What Happens When Islamist Extremist Terror Faces Vlad the Invader?

 

Apparently there were no newspapers, radio news or television news and nobody was much interested in the Chechen war of terrorism against Russia which caused troubles for the Russian government as nobody apparently knew how to fight this threat and remain unfazed, untouched, unshamed and completely oblivious to any and all the negative condemnations and accusations of human rights abuses, war crimes and negative fallout from the necessary acts which would prove effective once applied. But where to find a human who had nerves of steel, that glazed look in their eyes, and a stone cold heart who would be capable of rivaling Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, also known as Vlad Drăculea and lovingly by the peoples of Romania, Vlad the Impaler. The year was 1999 and the Russians found their man, a lieutenant colonel from the KGB back in the day stationed in Dresden, East Germany from 1985 to 1990. He was assigned a cover as a translator and interpreter while assigned to the KGB’s Directorate S with the other operatives who were actually agents using undercover identities. Putin worked in coordination with the infamous and often cruel Stasi Secret Police, who were often too obvious, where he assisted in selecting potential and approaching with attempts to recruit foreigners for assignments to carry out espionage for the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin wall and collapse of the Soviet Union would have left a lesser man in a desperate state but Vladimir Putin simply burned the KGB’s files, attempted to contact his similarly desperate seniors in Moscow who surprisingly were not in the office any longer as they too were scrambling to establish a new identity and position in the rapidly morphing government and governance. Putin landed himself in Leningrad and assumed position with the International Affairs section of Leningrad State University. Then he was chosen probably in part because he was expendable, but he proved to be far more dangerous than a man with nothing to lose, he became the man of the hour and took the Chechen problem and smashed it head-on. Putin applied the full force of the Russian military leveling entire neighborhoods and eventually leveled most of the Chechen Capital City of Grozny and caused severe damage throughout Chechnya and severely disabled the framework, networks, coordination and effectiveness and when the Second Chechen War concluded they wrote their new Constitution which declared their being a republic within the Russian Federation and the terror problems with Chechen rebels have virtually stopped and Putin gained the love and admiration of the Russian people. His go to any lengths and make the losses of the and effects of the conflict so horrific for the enemies that they completely concede disputed territory and avoided any further conflict that the horror afflicted and the appreciation of his population for the end of threats by the enemy that it reminds us of another Vlad, Vlad Drăculea. Way back in the ancient days of March 16, 2014, we saw this parallel between Vlad Drăculea from history and similar current actions and popularity with the people for his making their lives safer by Vladimir Putin, and the facts that they were both named Vlad. So we went the extra step and took the inspiration of Vlad Drăculea being named by his adversaries as Vlad the Impaler, and we gave Vladimir Putin the title Vlad the Invader when he entered the Crimea, Ukraine. {For anyone so inclined to peruse our collection of articles thus far concerning Vladimir Putin under our reference of Vlad the Invader can go here care-of, dare I reveal it, Google.}

 

 

 

The rambling above has its reasons as we are likely to have one of those moments when the current resembles the past but as an echo put through an amplifier and a few special effects added. As established, Vladimir Putin, Vlad the Invader, is a get the job done, damn the consequences, because as long as the people are behind me and will continue to elect me to whatever position is required for me to remain above the consequences, then damn those consequences and its pedal to the metal and increasing pressure until the others squeal and beg for mercy, though we know no mercy. Still, there has been a pressure vessel being pumped as fast and as far and wide as the Saudi Arabia Wahabbists and the Egyptian Al-Azhar University trained Imams are able to, with the aid of the social networks, online videos and their charismatic appeal combined with descriptions of grandeur awaiting those who take action in the holy jihad against the Western World, which oddly enough to these Imams the Russian Federation which was salvaged from the collapsed Soviet Union had now been relegated to the Western World. Many of the youth are looking at a future with little if any promise and frustration building up such that they eagerly seek something or someone to blame for what is described to them as a conspiracy of the Western Powers who spread corruption and misery wherever they rule as they take what they want and ignore those living in these places. All the poverty and lack of opportunity is inflated into a global conspiracy blaming whomever their chosen target of the moment is which is about to be the Russian Federation, currently Europe’s largest Muslim country. One might say that they know not with whom they are about to open terrorist hostilities. These Imams have all the trademarks of terror instigators with the training and certificates to match. They have been operating mostly in Central Russia centering efforts with the Tatars, Russia’s largest Muslim ethnic group numbering about 5 million, along with estimated 2.5 to 5 million Uzbeks, 1 million Tajiks and 1 million Kyrgyz all who currently reside in Russia. These Muslims are being radicalized with mixed but slowly building the result of both Salafism and Wahhabism, ultra-conservative movements within Sunni Islam.

