Quote:
Originally Posted by sailor_X
Oberon why won't you laugh at Churchil's decision not to fight Soviets when Poland was invaded on 1939 september the 17 th ?
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With original outside-the-box thinking like that you are a promising candidate to finally bring peace to the middle east, sailor_X.
A recent opinion piece in a German newspaper points out that what Putin now does, has a precedence in the American invasion of Panama 1989, which America claimed to be on behalf of protecting US citizens there. The strategic importance of the channel had nothing to do with it.
Formal goal of the operation was to guarantee the freedom of US troops in Panama from criminal prosecution, and the freedom to move at will. To enforce according treaties, Noriega had to be caught and kicked out of office.
Or 1983, when the US claimed to act on behalf of securing its national civilians when it invaded Grenada.
And in 1989 or 1990, US foreign minister Baker indirectly encouraged the Soviet Union to send military forces to Romania, to help pacifying the turmoil there was, and to stabilize the situation.
So, great powers are not shy to fall back to the argument of protecting their nationals or their vital interests in order to justify intervention in foreign sovereign countries. Putin is not the first doing it, he is just the latest in the line.
And something different:
This is from another article in a German newspaper. It shows in what regions how many people speak Russian as their native language. It is interesting to see that the split that seems to materialise in the Ukraine today more or less runs along the predicted frontline between two civilizational spheres as have been predicted by Samuel Huntington for the civilizational clashes of the forseeable future. The constellation in the Ukraine that is so unstable is due to a long history of wanted distortions that Stalin imposed, and conflicts even earlier than that. Traditionally, the West has always felt more towards Europe, and the East more towards Russia. And as I often have said before: Russia is neither Europe, nor Asia: Russia is Russia, a sphere of its own. Once again, Huntington was right. His message was not welcomed, and still is not wanted by many. But that ,means nothing more than that many people do not want to prepare for the consequence of bad news they hear.
That's why the West is weak and indifferent today. Wishful thinking about nice times to come all by themselves, prevented realism. And so, there we are. (And if it wouldn'T be Putin, than it would be some other Russian leader today. The doctrine that Russia has formulated, to intervene in foreign countries to protect its citizens, is not for no reason not called Putin-doctrine, but Medwedeew-doctrine .)