Crimea Twofer

A Schengen zone for NATO:

<blockquote>“Right after Crimea we sent out a questionnaire about [border regulations] to each member states, and the results were pretty scary. Some countries needed to recall parliament in order to let NATO units cross their borders. And one country said, ‘we can only have 1,600 soldiers on our soil.’” In reality, that meant that NATO would be unable to use that member state, which the NATO official declined to identify, for passage.</blockquote>

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2016-06-06/s…

Tactical nuclear weapons, pushing aside shared decision making, promoting American NATO generals as a kind independent decision maker on troop movements.

Democracy promotion.

This makes the Line of Control between India and Pakistan look like the most stable place in the world.

How can such behavior be seen as responsible? What madness infects man from time to time?

And we Gen Xers have not done our job. We never really explained what it was like to grow up under this sort of thing, how frightening, how many really worried about war between the US and the former Soviet Union. It polluted many an 80s childhood. Tornado sirens would freak kids out, sometimes, right?

Forgotten. Forgotten history.

I know others my age and generation had the same thoughts as children, but we never shared it with younger folk, or, we seemed to forget about it in the heady days of the 90s and our prosperous early adulthood. Now there simply isn't the "emotional memory" for many to understand how dangerous this is.

Another example of our idiocracy, worse than Trump. Or related.

Our artists can't help us this time around, either. They are lost in their super hero movie world.

What cowardice affects the Washington Consensus and its denizens. Why be afraid? Apart from a few lone voices, it's business as usual.

Psychotic:

“To deny adversaries this leverage, or at least reduce it, the Pentagon must studiously think through how the o set strategy can be shaped and imple- mented to deter, discourage and, if need be, control for and respond to adversary nuclear employment. e o set strategy, in simpler terms, must show U.S. adversaries that using nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies would be distinctly unwise and that the <strong>United States has ways and means to defeat (at least in limited terms) and deny the objectives of these opponents even if nuclear weapons have been used. …”</strong>

What of Third Offset Nuclear Weapons? Elbridge Colby, CNAS. (John Batchelor Show blurb)

Third Offset = give us more money

CNAS is a toxic influence. We are so screwed.

https://audioboom.com/boos/4597489-what-of-third-offset-nuclear-weapons…

Without links:

See what I mean by my previous comment in this thread? Recreating the dynamics of Able Archer 83:

<blockquote>The new need to think harder about limited war, <strong>including limited nuclear war</strong>, implies a need to rethink how to make nuclear threats credible to deter aggression against U.S. allies. These threats have to be made credible because they are not directly related to the protection of the continental United States. Nuclear consultation will be an indispensable tool for this task.</blockquote> - War on the Rocks

THE CASE FOR NUCLEAR CONSULTATION WITH NATO
ANDREAS LUTSCH

The Pakistani military talks about tactical nuclear weapons and we label them lunatic nutbags. But this is supposed to be sane.

The Washington Consensus and its European/British transatlantic counterpart is a cult. A dangerous cult.

War on the Rocks as a platform for discussion is too dominated by its CNAS-Richard Fontaine-John McCain-British academic NATOist milieu.

Once again, without the links:

What are we doing? Re-creating some of the same emotional dynamics of Able Archer 83, in a kind of loop?

<em>NATO Allies Preparing to Put Four Battalions at Eastern Border With Russia
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense says buildup is response to Moscow’s military activity near the Baltics</em> -
Wall Street Journal

Secretary Carter comes from that whole Fritz Ermarth (Casey and Gates, etc.) world of Star Wars with its proven wrong assessments of the then Soviet Union? They got everything wrong and yet the foreign party establishment bows to the conventional wisdom created by the residua of that foreign party apparatus embedded within Washington.

<blockquote>"The Board is deeply disturbed by the US handling of the war scare, both at the time and since. In the early stages of the war scare period, when evidence was thin, little effort was made to examine the various possible Soviet motivations behind some very anomalous events… When written, the 1984 SNIE's [assessments][3] were overconfident." That estimate, written by veteran Soviet analyst Fritz Ermarth, downplayed the hazards. </blockquote>

The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Declassified-PFIAB-Report (GWU national archives)

Heaven help us.

It's very important for nuclear powers to use sensible language, India and Pakistan. John Kerry would like you to keep the language civil (well, not NATO and Russia, just you two):

<blockquote>Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is a “thug” and a “liar”, one of Britain’s most senior ambassadors has said, as the EU prepares to approve tough new sanctions against Moscow.</blockquote>

<em>Vladimir Putin is a thug and liar, says top British envoy</em> (The Telegraph, from some time back).

Add to this the off-and-on bizarro rhetoric of President Obama and Putin, one ridiculing an entire country's economy, the other nuclear saber rattling while NATO shows off in Eastern Europe.

