February 10, 2010

Putin Orders Obama Not to Defend America

Hatched by Dafydd

Why do I have the awful premonition that Barack H. Obama is about to bow deeply from the waist again?

U.S. missile-defense plans are a threat to Russian national security and have slowed down progress on a new arms-control treaty with Washington, Russia's top military officer said Tuesday.

Gen. Nikolai Makarov said that a revised U.S. plan to place missiles in Europe undermines Russia's national defense, rejecting Obama administration promises that the plan is not directed at his country.

"We view it very negatively, because it could weaken our missile forces," Gen. Makarov, the chief of the Russian military's General Staff, said in televised remarks.

Translation: The Russkies agree with Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush that ballistic missile defense (BMD) works; and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is terrified that if we implement it, Russia will no longer have the ability to destroy America. From Vlad the Impeller's point of view, that's a very, very bad thing.

So the big question is -- is it also a very, very bad thing from the Obamacle's point of view?

Gen. Makarov's comments are the strongest yet on the revamped U.S. missile effort and signal potential new obstacles to an agreement on a new nuclear arms reduction treaty to replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START], which expired Dec. 5.

I'd much prefer to rely upon American BMD than Russian BS in a new START. How about you? How about the president?

But I'm getting nervous, recalling how quick and servile Obama was in cancelling the Bush BMD plan. All that Putin, a "former" KGB agent, needed to do was hint that the missile-defense plans were an "obstacle" to a new arms reduction treaty, and our American president hopped to obey. Obama didn't even gain any concessions or promises; his appeasement was unilateral.

Experts have said the new plan is less threatening to Russia because it would not initially involve interceptors capable of shooting down Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles....

Russian officials at first reacted calmly to U.S. plans to deploy Patriot missile systems in Poland, but have grown increasingly critical in recent weeks.

Romania last week approved a proposal to place anti-ballistic missile interceptors in the country as part of the revamped American missile shield.

Asked Tuesday about the plans in Romania and Poland, Gen. Makarov called the U.S. missile-defense plans a threat.

"The development of missile defense is aimed against the Russian Federation," he said.

Another translation: In this instance (and every instance from the Russian Federation), the term "Russian Federation" shall be understood to mean "reconstituted and reconquered Soviet Empire." When Gen. Zod Makarov says missile defense threatens the Russian Federation, he means BMD threatens Russia's plan to reoccupy Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, and Eastern Germany.

Makarov, a sock puppet for Putin, demands that the BMD program be part of the START talks:

"The treaty on strategic offensive weapons we are currently working on must take into account the link between defensive and offensive strategic weapons," Gen. Makarov said. "This link is very close; they are absolutely interdependent. It would be wrong not to take the missile defense into account."

When Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, issued an identical ultimatum to Ronald Reagan in 1986 at the U.S.-Soviet summit in Reykjavík, Iceland, Reagan called Gorbachev's bluff: He refused to sign a treaty that threw the Strategic Defense Initiative under the Gorby bus. I can't remember the exact quotation, but Reagan said something to the effect that America must never be afraid to walk away from a bad deal.

Is Barack Obama prepared to walk away from an equally bad deal with Vladimir Putin? I worry that he is so desperate for a treaty that he'll accept any treaty, even a bad one, rather than finish his term empty handed.

Cross-posted on Hot Air's rogues' gallery...

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 10, 2010, at the time of 6:18 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: MikeR

I think I agree with Putin on this one. Russia is not the same thing as the USSR. It is an obnoxious, perhaps expansionist, and fairly powerful country, but it is a mistake to think of it as the existential threat that the Communists were. The world is full of obnoxious, expansionist, powerful countries. I don't even see why we should be part of NATO anymore. We need a reasonable defense, but we could save a lot of money if we stopping thinking of ourselves as the world's policeman. Or, if they-all want us to be, they should be paying us to do it.

By the way, your comment facility refused to let me on for more than a month. Until I checked Remember Me, it always blocked me, saying, You have to allow sharing your email... (which I had okayed). Did anyone miss me, I wonder?