 

All of this will eventually reach the desired conflict but unlikely the desired end being aimed for by these outside forces who are instigating and also enlisting mostly illegal immigrants from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan and Afghanistan. These are numbering also in the millions as there is little enforcement and what there is can easily be worked around. The plan is not difficult to ascertain as it is the same as what has worked so perfectly with Islamic conquest since the early 700’s when they first spread out of their thin slivers of habitual areas on the rims of the Arabian Peninsula, some things never really change much. Step 1: infiltrate with immigration both legal if given the opportunity as was just extended by Angela Merkel and jumped on the bandwagon were François Hollande and Barack Obama, all of which are in denial of Islamist terror potential with the unchecked waves of ‘refugees’ which have an imbalance of men aged mid to late teens through mid-thirties all able bodied, single and many wearing designer cloths talking on the latest model iPhones. Step 2: demand changes to accommodate Islam and begin terror strikes to set area on the edge needing just the right bold strike of organized wide front of terror to send them beyond the cusp and likely unable to recover before the end plays out. Step 3: start to take position in the government and get trusted Muslims in position which are elected and push the non-Islamic native population from the area allowing them to remain either as Dhimmi paying the Jiyza or having converted to Islam which will get them observed to catch them still practicing their former religion in secret. Then the final Step 4: make the push to take the entire nation through force and install a theocratic dictatorship.

 

 

 

There will be a one-step solves all problems as Vlad the Invader shares the shock value though Vlad the Invader needs to be somewhat more tactful and within societal norms as even stretched by a long and grinding war one may not use Vlad the Impaler methods of impaling the bodies of those enemies taken prisoner and the dead left on the field of nettle by the invaders all on pike poles impaled with the other end of the impaling weapon firmly thrust deeply into the ground making for a gruesome and horrific sight which had the desired shock and flight rather than fight reflex from his enemies. The Ottoman Turks who were constantly trying to take the Romanian lands are reputed at one point to assign their most feared and similarly barbarous with his tactics to the point of appearing unbalanced or completely insane. His response to the request that he take care of the Vlad Drăculea problem and he ungraciously refused claiming that fighting a foe who showed to be even beyond the cusp by the Ottoman Turks most egregious commander who used shock value tactics himself but was quite terrified of Vlad the Impaler and thus the effect of peace and freedom from Ottoman rule. Vladimir Putin will still use the tactics he learned while studying methods within the KGB, the original trainers of Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas as well as other expert murderers such as Che Guevara, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tso Deng, Pol Pot and too many others to list.

 

