Breaking:PopeFrancisendorsesforcetostop

Breaking: Pope Francis endorses force to stop ISIS; Update: CNN says “punts on airstrikes”

posted at 2:01 pm on August 18, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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We already got hints of this over the last couple of weeks, as Vatican officials spoke on the record in support of limited military action to rescue the Yazidis. The Boston Globe’s veteran Vaticanista John Allen noted the stunning change of tone from the previous two international forays into Iraq, but warned in an interview on The Ed Morrissey Show that it sounded more like a “yellow light” than a full-fledged endorsement of war. Allen also pointed out that it looked as though the Vatican was taking some care to separate Pope Francis himself from whatever endorsement of military action they were signaling.

Not any more, according to the Associated Press. This time the Pontiff himself has endorsed military action, but with at least one significant condition:

Pope Francis has endorsed the use of force in Iraq to stop Islamic militants from attacking religious minorities but says the international community — and not just one country — should decide how to intervene.

Reuters corroborates the AP report with some direct quotes from Francis about the legitimacy of force in stopping an unjust aggression:

“In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression I can only say that it is legitimate to stop the unjust aggressor,” he told reporters on the plane returning from South Korea in response to a question about U.S. air strikes against Islamic State insurgents who have overrun much of the country’s north. …

The pope suggested he was not giving a automatic green light for bombings or war but that the situation was grave and the international community had to respond together.

“I underscore the verb ‘to stop’. I am not saying ‘bomb’ or ‘make war’, but ‘stop him’. The means by which he can be stopped must be evaluated. Stopping the unjust aggressor is legitimate,” he said.

“One single nation cannot judge how he is to be stopped, how an unjust aggressor is to be stopped,” he said.

Francis seems to stop short of explicitly endorsing military force, but that’s only theoretically speaking. If anything short of military force could stop ISIS, Francis wouldn’t need to make this statement in the first place. The question will be — and actually is, in Francis’ statements — just what kind of force to apply.

In many wars, one can debate whether one side or the other, or both, have committed “unjust aggression.” In the case of ISIS, which is conducting genocides, ethno-religious cleansing, and wholesale massacres, as well as condemning women into sex slavery, there is no debate on the nature of the conflict. There is, however, debate on what it would take to put a stop to all of the above “unjust aggressions,” which is Francis’ first qualifier on his endorsement. According to the rough parameters of the just-war doctrine, there should be no more force than what is necessary to bring an end to the injustice being perpetrated. Pope Francis doesn’t want to offer any prescriptions for the specific methods but just the moral framework for the decision.

His other qualifier, which is that the debate should take place in an international context, may be easier to meet — as long as Pope Francis isn’t suggesting that the only legitimate body for the debate is the United Nations. NATO and the regional nations threatened by ISIS would provide for a rather robust international forum and avoid the traditional sticks-in-the-mud Russia and China. On the other hand, Russia and China might have their own reasons for backing the use of force; going after ISIS helps Bashar al-Assad and the mullahs in Tehran, at least in the short run.

This pronouncement will put significant pressure on the US and EU to take action in Iraq against ISIS, precisely because of the singular nature of a Catholic Pope endorsing any kind of military action in any context at all. Who wants to be seen as more pacifist than the Pontiff and finding their reluctance to act called out by any Pope as a moral failure by omission? That may be especially true with this particular Pope, who has tremendous international popularity and credibility as a moral voice in the modern age.

We’ll see whether this prompts the West into some coordinated effort to stop ISIS. In the meantime, make sure to bookmark this moment, because it won’t come again soon.

Update: Keeping in mind that the media is usually eager to slice up Pope Francis’ remarks, it’s a good idea to look for the larger context. T. Becket Adams has a longer piece of the remarks:

And now for what Pope Francis actually said: pic.twitter.com/O7L0GCzCFW

— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) August 18, 2014

In it, the Pope actually does specify that the proper venue should be the United Nations, plus he’s a little more careful than Reuters or the AP suggested in issuing an explicit endorsement of force. In this case, though, to ask the question is to beg the answer. “Is this an unjust aggression?” cannot be answered in any way other than yes, unless we want to suggest that genocides and sexual slavery are legitimate in some circumstances. “How should we stop it?” may be a little more nuanced, but there is no way to stop ISIS now without resorting to some kind of military force.

This is what the Vatican officials explicitly conceded on the record last week. Legitimizing an international debate on these questions married to an exhortation to stop the “unjust aggression” is a not-terribly-tacit green light for international action through the UN, if and when that body can agree to do something about it.

Update: CNN has a different take on the same remarks:

The Pope punted.

Asked if he approved of the American airstrikes that began earlier this month against Muslim militants in Iraq, Pope Francis held back his weighty moral imprimatur, refusing to support or denounce the military campaign.

