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Russian Navy "On Verge of Collapse"

Discussion in 'The Stump' started by GRW, Jan 19, 2015.

  1. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    What is very reminiscent of WW2 are torchlight marches by the ultra nationalists dressed in SS uniforms giving Hitler salutes and honoring Stepan Bandera. The Russian law which you speak of was a direct result from 1. What Russia is witnessing 2. The West turning a blind eye on the whole issue.

    http://rt.com/news/219783-nazi-parade-kiev-bandera/

    http://www.focus-fen.net/news/2015/01/05/359017/failure-to-slam-neo-nazis-in-kiev-sure-sign-something-wrong-with-eu-czech-president-tass.html

    The reason why the new footage of these "mercenaries" is causing a stir is because the US has always denied their involvement.

    I always find it fascinating when I hear "what are Putins offers?" or "what is Russia doing to end this
    conflict?"..... How has this become solely Russias responsibility?? What has the West done to prevent any of the blood shed?
     
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  2. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    Why were they in the English Channel, after flying round the Irish coast etc? Patrolling your own borders usually means exactly that. And given the size of Russia, they've got plenty of their own airspace for "training" without encroaching on ours.


    Love to see you explain exactly how flying through commercial air lanes and causing havoc is "training". For what?

    "In Wednesday's incursion, the Bears travelled right round the British Isles and were detected by long-range radars before being escorted away by RAF fighter jets based in Scotland and Lincolnshire.
    Although the aircraft were travelling in international airspace, they were deviating from a standard route, triggering a 'quick reaction alert'."
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2931888/Russian-ambassador-summoned-Foreign-Office-RAF-forced-scramble-jets-intercept-bombers-sent-Moscow.html#ixzz3QWsNaDl1

    A Norwegian listening post intercepted cockpit conversations suggesting nuclear weapons were being carried.
     
  3. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    France, Great Britain, Russia and the US all have Submarines in service armed with nuclear missiles.
     
  4. Bundesluftwaffe

    Bundesluftwaffe New Member

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    Mh, maybe an UKR civil war thread would be good, cause this one was about the demise of Russian navy :) Just an idea, as I have also 3-4 videos to post from the conflict....or would these belong to "military history" (but this conflict is not history yet mh.).


    Well here is one of the videos, NAF fighters capture US weapons:


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbGCL0cfBdU
     
  5. Sloniksp

    Sloniksp Ставка

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    NATO bases surround Russia yet you cry fowl when a couple of aged bombers fly by your country...... :rolleyes:

    Again, these bombers were in international airspace, international does not mean yours, therefore; to claim "encroaching on ours" would be incorrect

    I think you already explained everything. Two Soviet era Bears flying beside your country caused havoc and panic etc.
     
  6. Takao

    Takao Ace

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    Yes, that is true...Ballistic missiles. But, that is not the case here..is it? This is a nuclear-tipped ASW weapon. Further, you said "Either way NATO ships and subs carry them". Since warships don't carry ballistic missiles, this made it obvious that you were not talking about ballistic missile submarines.

    Given that NATO warships don't carry nuclear weapons...What is your point?

    or is this all just a BS argument that you made by grasping at straws.
     
  7. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Member

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    The issue here wasn't territory...it was the breaching of countless international agreements on air safety by flying in civil-controlled airspace and airlanes without pre-cleared flightplans and with radar transponders turned off.

    However - if you wish to regard it as one of territory...


    ...said bases are not on Russian territory. And they are free to be established anywhere that any NATO member wishes them to have on their own territory.
     
  8. Bundesluftwaffe

    Bundesluftwaffe New Member

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    I´ll bite again.

    It is true what you write. However Nato broke the trust of the Russians. It was promised in the early 90ties that Nato would not expand eastwards, in "exchange" for re - unification of GER as well dissolving of the Warsaw Pact iirc.
     
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  9. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Member

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    And was that "promise" treaty-bound like that preserving the Ukraine that the Russian government signed in the same period - then broke by their various actions last year?

