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Mortarman Rockpainter said:
Perhaps he did (try and fail), but Harry Truman, on George F Kennan's advice, tried and succeeded.
Georgia and the Russian invasions/annexations/Lebensraum (2008 & 2015)
- Thread starter Haggis
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Perhaps he did (try and fail), but Harry Truman, on George F Kennan's advice, tried and succeeded.
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Thanks for your perspective Retired AF Guy. That's one of the things I was wondering if the USS Mc. Faul's AEGIS system could handle the missile onslaught that Russian was bragging about. I certainly hope you're right but even more so I hope we never have to find out. One another point E.R. Campbell's view is one i've long held Europe needs to grow some backbone and bloody fast.
Retired AF Guy
Army.ca Veteran
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cameron said:
I'm not an expert naval weapon systems, either US or Russian, so I don't have the expertize to say who has the best weapon system. The missiles the Russian was talking about is the SS-N-12 which has a speed of Mach 2.5 and a range of 550 km. However, at 11.7m x .9m (38' x 3.7') its a big honking missile. My philosophy is that the bigger you are, the bigger the target you are (starting to sound like Yoda).
Agree with you whole heartedly. While Putin may be hungry for power, at least he's still a rational guy (I hope!) who knows when to push and when to talk. Which is more than we can say about many other dictators out there.
ERC hit it on the head. When Yugoslavia blew apart the Europeans dillydallied while ethnic cleansing and the massacres were taking place and did nothing. It was only when the Americans (very reluctantly) got involved that anything happened.
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Something brought to my attention to make it all the more interesting....
Commentary: Israel of the Caucasus
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, Middle East Times, 2 Sept 08
Article link
From RUS media 2 days later
More on links
Commentary: Israel of the Caucasus
ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, Middle East Times, 2 Sept 08
Article link
From RUS media 2 days later
More on links
A post-mortem via the New York Times over the wider implications of this short war: September 10, 2008
Russia’s Recognition of Georgian Areas Raises Hopes of Its Own Separatists
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Tatarstan is a long way from South Ossetia. While South Ossetia is a poor border region of Georgia battered by war, Tatarstan is an economic powerhouse in the heart of Russia, boasting both oil reserves and the political stability that is catnip to investors.
But the two places have one thing in common: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both have given rise to separatist movements. And when President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia formally recognized the breakaway areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations two weeks ago, activists in Kazan, the Tatar capital, took notice.
An association of nationalist groups, the All-Tatar Civic Center, swiftly published an appeal that “for the first time in recent history, Russia has recognized the state independence of its own citizens” and expressed the devout wish that Tatarstan would be next. The declaration was far-fetched, its authors knew: One of Vladimir V. Putin’s signal achievements as Mr. Medvedev’s predecessor was to suppress separatism. The Tatar movement was at its lowest ebb in 20 years.
But Moscow’s decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia made Tatarstan’s cause seem, as Rashit Akhmetov put it, “not hopeless.”
Mr. Akhmetov, editor in chief of Zvezda Povolzhya, an opposition newspaper in Kazan, said, “Russia has lost the moral right not to recognize us.”
Mr. Medvedev’s decision to formally recognize the two disputed areas in Georgia — an option long debated in Moscow’s foreign policy circles — has had far-reaching consequences.
Most immediately, it has deepened the rift between Russia and its erstwhile negotiating partners in the West. But some also see Moscow departing from its longstanding insistence on territorial integrity, leaving an opening for ethnic groups within its borders to demand autonomy or independence.
“In the long term, they could have signed their own death warrant,” said Lawrence Scott Sheets, the Caucasus program director for the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that tries to prevent and resolve global conflicts. “It’s an abstraction now, but 20 years down the road, it won’t be such an abstraction.”
Moscow’s position is that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were extreme situations, in which decisions were driven by the threat to the lives of its citizens. Russian troops poured across the border early in August, after Georgian forces attacked civilian areas in the city of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, with rocket and artillery fire.
The attack made it “completely impossible” to conceive of South Ossetia returning to Georgian control, said Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, now Russia’s prime minister.
Mr. Peskov said Russia stood firmly behind the principle of territorial integrity and saw no major separatist movements within its borders.
“We do have some separatist movements, some extremist elements, especially in the northern Caucasus, but they are very minor,” he said. “These are very fragmented and very small groups.” He added that the circumstances of South Ossetia and Abkhazia belonged in a “totally different category.”