“I can only say this: It is licit to stop the unjust aggressor,” the pontiff said Monday during a press conference on the plane back to Rome from South Korea.  “I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means.”

In an apparent reference to the United States, Francis said “one nation alone cannot judge” the best means of stopping “unjust aggressors” like ISIS, the group that calls itself the Islamic State. Those decisions should be made by the United Nations, the pontiff said.

“Punted”? Hardly. Pope Francis called for an international agreement to stop ISIS, preferably through the UN. His argument is that single nations can use claims of just war to oppress other nations, but (a) that’s clearly not the case with these limited airstrikes, and (b) Francis is supporting a “stop” on ISIS and its “unjust aggression” in some form. His answer is remarkably clear — he wants the UN to take responsibility for stopping unjust aggression and then get something done. In the meantime, people are dying, which is why the Vatican took the time last week to offer support for airstrikes to relieve the Yazidis and Christians in northern Iraq.

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Tags: European Union, Iraq, ISIS, just war, NATO, Pope Francis, United Nations, Vatican

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Russiawillsend‘humanitarian’missionintoUkraine

Russia will send ‘humanitarian’ mission into Ukraine

posted at 2:41 pm on August 11, 2014 by Noah Rothman

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Russia’s anticipated direct “humanitarian” intervention into the crisis in eastern Ukraine may soon be underway.

In a telephone call with European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso, Russian President Vladimir Putin revealed that Russia will send a convoy of humanitarian aid to Ukraine in cooperation with the International Red Cross. The ICRC reportedly said that it did not coordinate with Russia and was not aware of a Kremlin plan to send a humanitarian convoy to Ukraine.

“For the past weeks, Russia has been urging Ukraine to allow it to send humanitarian aid to the residents of its eastern regions engulfed by pro-Russian insurgency, but Ukraine and the West have opposed the move,” The Daily Mail noted.

The Associated Press reported that Ukrainian officials confirmed a genuine humanitarian mission led by Russia in conjunction with the Red Cross would be heading to eastern Ukraine and has the “blessing” of the United States. A Russian spokesman said that the humanitarian mission would not be accompanied by any armed personnel or soldiers.

The Guardian reported that President Barack Obama has provided Ukrainian officials with reassurances that the humanitarian mission to Ukraine would be a peaceful one.

In a phonecall with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, on Monday night, the US president, Barack Obama, promised to take an active part in an aid mission to the rebel-held city of Luhansk, where residents have been cut off from water and electricity amid shelling that has claimed civilian casualties.

There remains, however, reason to be skeptical of Russia’s motives.

Multiple reports indicated last week that Russian military vehicles marked with the words “peacekeeping force” had been on the move toward the border with Ukraine. NATO also warned that Russia’s United Nations ambassador indicated his country’s call for a Ukraine peacekeeping force indicates Moscow’s willingness to intervene directly in Ukraine under the guise of a humanitarian mission.

On Monday, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko warned that a Russian invasion force is positioned along the border:

“As of 11 o’clock today, about 45,000 troops of the armed forces and internal forces of the Russian Federation are concentrated in border areas,” Lysenko told a briefing.

He said they were supported by 160 tanks, 1,360 armored vehicles, 390 artillery systems, up to 150 Grad missile launchers, 192 fighter aircraft and 137 attack helicopters.

With conflict appearing imminent, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council reportedly warned residents in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Lugansk to evacuate the area as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, in an exceedingly disturbing development flagged by The Interpreter Magazine, the Russian scientist and political commentator Andrey Piontkovsky, writing for Kasparov.ru, warned that Putin may intend to shatter NATO through provocation and believes he can use nuclear weapons with impunity in order to achieve that end.

Piontkovsky warned that Putin’s aim is “the maximum extension of the Russian World, the destruction of NATO, and the discrediting and humiliation of the US as the guarantor of the security of the West.”

To accomplish this, the Kremlin analyst wrote, the application of the Ukraine model to a NATO member state like Estonia – wherein native Russian speakers would declare independence from Tallinn – could force NATO to blink in response to what would likely be the ensuing invocation of the NATO treaty’s Article 5.

Even if NATO did respond militarily to Russian aggression, a display of maximum force from Moscow would likely force the Western powers to back down.

“Putin knows that they know that if they come to the assistance of Estonia, then Putin can respond with a very limited nuclear strike and destroy for example two European capitals,” Piontkovsky wrote. “Not London and not Paris, of course.”

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Tags: NATO, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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VIdeo:ShepSmithincredulousasStateDepartmentopens

VIdeo: Shep Smith incredulous as State Department opens briefing … by ignoring Ukraine plane crash

posted at 4:35 pm on July 17, 2014 by Allahpundit

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Via the Blaze, it’s appropriate for America’s diplomatic arm to be cautious in assigning blame, but this isn’t caution. It’s avoidance, and it’s inexplicable given that Psaki knows it’s the only topic anyone’s interested in. Whatever she has to say about Afghanistan can wait until tomorrow. What could State possibly be thinking?