If one were to question Vlad the Invader’s metal, one need go not very far to get results, just ask the residents and rulers of Georgia, Crimea, Eastern Ukraine, Chechnya and especially Chechen Capital City of Grozny as they will all weave a similar story of brutality and no apparent tactics beyond that of intimidation though overwhelming damage, loss of life, and senseless bombardment with the only explanation being that if a target was known then why not take out the whole block and every block around it and most of the ones on the outside of those just to make sure if the target was attempting to escape. This is not beyond other KGB rumored methods as in Lebanon one of the people taken hostage in a Hezballah raid was a Soviet Union official along with a few British, French, an Italian and a few Americans. The Italian was released with the threat for each nation to release all the Islamic terror suspects and those who already faced trial and were serving their sentences. The next day, after receiving intelligence that indeed a Russian national was taken there was an immediate Soviet response. An embassy vehicle drove by the headquarters building in southern Beirut where they rolled out the heads of three Hezballah terrorists captured the evening after the abducted Russian was confirmed on the ensuing morning. The heads included a note informing them where the rest of the bodies were buried and informed then if they had not released their Russian hostage, they could expect more deliveries. The Russian was standing at the gates of the Soviet Union’s Embassy later that very night carrying a letter of abject apologies and no Soviet Union citizen was again proving that when barbarity is met with superior barbarity the message is fully understood. The fact that the American hostages were amongst the last to be released was even more proof that one cannot answer barbarous hostilities with words and negotiations which include empty threats which the terrorists fully understand will never be carried out because the nations they are fighting obey the rules of war. This leads to the situation where one will act predictably which means their every move can be anticipated and thus their terror adversaries were always at least one step ahead.

 

Surprise and brash acts are the only tactic shown to work other than almost carpet-bombing entire cities or regions, acting impulsively or deliberately contrary to logic and all predictability and even with undue force and sinking not only to their level but a number of levels deeper just to assure that your message that you will destroy whatever it takes to shock the terrorists and their leaders to such an extent that they beg you for an end to the attacks or whatever utilized which got their full attention of the terror forces and it would be unwise to reignite such a game which required one to chance another person’s life. Such games and such stakes must be eradicated before another life is needlessly wasted. Never again must be the stated policy of any democratic nation and it must be strictly followed no matter the consequence. To cave to such demands only endangers everyone else as there becomes the idea that if one kidnaps the correct person or sufficient numbers of victims are kidnapped that a free nation will then cave to the demands placing one person above that of the entirety of the remaining population. Putin knows how that game is played and is willing to play such a game in the most brutal way. Where such is apparently such a violent and callous manner to treat life but it is the only way to prevent future lives being placed in danger making every foreign tourist a potential target and eventually that target becomes anybody anywhere. Odd as it may seem, the Russian policy could very well be the only manner in which to take such situations to their final manner and logistically defused in a manner which ends the kidnap threat as it gains the terrorist foe no gains. We need to unfortunately learn this answer ourselves or we will be subjecting the entirety of the Middle East in the actions not taken over the next few years. Careful planning before any situation becomes the news crisis of the decade until next week once the government caves to the demands. That is the reason terrorists must never be negotiated with, only destroyed wherever they stand.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

How Did This Mess Get Started

 

Looking at the world around us one has to wonder how it all got into the horrible state of affairs. There had to be a lynchpin which started the unraveling, an actual starting point which we can trace everything back to and find the culprit who made that initial error, mistake in judgement. But in order to do that one has to decide which of the unravellings we should start with as there are so many to choose from. There is Putin, or as we like to call him, Vlad the Invader (our original reference recently stolen by a Fox News commentator the erudite pontificator), who has shaken up parts of Central Asia and Eurasia and is threatening Eastern Europe, or at least there are some former nations swallowed by the Iron Curtain of the Soviet Union; there is China who apart from building a blue water navy with which not only to challenge the United States Naval hegemony of the seas, a privilege formerly owned by the British, but are also building Islands in order to cement her claims to the vast South China Sea and thus control or divert much of the sea lane traffic from the Indian Ocean in and out of the Pacific Ocean; there is the financial problems in Europe threatening the stability of the European Union and the adoption of one currency with the Euro; and the final and greatest roiling and boiling cauldron, the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA). There may be other problems out there but these are the most prevalent and easily identifiable.