The above hissed in response by: MikeR [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 11, 2010 9:46 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

MikeR:

It's not my commenting facility. I'm not a developer, and I didn't write and cannot maintain the program that screens commenters by username and password. That used to be handled by TypeKey, but TypeKey has been swallowed up by TypePad.

I have problems with it sometimes, too.

It's a flakey system, but it's the only one I know how to use!

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 11, 2010 11:23 AM

The following hissed in response by: Freedom Now

I dont see any need for arms control treaties with Russia. They are not our enemies. They are political opponents, but not enemies.

Obambi puts himself in a situation in which Russia has everything to gain and we have nothing to gain.

It doesnt matter how much Russia arms itself. They are not our enemies.

Let us build the anti-missile screen that we may one day need. Why let Russia dictate how we may defend ourselves?

They dont care about us. They dont have our best interests at heart. Putin, the KGB Shadowking, would love to see America destroyed. Then he can say pretty words about how much he loved our country and gleefully attempt to fill the superpower gap left by our country's destruction. How naive can anyone be?

Attempting to placate a man, who kills and imprisons his people just for exercising dissent against him, is foolish because he and his puppet are not rational partners for negotiations. He will always work against us. There is nothing we can do to appease someone with such superpower ambitions.

The above hissed in response by: Freedom Now [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 11, 2010 2:27 PM

The following hissed in response by: Freedom Now

I dont see any need for arms control treaties with Russia. They are not our enemies. They are political opponents, but not enemies.

Obambi puts himself in a situation in which Russia has everything to gain and we have nothing to gain.

It doesnt matter how much Russia arms itself. They are not our enemies.

Let us build the anti-missile screen that we may one day need. Why let Russia dictate how we may defend ourselves?

They dont care about us. They dont have our best interests at heart. Putin, the KGB Shadowking, would love to see America destroyed. Then he can say pretty words about how much he loved our country and gleefully attempt to fill the superpower gap left by our country's destruction. How naive can anyone be?

Attempting to placate a man, who kills and imprisons his people just for exercising dissent against him, is foolish because he and his puppet are not rational partners for negotiations. He will always work against us. There is nothing we can do to appease someone with such superpower ambitions.

The above hissed in response by: Freedom Now [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 11, 2010 2:28 PM

The following hissed in response by: MrDamage

The real problem with Russias objections to the US BMD plans is that a BMD in eastern europe does not protect the US from Russian missiles. Take a look at an atlas, the possibility of an ICBM being intercepted by anti missile sites in poland en route from eastern Siberia to the West coast of the US is effectively nil. Moreover, Russia possesses enough nukes and missiles to saturate any conceivable BMD with both real and false targets. So we have to find an advantage for Russia in objecting to US BMD sites in Poland/Romania and I believe I know what it is.

The obvious intention of BMD sites in Poland/Romania is not to intercept ICBMs directed at the US by Russia as sites in Poland/Romania would be remarkably ineffective at accomplishing that, but to intercept ICBMs directed at the US by IRAN.

Nuclear weapons are useless in the modern age as we all know because of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). But what if a nuclear strike was launched in a false flag operation? If Russia believes that they could covertly manipulate Iran into launching missiles at the US or that Russian special forces could seize a launch site long enough to launch Iranian missiles then Russia might well regard emerging Iranian nuclear capabilities as their deniable first strike capability. If the US were to neutralize that threat via an ABM shield, Russia would lose a potent weapon which could be used to wreak unimaginable havoc on the North American continent.

A less paranoid theory (is there really such a thing as too paranoid when it comes to Russian politics?) is that Russia does not object to a BMD that could not prevent Russia from nuking the US so much as it objects to closer military ties between the US and the ex soviet republics. But objecting to sovereign nations entering freely into mutually beneficial arrangements doesn't come across as being nearly as reasonable as weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth over BMD

The above hissed in response by: MrDamage [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 12, 2010 4:36 AM

The following hissed in response by: Chris Hunt

We're screwed.

The above hissed in response by: Chris Hunt [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 12, 2010 11:33 AM

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