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The bit of this starting at 3:30, re: Chelsea Manning. Continues for about ten minutes.
The podcast hosts are Iraq/Afghanistan vets.
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- Austria
- Finland
- Ireland
- Malta
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Venezuela?
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Not likely, what with the U.S. doing its damnedest to do it instead.
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I’m the last person to discount the reality of Putin’s cynical programme of expansion, but an attempted annexation of Finnish or Swedish territory would be a bit of a stretch, NATO being beside the point. Russia could make an historical case for annexing Crimea – one that didn’t require the chicanery we observed with rigged referendums and Little Green Men (that was for the benefit of his Know-Nothing base), but the cost-benefit analysis for that is very different.
The games he’s playing in the Arctic shipping lanes and the claims he’s making on territories there whose status is unclear will likely satisfy his ultra-nationalist supporters and his/Dugin’s geopolitical ambitions well enough without risking a shooting war with the West. Maybe he can join in the “war” between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island by introducing vodka into the mix.
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Indeed. He has a nice new “science” outpost to play with there.
“Russia’s largest Arctic military push since the fall of the Soviet Union and as Moscow moves to lay claim to the region’s huge oil and gas reserves”
Notable is the absence of anybody in the trump admin complaining about this. There is more theater in poking China with a stick in the South China Sea. Meanwhile Russia carries on…
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8 years of the Syrian Civil War.
Sadly I don’t think it is over. Turkey does not want the DFNS (Rojava) to exist.
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There is a history there, though… For instance:
Not to mention:
They used history as a pretext in both Ukraine and Georgia…
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Whatever claim they had on Finnish territory is long gone. After the Finns kicked Stalin’s arse in the Winter War they defined their territory well enough that a violation would prompt international action (even though Finland isn’t a NATO member). Finlandization is a factor, but giving up territory isn’t a part of that.
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That’s a somewhat misleading take on what happened. The Finnish defence in the Winter War was exceptionally tenacious, but they still lost. At the end of the war, the Finnish army was completely shattered and the Soviets dictated the terms of the peace.
The USSR started the war by demanding the right to fortify the Finnish approaches to Russia, and that’s what they ended it with. If they’d wanted to conquer all of Finland, they could have.
These episodes cover it pretty well:
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Just when I thought I was going to be constructive this morning. Thanks!
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Timing sure is interesting.
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Anybody old enough should be having Viet Nam flashbacks.
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