 

Let us start with the easiest of these, the financial meltdown in Europe. This problem was a situation just waiting to happen as soon as the most disparate economic nations decided to adopt the same currency unit without permitting a central planning committee to set their financial and economic planning and other such decisions in-line with each other. There was absolutely no way the less productive economies of such nations as Spain, Greece and Portugal had any hope of paralleling the productivity, GDP and economic output of a France, Britain or Germany. Additionally, adding the former Warsaw Pact nations probably sparked an even more divergent economic growth rate as nations such as Poland, the Czech Republic, and others plus the reuniting of Germany allowing the already dominant economy to also feast on the same rebuilding and economic recovery from the less efficient economic model of central planning to a market driven economy which granted these nations a greatly exaggerated GDP during their basically playing catch-up with the rest of Europe and becoming modernized economies. Thus the Euro was a pipe dream which probably had hoped that through the singular monetary unit, the Euro, would lead to a centralizing of economic planning being turned over to the European Union to plan these different economies as if they were a single unit. That was highly unlikely as that would have spelled the demise of the nation states and rendered them merely states in the continental nation of the European Union. What the European Union bureaucrats were seeking was a situation very similar to a former economic model using the Union name, the Soviet Union, replacing Moscow with Brussels and otherwise retaining that centralized, top down dictatorial form of economic planning. The hope of having all the European nations of the European Union surrender that much power to centralized governance was an impossible and thankfully unthinkable centralization of power. This became first indicated when Great Britain took a vote of the people on whether or not to adopt the Euro and the people were clearly heard to say not without losing to an invading army first, otherwise reported as a resounding no and Great Britain retained the Pound but with time would accept the Euro but it would change in buying power as it performed against the Pound. The British model of accepting the Euro while retaining their own currency would very likely have been a far better solution considering what we know now. By allowing each nation their own currency while having them also accept the Euro as legal tender the individual national economic planning would have reflected in their national currency which could slide against the Euro while still having an exchange rate at which the Euro would have an established buying power. This way Greece could remain Greece and Germany could march to their own economic tune and both nations would accept the Euro but their economy would be reflected in the exchange rate which would be set in Brussels. That would provide each nation with its economic freedoms while granting the central control freaks in Brussels their power in determining the value of the Euro to the individual currencies.

 

Next, let us take Vlad the Invader and resurgent Russia. Here the answer is simple; things are as they were inevitably meant to be. Russia has always had that appetite to chew on and swallow the smaller nations around her and some more so than others. Georgia and the Ukraine both fall into the more so than others category. Eventually there would have come along a strong and imperialist charismatic leader, instead we got a shirtless man experiencing a middle age crisis and owning a Napoléon complex likely due to the shared attribute of being of diminutive size also known as vertically challenged. Thus we have Vlad the Invader slowly but inexorably making advances which could have been potentially limited in the Ukraine to the Crimea but there would have been no stopping Putin’s appetite for conquest short of tempting his readiness for war by admitting the Ukraine and any other Warsaw Pact nation into NATO as well as the European Union. Of course this would have had the effect of making any of these moves by Russia on its neighboring countries, or as Vlad sees these nations being simply escaped provinces to be reclaimed, and thus pushing NATO or the weaker European Union into backing their mutual self-defense claims of, to quote an oldie but still a goodie, their all for one and one for all defensive agreements contained in both the European Union and especially NATO. So this can be traced back to Putin’s training as a KGB agent merging with his Napoléon complex plus his nationalistic and simplistic view that Russia was dealt a cruel and unfair blow with the, as he sees it, calamitous and most disastrous and lamentable event of the twentieth century and that he was the individual given the extraordinary and heaven ordained duty to rebuild Russia to her full and former glory. As far as others fearing Russia, especially in that neighborhood, Vlad the Invader has succeeded in spades.

