US Asks Vietnam To Stop Russian Bomber Refueling Flights From Cam Ranh Air Base 273
HughPickens.com writes Reuters reports that the United States has asked Vietnam to stop letting Russia use its former US base at Cam Ranh Bay to refuel nuclear-capable bombers engaged in shows of strength over the Asia-Pacific region. General Vincent Brooks, commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific, says the Russian bombers have conducted "provocative" flights, including around the U.S. Pacific Ocean territory of Guam, home to a major American air base. Brooks said the planes that circled Guam were refueled by Russian tankers flying from the strategic bay, which was transformed by the Americans during the Vietnam War into a massive air and naval base. Russia's Defense Ministry confirmed that the airport at Cam Ranh was first used for staging Il-78 tankers for aerial refueling of Tu-95MS bombers in January 2014. Asked about the Russian flights in the region, the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington respected Hanoi's right to enter agreements with other countries but added that "we have urged Vietnamese officials to ensure that Russia is not able to use its access to Cam Ranh Bay to conduct activities that could raise tensions in the region."
Cam Ranh is considered the finest deepwater shelter in Southeast Asia. North Vietnamese forces captured Cam Ranh Bay and all of its remaining facilities in 1975. Vietnam's dependence on Russia as the main source of military platforms, equipment, and armaments, has now put Hanoi in a difficult spot. Russia has pressed for special access to Cam Ranh Bay ever since it began delivering enhanced Kilo-class submarines to Vietnam. "Hanoi is invariably cautious and risk adverse in its relations with the major powers," says Carl Thayer. "The current issue of Russian tankers staging out of Cam Ranh pits Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other. There is no easy solution for Vietnam."
Cam Ranh is considered the finest deepwater shelter in Southeast Asia. North Vietnamese forces captured Cam Ranh Bay and all of its remaining facilities in 1975. Vietnam's dependence on Russia as the main source of military platforms, equipment, and armaments, has now put Hanoi in a difficult spot. Russia has pressed for special access to Cam Ranh Bay ever since it began delivering enhanced Kilo-class submarines to Vietnam. "Hanoi is invariably cautious and risk adverse in its relations with the major powers," says Carl Thayer. "The current issue of Russian tankers staging out of Cam Ranh pits Russia and China on one side and the United States on the other. There is no easy solution for Vietnam."
I feel for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trapped between three fires...
They need to keep the Americans happy to get American diplomatic support to keep China from eating them.
They need to keep the Russians happy to get access to cheap arms and possibly whatever diplomatic pressure the Russians have these days.
And then they need to keep the chinese from salivating every time they look at them.
Given that the US and Russia are at odds again, it is a very difficult position to be in these days.
They can't give the Russians or the Americans everything they want because much of what they want is the Vietnamese to choose sides.
And if they don't keep their allies happy they look more vulnerable to the chinese.
Poor vietnam.
Re:I feel for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why "Poor Vietnam"? I see no reason for Vietnam to go along with this, they have historical ties with Russia and geographical ties with China. They start to have to make choices if China and Russia disagree but that does not appear to be the case here.
The last time China invaded Vietnam, China's troops were pretty much annhialated by village militias. Vietnam had invaded Cambodia to stop the Khmer Rouge and China took exception. The US weighed in on the side of China and the Khmer Rouge.
Re:I feel for them... (Score:4, Insightful)
You weren't listening.
China could just take Vietnamese resources at sea. That would require a naval presence to stop. They're already dicking around with south Korea and Japan. There's no reason for the Chinese to not covet something off the shore of Vietnam... if only fish. A few big chinese fishing fleets could depopulate the seas near Vietnam forcing Vietnamese fisherman to sail farther or just shut down entirely. Either way the price of fish and therefore all relevant food stuffs would go up in Vietnam. And rising food prices in economically depressed countries is a recipe for big fucking problems.
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Which, in turn, would cause big fucking problems - a flood of refugees and general instability in the area - for China. Putin's error with Ukraine was not giving Ukrainians any good options; I doubt Peking will make such amateur mistake.
"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across." - Sun Tzu
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Your error is thinking the Ukraine conflict is between Putin & Ukraine. One does not negotiate with the house servants.
Beijing (not Peking) is full of amateur hour mistakes, particularly in its diplomacy. I laugh when Beijing whines "Why are my neighbors allying against me? It must be the machinations of the United States, not when I make diplomatic seizures of all the ocean territory up to their coasts".
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Then they'll leave for those who will, and the house goes unmaintained. Political power doesn't actually grow from the barrel of the rifle, it grows from the fear of being shot, which becomes brittle when the victim has nothing to lose but their chains. And Putin, having grown up in a country born of just such revolution, should had known that.
It's a pity, really: Russia has natural re
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China doesn't deal with such problems the same way the western powers would. Don't forget Tibet.