The picture looked very different before Mr. Putin took office. In the 1990s, President Boris N. Yeltsin urged regional leaders to “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow.” Movements toward self-rule were taking hold in some of Russia’s most valuable territory: in Tatarstan, home not only to an oil industry but also to a major truck factory and an aircraft plant; in Bashkiria, a major source of natural gas; in Komi, a northern province that produces coal.
All this came to a halt in Chechnya, an oil-rich patch of land in the north Caucasus. Chechnya was the only region to declare independence outright. In 1994, Russia sent troops into Chechnya, and two years of fighting left tens of thousands dead. In 1999, amid a crescendo of violence throughout the north Caucasus, Mr. Putin, then the prime minister, oversaw a second war that obliterated the Chechen rebel movement
The message from Moscow — empowered and newly rich with petrodollars — was clear. “Russia has shown the inhuman price it will pay to preserve its territorial integrity,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, a political scientist who leads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy. “The fighting in Chechnya was not just against the Chechen rebels, it was against movements all around.” In fact, the threat of separatism has largely faded from the Russian landscape, and Mr. Putin has granted enough freedom to quiet internal opposition in many of Russia’s trouble spots. Even in the north Caucasus, one of Russia’s most volatile regions, the government now helps Muslims with visas and airfare to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. At the same time, Mr. Putin greatly strengthened his executive power, abolishing the direct election of governors in 2004. Handpicked bosses improved local economies and clamped down harshly on opposition groups.
Tatarstan was a case in point. Tatars still commemorate the day in 1552 when Kazan fell to Ivan the Terrible, absorbing their country into Holy Russia.
When Mr. Yeltsin encouraged regions to assume sovereignty, Tatarstan complied with gusto, adopting its own taxes and license plates. Gleaming new mosques competed with Kazan’s onion domes, and ethnic Tatars, who made up 48 percent of the population to the Russians’ 43 percent, opened their own schools. The Tatar Parliament declared that local conscripts could not fight outside the Volga region.
When Mr. Putin eliminated regional elections, the Tatar president, Mintimer Shaimiyev, protested vociferously, calling the plan a “forced and painful measure.” But in the years that followed, Mr. Akhmetov, the editor of the opposition newspaper in Kazan, saw prospects for autonomy drop to a new low.
“We understood that our president could be removed at any time, within 24 hours,” Mr. Akhmetov said. But Mr. Medvedev’s decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he said, “created a precedent, kind of a guideline” for gaining independence. Moscow is confident that it wields strict control over politics in the outlying regions, he said, but that could change in 10 or 20 years.
“The seeds of self-destruction are built into the authoritarian system,” Mr. Akhmetov said. “It’s Moscow’s mistake.”
A similar stirring came out of Bashkortostan, a major petrochemical center where ethnic Bashkirs make up about 30 percent of the population. A small organization called Kuk Bure, which has pushed for the Bashkir language to be required in public schools, issued a manifesto accusing Moscow of “double standards” for championing ethnic groups like the Abkhaz and Ossetians while ignoring their platform.
“The time has come to ask each federal official — and they have multiplied by the thousands in Bashkortostan in recent years — ‘What are you doing for the Bashkir people?’ ” said the statement, which was posted on the group’s Web site.
Timur Mukhtarov, a lawyer and one of the movement’s co-founders, said the group’s mission stopped far short of independence. Though some may discuss that notion in private, laws against extremism have made it dangerous to espouse publicly.
At 31, he feels some nostalgia for the Yeltsin years, a time of “more chaos, but less fear.”
The Russian stand for self-determination in Georgia may not change Moscow’s attitude toward Bashkortostan, he said, “but at least it gives us something to discuss.”
Russia’s act could also stir movements in the northwest Caucasus, where a number of groups called for autonomy or separation in the early 1990s, said Charles King, a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. Those calls had gone quiet since Mr. Putin took power.
But few people have watched events in Abkhazia more closely than their ethnic kin, the Circassians. Many Circassians still live in Russia, in the republics of Kabardino-Balkariya, Karachayevo-Cherkesiya and Adygeya; the vast majority live outside Russia yet look back at the Caucasus as their homeland.
“They’re ecstatic,” said Professor King, author of “The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus.” “Their cousins have gotten independence. They see this as something quite big, that could have real implications for Russia.“
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/world/europe/10separatists.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
Russia’s Recognition of Georgian Areas Raises Hopes of Its Own Separatists
By ELLEN BARRY
MOSCOW — Tatarstan is a long way from South Ossetia. While South Ossetia is a poor border region of Georgia battered by war, Tatarstan is an economic powerhouse in the heart of Russia, boasting both oil reserves and the political stability that is catnip to investors.