I know, I know, lurking friend, if you are lurking, it is fairly ridiculous for me to comment on old blog posts, comment after comment, but I am essentially lazy on these subjects and it's easy for me to add a link here instead of creating my own site or writing some small article for a website. For some reason, it amuses me. And, anyway, I always sort of hope some student is reading and somehow gets an idea for a paper or something.

I don't think inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds anymore, I think given the nature of this current moment we sort of can't be, "do as we say, not as we do." It just won't work anymore, if it every worked.

The Chinese even told us to hold the megaphone diplomacy down, although, they had their own reasons. Not a bad counsel, though.

From Consortium News:

<blockquote>Anyone who dares protest the unrelentingly one-sided coverage is deemed a “Putin apologist” or a “stooge of Moscow.” So, most Americans – <strong>in a position to influence public knowledge but who want to stay employable – stay silent, just as they did during the Iraq War stampede.</strong>
.
In other words, as the United States rushes into a new Cold War with Russia, we are seeing the makings of a new McCarthyism, challenging the patriotism of anyone who doesn’t get into line. But this conformity of thought presents a serious threat to U.S. national security and even the future of the planet.</blockquote>
And
<blockquote>It may seem clever for some New Republic blogger or a Washington Post writer to insult anyone who doesn’t accept the over-the-top propaganda on Russia and Ukraine – <strong>much as they did to people who objected to the rush to war in Iraq</strong> – but a military clash with nuclear-armed Russia is a crisis of a much greater magnitude.</blockquote>

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/01/30/group-thinking-the-world-into-a-n…

Yes, I've noticed. People I'd read for years and had grown to trust now seem afraid to step out on their own. Or perhaps are so caught up in the group fever that they have convinced themselves.

I was much the same in the rush up to the Iraq War, my ignorance and fear and falling into the wrong crowd online all affected how I thought about the world. I believed many stupid things.

I've stopped reading old friends except to occasionally scan an article. On a personal level, I wish all well.

It is sad, though. Not everyone I've read is some newbie without savings looking for a job. There are quite a lot of settled people that might be kicked out of the fashionable crowd but can feed themselves and their families.

Yet....

OTOH, am I saying much about medicine online? When it comes to my profession, I'm pretty quiet, eh?

Can't start a war from my work, though.

Whose stupid idea was it to bring two nuclear powers with a troubled history up so close to one another in a tight security perimeter?

That is the exact language used by some in the "military intellectual" field too, the action intellectuals who have never gotten anything correct.

There is no need for the dreaded appeasement either; proxy wars are countered by good governance and intelligent border work.

When was the last time you saw a really good report on the border? OSCE only puts out bits and pieces and there are many with the technology to map the whole darn thing in Ukraine, you know?

Does anyone worry about the following patterns being created in decision makers and the nuclear escalation cascade in terms of NATO abutting a nuclear armed Russia? A mistake has nothing to do with ideology and who has the correct view of the world:

<blockquote>As to what we're going to do about the problem, darned if I know. But for starters the pathology needs to be better understood by the public before anything can be done. Many people don't believe the warnings because they don't know the science behind them. So unsurprisingly laws banning phone use while driving have made little to no difference in preventing people from using their communication devices on the road; you'll learn why in detail from Matt's discussion -- although distracted driving is only one aspect of the problem.
.
By the time the interview ended I was questioning whether the problem should even be termed an addiciton. It seems more a compulsion, which I don't think is quite the same as addiciton, and which isn't under conscious control. The compulsion is grounded in a very necessary survival impulse that's hardwired into our brains. Yet if we don't get control of a compulsion to use portable (and wearable!) digital communication devices, the entire human race will soon find itself in the deadly position of those ancient Greek mariners who were enthralled by the songs of Sirens.</blockquote> "The neuropathology of smart phone use is damn scary," Pundita blog

If the Indians and Pakistanis start trading insults, we worry about their nuclear escalation, but our own leaders don't stop to think how this strange reactive behavior over the internet might work and what we our training our leaders to be, to do, to think....

Some of the fashionable DC crowd--"journalists", think tankers and assorted hangers on trained like dogs to bark at the baddie of the moment--seem to be rethinking a few things as the rouble crisis continues.

Not for long, I'm sure. Careers and money are not made by thinking things through. Crisis often result from the bad decisions of many parties, not just one.

The stagnation of certain middle class incomes in America post 1990, manufacturing, feelings of middle class insecurity despite a not unreasonable current economy, <strong>the increased likelihood of conflict in the Mid East if there are no other brokers</strong>....yes, thinking things through is not the strong suit of the fashionably PhD'ed. Or, given the money making schemes for certain factions, things HAVE been thought through, just not what is best for the average American or Western European, or Eastern European even. If you need to sell, who shall you sell things to and who will get the contracts?