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The US is asking for the favour here, not China.
I can see more potential problems here for Vietnam if they became the US's "running dog". If I am missing something, then it is some point of conflict between Vietnam and China other than the humiliation inflicted 35 years ago.
btw, it is "annihilated", not "annhialated". Sorry - not a word I use too often.
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Well... I didn't say china was asking for anything either. I said they were inclined to "TAKE" not ask.
let me explain again:
Vietnam is near a large power that is inclined to eat bits of their territory or claim their sea resources by force.
To put that off, Vietnam has to appeal to outside authorities to keep china from doing that.
The only credible power capable of and willing to do that would be the US. The russians aren't especially capable of doing anything.
So Vietnam has to keep the US nominally happy so
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China only wanted to punish Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia, and that was already achieved. So the Chinese just shrugged and went home.
Given that Vietnam continued to occupy Cambodia through to 1989, a full ten years after the invasion, I think victory is an appropriate term. I think it was a combination of various factors, such as USSR logistics support, including satellite intel (which enabled Vietnam to avoid following China's intended strategy), considerable guerilla warfare, the revelations about the atrocities coming out of Cambodia, and simply not being prepared for a long fight that caused China to retreat from Vietnam.
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It was also a Vietnamese military victorious over a world superpower less than ten years ago. Vietnam was basically the equivalent of the US military in that region. Vietnam didn't have a lot of air power, but it had the best trained, veteran soldiers in the region. China, on the other hand, was still an antiquated mass of farmers that hadn't fought an external war since WW2. And they were trying to thrust a million men through a pass in a mountain range (which separates China from Vietnam).
The irony is
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Good for you.
1) You do realize that the end of WW2 and the end of the Korean War was less than 10 years?
2) "PVA troops in Korea continued to suffer severe logistical problems throughout the war. In late April Peng Dehuai sent his deputy, Hong Xuezhi, to brief Zhou Enlai in Beijing. What Chinese soldiers feared, Hong said, was not the enemy, but that they had nothing to eat, no bullets to shoot, and no trucks to transport them to the rear when they were wounded."
That is not the definition of a "professional
Re:I feel for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trapped between three fires...
They need to keep the Americans happy to get American diplomatic support to keep China from eating them.
They need to keep the Russians happy to get access to cheap arms and possibly whatever diplomatic pressure the Russians have these days.
And then they need to keep the chinese from salivating every time they look at them.
Given that the US and Russia are at odds again, it is a very difficult position to be in these days.
They can't give the Russians or the Americans everything they want because much of what they want is the Vietnamese to choose sides.
And if they don't keep their allies happy they look more vulnerable to the chinese.
Poor vietnam.
So in other words they can choose between China paying them a visit to bring them corrupt free market communism, Russia dropping in to bestow upon them the blessings of cleptocracy or the USA taking another crack at bringing them plutocracy when all they really want to do is practice their own home gown brand of nepotism and corruption?
Re:I feel for them... (Score:5, Interesting)
No.
They can choose between:
1. Not being able to buy cheap weapons from Russia.
2. Suffering ongoing economic, diplomatic, and strategic undermining from the United States.
3. The Chinese building oil wells 10 miles off their coast and draining their reserves dry.
Realistically these are the first things that each power will do if it feels it needs to send a message.
Russia really can't do much. Vietnam does need their weapons but maybe they can get them from India or possibly get some discounted hand me downs from the US. And keep in mind, that whatever they were buying from the Russians were Russian hand me downs.
The US can make it harder for US and other western companies to operate in Vietnam which is a lot of money and jobs out the window. And on top of that there are a lot of subtle things the US can do that individually don't matter but collectively are quite debilitating. If you really piss the US off, we can strangle nations. It isn't fast. But it can be sustained for generations... decade after decade after decade. And it just adds up.
And the Chinese are just right there. They have the most relevant military force in the area and have shown a willingness to just take what they want even with a US presence. Absent such a presence they'll just do a survey of anything they want and in the oceans at least off of Vietnam and strip it.
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Much more simply they can be more diplomatically effective. Ignore and rebuke the stupid stuff like this and ridicule the individual responsible for the stupid demand ie Russia wants to refuel planes, it flies in international territories, SO FUCKING WHAT, morons, it is not a time of war so piss off. Perhaps not in those words but certainly you want to find out who was the individually responsible for the request and front them directly. Where real contention arises simply invite affected parties to discus
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The Russians are not flying commercial airplanes. They're flying nuclear capable bombers and using them to intimidate and harass US allies.
So claiming that the Russians aren't bothering anyone is ignorant.
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Not really. It happens at the global trade level.
And Venezuela isn't an ally. I'm going to guess you're going to try and blame their financial melt down on the US?
Not us... that's them just killing themselves with stupidity.