But the two places have one thing in common: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both have given rise to separatist movements. And when President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia formally recognized the breakaway areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations two weeks ago, activists in Kazan, the Tatar capital, took notice.
An association of nationalist groups, the All-Tatar Civic Center, swiftly published an appeal that “for the first time in recent history, Russia has recognized the state independence of its own citizens” and expressed the devout wish that Tatarstan would be next. The declaration was far-fetched, its authors knew: One of Vladimir V. Putin’s signal achievements as Mr. Medvedev’s predecessor was to suppress separatism. The Tatar movement was at its lowest ebb in 20 years.
But Moscow’s decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia made Tatarstan’s cause seem, as Rashit Akhmetov put it, “not hopeless.”
Mr. Akhmetov, editor in chief of Zvezda Povolzhya, an opposition newspaper in Kazan, said, “Russia has lost the moral right not to recognize us.”
Mr. Medvedev’s decision to formally recognize the two disputed areas in Georgia — an option long debated in Moscow’s foreign policy circles — has had far-reaching consequences.
Most immediately, it has deepened the rift between Russia and its erstwhile negotiating partners in the West. But some also see Moscow departing from its longstanding insistence on territorial integrity, leaving an opening for ethnic groups within its borders to demand autonomy or independence.
“In the long term, they could have signed their own death warrant,” said Lawrence Scott Sheets, the Caucasus program director for the International Crisis Group, an independent organization that tries to prevent and resolve global conflicts. “It’s an abstraction now, but 20 years down the road, it won’t be such an abstraction.”
Moscow’s position is that South Ossetia and Abkhazia were extreme situations, in which decisions were driven by the threat to the lives of its citizens. Russian troops poured across the border early in August, after Georgian forces attacked civilian areas in the city of Tskhinvali, the South Ossetian capital, with rocket and artillery fire.
The attack made it “completely impossible” to conceive of South Ossetia returning to Georgian control, said Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for Mr. Putin, now Russia’s prime minister.
Mr. Peskov said Russia stood firmly behind the principle of territorial integrity and saw no major separatist movements within its borders.
“We do have some separatist movements, some extremist elements, especially in the northern Caucasus, but they are very minor,” he said. “These are very fragmented and very small groups.” He added that the circumstances of South Ossetia and Abkhazia belonged in a “totally different category.”
The picture looked very different before Mr. Putin took office. In the 1990s, President Boris N. Yeltsin urged regional leaders to “take as much sovereignty as you can swallow.” Movements toward self-rule were taking hold in some of Russia’s most valuable territory: in Tatarstan, home not only to an oil industry but also to a major truck factory and an aircraft plant; in Bashkiria, a major source of natural gas; in Komi, a northern province that produces coal.
All this came to a halt in Chechnya, an oil-rich patch of land in the north Caucasus. Chechnya was the only region to declare independence outright. In 1994, Russia sent troops into Chechnya, and two years of fighting left tens of thousands dead. In 1999, amid a crescendo of violence throughout the north Caucasus, Mr. Putin, then the prime minister, oversaw a second war that obliterated the Chechen rebel movement
The message from Moscow — empowered and newly rich with petrodollars — was clear. “Russia has shown the inhuman price it will pay to preserve its territorial integrity,” said Sergei A. Karaganov, a political scientist who leads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy. “The fighting in Chechnya was not just against the Chechen rebels, it was against movements all around.” In fact, the threat of separatism has largely faded from the Russian landscape, and Mr. Putin has granted enough freedom to quiet internal opposition in many of Russia’s trouble spots. Even in the north Caucasus, one of Russia’s most volatile regions, the government now helps Muslims with visas and airfare to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca, the hajj. At the same time, Mr. Putin greatly strengthened his executive power, abolishing the direct election of governors in 2004. Handpicked bosses improved local economies and clamped down harshly on opposition groups.
Tatarstan was a case in point. Tatars still commemorate the day in 1552 when Kazan fell to Ivan the Terrible, absorbing their country into Holy Russia.
When Mr. Yeltsin encouraged regions to assume sovereignty, Tatarstan complied with gusto, adopting its own taxes and license plates. Gleaming new mosques competed with Kazan’s onion domes, and ethnic Tatars, who made up 48 percent of the population to the Russians’ 43 percent, opened their own schools. The Tatar Parliament declared that local conscripts could not fight outside the Volga region.