From 'we have a company line on Ukraine' War on the Rocks ( I like you people A LOT, but I'm not stupid):

<blockquote>Because nuclear weapons appear to take major war and regime change off the table, they promise greater space for smaller powers to conduct proxy warfare, violent provocations, and even limited military operations at lower levels of escalation.</blockquote> THE U.S. NEEDS A MORE TAILORED & DISCRIMINATE DETERRENCE REGIME, Jerry Meyerle (can't embed links today for some reason).

Well, you only have to be wrong once on the whole nuke thing....

I think the most intelligent thing the human race has ever done (the various jostling factions in the EU, Russia, UK, US, the whole messy #HumanDomain of it), and I mean ever, is to draw a tight national security perimeter line right up to the border of Russia, between a nuclear armed US and NATO and a nuclear armed Russia.

That is without doubt the most intelligent strategery that has ever happened since the dawn of time.

From a book review on <em>The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain</em> by J.H. Gleason.

I have not read the book and don't know the author (for all I know, there might be a, uh, backstory) but am more interested in the "American diplomat's" assessment, more accurate than anything you all had to back you up intellectually in Afghanistan during our latest campaign:

<blockquote>Though this oversimplifies Mr. Gleason's complex picture; he emphasizes the fact that "during much of the period in question Great Britain's policy was, in the main, more provocative than Russia's" (p.3), and exposes the complete unreality of the "threat to India" by quoting an <strong>American diplomat's report in 1835: "Among the means daily employed to popularize [Russophobia], the preferred views of Russia upon British India have been, however absurdly, held up to excite the ignorant fears of the people" (p. 186). </strong>Mr. Gleason concludes that by 1841 there was "a generally accepted stereotype "of Russian villainy whose existence could be assumed by politicians. <strong>A few evocative phrases would produce immediate hostile reactions (p. 204, 225, 275f)."</strong></blockquote>

The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain by J. H. Gleason

Christopher Hill
Science & Society
Vol. 16, No. 3 (Summer, 1952), pp. 281-283

Evocative phrases. Even generally sensible milbloggers and others that I have followed over the years have reacted in a way that seems very emotionally programmed, as if there is a kind of Pavlovian response. Very curious.

The point here is not to debate the nature of Russia or Russians, or the affect of British thinking on American elites, but to understand that within our own history we had judgements quite at odds with the fashionable post-war thinking that so dominates our Washington Consensus, a consensus peopled by an erratically and strangely educated yet hugely ambitious elite with almost no real understanding of why they might react to events.

Those are the more innocent. The less innocent are those who think only in terms of a certain kind of forever enemies of great power politics, and were quite willing to sacrifice anything for it. Anything.

I'll try again without the link:

<blockquote>According to Kiev-based defence analyst Alexei Melnik, Kiev's strategy hinges on two objectives: Securing the border to prevent further men, weapons and supplies arriving from Russia, and blocking off rebel-held areas to keep the revolt from spreading. The next stage will be "targeted operations" by special forces to assassinate rebel leaders, Melnik predicted.</blockquote> -Ukraine retakes border crossing from rebels as Poroshenko goes on attack, The Guardian (from July)

Better border control might upset a variety of licit and illicit business interests on both sides of the border? Something is messed up:

<blockquote>This fall, a Help Army unit also reinforced Ukrainian border guards in patrolling and manning checkpoints along Ukraine’s frontier with Russia. The border is just about 50 kilometers from the center of Kharkiv.</blockquote>Ukraine: Kharkiv Volunteers Shore Up Border, Morale, Lobelog

It's not that I want smaller nations bullied by larger nations but the rhetoric surrounding this conflict seems more about pumping up various causes (arms sales, NATO revival, domestic Russian factors, money-making schemes, Eastern European and French and UK and German politics, etc.) than it does about protecting people or protecting national sovereignty.

Even though I know what I am doing won't change anything, I don't like giving up on a topic.

In proxy conflicts and insurgencies, I am told two things matter: governance and sanctuary, often cross-border sanctuary.

Reports in Western papers are always talking about trucks crossing borders, and supply chains for rebels, and then we get stories of shelling urban populated areas and the cutting off of pensions. Pensions are a big topic, and have been for years in Ukraine, especially with the IMF.

I tried embedding this link and excerpt earlier but it didn't work so I will try it without the link:

<blockquote>Ukraine is home to some of the world’s cheapest cigarettes — at $1.05 per pack — making the country a bonanza for smugglers, whether by glider or more mundane pathways on the ground. Cars and trucks filled with Ukrainian-made Marlboros and Viceroys get waved through border checkpoints by customs guards who seem more than eager to accommodate, for a price. Loads also move by bus and train, bound for other European countries where high taxes make packs cost as much as $5 (Germany) or $10 (United Kingdom).</blockquote> -Ukraine’s ‘Lost’ Cigarettes Flood Europe

<em>Big Tobacco’s Overproduction Fuels $2 Billion Black Market
By Vlad Lavrov, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project</em>

I would have no idea what is correct and what is not, but there is something very strange about the way borders are talked about in the West, specifically, American reporting.

