Ukraine Crisis

[Paleobrazilian]

Seek a mental health professional.

I, actually, live in Mexico. When sh**t hits the fan we will, as usual, send a crappy squadron of poor folk to the Pacific to express our support, and be done with it. It is the rest of you who will need help.

Reclaiming a territory that had been part of Russia for over two centuries is a slippery slope to invading the United States?

Actually only 1784-1954.

And the United States is supposed to take action to defend the capricious border changes set by Nikolai Khrushchev?

You swore in a treaty to do this - in exchange for taking Ukrainian nukes. Do not want to do it? Give back the nukes.

I didn't sign anything, and any such agreement requiring American taxpayers to defend a nation that does not serve their national defense isn't worth the paper it was written on. Do not hold me accountable for the Ukrainian leadership at the time being foolish enough to rely on the West for their defense when they had an adequate deterrent.


As an aside, since you seem convinced that this is 1938 redux, what countries do you suggest are next on the chopping block? Obviously Czechoslovakia and Poland were just the beginning for Godwin's dictator, and you can't argue that the Low Countries, Norway, Denmark, France, North Africa, and Russia had all been part of the German Empire prior to its dissolution.

As for the Russian dictator.... If you think he stops at Ukraine, I have 75 Brooklyn bridges in the Bronx to sell you.

Again, you put out this vague warning but do not point out any plausible places that would be next on Russia's list.

Actually, there are many reasonable guesses. Georgia (strategic place, dared to defy Putin before), Belarus (well, that would be a formality I guess), Finland (feels so 1940s), Moldova ("let's protect Transnistria")...

The work of "Eurasianists", specially Aleksandr Dugin, has been hugely influential within the Russian military. And that's very, very scary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

[Paleobrazilian]

Interesting piece on Eurasianism and Aleksandr Dugin, even though the source is far from great.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/372353/eurasianist-threat-robert-zubrinnteresting piece on Eurasianism and it's main proponent, Aleksandr Dugin:

[Paleobrazilian]

Vladimir Putin is obviously not Hitler. Not quite, anyway.

Hitler believed in the racial superiority of his people and that they deserved a Lebensraum which consisted of almost all of Eastern Europe as well as parts of Asia... including territories which at no point in history had been by Germany in any way.

Putin doesn't believe in any of this. He most likely believes - being an old school KGB officer and all - that Russia deserves to control a sphere of influence which is more or less identical to the boundaries of the old Soviet Union. Maybe (and hopefully) without the Baltic republics... hopefully because that could cause real trouble. But I assume that Putin knows very well that as long as NATO exists that any direct aggression against the Baltics automatically triggers Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and this means World War III. And I also doubt that Putin believes in "victory or death" like Hitler did.

There's one parallel between Hitler and Putin though. Both men believed that the rules don't apply to them as long as they find a way to get away with it. In essence, they believed in military power and that international law is just something written on a piece of paper.

What does this mean for "the West"? It means that the West has to deal with someone who belives that everything is fair game as long as it happens on the former territory of the Soviet Unions (sans the Baltic republics).

Now that's my take on Godwin.

While Putin is no Hitler, the eurasianist thought of many around him is blatantly fascist. Aleksandr Dugin, for example, loves to talk about the need to bring together the "Aryan Nations" under mother Russia. Yikes.