When Mr. Putin eliminated regional elections, the Tatar president, Mintimer Shaimiyev, protested vociferously, calling the plan a “forced and painful measure.” But in the years that followed, Mr. Akhmetov, the editor of the opposition newspaper in Kazan, saw prospects for autonomy drop to a new low.
“We understood that our president could be removed at any time, within 24 hours,” Mr. Akhmetov said. But Mr. Medvedev’s decision to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia, he said, “created a precedent, kind of a guideline” for gaining independence. Moscow is confident that it wields strict control over politics in the outlying regions, he said, but that could change in 10 or 20 years.
“The seeds of self-destruction are built into the authoritarian system,” Mr. Akhmetov said. “It’s Moscow’s mistake.”
A similar stirring came out of Bashkortostan, a major petrochemical center where ethnic Bashkirs make up about 30 percent of the population. A small organization called Kuk Bure, which has pushed for the Bashkir language to be required in public schools, issued a manifesto accusing Moscow of “double standards” for championing ethnic groups like the Abkhaz and Ossetians while ignoring their platform.
“The time has come to ask each federal official — and they have multiplied by the thousands in Bashkortostan in recent years — ‘What are you doing for the Bashkir people?’ ” said the statement, which was posted on the group’s Web site.
Timur Mukhtarov, a lawyer and one of the movement’s co-founders, said the group’s mission stopped far short of independence. Though some may discuss that notion in private, laws against extremism have made it dangerous to espouse publicly.
At 31, he feels some nostalgia for the Yeltsin years, a time of “more chaos, but less fear.”
The Russian stand for self-determination in Georgia may not change Moscow’s attitude toward Bashkortostan, he said, “but at least it gives us something to discuss.”
Russia’s act could also stir movements in the northwest Caucasus, where a number of groups called for autonomy or separation in the early 1990s, said Charles King, a professor of international affairs and government at Georgetown University. Those calls had gone quiet since Mr. Putin took power.
But few people have watched events in Abkhazia more closely than their ethnic kin, the Circassians. Many Circassians still live in Russia, in the republics of Kabardino-Balkariya, Karachayevo-Cherkesiya and Adygeya; the vast majority live outside Russia yet look back at the Caucasus as their homeland.
“They’re ecstatic,” said Professor King, author of “The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus.” “Their cousins have gotten independence. They see this as something quite big, that could have real implications for Russia.“
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/10/world/europe/10separatists.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin
- Reaction score
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- Points
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The bad economic news could hardly be worse for Russia. This report, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, only gives half the problem:
http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080917.wrbanksrussia17/BNStory/SpecialEvents2/home
To start: the Russian market was always reserved for the highest of high risk investors – your pension fund manager never put even one penny of your money there; not unless he was insane and corrupt.
It (the Russian stock market) closed early again today, as it did yesterday – on a “cease trading” order because the losses were overwhelming the system’s capability to keep rack of transaction values. The Russian government has promised RUB1 Trillion+ ($40± Billion) in liquidity but has not promised that the market will reopen tomorrow.
Then there is this, also reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act but this time from news.com:
http://www.news.com.au/business/money/story/0,25479,24359118-31037,00.html
There is one big worry: What passes for adult leadership in Russia traditionally looks to deflect attention rather than solve problems and there’s nothing like some military action to ‘unite’ the Russian people behind the thugs, bandits and secret policemen they elected.
http://www.reportonbusiness.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080917.wrbanksrussia17/BNStory/SpecialEvents2/home
To start: the Russian market was always reserved for the highest of high risk investors – your pension fund manager never put even one penny of your money there; not unless he was insane and corrupt.
It (the Russian stock market) closed early again today, as it did yesterday – on a “cease trading” order because the losses were overwhelming the system’s capability to keep rack of transaction values. The Russian government has promised RUB1 Trillion+ ($40± Billion) in liquidity but has not promised that the market will reopen tomorrow.
Then there is this, also reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act but this time from news.com:
http://www.news.com.au/business/money/story/0,25479,24359118-31037,00.html
There is one big worry: What passes for adult leadership in Russia traditionally looks to deflect attention rather than solve problems and there’s nothing like some military action to ‘unite’ the Russian people behind the thugs, bandits and secret policemen they elected.
Kirkhill said:Economic warfare Karl Rove style. >>
Message from the Yanks: We can still outspend you!!!!
