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Obama warns US will 'isolate' Russia if Putin doesn't pull back in Ukraine

NIMBY said:
That's certainly not all we have apdst.
Shut down ALL Air Flight to all EU countries and North America.
Blockade all entrances to Russian ports.
Stop frieght and passenger rail traffic.
Block all auto/truck traffic at their borders.

Freeze all of their assets overseas.
Round up all their Nationals overseas and send them on a slow train to Crimea .
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Blockade Russian ports? You do realize that that is a full blown act of war, right?
 
apdst said:
Obama could park a carrier task force in The Black Sea.
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that could be tricky. Those carriers would have to travel through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to get there. I wouldn't even contemplate it.
 
Yet to Perotista, you said park a carrier in the Black Sea.
Which is it with you, park a carrier or not ?
apdst said:
Blockade Russian ports? You do realize that that is a full blown act of war, right?
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Fearandloathing said:
More like the US was once part of Canada. But the analogy fades in the fact that America attempted to invade Canada twice, and were repelled.

The Ukraine was a part of Poland long before Russia was much of a country, so the argument is kind of like who does America belong to? "Indians" who aren't from India or "Eskimos" who are really Inuit?


And you are right, there isn't much Obama can do, his public protestations notwtithstanding, which makes it even more stange why he chose to unleash the CIA hounds in the first place.
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There is an old saying, be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
 
This is why you begin by parking them at the entrance to the Aegean Sea.

Yet House Intelligence Chair Rogers took the Navy off the table yesterday.

So which is it with the GOP?
How many voices does the GOP get to speak to Putin with, exacerbaing the problem ?
Perotista said:
that could be tricky. Those carriers would have to travel through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to get there. I wouldn't even contemplate it.
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NIMBY said:
Yet to Perotista, you said park a carrier in the Black Sea.
Which is it with you, park a carrier or not ?
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There's a huge difference between deploying a task force to international waters and establishing a blockade, Nimby.
 
Perotista said:
that could be tricky. Those carriers would have to travel through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to get there. I wouldn't even contemplate it.
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The draft is too shallow?
 
Perotista said:
I would like to see the president offer his services as a mediator. but that is me.
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I think he should send Kerry and Hillary in. :lol:
 
Perotista said:
I am not criticizing the president. there really isn't much he can do if Putin wants to take over the Ukraine. In fact their is nothing NATO or the EU can do to stop him.
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Which means the agreement in 1993 that Russia signed is null and void.
As long as war-mongers are talking tough while criticizing Obama, you can always count on me to talk tougher ande defend Obama.

Now, stop all naval, train, air, road traffic and water if we're serious.
Freeze assets, cut off gas and oil coming out--did I miss anything ?
 
NIMBY said:
This is why you begin by parking them at the entrance to the Aegean Sea.

Yet House Intelligence Chair Rogers took the Navy off the table yesterday.

So which is it with the GOP?
How many voices does the GOP get to speak to Putin with, exacerbaing the problem ?
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I don't know about the GOP. I suppose when things like this arise most of what you hear are from individuals and not party. I doubt if there is a single view for the party. What I hope that happens is the president will try to defuse the situation and the GOP on the whole will back him in his attempt to defuse it.
 
NIMBY said:
Which means the agreement in 1993 that Russia signed is null and void.
As long as war-mongers are talking tough while criticizing Obama, you can always count on me to talk tougher ande defend Obama.

Now, stop all naval, train, air, road traffic and water if we're serious.
Freeze assets, cut off gas and oil coming out--did I miss anything ?
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I don't know.
 
American said:
I think he should send Kerry and Hillary in. :lol:
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Yeah, that'll show 'em...

Quite an opening for levity there, sir .... but I don't want to be believed a hack... I'll just chuckle alone

:mrgreen:

Thom Paine
 
You can handle the specifics with the NAVY.
Especially since V. Putin attended War Games today, Russian News lead story.

Since the Russian stock market went down 12% today, we could help that with turning off the oil and gas spigots to the EU.
I'll look for someone to shut down Russian air travel to North America and the EU.

Who will freeze their overseas assets, since the EU countries are so feckless and appeasing?
And there's so much more we can do, as I've mentioned .
apdst said:
There's a huge difference between deploying a task force to international waters and establishing a blockade, Nimby.
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Thom Paine said:
Yeah, that'll show 'em...

Quite an opening for levity there, sir .... but I don't want to be believed a hack... I'll just chuckle alone

:mrgreen:

Thom Paine
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Putin knows Hillary can go from 0 to Bitch in 5 seconds..............he's quivering in his boots.
 
NIMBY said:
Which means the agreement in 1993 that Russia signed is null and void.
As long as war-mongers are talking tough while criticizing Obama, you can always count on me to talk tougher ande defend Obama.

Now, stop all naval, train, air, road traffic and water if we're serious.
Freeze assets, cut off gas and oil coming out--did I miss anything ?
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I don't think anyone of any consequence is talking tough. I think we're probably feeling rather powerless to stop what's going on myself.

"Everybody says 'no' to the U.S. these days without cost or consequence," Aaron David Miller, former adviser to six secretaries of State and scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, told Fox News.

He said the last "truly effective" foreign policy was under former President George H.W. Bush. "There was a cost for saying 'no' to the United States," he reminisced. "Right now, there is no cost."
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From what I've read, no one is very hawkish right now. So far, we're not sending representatives to the paralympics games Friday at the Sochi Olympics...neither is the UK. We've suspended talks about a trade agreement we've been working on with Russia for some time, and we've cancelled military games with them.

It's all beginning to make me rather nervous.
 
NIMBY said:
This is why you begin by parking them at the entrance to the Aegean Sea.

Yet House Intelligence Chair Rogers took the Navy off the table yesterday.