 

China is another historical hegemonic power in the Pacific Ocean or at least the western shores of the Pacific Ocean and at times the Indian Ocean as well. One has to remember that China used to have regular wars with the other great power of Asia, India, back when simple people power was a determining factor and has only in recent history run astride of hard times. Historically China has either been the regional power controlling all she could survey or China was broken into separate mini-states which often warred with each other thus diminishing their powers. The only other situation was when China was overrun or controlled by outside influences and she was in a slow but constant state of regaining her independence and eventually sovereignty over her invaders. China has been and remains the slow and patient survivor and eventual victor which one need but wait to see her resurgence. China has a long history of simply refusing to be cowed or defeated, merely witnessing a temporary inconvenience. China has relied on the winds of change always knowing that no matter what the calamity, be it outside invaders or internal misrule, everything changes and change is the one criteria which can be relied upon to render all things dust. China realizes that there are time when you are riding the crest of the wave and time when the wave has crashed down upon you and whichever end of that wave you find yourself, you will eventually find yourself at the other extreme so enjoy the best of times and remember them as a goal in the worst of times. For China time has been her greatest ally and greatest enemy but she also knows that time is her greatest weapon. China will rise and fall just as the ocean tides, just on a much longer cycle.

 

Then there is the Extended Middle East which incorporates the traditional Middle East and North Africa and often called MENA. We like Extended Middle East better. This area has always been a cauldron of swirling fates. One need do no more than read the Bible, the Old Testament, to realize the great swings of fate for all who resided in this area. There have been great empires which rose from next to nothing to greatness only to be blown away like the desert sands. Some of these empires blew away so completely that one is unable to find their descendants as it is as if they were snatched from the Earth itself. Probably the strangest of stories is the people of the Bible who only recently returned to their historic, ancient lands, Israel. However, this return has become the central story and burdened with the weight of responsibility for all the unrest anywhere on the globe and particularly throughout the Extended Middle East. Despite there being no actual or traceable root to the great turmoil destroying and potentially redrawing the map of the Extended Middle East to Israel, that has not prevented many from historians to political pundits to media reporters and even to governments and their agencies such as the United States Department of State from laying all of the blame at Israel’s doorstep.

 

The turmoil in the central Middle East is nothing new as it is the control point for all trade historically between three massive and divergent continents; Africa, Europe and Asia. This was the locations of a city-state which had no viable crop or natural resource and was hidden away behind a narrow splitting in a rock face and the city was entirely built into another rock face which had an outer clearing protected by tall rock walls and survived purely on trade and taking a percentage of all transactions. The city was Petra which finally and literally fell out of use after an earthquake made its further use untenable. But Petra was an indication on exactly how important the areas of the Middle East were for trade between the three continents. Tracing history in this area you find such names as Egypt, Hittite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Philistines, Minoans, Canaanites who worshipped such gods as Moloch and Baal, Persians and entering the more modern age, the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans and finally the French and British. Where to trace back the turmoil and near constant warfare of the Middle East, perhaps to Cain and Abel and the earliest recorded use of a rock as a tool of war. That might be a stretch but the earliest conflict likely predates writing by a sufficient amount of time that it also ceased being a part of the oral history and never got recorded just as the actual traceable location of Atlantis was never given (Pillars of Hercules and out in the great waters, like that helps).

 

But the recent difficulties and intermitted warfare both between nations and internal to nations is traceable to a particular intentional act meant to create just such internal strife and potentially these external wars in order to prevent the area from ever again uniting into the one promise the French and British had given to particular Arab tribal, nations and even clan leaders to persuade them into assisting them in their efforts against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, the reestablishment of the Caliphate, meaning the areas of the Ottoman Empire intact as a singular entity, and leaving these leaders as the ruling council and the ones who would choose the new Caliph. Instead, this promise was not only shattered but the lines drawn after World War I in both the Middle East and rest of the Ottoman Empire as well as the Austria Hungarian Empire in order to prevent there ever being a reunification thus preventing these powers from becoming preeminent and capable of starting the next conflagration. The division of the Austro-Hungarian Empire mostly achieved its purpose and the next war where it did arise out of Germany which was generally a previous part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and had only in the late 1800s gained its unified formation independent of outside control but not necessarily free of their influences thus leading to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi efforts and Word War II. But in the Middle East we had the Sykes–Picot Agreement which made completely arbitrary borders without, or possibly intentionally ignoring, tribal lines and clans or any of the natural political alignments often splitting lands as in the case of the Kurds; who also were promised their own nation as were the Jews in separate agreements but instead the Kurdish lands were divided and became parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran; making each nation internally unstable. Iraq is probably the most well-known of these divisions which in the case of Iraq divided the lands such that the Shiites were predominant in the south, the Sunni predominant in the center and the Kurds predominant in the north. This forced each of these imaginary nations to eventually find that the only way to restore and keep the peace was the rise of a militant strongman willing to impose peace by force of arms such as was the case under Saddam Hussein. Say whatever you like about Saddam Hussein such as he was a butcher, a murderer and a hard tyrant with an iron fist, he kept Iraq from devolving into internecine warfare such as we are witnessing today.