    And did such a "promise" even exist at all???? Enjoy...http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141845/mary-elise-sarotte/a-broken-promise


    Twenty-five years ago this November, an East German Politburo member bungled the announcement of what were meant to be limited changes to travel regulations, thereby inspiring crowds to storm the border dividing East and West Berlin. The result was the iconic moment marking the point of no return in the end of the Cold War: the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the months that followed, the United States, the Soviet Union, and West Germany engaged in fateful negotiations over the withdrawal of Soviet troops and the reunification of Germany. Although these talks eventually resulted in German reunification on October 3, 1990, they also gave rise to a later, bitter dispute between Russia and the West. What, exactly, had been agreed about the future of NATO? Had the United States formally promised the Soviet Union that the alliance would not expand eastward as part of the deal?

    Even more than two decades later, the dispute refuses to go away. Russian diplomats regularly assert that Washington made just such a promise in exchange for the Soviet troop withdrawal from East Germany -- and then betrayed that promise as NATO added 12 eastern European countries in three subsequent rounds of enlargement. Writing in this magazine earlier this year, the Russian foreign policy thinker Alexander Lukin accused successive U.S. presidents of “forgetting the promises made by Western leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev after the unification of Germany -- most notably that they would not expand NATO eastward.” Indeed, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggressive actions in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 were fueled in part by his ongoing resentment about what he sees as the West’s broken pact over NATO expansion. But U.S. policymakers and analysts insist that such a promise never existed. In a 2009 Washington Quarterly article, for example, the scholar Mark Kramer assured readers not only that Russian claims were a complete “myth” but also that “the issue never came up during the negotiations on German reunification.”

    Now that increasing numbers of formerly secret documents from 1989 and 1990 have made their way into the public domain, historians can shed new light on this controversy. The evidence demonstrates that contrary to the conventional wisdom in Washington, the issue of NATO’s future in not only East Germany but also eastern Europe arose soon after the Berlin Wall opened, as early as February 1990. U.S. officials, working closely with West German leaders, hinted to Moscow during negotiations that month that the alliance might not expand, not even to the eastern half of a soon-to-be-reunited Germany.

    Documents also show that the United States, with the help of West Germany, soon pressured Gorbachev into allowing Germany to reunify, without making any kind of written promise about the alliance’s future plans. Put simply, there was never a formal deal, as Russia alleges -- but U.S. and West German officials briefly implied that such a deal might be on the table, and in return they received a “green light” to commence the process of German reunification. The dispute over this sequence of events has distorted relations between Washington and Moscow ever since.

    GETTING THE GREEN LIGHT

    Contrary to Russian allegations, there was never a formal deal about NATO expansion.

    Western leaders quickly realized that the fall of the Berlin Wall had brought seemingly long-settled issues of European security once again into play. By the beginning of 1990, the topic of NATO’s future role was coming up frequently during confidential conversations among U.S. President George H. W. Bush; James Baker, the U.S. secretary of state; Helmut Kohl, the West German chancellor; Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the West German foreign minister; and Douglas Hurd, the British foreign minister.

    According to documents from the West German foreign ministry, for example, Genscher told Hurd on February 6 that Gorbachev would want to rule out the prospect of NATO’s future expansion not only to East Germany but also to eastern Europe. Genscher suggested that the alliance should issue a public statement saying that “NATO does not intend to expand its territory to the East.” “Such a statement must refer not just to [East Germany], but rather be of a general nature,” he added. “For example, the Soviet Union needs the security of knowing that Hungary, if it has a change of government, will not become part of the Western Alliance.” Genscher urged that NATO discuss the matter immediately, and Hurd agreed.

    Three days later, in Moscow, Baker talked NATO with Gorbachev directly. During their meeting, Baker took handwritten notes of his own remarks, adding stars next to the key words: “End result: Unified Ger. anchored in a ´changed (polit.) NATO -- ´whose juris. would not move ´eastward!” Baker’s notes appear to be the only place such an assurance was written down on February 9, and they raise an interesting question. If Baker’s “end result” was that the jurisdiction of NATO’s collective-defense provision would not move eastward, did that mean it would not move into the territory of former East Germany after reunification?

