What should the West do about Ukraine?

Very impressed that B and SP have heard the story of Stanislas Petrov. Just one of many amazing stories of the cold war era

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Originally posted by F1098

Very impressed that B and SP have heard the story of Stanislas Petrov. Just one of many amazing stories of the cold war era

To be fair, I didn't really know the details of it until today. I had a recollection of something happening, and I remember when he was awarded a couple of humanitarian awards about 10 years ago...but I had never really known the story behind it all until I researched it today.

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Originally posted by Sugarpie

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My point once again being that the worlds nuclear stockpile is no longer run by a Commodore 64. Computers are thousands of times more advanced today

Funny you should mention that. Last week's 60 Minutes report showed the computers currently in use in the missile silos. They are significantly older than the Commodore 64. Still use the 8 inch floppy disks. The General in command said that there are no immediate plans to upgrade because of the risk of cyberwarfare. I know this comment is a bit off topic from the Ukraine, but it appeared to be relevant. BTW - congrats on the degree.

lol....SP I remain delighted that you both showed interest in that. I've seen several documentaries on the the CW, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular and it is absolutely amazing how many times we ( both sides) have come to launching nuclear warheads. One of the more chilling ones has to do with the renegade Soviet sub commander who in that standoff, if I recall correctly, nearly launched his missiles on the belief that his out of communication commander had been destroyed by the US.......

Amazing and frightening stuff

All this and today NATO announces ( quite accurately in my view) that Russia was no longer a subject for partnership, but an "enemy".

Stay cool guys.

IIRC the Soviets saved face in the Cuban Missile crisis

Quote:

Originally posted by F1098

lol....SP I remain delighted that you both showed interest in that. I've seen several documentaries on the the CW, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular and it is absolutely amazing how many times we ( both sides) have come to launching nuclear warheads. One of the more chilling ones has to do with the renegade Soviet sub commander who in that standoff, if I recall correctly, nearly launched his missiles on the belief that his out of communication commander had been destroyed by the US.......

Amazing and frightening stuff

All this and today NATO announces ( quite accurately in my view) that Russia was no longer a subject for partnership, but an "enemy".

Stay cool guys.

Good find!

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-now-an-adversary-nato-official-says/

WASHINGTON -- After two decades of trying to build a partnership with Russia, the NATO alliance now feels compelled to start treating Moscow as an adversary, the second-ranking official of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Thursday.

"Clearly the Russians have declared NATO as an adversary, so we have to begin to view Russia no longer as a partner but as more of an adversary than a partner," said Alexander Vershbow, the deputy secretary-general of NATO.

Pro-Russian separatists seize more Ukraine government buildings
In a question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters, Vershbow said Russia's annexation of Crimea and its apparent manipulation of unrest in eastern Ukraine have fundamentally changed the NATO-Russia relationship.

"In central Europe, clearly we have two different visions of what European security should be like," Vershbow, a former U.S. diplomat and former Pentagon official, said. "We still would defend the sovereignty and freedom of choice of Russia's neighbors, and Russia clearly is trying to re-impose hegemony and limit their sovereignty under the guise of a defense of the Russian world."

In April, NATO suspended all "practical civilian and military cooperation" with Russia, although Russia has maintained its diplomatic mission to NATO, which was established in 1998.

Vershbow said NATO, created 65 years ago as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union, is considering new defensive measures aimed at deterring Russia from any aggression against NATO members along its border, such as the Baltic states that were once part of the Soviet Union, Vershbow said.

"We want to be sure that we can come to the aid of these countries if there were any, even indirect, threat very quickly before any facts on the ground can be established," he said.

To do that, NATO members will have to shorten the response time of its forces, he said.

Play Video
Ukraine government, security forces appear weak as violence increases
Vershbow, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said that among possible moves by NATO is deployment of more substantial numbers of allied combat forces to Eastern Europe, either permanently or on a rotational basis.

For the time being, he said, such defensive measures would be taken without violating the political pledge NATO made in 1997 when it established a new relationship with Moscow on terms aimed at offsetting Russian anger at the expansion of NATO to include Poland and other nations on Russia's periphery. At the time, NATO said it would not station nuclear weapons or substantial numbers of combat troops on the territory of those new members. For its part, Moscow pledged to respect the territorial integrity of other states.

Vershbow argued that Russia has violated its part of that agreement by its actions in Ukraine, and thus, "we would be within our rights now" to set aside the 1997 commitment by permanently stationing substantial numbers of combat troops in Poland or other NATO member nations in Eastern Europe. He said that question will be considered by leaders of NATO nations over the summer.

Ukraine government supporters and separatists battle in streets
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Ukraine should withdraw its military units from the eastern and southern regions of the country, where anti-government insurgents are seizing buildings, but hours later, Ukraine's acting president ordered the military draft be renewed as the unrest intensifies.