One of Ace’s commenters thinks it’s a simple matter of the administration being paralyzed as their problems internationally get bigger. Obama doesn’t know what to do or say about Russian separatists shooting down a passenger jet, so he goes on his burger run and gives a 60-second perfunctory statement. If he’s calm and treats it like no big deal, maybe everyone else will treat it like less of a big deal too. Psaki might be making the same move. If the White House isn’t treating this like a crisis, it’s unfair to expect them to do much about it, right? There’s something to that, but I think you’re also seeing in O’s and Psaki’s responses how invested the White House is in pushing its daily “message” to the media, no matter what else is going on in the world. Psaki’s job today was to spin Afghanistan and, darn it, she was going to spin it, no matter how many bodies are scattered across eastern Ukraine. Obama did the same thing in his Delaware speech earlier this afternoon, segueing easily from the crash to babbling about infrastructure spending. They’re in control of the narrative, not the media — or at least they want to be. In reality, Shep and Jennifer Griffin are laughing at them and going back to covering the crash. Baffling, but this is where we are with two and a half years to go.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Europe, Jen Psaki, jet, malaysian, NATO, putin, Russia, shep smith, State Department

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IsMoscow“secretlyworkingwithenvironmentaliststooppose

Is Moscow “secretly working with environmentalists to oppose fracking” in Europe?

posted at 1:21 pm on June 23, 2014 by Erika Johnsen

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That’s what the chief of NATO suggested at a conference last week, and frankly, I wouldn’t put it past the Kremlin. Via the Guardian:

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), and former premier of Denmark, told the Chatham House thinktank in London on Thursday that Vladimir Putin’s government was behind attempts to discredit fracking, according to reports.

Rasmussen said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”

He declined to give details of those operations, saying: “That is my interpretation.” …

A Nato official told the Guardian that Russia’s influence on energy supplies was causing problems for Europe. The official said: “We don’t go into the details of discussions among allied leaders, but Russia has been using a mix of hard and soft power in its attempt to recreate a sphere of influence, including through a campaign of disinformation on many issues, including energy. …”

I doubt many of these groups of usefully idiotic eco-crusaders really need any outside prodding to fuel their campaign to thwart Europe’s exploration and fracking of its own potential shale deposits (and, incidentally, Europe’s best practical hope for cleaner-burning emissions at the moment as well as economic growth, good grief), but Russia most definitely does not want that fracking to happen. Russia’s revenue and economy are largely dependent on energy exports, and because Putin’s government wants to keep the Europeans dependent on their gas shipments, Russian officials have been publicly critical of fracking — even as they themselves try to entice Western companies to share their fracking know-how to further unlock more of Russia’s reserves. As Keith Johnson at Foreign Policy notes, you expect the usual environmentalist opposition in places like Britain and Germany, but in other areas in Europe, the sudden rise of outright opposition is  a little more oddly conspicuous:

“It’s very concrete; it relates to both opposition to shale and also trying to block any alternative pipelines with environmental challenges,” said Brenda Shaffer, an energy expert at Georgetown University.

“There is a lot of evidence here; countries like Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine being at the vanguard of the environmental movement is enough for it to be conspicuous,” she said.

Bulgaria’s anti-shale movement is particularly telling. The country initially embraced fracking as a way to develop its own energy resources and reduce reliance on Russia, even signing an exploration deal with Chevron in 2011. But then came an eruption of seemingly grassroots environmental protests and a televised blitz against fracking. In early 2012, the government reversed course and banned the practice.

Researchers who’ve worked on the ground in Central and Eastern Europe say there is plenty of anecdotal evidence, if no smoking guns, of Russian financial support for some environmental groups that have recently mobilized opposition to shale gas development.

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Tags: environmentalism, Europe, fracking, NATO, natural gas, Russia

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FivedeadinUkraineclashesasObamawarns

Five dead in Ukraine clashes as Obama warns on sanctions

posted at 8:01 am on April 24, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Clashes intensified yesterday as Ukraine’s interim government began to assert itself with so-called “pro-Russian separatists” in its eastern provinces. Yesterday, Ukraine claimed that it had received support from the US to act, and attempted to dismantle roadblocks in Slavyansk. Five people died in the violence that followed, and all sides are accusing the others of responsibility:

Ukraine’s military launched assaults to retake rebel-held eastern towns on Thursday in which up to five people were reported killed, a move Russian President Vladimir Putin warned would have “consequences”. …

In Slavyansk, a flashpoint east Ukrainian town held by rebels since mid-April, armoured military vehicles drove past an abandoned roadblock in flames to take up position, AFP reporters saw.