Or is this my Rorshach test, where I have to see patterns where none exist? Sometimes a thing just IS?

What's the real deal with the leaky borders?

You don't have to approve of Putin to see how the seeds have been sown (in many places, Russia and the US, among others) for a new Cold War and how the desire for leadership often means power struggles at the periphery, however periphery is designated (Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, the Pacific "seams"):

<blockquote>Cheney's speech was designed to be provocative, a warning to Moscow not to take good relations with the Bush administration for granted. Two conservative senators, the Republican John McCain and the Democrat Joe Lieberman, have even urged Bush not to attend the summit unless Putin cleans up his act.

<strong>Three factors lie behind the new negativism on Russia: Putin's creeping autocracy; Moscow's international independence; and its growing role as a gas and oil supplier.</srong></blockquote>

Washington's style for overseas regime change is a bit cramped if someone pushes back, yes? And that someone then becomes the devil, even as we work closely with other devils, so to speak.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2006/jun/30/comment.russia

This Cold War helps no one, certainly not those in periphery nations. Cheney has very interesting attitudes and relations with the Saudis and I'm not talking the oil connections, there is something a little weird there, isn't there?

For discussion because emotional ties and habits of mind are complicated things. It's funny, how some people are told to carefully police their emotions toward certain lands of origin when considering American interests, while others are rarely given that advice (and here I mean general categories of immigrants or religions, not any one specific person):

<em>Secretary Pritzkers Emotional Ties to Ukraine</em>

<blockquote><strong>No country today appeals more to the American hero complex than Ukraine: David against the Russian Goliath, the object of Putin aggression for daring to see its future alongside Europe’s free markets.</strong>

BREAK

Penny Pritzker delivered that tough love message in Kiev, the city of her great grandfather’s birth, last week. “President [Petro] Poroshenko said the right things,” the Commerce Secretary, referring to his promise to adopt economic reforms, told me when she returned Friday after stops in Poland and Turkey. “But do they have the will?” That, of course, is a very different question.

Pritzker’s visit may have provided Poroshenko with useful political cover against vested interests protecting the status quo; two of three anti-corruption measures he introduced passed the Parliament. But that’s just a start.

<strong>For Pritzker, the visit packed an emotional punch. The Pritzker family fortune can be traced back to Kiev, where her great grandfather followed his brother’s escape from Tsarist Russia to the United States. The latter, Jewish and a political dissident, was about to be sent to Siberia.</strong></blockquote>

http://fortune.com/2014/10/06/secretary-pritzker-kiev/

During the Cold War, the immigrant group in the West that seemed most pro-Western always had the only legitimacy in any complicated ground conflict according the the Western narrative. Not just the Cold War, obviously. Is it the territorial integrity of Ukraine and European stability that matter most, or are there other emotions involved, in that complicated way even well-meaning people can't always understand? Emotions are one thing, analysis and the sort of analysis that can help a country like Ukraine is a different animal, it needs emotion too, but that emotion should involve something larger than picking one group, and one group only, to love.

Ukrainians of all types should be careful. A certain type of American destroys that which he or she loves the most....Not just Americans fall prey to this, obviously....

To be in an immigrant group that is on the outside of the magic circle is to be ignored, even when the information provided could have helped, really helped, for thirteen, going on fourteen, long years....

The following article shows a proxy war on the ground. The powerless always suffer:

<blockquote>There is a genuine animosity among people in Donbass toward the government in Kiev. The National Guard is widely hated; people accuse the army of random shelling. And the withdrawal of benefits and salaries on the cusp of winter has left many in despair. At the same time, people grumble about the inability of the DPR to help them, and lament its lack of basic organization. Some small protests have taken place in towns like Torez, close to where the Malaysian airliner was shot down in July.

While Ukraine's divorce gets ever uglier, the ordinary people of the Donbass focus on survival, on a hand-to-mouth existence, without the means to escape the violence that has torn apart their lives for the last nine months.

One of them, a fragile stooped woman who tells us she is 83, stands outside the last working Ukrainian bank in Donetsk, as others hammer on its door. Today it too will remain shuttered.

"I have no money," she says. "I'll probably die because I have nothing to eat."</blockquote>

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/20/world/europe/ukraine-donetsk-residents-st…

I talk a lot about cross border support to the Kashmir and Punjab insurgencies (and Afghanistan) around here, but there would be little situation to support initially had local issues not festered, and even if you don't buy that a more competent government might field a more competent military.