Although Ukraine last year announced plans to end military conscription and transfer to an all-volunteer force, Oleksandr Turchynov said in his order that the draft must be renewed in light of "threats of encroachment on Ukraine's territorial integrity and interference by Russia in the internal affairs of Ukraine."........"

Well I guess history is doomed to repeat itself once again. God help us.........

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Originally posted by F1098

Very impressed that B and SP have heard the story of Stanislas Petrov. Just one of many amazing stories of the cold war era

I know things.

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Originally posted by exocet

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Funny you should mention that. Last week's 60 Minutes report showed the computers currently in use in the missile silos. They are significantly older than the Commodore 64. Still use the 8 inch floppy disks. The General in command said that there are no immediate plans to upgrade because of the risk of cyberwarfare. I know this comment is a bit off topic from the Ukraine, but it appeared to be relevant. BTW - congrats on the degree.

Thats really interesting, but in a way kinda makes sense I guess. Those systems are probably un-hackable because they aren't part of the net. A little scary still though, considering it was sunlight bouncing off a solar panel on a satellite that Russia interpreted as a US missile launch.

Quote:

Originally posted by F1098

lol....SP I remain delighted that you both showed interest in that. I've seen several documentaries on the the CW, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in particular and it is absolutely amazing how many times we ( both sides) have come to launching nuclear warheads. One of the more chilling ones has to do with the renegade Soviet sub commander who in that standoff, if I recall correctly, nearly launched his missiles on the belief that his out of communication commander had been destroyed by the US.......

Amazing and frightening stuff

All this and today NATO announces ( quite accurately in my view) that Russia was no longer a subject for partnership, but an "enemy".

Stay cool guys.

That also probably adds a few seconds towards the next minute.

Not sure if that is a reference to the Doomsday clock or not, but I am too lazy to go back and read the last few pages.

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Originally posted by Lia

Well I guess history is doomed to repeat itself once again. God help us.........

So true Lia! The good news is the West( well most everyone except Sugarpie and others like her) learned from history. Watch for the warning signs and act on them before it is too late. We should have jumped Hitlers ass before he became so bold and out of control, for example. You have to learn from History or it is doomed to repeat itself. I post things and then I back up what I say with up to date news articles-when I have the time that is. I stated NATO would ramp up their Military force in the area and they are doing just that. When did the trouble start? When Ukranians got rid of a Russian puppet President in Ukraine. That is when all of a sudden Russia claimed the Crimea needed their help. Russia was losing control of Ukraine. Russia just threw away all the good will that had been built up with the West because one Leader thinks the Soviet Union was the good old days. Putting so much power in one persons hand is not a good idea

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Originally posted by NightCruiser

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So true Lia! The good news is the West( well most everyone except Sugarpie and others like her) learned from history. Watch for the warning signs and act on them before it is too late. We should have jumped Hitlers ass before he became so bold and out of control, for example. You have to learn from History or it is doomed to repeat itself. I post things and then I back up what I say with up to date news articles-when I have the time that is. I stated NATO would ramp up their Military force in the area and they are doing just that. When did the trouble start? When Ukranians got rid of a Russian puppet President in Ukraine. That is when all of a sudden Russia claimed the Crimea needed their help. Russia was losing control of Ukraine. Russia just threw away all the good will that had been built up with the West because one Leader thinks the Soviet Union was the good old days. Putting so much power in one persons hand is not a good idea

Are you actually suggesting that Putin has the same agenda as Hitler? And that the current conflict in Ukraine is on par with WW2 and the genocide the Nazi's committed?

And for the record. I NEVER said that this wouldn't escalate, and I NEVER said that people wanting to rejoin Russia was a good thing. I have said since day one that there is a percentage of people in Ukraine that want to rejoin Russia, and if thats what they want, then who are we to say that they can't. I have never been in support of Russia trying to take over Ukraine. You read what you want to read, and you ignore the rest. Then you fill in the blanks with your own twisted logic and theories.

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Originally posted by Sugarpie

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Are you actually suggesting that Putin has the same agenda as Hitler? And that the current conflict in Ukraine is on par with WW2 and the genocide the Nazi's committed?

And for the record. I NEVER said that this wouldn't escalate, and I NEVER said that people wanting to rejoin Russia was a good thing. I have said since day one that there is a percentage of people in Ukraine that want to rejoin Russia, and if thats what they want, then who are we to say that they can't. I have never been in support of Russia trying to take over Ukraine. You read what you want to read, and you ignore the rest. Then you fill in the blanks with your own twisted logic and theories.

More Like a Stalin(Russian leader in the past who killed between 3 and 30 million people) in the making:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin

"Mass operations of the NKVD also targeted "national contingents" (foreign ethnicities) such as Poles, ethnic Germans, Koreans, etc. A total of 350,000 (144,000 of them Poles) were arrested and 247,157 (110,000 Poles) were executed.[27] Many Americans who had emigrated to the Soviet Union during the worst of the Great Depression were executed; others were sent to prison camps or gulags.[47][48] Concurrent with the purges, efforts were made to rewrite the history in Soviet textbooks and other propaganda materials. Notable people executed by NKVD were removed from the texts and photographs as though they never existed. Gradually, the history of revolution was transformed to a story about just two key characters: Lenin and Stalin.

