invaded because it has happened several times in the past. Napoleon and Hitler both came at them from the west. They want buffers on their western frontiers.
They also need warm water ports. Sevastopol in Crimea provides that. Their port in Syria is also a part of that strategy.
The third thing that Putin knows is that Russia can only survive if energy prices stay high. Energy sales are the backbone of their economy. Low energy prices in the late 1980s were what created the bankruptcy of the USSR.
Putin knows that chaos in the Middle East creates fear in the oil markets and keeps prices high. That’s why he backs the Shias (Iran and Syria) against the Sunnis. He recognizes that strife between these two sects of Islam is good for high energy prices.
When you look at these factors, you begin to see the game that he’s playing. What could derail his game? Low energy prices would be a good place to start. Frakking techniques have made it possible for the U.S. to produce far more oil and gas than was ever dreamed of. Between Canada, the U.S., Mexico, and Israel there is much shale oil and gas. Producing it full out would lower oil prices and weaken Russia.
Russia could be a wealthy nation if they had a free market society. But they don’t and that is their vulnerability. We must never allow ourselves to believe the fictions that were foisted on us during the Cold War. – namely, that they were going to bury us economically. Without economic and political reform they will never, ever be a match for us.
Artfl, Putin’s move on Crimea is not a LONG RANGE PLAN cooked up in the ’50s by Uncle Joe. This is LONG TERM RUSSIAN POLICY formulated over 500 years ago: protect against invasion from the West, exploit the resources of the East, secure a warm-water port. What’s the surprise?
What’s sad is that neither “the smartest man ever elected President” and his Secretary of State, Officer Muldoon, know that. And you, Artfl, should know better.
“Putin knows is that Russia can only survive if energy prices stay high. Energy sales are the backbone of their economy. Low energy prices in the late 1980s were what created the bankruptcy of the USSR.
Putin knows that chaos in the Middle East creates fear in the oil markets and keeps prices high. That’s why he backs the Shias (Iran and Syria) against the Sunnis. He recognizes that strife between these two sects of Islam is good for high energy prices.” J.J.
That is the first plausible alternative explication for Putin’s behavior that I have yet read. Plausible enough that I think it a definite factor. It does not explain however, Russia’s support and critical facilitation of Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability. It only partially explains Russia supplying the Mullahs with sophisticated air defenses.
Fracking is absolutely the way to go for the reasons you state ( and for our own energy independence) but off the top of my head I can’t recall anyone here suggesting that Russia can economically bury us.
With all of these successes, maybe we can hope that Putin gets overconfident and moves back in on Afghanistan after we’ve left.
G.B., in 1956 Nikita Kruschev stated to some Western diplomats in Yugoslavia, “”We will bury you!” (Russian: “Мы Ð²Ð°Ñ Ð¿Ð¾Ñ…Ð¾Ñ€Ð¾Ð½Ð¸Ð¼!”, transliterated as My vas pokhoronim!) is a phrase that was famously used by Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev while addressing Western ambassadors at a reception at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18, 1956″.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_will_bury_you
The western press ran with this and were always highly impressed by the big military parades that the USSR put on to display their industrial strength. I was in the Navy at the time and remember many of our intelligence estimates were that the USSR was going to surpass us economically in 10 years. Even during the Reagan years there were estimates that they were very strong economically and our government for whatever reasons never let on as to how bad their economy really was.
I remember reading an account by two bicyclists who road from Moscow to Vladivostok shortly after the USSR dissolved. I was shocked to learn how backward and undeveloped most of the country was. Their eyewitness accounts of crumbling infrastructure, wide spread poverty, mediocre mechanical devices, the dearth of autos, etc., etc. shocked me to the core. I suddenly realized that it was a Potemkin Village and for some reason our intelligence community and news agencies never revealed the truth. That is, if they knew the truth. Even today, except for some of their major cities, they are just a step above a third world country with all kinds of economic problems. In fact here’s a quote from one financial adviser I follow:
“Of course, we all know that the Crimea conflict has been at the top of the news banners all week. But, how will the sanctions placed on Russia impact financial markets? The Russian stock market has tanked 10 percent this month, wiping out billions in market capitalization.
Economists have slashed growth forecasts to zero this year and foreign investors have been pulling money out of Russian banks. Investors took $35 billion out of Russia in January and February – about half as much as in the entire preceding year.” Putin is growling like a bear, but he really doesn’t have enough economic muscle to extend Russia too far. IMHO, if we had muscular leadership with a realistic view of what’s going on, Vlad would be much more careful.
The economic story with Putin is that he PERSONALLY owns a huge hunk of Gasprom.
It’s not enough that OPEC prices oil very dearly. Putin needs volume, too.
For some reason, pundit after pundit thinks that America benefits from lower energy prices.
Wrong.
Red China and India benefit from lower OPEC prices, not America.
We’re a high cost producer. India and Red China are massive importers — as are Europe and Japan.
High oil prices benefit our own oil sector — which then spends the money right back here — on wages and capital goods and dividends and taxes.
What we should do is just keep taking away Putin’s market share of crude oil exports. OPEC is keeping him in clover by being a totally repugnant supplier.
No-one is so stupid as to not recognize that European demographics are being poisoned by Muslim immigrants. The first major objectors: Denmark, Austria and Switzerland.
The Europeans are taking in Muslims as a tit-for-tat deal. This deal goes all the way back to 1974 — when the President of France cut a deal with the Algerians, et. al. to keep France off the oil embargo list.
(America and Holland were being sanctioned by AOPEC for permitting normal trade with Israel, remember? 1973-1974)
(Holland was getting its gas domestically — that is in Holland. It was getting its crude oil largely from the North Sea.)
(My Google research shows me that already the historical revisionism on this matter is vast: Holland has dropped off the list and it’s implied that many other nations were embargoed. Such was not so. Further, neither Venezuela nor Iran ever participated in the embargo — selling oil to Israel and America et. al. right on through the rumpus. Modern European scribes write as if Europe was embargoed. Such was not so.)
http://blueandgreentomorrow.com/features/on-this-day-in-1973-oil-price-hike-sparks-crisis-in-the-west/
$$$
With every sweet, light barrel of crude we pump… with every refined barrel we export… OPEC and Putin are squeezed.
BTW, Putin is giving the Iranians poisoned technology. That is, if his crew has any say, the Iranian atomics figure to be ‘fizzles.’
Atomics are touchy bombs. So there are gazillion ways for savvy players to wrong-foot the mullahs, who are not rocket scientists.
Between our reduction in usage… our increase in production… our increase in refined exports (Texas) OPEC is feeling the hammer.
Beyond that Algeria is ramping up nat gas exports to France by way of Spain. That connection is FRESH. Putin is losing market share. That is huge.
He’s gone from 45% of European nat gas imports to 33% — in only four years. Britain may well start contracting with Algeria for nat gas, too. The Channel is no biggie.
Algeria sure could use the big bucks.
I don’t think Putin is mad, or venal. As Henry Kissinger put it recently, he is a serious geopolitical strategist pursuing serious Russian interests.
There was a rumour of a report that Kissinger or another geo political pro America first individual, said that America has a sphere of interest that must be protected to protect America.
And then he pointed to the globe.
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