I'm always being told that the best research shows proxy wars and insurgencies have to do with internal governance first, and sanctuary or cross-border support second. But that never seems to be the conversation with Eastern Ukraine. Why are we so eager to turn that region into Afghanistan circa 1980s?

Do we want to help these fragile nations, or bleed and box in the Russians? Or are we afraid if we can't have an expanded NATO, that is a sign of American decline and loss of global leadership?

Look at a map, look at our size, look at our population, look at our hemispheric dominance, and look at our Pacific coast. That is dated NATOist thinking but I guess too many Americans are emotionally attached to the idea of being a European power.

I do not understand the border situation at all, and I mean the non-rebel held areas. I just don't get it.

Karzai has this interview on a Polish radio station, is it? Polish soldiers served in Afghanistan and watched a complicated proxy conflict on the ground. What do those young soldiers think, how do they think NATO got it or didn't get it on the ground there (understanding the situations are different in important ways and situations are contingent).

A shorter comment since I seem to confuse people:

If we rush to make Eastern European states (NATO and non-NATO alike) into front-line states in a security competition with Russia, we may end up doing to them what happened to Pakistan during the early Cold War, reforms and changes in governance that need to take place may not take place because the impetus for changing how one thinks about the world just isn't there. Someone will push you into a corner, or you will think that you can always get bailed out by the IMF or whatever.

Think hard, friends in Ukraine and elsewhere. Look at the history of developmentally weak states in the early part of the last Cold War security competition and ask yourself if this is the place you want to put yourself. Fault is not the correct word, I think, instead, what multiple factors brought us to a crisis state and how can it be reversed?

Let me try this without the link and see if it works:

<blockquote>A decree posted on the president's website said all state companies, institutions and organizations should end their work within a week and "evacuate workers, with their permission, [and] where possible remove property and documents."

The ruling, which formally asks parliament to revoke the "special status" of the regions, also suggests Ukraine's central bank take measures to close down all banking services in certain parts of separatist-held areas, including card operations.</blockquote>

Moscow Times

On the one hand, I understand the desire to cut off funds for an insurgency, on the other hand, this is a bit like when all those security service people were fired and then what were they going to do in the East, for jobs I mean?

Security without development doesn't make sense but this is different from third party COIN because this is about internal governance and not an outside party.

There is an interview in The National Interest that might be of interest:

<blockquote>Former Georgian foreign minister and current chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Georgian parliament Tedo Japaridze is a close observer of these events.</blockquote>

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/tni-interview-the-legacy-mikheil-sa…

In it, he makes the point that a sort of bait or trap was set and the Georgians under Saakashvili unfortunately took the military bait and attacked. What interests me is how we Americans likely reinforced certain Georgian attitudes that only helped further wandering into a trap, just as I am afraid we are doing the same with Ukraine today.

So the point isn't that it is the fault of the Americans for expanding NATO or that Russia is hell-bent on domination, instead it is about good governance and the role security policy takes within good governance, it is informed by the larger whole if it is good policy and governance.

It's so strange, often the very people in DC that would most like to help a certain region or country end up harming it, it's as if the very emotion that causes the interest prevents a calm assessment of the situation.

I posted the following in another thread but it belongs here too, because the parallels in some sense are quite striking when examining the Western attitudes toward crisis and crisis states (I've edited a bit from the other comments section):

<blockquote>William Easterly once made similar comments to Nancy Birdsall regarding the phenomenon of development aid preventing good governance in the comments section at the Guardian!

This matters for the situation in the Ukraine too because the West--and many of the most hawkish supporters of Ukraine--is now in the process of hurting Ukrainian economic development because it is caught in a security competition with Putin and that is hurting the developmental state to install a militarist strategy.

In this space, the tradition of empathy that is at the corner stone of a certain idea of Special Forces eliteness is in one sense counterproductive, because the empathy only extends toward the security narrative and fails to take into account the larger societal picture. Mirroring, in short, mirroring that is one factor among many in preventing the needed reforms and rethinking that needs to take place.</blockquote>

I hear a lot about Putin-the-KGB-snake here but then I wonder how much is it that people care about Poles or Ukrainians or Georgian or Lithuanians and how much is the desire to punish that will only hurt the very people caught up in the process. In order to protect their own sovereignty, the Ukrainians have many internal reforms to make and instead of improving the situation for the military or the Border Forces, they are caught in a certain kind of targeting strategy that is hurting their own people in the East too, and then one wonders what this is all really about, the egos of men (or women), or actually providing help to people that need it.

This is also the problem with the "but if NATO hadn't expanded, it would have been harder for border states," because it shows me that people haven't done their homework. There were many other plans for defense of these states discussed during the 90's, quite robust plans too.