The irony of that statement is that the bankrupcies suffered by the Yanks are what caused the crisis in the first place. Russian economic fundamentals are good since their macroeconomics are sound and they weren't hit directly by the sub-prime meltdown. The US are, however, between a rock and a hard place. I say around the the start of December the markets in Russia will be back where they were before mid-august, but I say this with great uncertainty: could be sooner, could be later, but I'd buy Russian blue-chips while they are underpriced. Many say November, but I am skeptical. In regard to the US markets, only god knows what will happen. Canada will not be hit too hard, but the effects will be mostly indirect. I'll definately have trouble finding a job here when I graduate in Capital Markets.... oh well...
An interesting comment I have by one financial analyst is that the Federal Reserve dropped a bunch of Euro and other currencies on the market before the dollar spike, causing people to withdraw from oil (which is negatively correlated with the dollar). If this is true than this is very bad; if this is their long-term strategy then eventually they are going to run out of foreign reserves.
I don't think the war in the caucauses explains any of this, seeing as the financial trouble is worldwide. China was hit even harder than Russia, and so far no Russian banks have filed for bankruptcy, as opposed to the US where we are already in the double digits in terms of this. Anyways claiming that Georgia has anything to do with this is a real stretch of the imagination who has any clue as to what they are talking about when it comes to finance. At most the phycological effects of the Georgian crisis could explain 10-25% of the current withdrawl of capital. In regard to this little illustration of intillect, "So all of the factors that were behind the Russian surge of the past three years economically have had their legs knocked out from under them. And investors are acting appropriately.", I can only bring the author's attention to a lack of his business education, since Russian blue-chip companies have P/E ratios of 12-15, Price-to-book hovering around 1 for some banks, they represent really good bargains now, and since the country has not even considered tapping into the 500 billion dollar stabilization fund seeing as they don't consider this crisis to be "real". Believe me, there will be no liquidity problems with a 500 billion dollar stabilization fund, created for situations much worse than this.
- Reaction score
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Banks in the United States are formed, and managed different than they are in Canada, or Russia. Different governmental controls and input.
That could be one reason the USA has seen the bankruptcies. I forget the details on how it all works though. So sadly...I am quite useless.
Coming from a family very in the know of such things obviously doesn't always mean the youth will obsorb any of it. haha
That could be one reason the USA has seen the bankruptcies. I forget the details on how it all works though. So sadly...I am quite useless.
Coming from a family very in the know of such things obviously doesn't always mean the youth will obsorb any of it. haha
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 1,260
oligarch said:
Quite correct. My point is that this financial crisis may well explain why Russia adopts even more thuggish, aggressive ways - to distract attention from the kleptocracy that masquerades as 'rule of law' in Russia and unite the people behind a military adventure.
- Reaction score
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Oligarch, my comment was facetious. I just know that there are people out there that are inclined to find the "hand of Rove" in all things.
With respect to your comment about bankruptcies and PE ratios. The issue is not whether Russian companies outperform US or western companies. The issue is whether or not investors can believe the ratios, whether or not companies are allowed to go bankrupt or forced into bankruptcy by oligarchal fiat, whether or not investors have a reliable system of laws by which they can hold the government, the company, and the oligarchs, to account.
It is not that Al Capone didn't run a profitable business. It is a question of whether or not you want to do business with Al Capone.
With respect to your comment about bankruptcies and PE ratios. The issue is not whether Russian companies outperform US or western companies. The issue is whether or not investors can believe the ratios, whether or not companies are allowed to go bankrupt or forced into bankruptcy by oligarchal fiat, whether or not investors have a reliable system of laws by which they can hold the government, the company, and the oligarchs, to account.
It is not that Al Capone didn't run a profitable business. It is a question of whether or not you want to do business with Al Capone.
E.R. Campbell said:
You seem to exaggerate impacts of stock indexes on Russian economy.
Let me tell that they are too far speculative and too far away from 99% people and businesses comparing to US or Canada.
By the way, they are up 30% today.
Would you mind to post an article on this success?
Prove what?Paul W... said:
If you want to make a good documetary and make your opinion on Putin and his government, you will learn Russian and go to Russia in order to interview real people.
You will not go to a garbage yard to interview all sorts of scumbags like traitor Kalugin, terrorist Zakaev, communist Landsbergis or former chessmaster Kasparov.
It is just not serious. It is like to ask Osama Bin Laden about American politics.
Yeah, they speak English, but nobody gives a sh$t about their opinions.