By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
The Baltic States in 1944. Hungary 1956. Czechoslovakia 1968. Afghanistan 1979.
Ukraine 2014?
That’s what it looked like on Friday evening, Save Jerseyans, as reports of Russian troops invading Crimea leaked to international media outlets. Grim portents indeed. War is brewing.
And yes, it was all preventable. Western weakness invites eastern aggression. Every. Damn. Time. Yet the Left never learns its lesson because its adherents are too busy trying to rewrite history than learn something of value from it.
Democrats can’t even believe it’s happening. “Nobody thought Putin was going to invade last night,” an unnamed U.S. Senate aid opined to the Daily Beast. “He has the G8 summit in Sochi coming up, no one really saw this kind of thing coming.”
I probably would’ve missed it, too, had I spent the past several years chugging “Yes We Can!” kool-aid and ignoring the world around me.
Vladimir Putin’s Olympic games opening ceremony confirmed what we already knew: the former KGB agent longs for a reconstitution of the Soviet Empire, economically if not in terms of real territory. Hence, the tug-of-war over Ukraine by Russia and the European Union. None of this or that is a big surprise.
What’s changed is America’s unwillingness to provide a check against Russian aggression. It began in 2009 when newly-minted President Obama sent chills down Eastern European spines by cancelling the Bush-era missile defense shield program. Obama compounded the problem in March 2012 when he promised Putin’s predecessor (and inferior) greater “flexibility” after reelection.
Taken together with the fact that this President indecisively blundered his way through Syrian, Libya, and virtually every major foreign policy challenge confronted in his tenure, again, anyone who’s surprised that Putin is finally taking advantage of the United States’ global retreat is either stupid or not paying any attention whatsoever.
You can imagine what FDR, Truman, Reagan, either Bush or even Kennedy would’ve said on the television tonight were they still in charge.
President Obama’s official response to the Crimean situation on Friday evening as Moscow directly violated Kiev’s sovereignty?
“Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing.”
That’s not a warning, folks. It’s not even an admonishment. That’s a statement of fact. And it’s as pathetic as it is unacceptable at a time when the world needs leadership, not a class president sporting a spine with the rigidity of a melting jello mold.
What else can we, the sane, say today? I apologize to the people of Ukraine, with whom I share a common heritage (I’m 25% Ukrainian), for my government’s role in engendering this crisis and the struggles that lie ahead.
I voted for the other guy.
Calm down. When Putin went to war against Georgia, the anxiety was so thick as if Russian tanks are rolling through Atlanta streets, and how it ended? Russians never even approached Tbilisi but annexed a piece of land that was Russian, and wanted to be Russian. Same will occur in Ukraine. Crimea Peninsula was torn off Russia and “gifted” to Kiev by Nikita Khruschev, but Crimeans are 85% ethnic Russians, they never considered themselves Ukrainians, and they want to merge back with Russia. So, if Putin’s conquests are like that, not only I don’t care, I actually welcome them. It is orders of magnitude more benevolent than what we did in former Yugoslavia.
Max, I guess you’re right we shouldn’t worry. After all, Hitler only wanted a small German speaking strip of Czechoslovakia. After that, he was done with territorial conquests, and Neville Chamberlain ensured peace in out time. How well did that work out?
Bill, learn some history before poster-casing for Godwin Law. Sudetenland was never German in the first place, and the percentage of native Germans in it was about 20-30% (source: Wiki). If anyone has a case for owning Crimea it’s Turks, not Ukrainians.
All of Czechoslovakia was historically part of Austria,which had just been annexed to Germany (and was historically considered a German state). Also, the 20-30% refers to all of the Czech Republic, not the Sudetenland. German speakers were actually a plurality in the Sudetenland.
Disgraceful
Bill, I’d like to see sources confirming your claim of German-speaking plurality in Sudetes; Wiki does not confirm that. But even if it were true, Sudetes were not German lands, whereas Crimea was Russian for many centuries, and 85% locals not only speak Russian as main language but actually see themselves as Russian citizens.
Historical context aside, Putin appears to be a more pragmatic sort of tyrant. He could, after all, roll over Georgia and set a puppet kinglet in Tbilisi but chose to voluntarily end the war and withdraw, despite virtually zero pressure from the West. He could easily reinstall Yanukovich and lay claim to the entire Eastern Ukraine (where 50-60% of population are ethnic Russians or Jews) but carefully avoided doing either.
Also, Russia is not an industrial giant like the USSR used to be, but a corrupt plutocratic state with decaying infrastructure, resource-based economy, and dwindling native population. If that is what passes for foreign enemies these days, I’d say domestic ones are thousand times worse.