Shots were heard as a helicopter flew overhead, and the pro-Kremlin rebels ordered all civilians out of the town hall to take up defensive positions inside.

“During the clashes, up to five terrorists were eliminated,” and three checkpoints destroyed, the interior ministry said in a statement. Regional medical authorities confirmed one death and one person wounded.

Earlier Thursday, Ukrainian special forces seized back control of the town hall in the southeastern port city of Mariupol with no casualties, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said. Separatist sources confirmed the loss of the building in the port city, whose population is 500,000.

That may prompt a response from Russia. Yesterday, Sergei Lavrov warned that Ukraine could expect the same treatment Georgia got in 2008 if it attacked ethnic Russians, a threat that the interim government in Kyiv certainly has had in mind since coming to power. Later, he made the threat even more explicit:

Lavrov didn’t say on Wednesday that any military intervention was imminent, but he didn’t rule it out, either.

“Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” he said.

The US didn’t remain silent, either. Earlier today, from his tour of Asia, Barack Obama warned Russia that more sanctions will be coming. However, coming in nearly the same breath as his claim of victory on Syrian chemical weapons, it might be a little difficult for Vladimir Putin to take it too seriously:

If the sanctions talk doesn’t phase Putin, then another Obama move may. State-owned propaganda channel RT took a good, long look at the arrival of American troops in Poland in the last 24 hours — with more coming to the Baltic states that border Russia:

The first American troops arrived in Poland on Wednesday, after Washington said it was sending a force of 600 there and to the Baltic states amid rising tensions with Russia over Ukraine.

Some 130 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade — nicknamed “Sky Soldiers” — touched down early afternoon in Swidwin, in the northwest of the country, and were welcomed by Poland’s defence minister.

“Every day we work on the defence of our country but in a world that is changing, and that is full of threats, we need strong and steadfast allies such as the United States and NATO,” Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said under a cloudy sky.

The troops, who are usually based in Vicenza, Italy, arrived at the base on two Hercules transport planes.

A further 450 US troops will be deployed in the next few days in the ex-Soviet Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, following Washington’s announcement Tuesday that it would increase its presence in the region to reassure its NATO “allies and partners”.

NATO apparently needs plenty of reassurance:

Today’s NATO, hollowed out by years of European military cuts and deployed mostly to help fight far-off battles in places like Afghanistan and Libya, is no longer as prepared to counter a newly assertive Kremlin, its own leaders acknowledge.

Western European members of NATO may regard the conflict over Ukraine as remote, an annoying threat to their business ties to Moscow, said Artis Pabriks, who was Latvia’s defense minister until he stepped down in late January. “But for us, it’s not about money, it’s existential,” he said. “You guys may remain with your freedoms, but we may not, so it’s different.”

NATO itself is awakening to the altered circumstances. Ukraine, said Maj. Gen. Andrew M. Mueller, who commands NATO’s fleet of 17 surveillance planes, “made us re-emphasize the mission we were built for.”

“We’re augmenting NATO defenses inside NATO,” he added. “We’d gotten away from that a bit with Afghanistan and Libya.”

But it will take more than a change of emphasis to re-energize a military alliance that has badly eroded since 1989. The United States is responsible for 75 percent of NATO military spending, and only a handful of European countries meet the alliance’s target of having military budgets of 2 percent of gross domestic product.

Putin has made NATO relevant again, a development he may end up regretting. The costs of this adventure are escalating for Putin, even if only incrementally. The question will be whether he takes the West seriously enough to stop before he sends troops over the Ukrainian border, or possibly that he takes the West so seriously that he feels he has no other choice but to grab eastern Ukraine.

Tags: Barack Obama, NATO, Poland, Russia, Sergei Lavrov, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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U.S.toannouncegroundtroopstoPoland,says…

U.S. to announce ground troops to Poland, says… Polish defense minister

posted at 7:05 pm on April 18, 2014 by Mary Katharine Ham

Leading from behind on its own troop movements, now, the Polish prime minister seemed to get ahead of the Obama administration on news of U.S. troop deployments to Poland as a response to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak told the Washington Post after a meeting with Sec. Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon:

Poland and the United States will announce next week the deployment of U.S. ground forces to Poland as part of an expansion of NATO presence in Central and Eastern Europe in response to events in Ukraine. That was the word from Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, who visited The Post Friday after meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday.

Siemoniak said the decision has been made on a political level and that military planners are working out details. There will also be intensified cooperation in air defense, special forces, cyberdefense and other areas. Poland will play a leading regional role, “under U.S. patronage,” he said.

But the defense minister also said that any immediate NATO response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, while important, matter less than a long-term shift in the defense postures of Europe and America. The United States, having announced a “pivot” to Asia, needs to “re-pivot” to Europe, he said, and European countries that have cut back on defense spending need to reverse the trends.