War on The Rocks has the following in its weekly roundup:

<blockquote>Julie Ioffe and Linda Kinstler explain that the West is tired and bored with Ukraine, while Europe is reluctant to extend its embrace to a penniless, conflict-ridden country.</blockquote>

http://warontherocks.com/2014/11/weekend-reading-november-14-16/

I think the very rhetoric that Ioffe and others have used has contributed to this process. It's not so much boredom as wariness and that is what happens when over-the-top rhetoric and the desire for crusades as an activist overtake quality analysis. Russian actions are a concern, there is clearly a complicated proxy conflict going on, yet in describing everything in the most simplistic and hyperbolic ways, Ioffe and others undercut their own credibility. Activists are rarely good analysts, diplomatic, planners, etc., of any kind.

Ever read a young person's CV these days, for any job really? Our educational system and our larger culture so valorizes activism that we've forgotten other people are important too in maintaining a healthy society.

Wow. The poor Ukrainians. They really are being "Kashmir-ized" --in a sense-- and many internal and external parties are contributing to this phenomenon: Russia, NATO, European/Eastern European nations aspiring to be local or European hegemons, various internal parties.

Every time the US wants more sanctions, the news of an invasion hits the American papers. It's an obvious enough pattern, except that most people don't really pay attention, or allow their passions to carry them away, so the patterning works in its imprinting on the American people.

Brennan and acolytes really can't do anything but 'offensive operations' and targeting in terms of visualizing strategy and transmitting this to allies.

Or perhaps they can. Budgeting follows threats, except, if anyone was really interested in territorial sovereignty, this would be one of the first places to pay attention.

<blockquote>“The idea is not just to build [these trenches], but do so in a way that the [Russian] border patrol knows that we will defend ourselves,” said Makarova, who has been volunteering at the border since last February. “We want them to know that they [Russians] will not be met here with open arms.”

For regular army troops stationed in the area, Sunday visits by volunteers can provide a welcome diversion from a tense, yet dreary routine: the border around Kharkiv has been quiet since the outbreak of upheaval in eastern Ukraine, yet the potential for trouble is high, and troops remain on alert.

Dmitry, a 19-year-old soldier, said volunteers were making critical contributions. Without them, he suggested, the fighting capacity of the Ukrainian army would be greatly diminished. The army is still not able to provide all its soldiers with some basics, and volunteers are making up the difference. “There are no uniforms, no bullet-proof vests, no equipment,” he said.</blockquote>

http://www.lobelog.com/ukraine-kharkiv-volunteers-shore-up-border-moral…

I wonder if the Ukrainians can escape the traps being set for them? I sincerely hope so.

If Russia is such a dire threat that it requires the stationing of missiles and NATO to redouble its efforts, then why the desire to sell them products?

<blockquote>Poland has made a formal request that the EU take Russia before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to overturn its ban on EU food and vegetables.

Reuters reported on Tuesday (19 August) that Poland’s economy ministry had sent a written request for a legal challenge to EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht.

The move is expected to be confirmed by agriculture minister Marek Sawicki and economy minister Janusz Piechociński at a press conference on Wednesday (20 August).

Moscow slapped the one year ban on many food and agriculture imports from the EU, along with the US, Canada, Australia and Norway earlier this month in retaliation against EU sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

Poland is likely to be one of the countries hit hardest by the ban. Last year, it exported more than €1 billion of food to Russia, which is its fourth largest market after Germany, the UK and France, with its apple growers, who export around half of their crop to Russia, the main victims.</blockquote>

http://euobserver.com/news/125295

I am sorry, but the rhetoric versus the reality does not instill confidence. Germans are chided for their desire to trade, but this is okay?

What is Gen. Breedlove smoking? What happened to all that awesome border training and money the Ukrainians have been getting for the past decade or more?

<blockquote>U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, said although NATO had no plans to intervene in non-NATO member Ukraine, NATO countries in eastern Europe needed to start preparing for a possible threat from "little green men" - referring to soldiers in unmarked uniforms.

"The most important work to prepare a nation for the problem of 'little green men', or organizing of Russian (speaking)population, it happens first. It happens now," Breedlove said in an interview published online by German newspaper Die Welt.

"How do we now train, organize, equip the police forces and the military forces of (allied) nations to be able to deal with this?" he said, according to a transcript of his remarks in English provided by NATO.

"If we see these actions taking place in a NATO nation and we are able to attribute them to an aggressor nation, that is Article 5. Now, it is a military response," he said.

NATO's mutual defense clause says an attack on one member state is considered an attack against the alliance as a whole.

The Ukraine crisis has dragged relations between Russia and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War and set off a round of trade restrictions that are hurting struggling economies in both Russia and Europe.

NATO has taken a series of steps to reinforce its military presence in eastern Europe since the crisis began. Longer term measures are expected to be agreed at a NATO summit in Wales in September.</blockquote>

Unbelievable. NATO is such a disaster, in Afghanistan and in Europe. Completely incompetent. They are going to start a hot war between the US and Russia, if the geniuses aren't careful.