Not every idiot nation that kills itself is our fault. The only nations I'm aware of at the moment that we're engaged in suppressing to any great extent are Russia (early stages), Iran (we appear to be turning that off but who can say), and North Korea.
Beyond that, we're not conducting s
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Re:I feel for them... (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is not going to invade Vietnam or really anyone else for sometime.
The US is politically fatigued by war.
The only thing that will get us out of this mode will be an attack on our soil that will force us to savage our opponent so that no other rival thinks that our territory can be struck without a lethal response.
Or some atrocities against our core allies. The US has many allies and they're not all equally important to us. Strike a member of NATO or one of our core east asian allies... possibly Israel as well.
Anything outside of that and the US will dither before committing troops.
Vietnam can host Russian bombers without risking US invasions. The real risk would be political, diplomatic, and economic isolation.
The US could simply give Vietnam the cold shoulder. And that could be just as dangerous for them because it might embolden the Chinese to invade Vietnam or nearly as bad the Chinese might just start appropriating Vietnamese shipping or build oil wells right off the coast of Vietnam.
The ability of these countries to protect their sovereign territory from China is based almost entirely on appeals to the international community to see that territorial borders are respected.
IF the US abandons Vietnam they may find there is no political or economic cost for china to simply take what it wants. Which means Vietnam loses natural resources at the very least and has no recourse. What is more, the US has clean hands in the whole thing because we will not have stolen anything from them. We'll just have selectively abstained from some meetings in the UN.
That is the sort of thing the US can do to Vietnam without using its military at all. It also has the benefit of making the US look good because we're not the ones taking people's stuff. And there will probably be appeals for the US to do something which itself is an admission of the value of US power. So again, America has that option and it is a pretty strong hand.
The Russians however are supplying arms to the Vietnamese. Not just guns... ships.... missile batteries. Something that could actually pose a problem for the chinese. The chinese could eat the damage and keep coming. There really isn't much the Vietnamese could do about it. But it would increase the cost or possibly even slow them down a bit.
Regardless, the Russians don't have to sell weapons to the Vietnamese. And the Russian weapons are pretty good while being a lot cheaper then western suppliers. The chinese are also big suppliers of weapons but like the Russians and Americans they only sell weapons to people they want to have weapons. The chinese are unlikely to sell formidable weaponry to the Vietnamese so they have to rely on whomever might supply them.
Another option might be the Indians. They're also pretty big arms suppliers. Their alliances are a little confused these days though. Traditionally they were allied with the Russians which is why the US has its complicated relationship with Pakistan. But they have more cultural, economic, and diplomatic ties with the west these days so the relationships are confused.
Re:I feel for them... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US could simply give Vietnam the cold shoulder.
What about giving some humanitarian help by coughing up for medical help or compensation for the thousands of Vietnamese children who are still born with damages from Agent Orange? Vietnam is still today suffering from the effects of the brutal US war machine.
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I'm just going to point out that from a purely pragmatic position...
This is quite a contrast compared to the 'morality' play you were tossing at me. Here it seems you accept that we live in a might-makes-right world of battling empires.
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Here it seems you accept that we live in a might-makes-right world of battling empires.
We do. This is the real world, not Star Trek, there hasn't been an awakening of all humanity that has showed us the error of our ways. The only thing keeping our aggressive tendencies somewhat in check is the fear of mutual destruction. Be happy for that bit at least; we simply flirt with total war these days, we don't actually engage in it.
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No, captain strawman.
As the strategic planner for a nation you have a responsibility to be pragmatic. Your people depend upon it. You are paid to a certain extent to be paranoid, think to the future, and make sure your people are safe.
So basing any policy on something that won't happen is dumb.
Moving past that to morality plays... if you don't want to talk about morality then don't talk about morality.
I'm not going to let you make a certain type of argument and then forbid myself from crossing the river on
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not without substantiation you can't.
And if you make a falsifiable argument, given that your premise is specious, I will destroy your position.
That you are going out of your way to be vague is an admission of your weakness. You seek to avoid being countered by presenting arguments and statements that are too vague to be logically deconstructed.
This is effectively a concession on your part.
You will obviously disagree but in the absence of actually providing falsifiable arguments, your contradiction will not
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Called it.
You made an argument you couldn't back up and so resorted to really obvious sophistry to try and save it. I noted that and then predicted given that your latest pathetic ploy failed you'd just puss out.
So, there you go.
Either I'm a fucking fortune teller or you're just that predictable.
*does a few crotch humps on AC's face and walks off*
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I note that you have still made no attempt to back up your position.
I called you on it.
You responded by attempting strawmen and other various fallacies.
I called you on that and then predicted you'd puss out when that was foiled.
And here you are making insults without making any attempt to actually prove me wrong by going back and making a falsifiable argument.
You won't because you've got nothing but some sad insults as you go slinking out of the room in defeat.