Max, here is a map of Bohemia (basically today’s Czech Republic). Most of the areas bordering Germany area shaded dark red, indicating over 75% were German speaking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sudetendeutsche.png
Bill, it looks from the article that Germans were a majority in Bohemia, which was annexed by Czechs as a result of WWI, but a minority elsewhere in Sudetenland. It’s a strange, shocking even, thing to conclude but perhaps Hitler may have had a valid pretext for his demand. Then, again, this conclusion does not detract from the other points I made in the last post: Putin is no Hitler, and Russia of today is no Germany of the 30-ies.
Max, there was no Czech nation prior to World War I, how could they “annex,” anything? Also, the Sudetenland is a small part of Bohemia, not the other way around. Germans were a majority in the Sudetenland, and a minority elsewhere in Bohemia. Hitler first annexed the Sudetenland (which contained all of the Czech’s fortifications), then the rest of Czechoslovakia. Also, why are you in Vlad’s fan club?
The Czech nation existed since medieval times, but I’ll accept the correction: “annexed by the state of Czechoslovakia”. Sudenetland consists of parts of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia.
More to the point, I don’t like what Putin is doing, but believe that his actions do not warrant American intervention, direct or indirect. Given our own sorry state of affairs, we should be done playing world police. And, as nasty and corrupt as Vlad is, I’d trade Obama for him any day.
Max, there was no Czech “nation-state” until World War I. The entire area of what is today’s Czech Republic was controlled by Austria (which one of many German states until 1870 when there was a German nation state). As the Sudetenland was part of Austria’s lands, it was part of Czechoslovakia from its founding after World War I. It never annexed this land from Germany or anyone else. Similarity, Crimea has been part of the Ukraine from its independence after the dissolution of the USSR.
No Czech “nation-state”, Bill? Google “Jan Hus”. You also confuse Austria with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. My classes on European history, given that they were in Europe, are apparently better than those in American schools. But it doesn’t matter; I don’t want this discussion to get bogged down in historical minutiae while truly relevant bits are forgotten.
As for Crimea, it was taken from Russia and “gifted” to Ukraine by Khrushchev in 1954, for no reason at all; though it was not his to give, no one in the USSR was about to deny the newly elected First Secretary his whim. I see what Putin is doing today as a forceful return of stolen property. I will, however, reconsider my position if Russia expands its claim to Eastern Ukraine, a co-aligned but historically Ukrainian territory.
Russia invades Georgia in 2008 under which leftist US President?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkjCg3VME3k&sns=em
Max, I’m not trying to argue, but where did you learn that the Bohemia is a part of the larger Sudetenland (instead of vice versa) or that Germans were only 20% of the Sudetenland? The area that is now the Czech Republic had been ruled by the Habsburgs (Austrian Royal Family) since 1526, until World War I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Habsburg_Map_1547.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Bohemia
Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, there was an Austrian and a Hungarian state, and the Czech Republic was in the Austrian part of it.
Furthermore, Ukraine and Russia signed the Budapest agreement in 1994. Under that agreement, The Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for Russia guaranteeing Ukraine’s current borders.
Bill, I have just reread my posts, and none of them says that Bohemia is part of Sudetenland; you might be reading things that aren’t there. In any case, I’d say I had enough of this history dispute, and I am still disagreeing with “Putin is Hitler” position that started it.
As for Budapest agreement, Putin seems to be willing to violate it, correctly judging that Western powers that be will not interfere. I’d say he is not unlike a man who, having his kid’s bike taken by a neighbor, beats said neighbor half to death and takes the bike back, judging (correctly) that local cops are either lax or busy elsewhere. While the act itself has certain moral justification, it is still brazenly illegal and immoral.
Max, I’m referring to the 11:21 am comment where you said “Bill, it looks from the article that Germans were a majority in Bohemia, which was annexed by Czechs as a result of WWI, but a minority elsewhere in Sudetenland” Also, this is more akin to Putin having sold his bike to his neighbor, then coming back 20 years later thinking he sold it for too little.
Bill, Sudetes also include parts of Silesia and Moravia, two provinces populated mostly by ethnic Czechs. I’d say, enough with this nitpicking.
As for the bike example, Putin did not sell that bike, and neither did Russia. Khrushchev was an Ukrainian national. In my dictionary, gifting to self qualifies as stealing. Notably different is Alaska, which was sold so fair and square that not even the most hotheaded Russian pols clamor for its return, despite deteriorating relationships with the USA.
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