And for what?

http://news.yahoo.com/nato-respond-militarily-crimea-style-infiltration…

That's it. Someone with MS shouldn't read about these things, and I can't take it anymore. What a waste, every time I spend any time reading about our alliance structure and the Generals meant to manage them, I just end up in a bad mood. (Not really, because why worry about something over which you have no control?) Go for a run, Madhu, run away from the Borg....

I still don't get it. Does everything the NATO proxies within the EU touch turn into dust?

<blockquote>The EU Border Assistance Mission to the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine was established in response to the joint letter from the Presidents of Moldova and Ukraine dating from 2 June 2005 calling for additional EU support for capacity building for border management, including customs, on the whole Moldova-Ukraine border, including the border between Ukraine and the separatist Transnistrian region of the Republic of Moldova, because the Moldovan border authorities are unable to be present there.

On 7 October 2005, a Memorandum of Understanding on the Border Assistance Mission was signed between the European Commission and the governments of Moldova and Ukraine. The official opening ceremony of the EU Border Assistance Mission to Moldova and Ukraine took place on 30 November 2005.</blockquote>

All this time and effort and money, and, yet....

Must I turn into a mini-intelligence agent for everything because as an American citizen I can't rely on anything in the media or government?

http://eeas.europa.eu/csdp/missions-and-operations/moldova-and-ukraine-…

Yes, who wouldn't be thrilled with this kind of activity on their border with an economic bloc that plays hardball? NATO or its proxies can't fight their way out of a paper bag but they sure are expansive, greedy and never leave anyone alone, EVER.

Meshing ourselves with Brussels forever-and-ever is such a big strategic mistake for Americans....not making an isolationist argument, either, but simply saying there are other ways to relate to Europe. If staying in supposedly prevents conflict, how come we cause so many?

I remain perplexed by the conversation (missiles in Poland! A revived NATO! Sanctions!) when the following is the case:

<blockquote>When Reuters visited this section of border in late July and early August, two Russian border guards emerged from bushes and waved the reporter away. "It's better not to drive here", one said.

The guards denied that armored personnel carriers or tanks had crossed into Ukraine along the rough track.

A kilometer away, on the outskirts of the Russian town of Donetsk, caterpillar treads have left white marks on the roadside.</blockquote>

http://news.yahoo.com/russias-border-ukraine-fighters-military-gear-mov…

Why is Kiev so uninterested in Border control if this is an unconventional fight, an unconventional proxy affair?

I have a hard time taking anything seriously by any of the grandstanders of NATO or otherwise. What game is being played on the American people this time?

But borders and their nature are never a strong suit of the American Foreign Policy Apparatus, whether Syria or AFPak or our own.

What could go wrong with sending more arms or money into this, whether from the Russian side or the American/NATO/EU side:

<blockquote>Ukraine’s coalition collapsed after two parties quit during a months-long pro-Russian insurgency in the nation’s east that downed a Malaysian Air jet last week.

The UDAR and Svoboda parties said they’d leave the government and seek a snap parliamentary ballot, according to statements today on their websites. Under the constitution, the former Soviet republic has 30 days to form a new coalition or it must call early elections. The existing cabinet will remain in place in the meantime.

Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s government, took over the country in February after pro-European street protests prompted Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych to flee to Russia. Yanukovych’s successor, billionaire Petro Poroshenko, had pledged to call parliamentary elections this year.</blockquote>

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-24/ukraine-coalition-government-c…

Good job with the billions in democracy promotion, Freedom House and USIP and Dept. State and whatever else. Everything you touch turns to gold, Ms. Nuland! Why didn't I skip med school and get a BA from Brown and move to DC and play policy wonk for hire!

NATO is just the best, we Americans should totally and forever be subservient to Brussels when we aren't busy trying to be a hegemony through NATO all while pissing everyone else off. Let's keep paying for all of it even when the EU gobbles up more and more trade.

Say, it isn't China that is our main trade competition in Africa, Africom! That would be good ole Europe.

Aw, I know there is nothing I can do and DC has got its favorite postings back, the Middle East and Asia are a drag but telling Europeans in nice European nations what to do is such a nicer way to make a living than actually doing real work.

And gee whiz, it's nice to have the Cold War back, isn't it American Army generals! It's like Christmas. No more worrying about winning wars, just ceremonial money spending!

This piece, "British Views on NATO Enlargement" (from 1997, I believe) can be read along with Jill Russell's latest posts at Kings of War:

http://www.nato.int/acad/conf/enlarg97/sharp.htm

http://kingsofwar.org.uk/2014/06/what-does-a-committed-strategic-relati…

As uncomfortable as this subject is--that of NATO and the "special relationship" and how it needs to adjust itself for this century--we have to think about it.