He seemed to go farther than Hagel went earlier today:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday the door is open to larger U.S. military rotations through Poland, including ground troops, as the international standoff persists over Russian incursions into Ukraine.

Hagel briefed reporters at the Pentagon after a meeting with Polish Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, who came to Washington in search of more American soldiers, warplanes and support troops to help bolster security in a country nervously eyeing Russia’s expansionist behavior.

That seems odd, right? Either way, glad to see some seriousness about the situation and solidarity with Poland.

“We have to be alert to all possibilities,” he said. “The actions of the Russians over the last two months are not only irresponsible, with violating the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation, they’re dangerously irresponsible … [NATO’s role is to] think through, what are the possibilities, what could happen, so yes, based on past actions, we have to look at every possibility.”

Hagel said the U.S. has protested an encounter last weekend in which a Russian Su-24 Fencer attack jet buzzed the destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Black Sea. Previously, defense officials had said they’d had no contact with the Russians about it, but Hagel said commanders have made their displeasure quite clear.

“We didn’t tell ‘em we were happy,” he said.

Hey, maybe we should have stuck with missile defense in Eastern Europe when Obama came into office. Rep. Mike Pence suggested in a speech Thursday we should ramp back up:

“And, with continued instability in the Middle East, Iran’s ongoing effort to develop long-range missiles and nuclear technology, and Putin’s annexation of Crimea and aggression in Ukraine, I believe we must take immediate steps to deploy a robust missile defense in Europe – especially Poland and the Czech Republic – to protect the interests of our NATO allies and the United States in the region.”

The Free Beacon has video of that speech:

Tags: Chuck Hagel, NATO, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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SplitbetweenWhiteHouseandNATOcommanderon

Split between White House and NATO commander on Ukraine?

posted at 12:41 pm on April 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Last month, four-star Air Force General Philip Breedlove arrived in Washington to brief Congress on Russia’s mobilization on its border with Ukraine and the options available for the US and NATO — the latter of which Breedlove leads as Supreme Allied Commander. Breedlove, who is also the head of European Command for the Pentagon, got sent back early in order to consult with allies. However, a new exclusive from Eli Lake suggests his abrupt return to Europe may have been driven by a split with the White House over aid to Ukraine:

During classified briefings on March 26 and March 27, Gen. Philip Breedlove painted for members of the House Armed Services Committee a bleak picture of Russia’s actions—and warned that the United States was not taking steps it could to help Ukraine better defend itself. On several points—from estimates of Moscow’s troops to intelligence-sharing with Russia’s likely adversaries—Breedlove’s briefing directly contradicted the message coming from other branches of the Obama administration.

Breedlove, a four star Air Force general, was careful not to tell members of Congress anything that directly undermined the authority of the Commander-in-Chief during his March briefings. But lawmakers and Congressional staff members who attended these sessions say it was clear that Breedlove felt he was stifled to respond adequately to the crisis in Ukraine.

The quiet protests from one of Obama’s most important generals at the moment reveal an important policy rift inside the administration. While President Obama, the joint chiefs of staff and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have hesitated to provide too much assistance to the interim government in Ukraine, Breedlove has wanted to do more.

In a statement for The Daily Beast, Breedlove acknowledged that he met with members of both parties in Congress in the last week in March. “I provided my estimation of Russian capabilities and that estimation was well-received by the Members. As these sessions were classified, I can only get into generalities.” Breedlove added that he discussed a number of issues including the U.S. consideration of non-lethal aid to Ukraine. “I was clear that our efforts were aimed at reassuring our NATO Allies and European partners of our commitment and resolve,” he said.

Members of Congress, Congressional staff and U.S. defense officials say Breedlove has wanted to brief Ukraine’s military on the detailed intelligence U.S. spy agencies had gathered on Russia’s troop movements and analysis of Russian war plans.

This puts quite a different spin on the earlier news about satellite photos released by NATO. Breedlove was the one who released them, and made it clear why on his Twitter feed:

Russian forces around Ukraine fully equipped/capable to invade. Public denial undermines progress. Images tell story http://t.co/vQ0z2OM5I4

— Phil Breedlove (@PMBreedlove) April 10, 2014

Here is a report on Breedlove’s return from two weeks ago:

Breedlove’s abrupt departure looks like it was motivated by other interests than just getting a closer look at the Russian threat. It prevented his scheduled testimony last week to the House Armed Services Committee about the specifics of that threat, and Breedlove’s input on how best to respond to it. Mike Rogers, who chairs the committee, has a bill that would authorize specific areas of intelligence sharing with the interim Ukraine government, at which the White House has balked so far. Rogers told Eli Lake that the bill intended to respond to Breedlove’s recommendations, but that legislation is really too slow — and that the White House should be taking Breedlove’s advice directly.

