Ukraine makes the news almost everyday….well in the rest of the world that does not have a Super Bowl to agonize over………..and most of the reports we see and read are he said they said propaganda……and some of the largest newspapers here in the US have been the worst at reporting on the Ukraine conflict……
Do you remember back in the Spring and Summer when all the world was jumping through hoops because of Russia’s advance into Ukrainian territory?
The world went batcrap crazy….NATO was predicting that all other former Soviet states would be falling like dominoes……that hysteria lead to the formation of a NATO Rapid Response Force……do you recall any of this?
Probably not because it did not effect you in any way……but the plan was to create a Rapid Response Force to handle any flare ups in Eastern Europe……the US and NATO came up with an idea and a plan……but as usual that may be as far as it goes…….
Arguments over who’s going to pay for the creation of the “rapid reaction” force in Eastern Europe, something NATO agreed to create back in September, has left the alliance spinning its wheels on actually getting the force going.
It was supposed to be a 5,000 ground troop force with air and naval support positioned along the Baltic Sea as some sort of hedge against a Russian invasion, something no one serious expects anyhow.
Diplomats are now saying that the force, which was supposed to be put together quickly, will be lucky to be fully operational before 2016. Fewer than 100 of the 5,000 troops have been committed yet.
May I suggest that the term “rapid” be eliminated from the title.
Basically this was just a cover for NATO to get more cash and spend it on weapons and other implements of destruction. In other words just a vague plan to boost the profits of your local friendly Military-Industrial Complex………and that is what our foreign policy is really all about…in case you were confused.
Inkwell Institute
Eastern European Desk
Since WW2 there has been a gigantic game of chess going on….East vs West…….First world vs second world……basically battle lines that are being formed…….a massive geopolitical game of chess.
First, the Soviet Union formed a buffer zone between them and the West….including E. Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Baltic states…..it was a logical necessity for every invasion has come through these areas…..they were forming a safety zone of early warning.
Then shortly after WW2 the West formed NATO as a safety zone of their own which included most of western Europe….this to feed the paranoia of the Iron Curtain.
Then in the late 80’s and early 90’s the Soviet Union began falling apart….there seemed to be a short period when the alliances of the past would not be needed……..but experts could not let the chess game go…….there had to be a way to keep it going. there was….the answer….expand NATO to include as many post Soviet countries as possible…….
One would think that it would end there, right? Wrong oh great one!
Russia tried to keep some of their past members with the CIS……..the Commonwealth of Independent States……..an institution t try and counter the expansion of NATO…….
A loose confederation of prior Soviet states that has been shrinking ever since it was established…..to try and slow the disintegration of the organization a new Eurasian Economic Union…….(see previous post)………..an attempt to head off the charge to join the EU.
Posturing has begun……spheres of competing influence are being formed……and in the end we will return to the days of yore and a new cold war…….hard to see how this bodes well for the nation of the world…….
What’ next? Will corporations divide the earth up and start the Roller Ball concept?
I guess we could look on the bright side and say that this grab is better than a grab by warfare…..but any type of land grab will effect the people involved in one way or the other…..thoughts?
While the world was distracted with VA BS and the prisoner exchange and …..pause here for thought……there is so much lame BS that it is hard to stay focused on any or it. But while the world snoozed Russia was attempting to form an economic union…….
ANALYSIS. How Significant Is the Eurasian Economic Union? | World Affairs Journal.
Looks like the hawks will get their way……how long will it take for this to escalate into a downward spiral?
Poland, Estonia exercises part of plan to increase presence in eastern Europe – U.S. – Stripes.
Inkwell Institute
Eastern European Desk
There are great speeches in history like Gettysburg Address, or FDR’s Day of Infamy speech…but the one I want to talk about is the “Tear Down This Wall” speech given by Reagan in Berlin in 1987…in case you are fuzzy…..he stood by the Berlin Wall and ask the Soviet premier to tear down the wall…there was lots more to the speech but that is the part that people, mostly Repubs want to remember…kinda like the “give me liberty” speech by Henry…all that is remembered by most Americans is some slogan fit for a bumper sticker……..
Reagan rambled on and on about the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, missiles, Asia….but the part that I remember most was when he was addressing the USSR and its lack of freedom………
Freedom leads to prosperity. Freedom replaces the ancient hatreds among the nations with comity and peace. Freedom is the victor.
About two years after his speech the E. German authority opened the wall up and it was truly torn down……a great day…especially for Repubs they could claim their ideology was the cause of the collapse of the USSR………
Meanwhile back to the quote….with the fall of communism the whole region of Eastern Europe opened up to the idea of capitalism, which some equate with freedom……..but after about 20+ years of capitalism what has Eastern Europe learned?
Pick a country….any country…..say ….Hungary….what is happening there with all this freedom and democracy? A Pew Research poll shows…….
With parliamentary elections approaching, Hungarians are in a funk. Nearly unanimously, they say the economy is in bad shape, and a stunning 72% say most Hungarians are actually worse off now economically than they were under communism. But Hungary’s malaise is not all about economics — most are frustrated with politics too. Overwhelmingly, Hungarians are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working and discontent with political elites, with about three-in-four saying political corruption is a major problem. A fall 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project highlights the degree to which, even in a region where disillusionment is common, Hungarians stand out.