But Stephen Walt has written about this, yes? The fact that we are moving away from each other, Europe and the US.

The long term trends are this way, although in the short term the 90's era nostalgia of a Hillary Clinton will continue to hold onto these relationships in a 20th century way, should she become president.

Shame really, we need to readjust--not end--these relationships.
If I haven't been spending as much time on milblogs lately, it's because I have become more interested in the larger context which I think matters more in the long run.

(Yes, yes, I have tried to write something but other things take precedence over my self-education on this subject, Dave :) Who knows? Maybe it will be something more tailored in its way for a medical journal. That would be more to my liking.... :) )

Let me try this again:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1995/sep/21/should-nato-growa-…

<blockquote>One of those alternative policies has been on Talbott’s desk since early May, in the form of a draft of the article by Dean, with the endorsement of a group of retired senior State Department officials, now numbering eighteen, prominent among them former Deputy Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Navy, and Ambassador at Large Paul H. Nitze, whom Talbott, in an earlier incarnation, eulogized in The Master of the Game: Paul Nitze and the Nuclear Peace, one of the books cited to identify him in The New York Review. Other leading signatories of the letter to Secretary Christopher endorsing this alternative policy are former Under Secretary of State U. Alexis Johnson, former Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany Martin J. Hillenbrand, and Ambassador Matlock. Johnson and Matlock also served as ambassadors to Czechoslovakia and Hillenbrand as ambassador to Hungary, and among their co-signatories are two former ambassadors to Poland and former ambassadors to Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania, as well as two former Directors of Policy Planning for the State Department, a post also held by Nitze early in his career. A copy of this letter is appended. (At a news conference in Washington organized by the Arms Control Association on May 17, former Ambassador to the USSR Arthur A. Hartman, Matlock’s predecessor, also declared his opposition to NATO expansion.)

The common elements of the alternative policy endorsed by these critics are simple: accelerate full membership of the European Union and its nascent defense arm, Western European Union (WEU), for the East-Central European states now in the process of qualifying to join those bodies, while maintaining NATO’s “Partnership for Peace,” to which those states, together with Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, all belong. WEU is at a formative stage and is not viewed as a threat by the Russians, while NATO will always remain in their eyes what it was designed to be: a military alliance directed against the Soviet Union and now, by inheritance, against Russia.</blockquote>

European and Transatlantic power politics are sublimated within NATO and the EU, so that I wonder if the US is always aware of how our quest for European hegemony is being hollowed out by alliances trying to confuse us with threats, when, really, they are using the US to pursue other goals within the alliance; money politics, jockeying for position, etc.

This letter to the editor from 2008 (in The Washington Post) is interesting in light of Jeremy Kotkin's article in War On The Rocks:

<blockquote>I didn't find Robert Kagan persuasive when he said that what Vladimir Putin, now Russian's prime minister, has to fear from NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia is only democracy, not a military threat ["Ideology's Rude Return," op-ed, May 2]. Mr. Kagan echoed President Bush on the subject in writing, "NATO is less provocative and threatening toward Moscow today than it was in [Mikhail] Gorbachev's time."

Both columnist and president are wrong. Mr. Putin sees the world around his immediate frontiers in a strategic sense of military options. NATO forces are in his face from Murmansk to the Baltic states, Romania and Turkey. Kyrgyzstan, while not in NATO, is certainly an American client with its large U.S. military airfield and staging area at Manas, near the capital. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan have pledged to the U.S. various forms of direct military cooperation.

Think about Mr. Putin's reduced military options in backing up Russian policy if Ukraine and Georgia join NATO. Mr. Putin could not be clearer on this point: Russia will not tolerate further NATO expansion eastward. He has stated that to any media outlet that will listen. He has shown his seriousness on this point with stepped-up Cold War-style flights by his Tu-95 Bear bombers over our ships at sea and near Alaska and Great Britain.

We risk a major confrontation by disregarding Mr. Putin's "red line" on this subject.</blockquote>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05

I’ve been digging through Congressional testimony, op-eds, letters to the editors and so on from the 90′s to the present. The number of warnings is amazing. Everyone from Phyllis Schafly to the late Senator Wellstone.

Note, recognizing the complicated multifactorial nature of the current Ukraine crisis is not the same as being an apologist. We have a form of unconventional warfare being practiced on the Ukraine by Russia; and we have a complicated form of political warfare being practiced in the Ukraine by the US, UK, EU and so on. The whole-of-it matters for understanding.

I don't buy the Gene Sharp/USIP/Helvey/NED line. Even if well-meaning, it is picking and choosing politicians within a system which is not democracy promotion. It is violating sovereignty. If done incorrectly, it can add to instability.

I am struck by the one-factor nature of much of the analysis here, the one factor being the presence or absence of the American military. It's too simplistic a formulation and yet is trotted out every time on many a milblog, etc.