So which is it with the GOP?
How many voices does the GOP get to speak to Putin with, exacerbaing the problem ?
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Are you aware that a naval blockade is an act of war?

And I would ask about your solution, what happens when Russia opens fire? Does Obama fire back and with what? Nukes?

You see, there is no military solution. Britain rejected it on the week end, Canada yesterday, Poland the same day, for all those reasons. Trust me, the collective military intelligence of all of NATO, Poland, Ukraine, as well as the Pentagon and maybe even the Vatican has been over this, and if they aren't even talking about it, it is not Obama's to own.

In retrospect, the decision to screw with Putin's head and mess with Ukraine was pretty damn stupid. He poked a big ugly stick into a giant wasp's nest with no way to deal with the wasps so now all he can do is avoid the stings
 
Fearandloathing said:
Are you aware that a naval blockade is an act of war?

And I would ask about your solution, what happens when Russia opens fire? Does Obama fire back and with what? Nukes?
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And I would again ask you, are you not aware that what Putin did is an act of War?
You know, the 4-Nation agreement in 1993 where Sen. Lugar paid how much treasure for Ukraine's nukes.
 
MaggieD said:
[h=1]Obama warns US will 'isolate' Russia
if Putin doesn't pull back in Ukraine[/h]
Obama threatens to

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the time for warnings is over. The article says they are considering what steps to take. Why don't they already KNOW what steps to take? Why are no contingency plans for this in place already? If our intelligence didn't see this coming? Why not?

I blame our intelligence community. We spend billions​ of dollars to get a heads up on this type action. What happened?
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The intelligence community has never been able to predict things accurately and its primary focus now is terrorism and domestic surveillance. The problem is as soon as the Cold War ended everyone forgot about Russia and how it views the world, which has never changed- many Eastern Europeans still live in the specter of the Cold War and WW2, the Russians believe that in order for their nation never to be attacked again like what Germany did to them in the last world war that they must have buffer states that are friendly to them and Ukraine is probably (along with Belarus) the most important of these- Russia will go to war to keep it in its sphere of influence and decades of peace will not change its views.

The West has been lulled in a false sense of security over this and both the people and their governments have been spoiled by winning easy wars against inferior 3rd World militaries. The prospect of going up against an equal enemy has got a lot of people scared and many will be unwilling to sacrifice a lot of lives to defend Ukraine.

The Ukrainians are also partly to blame for believing the rhetoric that there will be other nations that could help in in situations like these. I think other countries iwll now realize that if faced with war against a regional power the US will ultimately back off from their assurances and treaty obligations. In the end, nations cannot depend on others for their defense and the Ukrainians should not have given up their nukes- at one time their nuclear forces were larger than UK, France and China's combined but they gave it all up- and now its going to cost them.

As an anecdote, I was in Estonia when the Russians invaded parts of Georgia and every single male citizen of that country got a letter from the government saying that they needed to be ready to be called up for active duty. The former Eastern bloc countries take incidents like this very seriously and there will no doubt be a new arms race in the region regardless of the outcome.
 
Objective Voice said:
Only in your own mind. But I digress...

While I firmly believe Putin has overstepped his bounds, I have to ask those who are insisting that the Obama Administration take stronger action beyond imposing sanctions against Russia, what exactly do you think should be done?

And let's remember this: Other than Granada, Reagan never fired a shot at any other country, not even a single bullet in Russia's direction throughout the Cold War era. He got others to do it albeit very underhandedly (i.e., Iran/Contra...stinger missles smuggled into Pakistan so that the Afghan rebels could fight a more definitive war against their Russian invaders). Clinton eventually decided to take military action against the Kurds in Kosovo, but only with unilateral support. The only time Bush I led an attack against another country during his Presidency was when the Kuwuiti Prince asked for his help directly. And we all know what a mess GWB made with his pre-emptive strike against Iraq.

So, I ask you folks, what exactly is Pres. Obama to do at this point considering that not one shot has been fired from a Russian gun aimed at a Ukrania citizen or its military? I get that Putin is taking similar actions as Hilter did when he invaded Poland and its citizens gave up without a fight. It's history somewhat repeating itself here. But again, other than marshalling international support and isolating Russia still further, what other action would you suggest be taken at this point?
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Nothing...we expect Obama to do nothing.
 
Perotista said:
Possible, I was reading or have read the depth is somewhere around 100M in one or the other and that is the average.
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The draft of an American aircraft carrier is around 11m +/-
 
MaggieD said:
[h=1]Obama warns US will 'isolate' Russia
if Putin doesn't pull back in Ukraine[/h]
Obama threatens to

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the time for warnings is over. The article says they are considering what steps to take. Why don't they already KNOW what steps to take? Why are no contingency plans for this in place already? If our intelligence didn't see this coming? Why not?

I blame our intelligence community. We spend billions​ of dollars to get a heads up on this type action. What happened?
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We have an administration led by a guy who thinks he is smarter than his Intelligence Community, and who is actively distrustful of his senior military and intelligence advisers, and apparently thinks, after having had the rug yanked out from under him multiple times, that Russia can be trusted to act as a good-faith player.

What makes you think that the President didn't get any warning, vice simply ignoring the warnings that he got because A) he isn't terribly interested in national security outside of doing the minimum to make sure it doesn't become a problem (that's why we drone people) and B) isn't terribly interested in Ukraine? Heck, the assessment that Russia is probably going to pull something like this has been available in Open Source materials for some time now - he could have read the friggin Washington Post, if he actually wanted to spin up contingency planning.

I sincerely doubt the President is or was surprised. I also sincerely doubt that he really cares. Which is why I sincerely doubt that we will do anything beyond rhetoric. Which is why (to answer your question) the future will be long on "threats" and "consultation with allies" and "opinions of the global community" and short on "actions."
 
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