    In answering that question, it is fortunate for posterity’s sake that Genscher and Kohl were just about to visit Moscow themselves. Baker left behind with the West German ambassador in Moscow a secret letter for Kohl that has been preserved in the German archives. In it, Baker explained that he had put the crucial statement to Gorbachev in the form of a question: “Would you prefer to see a unified Germany outside of NATO, independent and with no U.S. forces,” he asked, presumably framing the option of an untethered Germany in a way that Gorbachev would find unattractive, “or would you prefer a unified Germany to be tied to NATO, with assurances that NATO’s jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward from its present position?”

    Baker’s phrasing of the second, more attractive option meant that NATO’s jurisdiction would not even extend to East Germany, since NATO’s “present position” in February 1990 remained exactly where it had been throughout the Cold War: with its eastern edge on the line still dividing the two Germanies. In other words, a united Germany would be, de facto, half in and half out of the alliance. According to Baker, Gorbachev responded, “Certainly any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable.” In Baker’s view, Gorbachev’s reaction indicated that “NATO in its current zone might be acceptable.”

    After receiving their own report on what had happened in Moscow, however, staff members on the National Security Council back in Washington felt that such a solution would be unworkable as a practical matter. How could NATO’s jurisdiction apply to only half of a country? Such an outcome was neither desirable nor, they suspected, necessary. As a result, the National Security Council put together a letter to Kohl under Bush’s name. It arrived just before Kohl departed for his own trip to Moscow.

    Instead of implying that NATO would not move eastward, as Baker had done, this letter proposed a “special military status for what is now the territory of [East Germany].” Although the letter did not define exactly what the special status would entail, the implication was clear: all of Germany would be in the alliance, but to make it easier for Moscow to accept this development, some kind of face-saving regulations would apply to its eastern region (restrictions on the activities of certain kinds of NATO troops, as it turned out).

    Kohl thus found himself in a complicated position as he prepared to meet with Gorbachev on February 10, 1990. He had received two letters, one on either end of his flight from West Germany to the Soviet Union, the first from Bush and the second from Baker, and the two contained different wording on the same issue. Bush’s letter suggested that NATO’s border would begin moving eastward; Baker’s suggested that it would not.

    According to records from Kohl’s office, the chancellor chose to echo Baker, not Bush, since Baker’s softer line was more likely to produce the results that Kohl wanted: permission from Moscow to start reunifying Germany. Kohl thus assured Gorbachev that “naturally NATO could not expand its territory to the current territory of [East Germany].” In parallel talks, Genscher delivered the same message to his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, saying, “for us, it stands firm: NATO will not expand itself to the East.”

    As with Baker’s meeting with Gorbachev, no written agreement emerged. After hearing these repeated assurances, Gorbachev gave West Germany what Kohl later called “the green light” to begin creating an economic and monetary union between East and West Germany -- the first step of reunification. Kohl held a press conference immediately to lock in this gain. As he recalled in his memoirs, he was so overjoyed that he couldn’t sleep that night, and so instead went for a long, cold walk through Red Square.


    BRIBING THE SOVIETS OUT
    But Kohl’s phrasing would quickly become heresy among the key Western decision-makers. Once Baker got back to Washington, in mid-February 1990, he fell in line with the National Security Council’s view and adopted its position. From then on, members of Bush’s foreign policy team exercised strict message discipline, making no further remarks about NATO holding at the 1989 line.

    Kohl, too, brought his rhetoric in line with Bush’s, as both U.S. and West German transcripts from the two leaders’ February 24–25 summit at Camp David show. Bush made his feelings about compromising with Moscow clear to Kohl: “To hell with that!” he said. “We prevailed, they didn’t. We can’t let the Soviets clutch victory from the jaws of defeat.” Kohl argued that he and Bush would have to find a way to placate Gorbachev, predicting, “It will come down in the end to a question of cash.” Bush pointedly noted that West Germany had “deep pockets.” A straightforward strategy thus arose: as Robert Gates, then U.S. deputy national security adviser, later explained it, the goal was to “bribe the Soviets out.” And West Germany would pay the bribe.