Until now, Breedlove appears to have carefully picked his modes of dissent from the administration’s Ukraine strategy. Ironically, today is the 63rd anniversary of the firing of Douglas MacArthur for his attempt to publicly take control over war policy from Harry Truman, which was deeply unpopular at the time but served as a strong precedent for civilian control over the American military. The President has control of foreign policy, including military and intelligence strategy, and for good reasons — even when we don’t necessarily agree with the previous election’s results or the policies. If this is truly a split that’s going public, then both Breedlove and the White House will face some difficult choices, and soon.

Update: Someone’s a fan of this story …

Yet another must-read from @EliLake: "Key General Splits With Obama Over #Ukraine" http://t.co/aNvaRqz5Ky

— John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) April 11, 2014

Tags: Barack Obama, Mike Rogers, NATO, Philip Breedlove, Russia, Ukraine, White House

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NATO:SatellitephotosshowRussiamobilizingonUkraine

NATO: Satellite photos show Russia mobilizing on Ukraine border

posted at 10:01 am on April 11, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday, NATO released commercial-satellite images to confirm what they had long claimed and what Russia has repeatedly denied — that Moscow has mobilized tens of thousands of troops on the border with Ukraine. Russia has insisted that they do not plan to invade eastern Ukraine and that the troop movements are part of normal exercises. NATO published the photos to rebut that explanation:

NATO released satellite photographs on Thursday showing Russian military equipment, including fighter jets and tanks, that it described as part of a deployment of as many as 40,000 troops near the border with Ukraine. The release came the same day that President Vladimir V. Putin reiterated a threat to curtail gas sales to Ukraine.

The photographs, taken by a commercial satellite imaging company called DigitalGlobe, offered some of the first documentary evidence of a military buildup that the West says Russia could use to invade Ukraine at any moment. They were released at a news conference in Belgium by Brig. Gary Deakin, the director of NATO’s Comprehensive Crisis and Operations Management Center.

The Kremlin has accused the West of exaggerating Russia’s military presence along the Ukrainian border and has insisted that it has no plans for a second military incursion after its lightning-quick occupation andannexation of Crimea. Still, Russia has warned that it may take military action to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine if they are threatened. …

At the news conference on Thursday, Brigadier Deakin said the photographs showed a menacing force.

“The Russians have an array of capabilities, including aircraft, helicopters, special forces, tanks, artillery, infantry fighting vehicles,” Brigadier Deakin said, according to a NATO news release. “These could move in a matter of hours.”

Sergei Lavrov had earlier warned NATO not to move its forces into proximity of Russian borders, which the Russian foreign minister claimed would violate the NATO-Russian accords on Western troop movements. He accused the West of being “Russophobic”:

NATO placing military forces near Russian borders will be in violation of NATO’s international obligations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Interfax. ”The fact that NATO members [East European NATO members] are now being forced, most likely under pressure, to place troops near Russia, is a violation of the basic act of Vienna declaration principles,” Lavrov said.

Russophobic moods start prevailing in NATO over aspiration to ensure security of Euro-Atlantic region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Interfax.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov believes Eastern European countries are provoking anti-Russian tendencies in NATO. ”It looks like panic, which some Eastern European countries, which did not stop talking about imagined threats from Russia after entering NATO, are trying to artificially fan,” Lavrov told Interfax on Thursday, commenting on the statements made by NATO military officials calling for the reinforcement of military forces in Europe due to “the Russian threat.”

The minister said NATO officials once convinced Russia that the Eastern European countries would “calm down” about the imagined threats from Moscow after they entered NATO.

“However, they have not calmed down, they have begun doing everything – by the way, with evident encouragement from Washington – to not just calm down in NATO, but conduct the music in NATO and use the rules of solidarity and consensus accepted in NATO and the EU to minimize cooperation between NATO and Russia.

“It’s sad,” Lavrov said.

However, Lavrov signaled that Moscow may have had enough of this fight. All Russia wants, Lavrov wants, is a guarantee of Ukrainian neutrality and an end to NATO efforts to woo Kyiv into the alliance:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Friday for legal guarantees of Ukraine’s neutrality, underlining Moscow’s determination to keep the neighboring former Soviet republic out of NATO.

Lavrov said Moscow was ready for four-party talks next week with the United States, the European Union and representatives of Ukraine and suggested Ukraine’s gas debt to Moscow should be on the agenda, Russia news agencies reported.

But he suggested Moscow would try to use such talks to shape Ukraine’s future and keep it from moving too close to Europe and the United States under the pro-Western leadership in power following the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovich.

“Firm guarantees of the preservation of Ukraine’s non-aligned status law, are needed,” Lavrov said at a meeting with Russian non-governmental organizations, adding that the guarantees should be “enshrined in law”.