All of this bodes well for the electoral prospects of Fidesz, the right-of-center opposition party, which is expected to soundly defeat the incumbent social democrats in the upcoming elections.1 However, these findings do not mean Hungarians are rejecting democratic values. In fact, as the survey illustrates, they are more likely than other former Eastern bloc publics to say it is very important to live in a country with democratic rights and institutions. But few believe Hungary currently has these democratic freedoms.
In the 2009 poll, more than three-in-four (77%) said they were dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in Hungary, the highest percentage on the survey. In the other former Eastern bloc nations, there were notable generation gaps on this question, with people under age 40 — essentially, the “post-communist” generation — more likely to be satisfied than older respondents. Not so, however, in Hungary, where old and young alike tended to give the current state of democracy a grim assessment.
As with any so-called democratic country, Hungary’s new constitution is in contention……a report in the BBC……
The legal and constitutional experts said the charter was rushed through without proper debate.
They said the governing Fidesz party could use its two-thirds majority in parliament to push through laws which might prove impossible to overturn.
This meant, they said, “the principle of democracy itself is at risk”.
They also said other social issues – including the rights of the unborn child, marriage between a man and a woman, and the definition of life sentences – “should be left to the ethical debates within society” rather than enshrined in the constitution.the new constitution
Hungary has a right of center government…….actually it is more nationalistic…..and we know what that means….right?
There is growing resentment for capitalism in the Eastern bloc (to use an old Cold War term)….it is becoming more and more clear that the people are not better off with capitalism…that they may NOT be freer with capitalism…..and the population may NOT be more prosperous with capitalism…..one problem is that old hatreds are becoming more and more to the forefront of politics……..so some are having a bout with buyer’s remorse…..
Looks the statement by Biden that caused such an outroar about the tests that will surely appear, has come true.
As reported in the NY Times:
President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia greeted his future American counterpart, Senator Barack Obama, with bristling language on Wednesday, promising to place short-range missiles on Russia’s western border if Washington proceeded with its planned missile defense system in Eastern Europe.
Mr. Medvedev described specific measures Moscow would take if Washington went ahead with a plan to station a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. He said Russia would post mobile Iskander missiles — tactical weapons designed for use against targets like long-range artillery and airfields, in addition to missile defense systems — around Kaliningrad, an enclave at Russia’s western border. He also said Russia would use radio equipment to jam the Western missile defense system.
Careful–the world is watching.
The economies of central and eastern Europe are being rocked by the crisis of world capitalism, compounded by the corrupt and pro-big business policies of their local elites.
Defying many economists and commentators, who had forecast that the region would be well placed to deal with the credit crisis due to the lower relative weight of finance capital within their national economies, much of Eastern Europe stands on the verge of insolvency and deep and protracted recession.
An estimated five million workers have left the eastern European countries for Western Europe between 2004 and 2007. The mass migration from the ex-Soviet states has left key sectors of the economy and public services such as healthcare critically short of skilled workers. Poland and Ukraine almost had to abandon their status as co-hosts of the 2012 European Football Championship due to the chronic shortages of labour needed to renew facilities for the competition.
Only a few months ago, a recession in Western Europe was viewed as a potential boon to overheated Eastern Europe economies. Inflation, running at 15 percent in Russia and Latvia, seemed to be the greatest threat. However, as the full impact of the global crisis unfolds, the alleged ability of Eastern Europe to weather the storm relatively better than its Western counterparts has been thrown into question.
All the economies of the eastern European region are highly dependent on credit from the international markets. The Institute of International Finance has estimated that total private capital and credit flows into eastern Europe, the former USSR and Turkey, are likely to fall from nearly $400 billion in 2007 to an estimated $262 billion next year, a figure which may fall even further as it is based on optimistic forecasts of the effectiveness of the international governmental bailouts of the banks.
The International Monetary Fund forecasts a fall in the growth rate for gross domestic product (GDP) for central and southeast Europe from 5 percent this year to 3.5 percent in 2009. For Russia and the former Soviet Union, it predicts growth of around 7 percent for this year and 5.5 percent for 2009.
The IMF will be demanding and recieving much more in concessions from these countries if they want aid in their fighting the economic crisis. (Read my post on the IMF)
If you can remember Hungary in the 50’s or Czech rebellion of the 60’s–then you can understand why those people in Eastern Europe are worried.
Signing a missile-defense deal with its good friend the United States has earned Poland nothing less than the threat of nuclear attack from Russia — a threat that might not sound so empty these days, given Moscow’s bloody battle with Georgia.
That conflict has plunged Europe into crisis, sending waves of jitters through Poland and other eastern nations, once-occupied parts of a Soviet empire that some fear Russia may want to reconstruct. Moscow’s actions have also succeeded in driving deeper the wedge between Europe’s East and West.
Ukraine and Moldova are worried that they could be Russia’s next targets. The Czech Republic, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of a Soviet invasion that crushed the Prague Spring reform movement, is fretting about history repeating itself. Many Eastern European nations, Poland chief among them, are eager to find safe haven, and have turned to Washington for guidance and reassurance and partnership.
But the fact that the distracted and overly stretched Bush administration took little concrete action to protect Georgia from Russia’s wrath must also give pause to nations that would throw their lot completely with the U.S. Is the strategic alliance that many Eastern European countries have been building with the U.S. since the fall of communism nearly two decades ago still worth the risks?