The Big Picture Archives - Page 18 of 33

September 18, 2014

A Premature Party for Poroshenko

From Leon Aron, Director of Russian studies at the American Enterprise Institute:

…By withholding military assistance to Ukraine — the only thing that could have changed Putin’s mind by giving Kiev a chance to turn the tide on the battlefield — the West has greatly contributed to [Ukrainian President] Poroshenko’s decision to accept a very bad deal. No amount of ovation, not even a standing one, during Poroshenko’s address to the joint session of Congress today can obscure this grim reality.

Read more at A Premature Party for Poroshenko.

September 18, 2014

Defence With A “C”: The Russian Bear Cometh!

From Chris at Defence with a C:

Russia has spent the last decade talking about programs to upgrade its armed forces and spend more money on things like training, logistics and maintenance. The fruits of this investment, or even just the investment itself, appear to be taking a very long time to actually materialise.

This is not to say that NATO shouldn’t sleep with one eye open, or that NATO should stop investing in its collective defence. Vigilance is the first stage of preparedness after all. But to say that Russia is an imminent threat to NATO is over egging the pudding I feel….

September 18, 2014

Poroshenko: ‘Today Ukraine is bleeding for its independence and territorial integrity’

From Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s speech to the Canadian parliament in Ottawa on September 17:

Today Ukraine pays a very high price for defending what we believe in – democracy and freedom to choose our own future. For more than two decades we proudly stated that Ukraine gained its independence without shedding a single drop of blood.

Today Ukraine is bleeding for its independence and territorial integrity.

September 16, 2014

Putin Attacks the West’s Soft Underbelly | World Affairs Journal

From Arthur Milikh at the Heritage Foundation:

Alexander Hamilton lamented long ago, in Federalist 25, what may become our tendency to act as if “all that kind of policy by which nations anticipate distant danger and meet the gathering storm must be abstained from.” Putin knows we want to be deceived. But what nation would choose, as Hamilton puts it, to “receive the blow before we could even prepare to return it”?

Putin’s new genre of war in part stems from our Western intellectual deficiencies. He knows we cannot countenance full-on conventional warfare in such a critical region—but we can swallow ambiguity. He knows that we will likely intervene only on account of moralism or shame, but we will not act strategically, trusting in our judgment. Putin will provide us with empirical data to sufficiently muddy the waters and thereby destroy our confidence in our own intuition. The incursion of a “humanitarian” convoy of 200-plus trucks into Ukraine last month was a masterful example of this….

September 16, 2014

Putin’s Playbook | NYTimes.com

From Maxim Trudolyubov, opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti:

…So what is Mr. Putin up to, my American friends and colleagues keep asking. He is, quite simply, bent on preserving and expanding his personal and Russia’s international power. Some of his methods were inherited from the Soviets, some were developed in the absence of domestic political traditions, and some were borrowed from the West. There is no consistent ideology. Nor is there is anything particularly Russian about his beliefs. But the methodology in his playbook is constant and ruthless. It involves techniques that function when all past checks on power — institutional constraints and traditional values — are gone. If it’s true that much of the world is moving in this same ruthless direction, then, yes, Mr. Putin’s methods are indeed political guidelines for the future.

Read more at Putin's Playbook – NYTimes.com.

September 13, 2014

The Madness of War

Today Pope Francis denounced war as “madness” in a moving homily delivered at Redipuglia, at a vast monument to the dead of the First World War located in northeasternmost Italy, a stone’s throw from the Slovenian border. The pontiff did not mince words:

“Humanity needs to weep and this is the time to weep … Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction … War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: it seeks to grow by destroying … Greed, intolerance, the lust for power. These motives underlie the decision to go to war and they are too often justified by an ideology.”

From the XX Committee.
Read more at The Isonzo and the Madness of War | The XX Committee.

September 4, 2014

Extent of the Russian “incursion” in Ukraine

Russian “humanitarian” convoy in Ukraine. Link posted by Gary Kasparov

http://youtu.be/aKdQSFleBSc

September 4, 2014

Iran Didn’t Create ISIS. We Did | The Diplomat

From Ben Reynolds:

….No one is innocent in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, but Iran is not primarily responsible for the current state of affairs. The U.S. and its allies destabilized Iraq and Syria in turn, creating safe havens for extremists that previously did not exist. U.S. allies provided the material support that allowed ISIS and groups like it to become threats to the entire region, despite lacking any substantial popular base in Syria and Iraq. It is not unreasonable for Iran and Hezbollah to fight against these groups, which murder and enslave Shia and other religious minorities. Their actions conceivably fall under one of the West’s favorite principles of international law: the duty to protect.

August 30, 2014

Luc Vancraen: Can the EU still prevent an open war between Ukraine and Russia?

Interesting proposal from Luc Vancraen, an entrepreneur in Kyiv who holds a masters degree from Boston University:

If there is no Novorussia today it is because of the ferocious fighting of the Ukrainian armed forces. If the EU wants the Ukrainians to stop fighting after Donbas is liberated it will have to come up with a plan that convinces even the volunteer battalions that it is just a matter of time before Crimea returns to Ukraine.

The only way I can see this happen is through a Crimean Occupation Tax on all energy imported from Russia into the EU and all other countries that want to participate. President Putin will not like this tax at all but strangely enough it might be enough for him to belief that this could stop the Ukrainian army. It buys him time and he can speculate on convincing the EU to drop it later through good behaviour even though this won’t be easy with a name like this.

The tax will be paid on all Russian gas, oil and coal sold in the EU. Who pays this tax? Initially it will be EU citizens through their energy bills. This allows Putin through the Russian propaganda to trivialise these sanctions and to laugh with the stupidity of the EU that sanctions itself. But don’t underestimate the creativity of the energy companies. They will find other suppliers and this helps the EU to reduce dependency from a supplier they can no longer trust. Russia will be faced very fast with a serious dilemma. Lowering energy prices to include the tax so that it remains competitive with suppliers that don’t need to pay this or totally losing the biggest customer on earth. Simulations show that after just two years it is Russia that is paying this tax to avoid totally losing the EU as a customer.

August 30, 2014

Garry Kasparov: It’s a War, Stupid! | TIME

From Gary Kasparov:

As always when it comes to stopping dictators, with every delay the price goes up. Western leaders have protested over the potential costs of action Ukraine at every turn only to be faced with the well-established historical fact that the real costs of inaction are always higher. Now the only options left are risky and difficult, and yet they must be tried. The best reason for acting to stop Putin today is brutally simple: It will only get harder tomorrow.