That may disappoint pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk, who seized government buildings in hopes of a Russian intervention:

It might disappoint pro-Russian separatists in Transnistria in Moldova, too:

The new government in Kyiv also signaled a willingness to talk about an expanded view of federalism for the provinces in the east:

Ukraine’s prime minister on Friday told leaders in the country’s restive east that he is committed to allowing regions to have more powers, but left it unclear how his ideas differed from the demands of protesters now occupying government buildings or Russia’s advocacy of federalization.

The officials whom Arseniy Yatsenyuk met in Donetsk did not include representatives of the protesters. The officials asked Yatsenyuk to allow referenda on autonomy for their regions, not on secession.

“There are no separatists among us,” said Gennady Kernes, mayor of the Kharkiv region where protesters had occupied a government building earlier in the week.

If all sides are willing to compromise, there is room for an exit strategy from the crisis. Russia will drive a hard bargain in these talks to be sure, with its threats to cut off natural-gas supplies from Ukraine and a demand to have them pay what Moscow says is an overdue bill for gas already delivered. But Russia may be seeing — finally — that an aggressive move on eastern Ukraine will carry unpleasant security consequences for them in the Baltics and perhaps in the Black Sea, too. NATO will have to give up making Ukraine part of a Western defense network (and Georgia as well, in all likelihood), but that was unrealistic anyway as long as Russia’s economy allows them weight in this region.

However, even with a relatively cost-free resolution in the offing, the scales should have fallen now from Western eyes about the nature of Vladimir Putin and his ambitions for a new Russian empire. It should be a long, long time before anyone offers Lavrov or Putin another “reset button.”

Tags: NATO, reset button, Russia, Sergei Lavrov, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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RussiatoNATO:Hey,explainyourmovesin

Russia to NATO: Hey, explain your moves in eastern Europe

posted at 8:41 am on April 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Let’s see if we can guess who’s who in this New Cold War scenario. Troops and materiel have been shifted around on one side, and the other side demands an explanation of what intent lies behind those moves. This refers to the massive buildup on the Russia-Ukraine border, right, with NATO demanding the answers? Er … not exactly. In this case, it’s more like the classic line, “Mom — he hit me back!”

Russia says it wants answers from NATO regarding activities in eastern Europe, after the Western military alliance said it would step up defenses for its eastern members.

Russia’s move to annex the Crimea region from Ukraine last month has sparked the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War, and raised fears among its eastern European neighbors. …

“We have posed these questions to the North Atlantic Alliance. We are expecting not just any answer but an answer fully respectful of the rules we have coordinated,” Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov told a joint news briefing with his Kazakh counterpart on Thursday.

Responding to criticism from Kiev and the West over the presence of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine, Lavrov said Russia had the right to move forces on its territory and said they would return to their permanent bases after completing military exercises.

“Russian troops in the Rostov region will return to their bases after completing military exercises,” Lavrov said, referring to an area near the Ukrainian border.

Well, then, the response practically writes itself. NATO’s units will end their “exercises” when Russia’s do the same. It’s a little late to complain about NATO’s lack of respect for “rules we have coordinated” when Russian forces just dismembered Crimea from Ukraine and threaten to partition it further. Lavrov gives a pretty good demonstration of diplomatic chutzpah in this demand.

Just the same, there are indications that NATO’s message may finally have gotten through to Moscow. Pro-Russian demonstrations of the kind Moscow used to justify its action in Crimea are dissipating in the key Donetsk region:

The new billionaire governor of the Donetsk region has no intention of allowing Moscow to carry out another Crimean-style annexation here in coal-mining, steel-making eastern Ukraine, which lies temptingly along the Russian border.

Serhiy Taruta, a steel magnate appointed just a month ago by the Kiev government, intends to hold this Russian-speaking ground for Ukraine by keeping order and improving people’s lives in the poverty-strapped steppe.

Donetsk was roiling with fear and violence as he took over. Russian television propaganda persuaded many here that fascists from western Ukraine were on the way to rampage through the east. Suddenly protesters in the city of Donetsk were shouting under the Lenin statue for a referendum that would allow them to join Russia. On March 13, a pro-Russian crowd set upon pro-Ukrainians. A 22-year-old pro-Ukrainian was knifed. He died on the way to the hospital. …

The annexation of Crimea, however, stirred latent pro-Ukrainian sentiment. Public officials began speaking out against the rumors. Last weekend was quiet. Now the guards at Taruta’s government office are down to a handful of riot police, with only a few strands of barbed wire strung near the front door.

Taruta has a message for the West, too:

With perhaps 40,000 Russian troops massed on the nearby border and making him uneasy, he had a special message for Washington, which in 1994 persuaded Ukraine to relinquish its nuclear weapons in exchange for a promise to protect its territorial integrity. “There have been guarantees,” he said, “and they need to be carried out.”