*crotch humps him again*
You can either prove me
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You've shifted your position. Now you're arguing something totally different.
This rhetorical technique is known as 'clouding'.
I will note that you are not defending your initial position and will take it as conceded.
So that is one point for me there and none for you. On to the next issue!
You are suggesting three things.
1. That there is some evil act that my government did. You have not defined it.
2. That I am denying complicity for this unspecified act.
3. That citizens of a state are complicit in the action
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You'll devolve into petty trolling now that you've given up all pretense at having any place in this discussion.
Sort of the universal fate of asshats that get stopped in discussions.
*shrugs*
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In the Age of Information, can a war machine be both brutal and efficient? You need to whip up nationalistic frenzy to get your population to accept mass civilian - or even military - casualties, but doing so risks a demagogue seizing power and looting the country - and that's assuming they're just a cleptocrat, rather than a homicidal maniac.
US Army realizes this, even if you don't, w
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I agree that the basic choice is whether or not to be a hegemonic power, and that the choice to be one is unreasonably bad. Somehow the people who end up in charge seem to be those who worship power, though, so expecting them to evaluate things the same way is unreasonable. So the first thing that needs to be fixed is that the way to get power is to desire power. This is one reason I think "elective office" should be replaced by "selective office", and that the selection should be essentially a lottery a
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As to brutal war machines in the information age, that is not new to the information age. demagogues or cleoptocrats were every bit as much of a problem in past ages. The only thing that has changed is that people not part of the government are able to speak more clearly even in a minority and get their voices heard.
That is in effect a large part of the problem with the US using military power these days. I am not suggesting that people should be suppressed. But because they are not they create an additiona
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War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
(attributed to somebody or other)
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I didn't say it did. I just said you need to compare apples to apples.
Once you comprehend what you're talking about, it becomes harder to throw around the moral bowling balls.
You're going to have to admit that compared to its peers, the US is relatively quite benign.
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No. It's because it's small and relatively weak. The tactics that work for a small, relatively weak country don't work for a large, relatively strong country. This is why he selected the comparison example he did. He could have also suggested a classical Hindu empire, that of Ashoka, but didn't because that would weaken is argument. OTOH, please do notice that much of Ashoka's history is uncertain, and that he's the ONLY example of an essentially pacifistic emperor. Also that he only converted to Budd
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No, because its like comparing a man with no arms or legs against a man that has both.
The relative capabilities of the two countries are not comparable.
The US could wipe out the whole planetary population. If you think it is reasonable to compare such a power against a country that couldn't even successfully attack Belgium then you're something of an idiot.
Let me explain further here... if you could make such an argument then you could compare an individual with a whole nation.
Now how many people has the mo
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Having an effective military does not make you evil.
As to the US being inherently evil because it is powerful... so you're making the tired argument that beggars are all saints and the rich and powerful are all evil? Doesn't really make a lot of sense there, sport.
As to my point that you can't compare nations that are dramatically dissimilar in their relative capabilities... that is a reasonable point.
Work harder, Mr AC.
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The only thing that will get us out of this mode will be an attack on our soil that will force us to savage our opponent so that no other rival thinks that our territory can be struck without a lethal response
They can whip up a false flag any old time, or go all FBI and just encourage and equip some terrorists, and then they get their excuse.
Re:I feel for them... (Score:4, Informative)
The only thing that will get us out of this mode will be an attack on our soil that will force us to savage our opponent so that no other rival thinks that our territory can be struck without a lethal response
They can whip up a false flag any old time, or go all FBI and just encourage and equip some terrorists, and then they get their excuse.
Maybe, but why would the US want to conqueror Vietnam? The only reason we cared about it before was to try to slow Soviet expansion. That, and the US was still stuck in island-hopping mode a bit from WWII.
After Vietnam the US learned its lesson and just did what the USSR did in Vietnam - give tons of guns to the locals and turn it into a huge war of attrition. That is why everybody who used to be in the USSR has fond memories of Afghanistan.
I don't think the US really has any strategic interests there any longer.
In any case, the US really does seem to be fairly war-fatigued these days. Sure, Bush II would probably have been reluctant to go into Ukraine, but you can bet that there would be a huge deployment against ISIS back in that era. Now the US is more eager to let the Iraqis take care of themselves, and everybody is probably somewhat better off for it.
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Everybody except the headless victims in the mass graves.
True, and it is wrong to buy into the whole moral equivalence thing. Granted, the US was out of control in Iraq with torture and all that, but I imagine the US pillaging is fairly tame compared to ISIS.
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That sort of thing really doesn't happen.
I know of three possible examples and they're all highly suspect.
You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
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That sort of thing really doesn't happen.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA [wikipedia.org]
Close your eyes, it can't happen here!
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From all reports that appears to be a tragedy of errors. Many different powers all did things at different times that were misinterpreted as being against them specifically or in coordination with other powers.