    In April, Bush spelled out this thinking in a confidential telegram to French President François Mitterrand. U.S. officials worried that the Kremlin might try to outmaneuver them by allying with the United Kingdom or France, both of which were also still occupying Berlin and, given their past encounters with a hostile Germany, potentially had reason to share the Soviets’ unease about reunification. So Bush emphasized his top priorities to Mitterrand: that a united Germany enjoy full membership in NATO, that allied forces remain in a united Germany even after Soviet troops withdraw, and that NATO continue to deploy both nuclear and conventional weapons in the region. He warned Mitterrand that no other organization could “replace NATO as the guarantor of Western security and stability.” He continued: “Indeed, it is difficult to visualize how a European collective security arrangement including Eastern Europe, and perhaps even the Soviet Union, would have the capability to deter threats to Western Europe.”

    Bush was making it clear to Mitterrand that the dominant security organization in a post–Cold War Europe had to remain NATO -- and not any kind of pan-European alliance. As it happened, the next month, Gorbachev proposed just such a pan-European arrangement, one in which a united Germany would join both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, thus creating one massive security institution. Gorbachev even raised the idea of having the Soviet Union join NATO. “You say that NATO is not directed against us, that it is simply a security structure that is adapting to new realities,” Gorbachev told Baker in May, according to Soviet records. “Therefore, we propose to join NATO.” Baker refused to consider such a notion, replying dismissively, “Pan-European security is a dream.”

    Throughout 1990, U.S. and West German diplomats successfully countered such proposals, partly by citing Germany’s right to determine its alliance partners itself. As they did so, it became clear that Bush and Kohl had guessed correctly: Gorbachev would, in fact, eventually bow to Western preferences, as long as he was compensated. Put bluntly, he needed the cash. In May 1990, Jack Matlock, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow, reported that Gorbachev was starting to look “less like a man in control and more [like] an embattled leader.” The “signs of crisis,” he wrote in a cable from Moscow, “are legion: Sharply rising crime rates, proliferating anti-regime demonstrations, burgeoning separatist movements, deteriorating economic performance . . . and a slow, uncertain transfer of power from party to state and from the center to the periphery.”

    Moscow would have a hard time addressing these domestic problems without the help of foreign aid and credit, which meant that it might be willing to compromise. The question was whether West Germany could provide such assistance in a manner that would allow Gorbachev to avoid looking as though he was being bribed into accepting a reunified Germany in NATO with no meaningful restrictions on the alliance’s movement eastward.

    Kohl accomplished this difficult task in two bursts: first, in a bilateral meeting with Gorbachev in July 1990, and then, in a set of emotional follow-up phone calls in September 1990. Gorbachev ultimately gave his assent to a united Germany in NATO in exchange for face-saving measures, such as a four-year grace period for removing Soviet troops and some restrictions on both NATO troops and nuclear weapons on former East German territory. He also received 12 billion deutsch marks to construct housing for the withdrawing Soviet troops and another three billion in interest-free credit. What he did not receive were any formal guarantees against NATO expansion.

    In August 1990, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait immediately pushed Europe down the White House’s list of foreign policy priorities. Then, after Bush lost the 1992 presidential election to Bill Clinton, Bush’s staff members had to vacate their offices earlier than they had expected. They appear to have communicated little with the incoming Clinton team. As a result, Clinton’s staffers began their tenure with limited or no knowledge of what Washington and Moscow had discussed regarding NATO.

    THE SEEDS OF A FUTURE PROBLEM
    Contrary to the view of many on the U.S. side, then, the question of NATO expansion arose early and entailed discussions of expansion not only to East Germany but also to eastern Europe. But contrary to Russian allegations, Gorbachev never got the West to promise that it would freeze NATO’s borders. Rather, Bush’s senior advisers had a spell of internal disagreement in early February 1990, which they displayed to Gorbachev. By the time of the Camp David summit, however, all members of Bush’s team, along with Kohl, had united behind an offer in which Gorbachev would receive financial assistance from West Germany -- and little else -- in exchange for allowing Germany to reunify and for allowing a united Germany to be part of NATO.

    In the short run, the result was a win for the United States. U.S. officials and their West German counterparts had expertly outmaneuvered Gorbachev, extending NATO to East Germany and avoiding promises about the future of the alliance. One White House staffer under Bush, Robert Hutchings, ranked a dozen possible outcomes, from the “most congenial” (no restrictions at all on NATO as it moved into former East Germany) to the “most inimical” (a united Germany completely outside of NATO). In the end, the United States achieved an outcome somewhere between the best and the second best on the list. Rarely does one country win so much in an international negotiation.