In light of revelations from Soviet archives, historians now estimate that nearly 700,000 people (353,074 in 1937 and 328,612 in 1938) were executed in the course of the terror,[49] with the great mass of victims merely "ordinary" Soviet citizens: workers, peasants, homemakers, teachers, priests, musicians, soldiers, pensioners, ballerinas, beggars.[50][51] Many of the executed were interred in mass graves, with some of the major killing and burial sites being Bykivnia, Kurapaty and Butovo.[52]

Some Western experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.[53][54][55][56][57]

Stalin personally signed 357 proscription lists in 1937 and 1938 that condemned to execution some 40,000 people, and about 90% of these are confirmed to have been shot.[58] At the time, while reviewing one such list, Stalin reportedly muttered to no one in particular: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one."[59] In addition, Stalin dispatched a contingent of NKVD operatives to Mongolia, established a Mongolian version of the NKVD troika, and unleashed a bloody purge in which tens of thousands were executed as "Japanese Spies." Mongolian ruler Khorloogiin Choibalsan closely followed Stalin's lead.[60]

During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet leadership sent NKVD squads into other countries to murder defectors and other opponents of the Soviet regime. Victims of such plots included Yevhen Konovalets, Ignace Poretsky, Rudolf Klement, Alexander Kutepov, Evgeny Miller, Leon Trotsky and the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) leadership in Catalonia (e.g., Andreu Nin).[61]
Deportations
Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union
1941 June deportation in Latvia

Shortly before, during and immediately after World War II, Stalin conducted a series of deportations on a huge scale that profoundly affected the ethnic map of the Soviet Union. It is estimated that between 1941 and 1949 nearly 3.3 million[62][63] were deported to Siberia and the Central Asian republics. By some estimates up to 43% of the resettled population died of diseases and malnutrition.[64]

Separatism, resistance to Soviet rule and collaboration with the invading Germans were cited as the official reasons for the deportations, rightly or wrongly. Individual circumstances of those spending time in German-occupied territories were not examined. After the brief Nazi occupation of the Caucasus, the entire population of five of the small highland peoples and the Crimean Tatars – more than a million people in total – were deported without notice or any opportunity to take their possessions.[65]

As a result of Stalin's lack of trust in the loyalty of particular ethnicities, ethnic groups such as the Soviet Koreans, the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars, the Chechens, and many Poles were forcibly moved out of strategic areas and relocated to places in the central Soviet Union, especially Kazakhstan in Soviet Central Asia. By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of deportees may have died en route.[62]

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including the entire nationalities in several cases).[66]

In February 1956, Nikita Khrushchev condemned the deportations as a violation of Leninism, and reversed most of them, although it was not until 1991 that the Tatars, Meskhetians and Volga Germans were allowed to return en masse to their homelands. The deportations had a profound effect on the peoples of the Soviet Union. The memory of the deportations has played a major part in the separatist movements in the Baltic States, Tatarstan and Chechnya, even today....."

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Originally posted by NightCruiser

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More Like a Stalin(Russian leader in the past) in the making:

Thanks for explaining, because this certainly sounds like you're comparing the current situation to Hitler and the Nazis

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Watch for the warning signs and act on them before it is too late. We should have jumped Hitlers ass before he became so bold and out of control

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Originally posted by Sugarpie

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Thanks for explaining, because this certainly sounds like you're comparing the current situation to Hitler and the Nazis

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Stalin made Hitler look like a light weight

The point is that these type systems usually produce monsters

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Originally posted by NightCruiser

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Stalin made Hitler look like a light weight

Ummm....yeah.....this is a topic for a different thread, but on deaths alone while they were in power, Hitler had Stalin beat by an 11 to 1 ratio (est)

Agreed that Stalin wasn't a swell guy...but a lightweight compared to Hitler...I don't think so.

We could go on bout the Hitler's, the Stalin's, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot all day. They are no longer relevant today, the questions is will the world let Putin follow in their footsteps. I hope and pray not, we don't need a repeat of history in the twenty first century.

How much are Americans willing to get involved in Ukraine?

Events surrounding Ukraine continue to move at a rapid pace, as violence spreads across the country and Ukraine's acting president reinstates military conscription.
Meanwhile, the world watches to see just how far the Obama administration will get the US involved


http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27244152

With todays events, I think its getting more and more likely that some sort of coalition force or UN force will be deployed...what their agenda will be, remains to be seen. I really don't think the world is waiting to see what the Obama administration does. I think Americans are waiting to see what Obama does. None of my Canadian news outlets, nor Reuters mentioned anything about Obama, American troops, or the possibility of American troops.