The vietcong saw lots of things happening and they thought it was all the US. There were many other powers in the area though and their actions coincided with the US actions. What is more, the response against the US was also more general and not specific to the US. But the US likewise interpreted it
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You have the attack on the Maine which is alleged to have been sabotaged by American forces wanting to justify the Spanish American war, you have Pearl harbor which is alleged to have been intentionally allowed to happen by FDR, and you have the gulf of tonkin which is sort of a tragedy of errors.
The "tragedy of errors" bit is applicable to Pearl Harbor, more so than the Gulf of Tonkin. Exactly what happened to the USS Maine is disputed, we'll never know for sure, but the simplest explanation (remember Occam's Razor) is an accidental explosion in her coal bunkers. This was the hypothesis of Admiral Rickover, who investigated the historical record, and whatever else one can say about him you can't dispute his thoroughness and talent for engineering.
There are conspiracy theories surrounding both th
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I think the fact that the Gulf of Tonkin incident basically didn't happen sortof proves that the response to it, the lie about what happened, was indeed a sort of conspiracy intended to create a legal basis for war.
I think most people involved have already admitted that they used it as a false pretext for war. It seems to have been well known, even at the time. The Frenchies let the commies take over, and we were going to fix that.
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"The US is politically fatigued by war."
We'll see about that when a Republican is elected next time by holding his hands in the air and chanting nonsense about "Freedom" and how we need to "Protect" it. Since I was born in 1978, EVERY Republican has had some sort of War/Invasion while the Democrats try to stay away, save a few pin-prick Air Strikes to keep the Warmongers happy.
War is obsolete in my opinion, we as a WORLD can't advance until we learn to live together on this tiny Blue Planet.
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I love that people also forget that the demomcrats got the US into WW1, WW2,
You have an odd definition og "got into". In WWI, the deciding factor was Germany started using unrestricted submarine warfare on American ships. It was either fight back or keep losing sailors. In WWII, the Empire of Japan bombed the crap out of a US naval base.
I mean sure, it might have been a democrat president that finally responded, but in both cases there was not a whole lot of choice remaining.
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You have an odd definition og "got into". In WWI, the deciding factor was Germany started using unrestricted submarine warfare on American ships. It was either fight back or keep losing sailors. In WWII, the Empire of Japan bombed the crap out of a US naval base.
And what is that odd definition? The US could have halted trade with England and France. In the second case, the US had been building up military power and obstructing both Japan and Germany before that point.
but in both cases there was not a whole lot of choice remaining.
Which is a common MO of US presidents - dither the US's way into a war.
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Not really. The US decided to enter WW1. We didn't have to do it. We decided to do it.
As to WW2, that was caused in large part by the US frustrating the Japanese efforts to conquer the pacific using economic means.
Understand, I am not against the US doing either of these things. However, democrat presidents were in charge of the US in both cases and their actions directly lead to those wars.
What is more, I could also point out that Bill Clinton was offered Osama bin Ladin by the Saudis and he turned them do
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I don't think it makes much sense to look back at WW2 in this context. The parties have radically rearranged themselves since then. In the past decade, mainstream Republicans have been unabashedly warmongering. This isn't to say that Democrats don't have their hawks, or that Republicans don't have their isolationists, but the grand total for both parties is that Republicans are a party of war right now. And Democrats... well, I wouldn't exactly call them a party of peace, either, but a party of "less war" w
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In regards to unabashed warmongers... its all a question of timing.
And if you cherry pick your context then you're going to get whatever result you want.
Saying the Republicans are warmongers because they were in power during 9/11 and were responsible for the response to the terrorist attacks is unreasonable.
The democrats in the same position would almost certainly have done something very similar. And really, they were entirely on board for it for a long time. They signed everything. Their names are on thos
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You don't know that. You can point to no comparable incident where such a thing happened.
As to who is and is not a simpleton, given that your "proof" was completely baseless... that would be you, shit for brains. ;-)
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I'm not trying to take particular side here - but I don't think comparing Kosovo, Libya and Syria to Iraq 1, Afganistan and Iraq 2 really works that well in terms of scale, cost and destruction. ie some minimal half hearted air strikes vs large invasions.
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You really want to compare? Afghanistan is comparable to Lybia in terms of destruction and terrorist breeding ground creation. Syria is well comparable to Iraq in terms of deaths, suffering, civilian casualties, refugees, etc. The amount of bombing in Belgrade was quite substantial as well. I would not discount it.
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Even if some of those conflicts overall can be comparable in scale, the scale of US involvement and the role the US had in initiating them (which are the 'appetite for war' bits the president is responsible for) were quite different.
Kosovo, Libya and Syria were conflicts already well underway before US involvement and there were no US ground invasions (yet at least).