    But as Baker presciently wrote in his memoirs of his tenure as secretary of state, “Almost every achievement contains within its success the seeds of a future problem.” By design, Russia was left on the periphery of a post–Cold War Europe. A young KGB officer serving in East Germany in 1989 offered his own recollection of the era in an interview a decade later, in which he remembered returning to Moscow full of bitterness at how “the Soviet Union had lost its position in Europe.” His name was Vladimir Putin, and he would one day have the power to act on that bitterness.
     
  10. Bundesluftwaffe

    Bundesluftwaffe New Member

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    Don´t think so, but asfaik the Kiev junta caused the civil war, not the Russians. But explain what actions you mean. EDIT: If you mean the crimea thing, it was already discussed and I agreed to a decree that it wasn´t right..... .

    Re: Expansion of Nato:

    http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/142310/joshua-r-itzkowitz-shifrinson/put-it-in-writing

    "................however problematic its recent behavior, then, Moscow has reason to argue that the West broke a promise. As declassified U.S. documents show, the George H. W. Bush administration and its allies worked hard to convince Soviet leaders that Europe’s post–Cold War order would be mutually acceptable, as the Soviet Union would retrench and NATO would remain in place. Yet U.S. policymakers may not have intended to make this vision a reality. And although there are many reasons to criticize recent Russian behavior, Russia may not be lying when it claims that a promise was broken. In the end, the United States overturned the system it promised to bring about...."
     
  11. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Member

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    But I seem to remember it was the "new" system in Russia that agreed to the treaty guarantees on Crimea and the Ukraine....
     
  12. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    Remind me why NATO was formed again? And why so many ex-Soviet satellites choose to join it?
    The aircraft were also shadowed by French aircraft, so hardly completely innocent. How old does an aircraft armed with a nuclear weapon have to be before it's "harmless"?!
     
  13. GRW

    GRW Pillboxologist WW2|ORG Editor

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    And every news report from a war zone that I've ever seen shows fighters armed with Kalashnikoves, RPG's etc.
    What's your point- that only the US arms industry supposedly sells abroad?
     
  14. CAC

    CAC Ace of Spades

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    Slonskip...are you trying to say that flying nuclear weapons close to a possible enemy isnt a stupidly provocotive thing to do?

    What reason would YOU give for such an exercise?
     
  15. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Sloniksp,

    at least you do recall when Bush decided to attack the Iraqi in early 2000 for the Massive weapons that would kill everybody. Civilians flew to be there live shields, and there were people rioting everywhere in Europe not to attack. the Poltiicians made a different choice but the intel info was a fake just as we thought in the first place. Of course Saddam was a bad man, but civil war was the expected result and now we have ISIS.
     
  16. von_noobie

    von_noobie Member

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    NATO is not the EU.. The Majority of the Ukrainians wanted to join the EU. So NATO didn't expand eastwards, Hence no justification for Russia's actions..
     
  17. Bundesluftwaffe

    Bundesluftwaffe New Member

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    @
    The_Historian
    My point was nothing - the video is for info on the conflict. However it is strange that the UKR army uses US weapons or as the militiamen suggest, western mercenaries fight there. Btw. so called volunteers fight for both sides it seems.

    @
    von_noobie

    So you have asked all UKR people or which sopurce says that ? At least the eastern portion seems not very keen on the EU. Also the only thing that the bankrupt country would have wanted from the EU is money. And of course the stupid EU leaders would give it - for geopoitical reasons (cutting off Russian influence, raw materials etc.). Also I suggest you look at a map from Nato in 1992 and Nato today...

    Well it´s too OT in the navy thread I stop here. I have more UKR war video I may post in a better thread.

    But a personal word:
    It is beyond me why so many guys here seem to defend the Kiev regime that kills their own people!
     
  18. green slime

    green slime Member

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    Fixed that for you.
     
  19. CAC

    CAC Ace of Spades

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    "Cutting off Russian influence" - "raw materials" ....doesn't sound stupid to me...if you can't beat us, then join us...
     
  20. Bundesluftwaffe

    Bundesluftwaffe New Member

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    Meaning ? Both parties have guns obviously.
     

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