 

The rest of the turmoil which we are suffering through today may have had a recent triggering event, namely the Cairo speech by United States President Barack Obama and his foreign policy which was centered around his campaign promise to end the wars and bring the troops home. Unfortunately for the majority of the people turned victims in the Extended Middle East, President Obama pulled all of the United States military personnel from both Afghanistan and Iraq prematurely as neither nation had developed the experience of the new governance nor the military ability to resist disorder while, especially in Iraq, the suppressed majority had some real and serious issues and grudges to settle with the minority who had ruled the nation through oppressions and they were out to get that revenge which tore the nation apart making it ripe for a force such as ISIS to tear into its midsection and even gain some support from the people there. The Sykes–Picot Agreement was designed to make the Middle East in particular and the Extender Middle East by division of who controlled what area which became independent nations with the arbitrary borders established by their respective colonizers, left the entirety of these areas as a tinder box simply waiting for that spark and it was likely the Cairo Speech and the enthusiastic attempt after the Tunisian vegetable cart vendor’s self-immolation and subsequent uprising in Tunisia being used as the trigger for President Obama’s attempt to redraw the Middle East around granting the Muslim Brotherhood preeminence over the region sharing control with Iran as the hegemon in the east and the Muslim Brotherhood in the west. Even had this plan succeeded it would have only set up a different state of conflict but this time with two very strong entities making for an even potentially greater struggle. The war right now is contained for the most part to the Greater Syrian conflict which includes ISIS and Iraq and the Iranian intervention, and the Egyptian struggle internally for the most part with the Egyptian military wresting control from the Muslim Brotherhood. The trouble in Libya is tribal and most likely to remain in Libya unless ISIS gets a firm and significant foothold and then there will be trouble as ISIS then moves to take all of Libya and begins their spread into Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria, but especially Egypt. History will likely eventually lay the blame for the current explosion of unrest and open warfare in the Extended Middle East to the United States meddling and doing so by proxy removing their personnel, especially military, from the Extended Middle East and stirring the pot so to speak and hoping for the best. They failed, or should we simply say the truth, President Obama really had no idea what he was attempting and misunderstood the players and nearly everything in the Middle East and almost every other foreign affairs which he has chosen action or inaction. Incompetence beyond measure being wielded by a self-indulgent, uninformed, narcissist with delusions of competence and wisdom that produces a boondoggle that only complete ineptitude, ignorance and delusions of grandeur could produce. I am sure there are other adjectives which would apply but for the sake of brevity shall we coin a new phrase and call such complete ineffectiveness which produces great conflagrations as doing an Obamy.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