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You really want to compare? Afghanistan is comparable to Lybia in terms of destruction and terrorist breeding ground creation. Syria is well comparable to Iraq in terms of deaths, suffering, civilian casualties, refugees, etc. The amount of bombing in Belgrade was quite substantial as well. I would not discount it.
That has got to be just about the lowest quality analysis I've seen in years. That is just, wow. Low information.
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The US has many allies and they're not all equally important to us. Strike a member of NATO or one of our core east asian allies... possibly Israel as well.
I'm not sure the United States would really march for NATO. An attack on Germany, Italy, the UK, or France? To the ramparts! The Baltic States? Would we really go to war with a nuclear armed state over them? That's the ten million dollar question, isn't it? We're talking about three countries no one has heard of, that have no significant cultural, historical, or economic ties to the US, with combined population roughly that of Maryland. I'm not certain you could sell it to the current United States C
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Any member of NAT would get a major US response. Not only do we care but we are contractually and honor bound to do it.
We have signed agreements to that effect. If the US didn't come then we would be in breach of our agreements.
The US keeps it word.
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In regards to France not honoring an agreement, that has nothing to do with the US honoring an agreement. I did not say "no country has every violated an agreement" I said that the US honors its agreements.
As to headlong into a war over a Baltic state, you forget that Britain did engage Germany over Poland.
And Britain's position was more analogous to the US's current position.
We are the head of a political and military alliance. If members of the alliance can be struck without a response from the US then th
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Not true. Prior to Putin's aggression Russia was actually invited to NATO meetings and the US was going out of its way to bring Russia into the fold.
Why did Europe for example become so dependent on Russian oil? During the cold war we did not do that. It happened largely after the fall of the soviet union. NATO members were encouraged to trade with the Russians.
Putin has made it clear that that was a mistake.
Russia must be economically isolated and starved until it breaks.
Again, this does not happen quickly
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As to the US violating its agreements, I note that you haven't provided any contemporary examples to back up your position. I will have to take that as your admission that you don't have any which is an argument in my favor.
Either back up your position with a contemporary US example or concede.
In regards to your atlantic article, it contained nothing I didn't already know. Would you like to draw my attention to something specific?
As to war between the west and Russia, that is already happening. I did not sa
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The Baltic States? Would we really go to war with a nuclear armed state over them?
Yes.
We're talking about three countries no one has heard of, that have no significant cultural, historical, or economic ties to the US, with combined population roughly that of Maryland. I'm not certain you could sell it to the current United States Congress, never mind the general public, most of whom can't even find Latvia on the map.
You should own those statements. you might not be able to find NATO on a map, but our military can.
And Congress already did.
And nobody is going to do a poll, our military commanders in Europe are already there, and will already be part of the fight from the beginning, and they won't need authorization. They're already the ones authorized to protect NATO.
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WRT the Indians: they're non-aligned.
Their alliances are to themselves. They buy from whoever gives the best deals and long-term support (or at times, from whoever's actually willing to sell to them)
Buying russian hardware has been a necessity since they had sanctions dropped on them by the west after demonstrating they could build nukes - using material misappropriated from the supposedly proliferation-resistant CANDU reactors Canada sold them cheap as part of an aid package.
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Well... That still leaves Vietnam between three fires.
They won't give up the reactors or otherwise show that they're not being used to make nuclear weapons because that could actually give china some pause. They sort of need nukes really.
And that leaves them with the Americans and the Russians to please to balance the chinese.
The nuke issue is really quite unfortunate. The Vietnamese will have to decide what is a greater threat to their long term survival. Being on the international shit list for those reac
Re:Doubtful (Score:5, Interesting)
Putin needs to get total victory in Ukraine. He doesn't need to actually absorb them literally but he does need to bring them into the Russian sphere of influence and break the western strategic ties in the region. If he doesn't, then his domestic political position collapses.
You have to keep in mind that prior to the invasion of Ukraine, his polling numbers in Russia were very low. Then he went to war and his numbers popped up.
If it goes on for too long and he doesn't come out of it looking like a winner then he'll probably suffer for it politically.
As to china, they have similar political problems brewing as well as mounting economic problems.
They've just recently sold their US bonds as well as many other assets. Their ability to pump money into their economy is coming to a close. And with that a sea change in china's economic position. And with that, changing political, diplomatic, and strategic relationships.
We are living in interesting times. ;)
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You create a false narrative here. Putin's approval rating was steadily holding above 63% ever since he took office and shot up to 85% several times during his tenure for prolonged times, every time he was seen to defend Russian interests in the world. US or EU politicians usually don't have such good ratings. Here is an article with 2000-2013 chart.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma... [forbes.com]
Putin does not need "victory" in Ukraine. He has already achieved victory by standing up for Russia. On the contrary, nobody wa
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Hmmm... you have to be careful with Russian media:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
http://www.gallup.com/poll/167... [gallup.com]
His poll numbers were in decline and most analysts believe his actions are a crass political ploy to boost his poll numbers in Russia:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/... [usatoday.com]
I can cite articles and conclusions from think tanks all over the world if you like. I read something from a Japanese source the other day that said the same thing.
This is how the governments of t
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Putin does need victory because he got people all riled up through his propaganda machine. For over a year now, they've been feeding the public stories about "Ukrainian Nazi atrocities" etc. If he now abandons Donbass, then that same propaganda will turn against him - after all, it would mean that he abandoned the region to those same Nazis he was screaming bloody murder about, and how's that not sign of a weak and cowardly leader?
The definition of "victory" though is fuzzy here. If the separatists can hold
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Have you been paying attention to the chinese economy at all? Or are you running on 100 percent pure bravado?
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Or maybe they just realized it was a good time to do so. The USD is at a 12-year high against the Euro right now (the two are nearing parity), and a 5-year high against the British pound. The American economy has been on a major upswing in the last few years, outpacing the international community, so suggesting America's economy is in a position of weakness at the moment is outright false, suggesting the dollar is worthless is provably inaccurate, but suggesting stuff may go down soon could prove to be true
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IIUC, the value of the dollar is tied to the fact that it can be used to buy oil. That the USD is at a 12 year high may be due to the fact that the OPEC are selling oil in dollars at lower prices. How long do you expect this to continue? (If this analysis is correct, then the value of the $ is not primarily based on internal US production, and is out of our direct control. And this also explains our intense military involvement in the Persian Gulf area so that we have rather strong indirect control.)
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USD is high against the EUR not because USD is strong, but because the European Central Bank is printing money like there is no tomorrow - for some very strange reason their current president is convinced that the Eurozone has a huge deflation problem.
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That's a contributing factor, and is largely responsible for the sudden spike in the last few days, but I pointed out the British pound as well to illustrate that it's strong in general, rather than just strong against the Euro due to the stuff happening in Europe right now.
But yes, you're quite correct that the USD came on strong against the Euro in the last few days because of that stuff. Even so, it was already gaining at a steady pace, and was set to reach parity sometime late this year. The changes in
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US interest rates only go up in order to intentionally slow down growth to prevent an over-heated economy and a boom/bust cycle.
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If China wanted to buy it then they'd just do that.
Come now. Think about it.
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I don't proofread my posts. Deal with it.
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First, the US doesn't especially want to use the base. That isn't their interest.
Second, the chump change the Chinese would make from running the facility wouldn't be enough.
Third, the Russians likely wouldn't be comfortable with US and chinese military being that close to their nuclear bombers.
Fourth, the Vietnamese want the money themselves chump change though it is and will not share it with anyone.
So... none of the above.
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I was going to say that Riverrun is the Vietnam of westeros.
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Ehm... yes and no.
You are correct that we'd not deploy troops or move our navy in to directly attack chinese forces. We have no defense pact or treaty with vietnam. However, that activity would justify a hightened alert in east asia, a boost to local defense spending, economic sanctions, and really a very long list of things that are starting to happen to Russia right now due to their own misadventures in eastern europe.
The chinese are likely not as stupid as the Russians. A point that largely triggered the
As if we were on some sort of moral high ground. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm afraid of Russian nukes too but I fail to see how any one could do anything but laugh at us over this request given our military posturing.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Chinese actually were Involved... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Vietnamese will be likely to stop the flights.
Their current big international dispute is over their maritime boundaries with China. The CHinese claim almost the entire South China Sea on the basis of something called the "nine-dashed-line," and have a tendency to periodically engage in extreme brinksmanship with all their neighbors in the region, including Vietnam. They actually fought a war with the Chinese in '79. Which means if the Russian flights support China in any way the Vietnamese have every reason to stop them.
But they aren't involved, so we'll just have to put up with it like we do in Europe.
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Even if your reading of history is accurate (hint: It's not) it's completely irrelevant. China ratified the Convention of the Law of the Sea [wikipedia.org]. They gave up their "right" to claim the entirety of the South China Sea when they did that.
They undoubtedly have national security interests there, just as the United States does in the Gulf of Mexico, the difference is that the US doesn't lay claim to the entire Gulf. There's no need, we simply buy the fucking resources from the other states with claims, which is
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Dude, learn some fucking international law.
In '47 there was a press release. China has never made a formal claim before any international legal body, or even bothered to explain precisely (as in which geographical coordinates) the line ends. The line is not connected, and even in the spots where there's actually as line the map is small enough (and the line wide enough) that it's like 5-10 miles wide.
If the "we owned it before you existed" legal standard was actually a legal standard maybe a half-dozen Afri
Equal treatment is the answer. (Score:2)
This reminds me of teh old joke... (Score:2)
...about the unarmed bobby who is pursuing a suspect, and yells, "Stop, or I shall have to yell Stop again!"