President Obama Sends Definitive Message on Ukraine

The situation in the Ukraine does not exactly fill one with a firm belief that everything will work itself out without any bloodshed. According to the first Ukrainian to lead the nation after the fall of the Soviet Union, former President Kravchuk, there are currently minimally approximately eighteen-thousand Russian troops operating in the Crimea region of the Ukraine. Where the Ukraine works as strategically placed buffer state between Russia and Europe, the Crimea could be seen as the buffer region between Russia and the rest of the Ukraine as well as the vital link to the Black Sea providing Russia with a warm water port with access to the Black Sea and from there the Mediterranean Sea on into the Atlantic Ocean. There is no question that Russian President Vladimir Putin, I like to refer to him as Vlad the Invader, has taken and planning on retaining the entirety of the Crimean Peninsula. The big question is whether or not President Putin has any plans to invade the remainder of the Ukraine and after that would he continue his aggressions by continuing westward pushing Russian forces into Poland, northward across Belarus or southward into Romania. Then again, if President Putin’s aim is, as some have claimed is his goal, to reform Russian hegemonic control over all the areas which were formerly within the Warsaw Pact nations within the eastern parts of Europe within the Iron Curtain, then occupying the Ukraine is only his initial step. If Putin is planning to reassert Moscow’s iron-fisted control over the entirety of the domains which fell under the formidable control of the Soviet Union, then his eventual aim could likely be seen as forcing all of Europe into subservience to Moscow.

 

Meanwhile, United States President Barack Obama has appeared completely ineffectual and powerless in the face of President Putin’s aggressions. But if the leaked announcement move by the Pentagon is correct, that is about to change. A response from the United States may be imminent as units are to be deployed to Poland as a statement, a warning to Russian President Putin. The announcement referred to sending twelve F-16 aircraft and three-hundred American troops to Poland by the end of the week to reassure and defend American allies in the region and to be a show of force to convey the seriousness of America’s commitments to NATO and the treaties with the Ukraine among other nations. I am sure this almost marginal and miniscule commitment will be more of an amusement to President Putin and will be regarded as a message of President Obama’s increased flexibility which he had promised former Russian President Medvedev before the last elections. This show of force is just the latest example of the new President Obama America which stands as firm as jello when it comes to protecting former American allies or facing down threats to the status quo in the world which contrasts well with the forcefulness reserved for the former allies and friends of the United States. The American citizens voted twice for Hope and Change and a fundamental transformation of their country, and that is exactly what they are receiving. Unfortunately, that is also what the rest of the world is getting and we did not vote for that. For the immediate future, the Ukraine and its new leadership are left to squirm while being in the direct glaring and menacing stare of a cold former KGB enforcer become Russian President and his attitudes and reliance on force have remained from his days in Rumania.

 

The problem for the people and government of the Ukraine is that despite the weakness of the troop deployment by the United States, any expected assistance from the European nations will likely make this American deployment look formidable. Basically, the Ukrainians are going to be left on their own which hopefully they have realized by now. Of course, perhaps the Ukrainians should thank their lucky stars that President Barack Obama did not hold negotiations with Vlad the Invader and bring the indomitable European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and the stalwart United States Secretary of State John Kerry demanding they all meet in Munich to decide whether the peoples of the Crimea were really displaced Russians which had requested Russian protection. The Ukrainians would have faced the same destructive compromises which happened in the famous previous negotiations in Munich when the allies presented Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany by allowing a similar encroachment as we are facing with the Russian incursion into the Crimean peninsula of the Ukraine. There will be no demands for Putin to remove his forces. There will be no ramifications or deterring moves in order to force the Russians to reconsider and actually assist in the defense of the Ukraine. Should Vlad the Invader decide to take the remainder of the Ukraine, the rest of the world will be treated at most with another long and uninspiring speech from President Obama giving platitudes and kind explanations on how Russia had simply reconstituted the lands which had belonged to them since Czar Catherine the Great annexed these areas as part of Russia. The next threat might once again be an attack on Poland. The question is whether it will once again be a division of Poland between Angela and Vlad or will Vlad the Invader be selfish and demand all of Poland for Russia. Should Russian aggressions extend beyond the Ukraine, such an action might be a nation too far and force an actual and consequential response, even from President Obama. We can only pray that such a situation never comes to pass.

 

Beyond the Cusp