But yes, this is offtopic here, especially in comparison to some of the interesting ideas that never make the climb out of Firehose.
Lost that war (Score:4, Insightful)
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Worse than that. One of the principal public spokesmen for the movement to sell out South Vietnam (along with Cambodia and Laos) to Russia is now pretending to object to the base's use by Russia, as if he cares about such things, and it's not only being reported with a straight face by the media and places like Slashdot, but it's being accepted with a straight face by people like you. I find this to be a veritable tsunami of ignorance about the history of the era and John Kerry's role in it.
No Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
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Seems the solution for Vietnam would be all to easy: Simply remind the US that you kicked their asses and took that base fair and square and that if they have a problem with it, they are free to come back over and have their "operation freedom" shoved up their ass all over again because they are allied with both Russia and China and the party raising most of the tensions in the "region" is the US who keeps demanding that the world do as it says or "else".
Sure, and Vietnam could give up about 20 billion in export surplus with the US. We are #2 in trade behind china and Vietnam has a trade surplus with us, unlike with China. They, unfortunately, are the little guy stuck between three powers.
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Simply remind the US that you kicked their asses and took that base fair and square and that if they have a problem with it, they are free to come back over and have their "operation freedom" shoved up their ass all over again
You're a bit confused about the facts. The US kicked North Vietnam's ass repeatedly which is why they signed the peace treaty. After the North Vietnamese agreed to peace the US withdrew from South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese then invaded since the people that kept kicking their ass had left.
The North Vietnamese didn't take the base "fair and square." They lied, broke a peace treaty, engaged in a war of aggression by invading South VIetnam, and terribly abused the people of South Vietnam in addition to
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Vietnam won its freedom from France, Japan and US backed coups. It can now do what it wants with its own sites and offer deals to any other nation it likes.
Vietnam can now also trade with or accept help from any nation it likes.
Vietnam no longer has a US back junta in power. The US seems just as up set with the UK over the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank issue.
Support for C
Re:"There is no easy solution for Vietnam." (Score:5, Insightful)
That would work.
They present one side as "Russia and China", but really, China is in this for themslves. They're making good use of the western sanctions on Russia to enrich themselves, negotiating all of the detals with Russia that they've been wanting to negotiate for a long time at bargain-basement prices that previously Russia had been unwilling to do.
Vietnam, too, is in this for themselves. They want their military purchases from Russia, and they also want investment from America. Buying them off is almost certainly a possibility. The question then becomes however, can the US really afford to buy off everyone? It's about proportionality... if Russia can spend a couple tens of millions of dollars to make the US spend a billion, Russia wins. On the other hand, if the US can spend a billion dollars to cost Russia a billion, the US winds, because the US economy is so vastly larger than the Russian economy.
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Good theory. It would have been a good place to start your investigation, but it not really valid an analysis.
I recommend actually looking at the details of the recent deal that China signed with Russia. Russia came to them for a deal, and the Chinese just took their existing energy deal, lowered the prices, and "agreed" to a contract locking in that discount for a number of years. That way the Russians get to put a big number on the size of the deal, and the Chinese didn't have to accept any cost to "help"
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"Right after the US withdrew from Vietnam, they fought (and won) a border war with China."
Viet/Chinese emnity goes back a lot further than you might think: The Vietnamese reputedly still haven't gotten around to forgiving China for stripping their forests in order to build Admiral Zheng He's fleet.
The Vietnamese would happily welcome american money as much as russian money, as long as it doesn't come with governance strings attached - the Vietnam war was fundamentally a war of independence from French Colon
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"China is in this for themslves. They're making good use of the western sanctions on Russia to enrich themselves, negotiating all of the detals with Russia that they've been wanting to negotiate for a long time at bargain-basement prices that previously Russia had been unwilling to do."
Spot on. There's little love lost between the two neighbours - they're on "cordial" terms, not "friendly" ones.
"It's about proportionality... if Russia can spend a couple tens of millions of dollars to make the US spend a bil
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Multi-billion? Wow, you think countries like Vietnam are stupid enough to sell themselves cheap.
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Did I miss the part where there was a war between Vietnam and China in the late 70's as a result of China's support for the Khmer Rouge's genocide?
Ho Chi Minh said... (Score:2)
I'd rather have ten years of American hostility(?) than a thousand years of the Chinese.
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You're not a nerd, you don't even have a slashdot account. How would you know what news nerds want?
Get off the lawn, you're trespassing.
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Knowledge is too nerdy for these cowards, they'll just whine and cry, whine and cry, whine and cry. They won't, can't, ever know it is their own fault. If they allowed themselves to discover the cause of the problem, they might have to implement a technical fix. That would be almost nerdy, and so they'd run away.