He’s not the only Russian-speaking Ukrainian seeking a restoration of the nation’s territorial integrity. Crimea must be returned, demanded … Viktor Yanukovich?

Former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted after asking Russian troops into Crimea, admits that his decision was wrong, calling Moscow’s annexation of the Black Sea peninsula “a major tragedy.”

In an interview with The Associated Press and Russian channel NTV, he said he made a mistake when he asked Russia to intervene, a move many Ukrainians view as treason.

“I was wrong,” he said through a translator. “I acted on my emotions.”

Yanukovych, who is currently residing in Russia, said he hoped to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to return Crimea.

“We must set such a task and search for ways to return to Crimea on any conditions, so that Crimea may have the maximum degree of independence possible… but be part of Ukraine,” he said.

Don’t expect Ukrainians to be too impressed by this admission of presidential immaturity. Security officials in the new government in Ukraine accused Yanukovich of ordering the murders of Euromaidan protesters. Kissing up to Kyiv now won’t improve his standing in Ukraine, nor will undermining the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s Crimea annexation make him more popular in Moscow. If Yanukovich keeps “act[ing] on my emotions,” he may need to find a new place for asylum.

Tags: Crimea, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, Vladimir Putin

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NATOsuspendscooperationwithRussiaoverUkrainethreat

NATO suspends cooperation with Russia over Ukraine threat

posted at 8:01 am on April 2, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Russia has insisted that it has no designs on eastern Ukraine, and that its troops massing on the border are for Russian security only and would be recalled. They’re still poised on the border, however, and NATO has finally taken its first steps to recognize the new paradigm in eastern Europe. Yesterday, the alliance suspended all of its outreach programs to Russia, military and civilian, warning Moscow that its aggression meant an end to “business as usual”:

NATO suspended all practical cooperation with Russia on Tuesday in protest at its annexation of Crimea, and ordered military planners to draft measures to strengthen its defenses and reassure nervous Eastern European countries.

Foreign ministers from the 28-nation, U.S.-led alliance were meeting for the first time since the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea region touched off the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia’s actions meant there could be no “business as usual”.

“So today, we are suspending all practical cooperation with Russia, military and civilian,” he told a news conference.

Instead, NATO has now begun to look at measures to strengthen its eastern frontiers. That would put the focus on the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary, and perhaps even Bulgaria as a Black Sea defense. Finland might eventually be another point of concern, although it doesn’t belong to NATO. At least, Finland isn’t a member state yet, but Russia is giving them reason to think about it:

Russian military drills near neighboring Finland have provoked concern that northern Europe may be the next focus of Moscow’s seemingly renewed appetite for redrawing its borders.

Troops and jet fighters from all four military regions of Russia were deployed Sunday about 150 miles east of the Finnish border, according to the English-language newspaper Finnbay. The Russian defense ministry said in a statement that the exercises were pre-planned and that more than 50 fighter pilots took part.

Finland was part of the Russian empire for 108 years, from 1809 until Russia’s withdrawal from World War I in 1917. The Karelia region, where the war games are taking place, straddles the Finnish border and has historically been a heavily militarized zone for Moscow.

But experts say that while Moscow appears to have seized another opportunity to flex its muscles, the threat of an armed invasion is very low.

Tell that to the Finns, who are less sanguine about their national security these days. If Putin is out to reconstruct the Russian empire, then Finland has to feel at least a little nervous — and these military drills seem designed to send a message. That would be the same message that Putin sent with military drills just before seizing Crimea from Ukraine.

The West finally seems to be waking up to the threat from Putin. They may still be able to harden their eastern frontier, but they’d better be prepared to harden their resolve on economic sanctions first. Moving tanks, planes, and troops is relatively simple, but getting natural gas and energy isn’t — unless Europe starts producing more of its own. This new Cold War may get very literal next winter.

Tags: Crimea, Finland, NATO, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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Quotes of the day

Quotesoftheday postedat10:41

USintel:PutinmoveoneasternUkrainelikely

US intel: Putin move on eastern Ukraine likely

posted at 8:01 am on March 27, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Well, why not? The only reaction to Vladimir Putin’s seizure of Crimea was a series of personal hand slaps and being called a relic of the 20th century, which isn’t exactly a stinging rebuke. American intelligence has finally come to the conclusion that massing troops and armor on a border actually is a pretty good sign that both will be used, and soon:

A new classified intelligence assessment concludes it is more likely than previously thought that Russian forces will enter eastern Ukraine, CNN has learned.

Two administration officials described the assessment but declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information.

The officials emphasized that nothing is certain, but there have been several worrying signs in the past three to four days.

“This has shifted our thinking that the likelihood of a further Russian incursion is more probable than it was previously thought to be,” one official said.

The buildup is seen to be reminiscent of Moscow’s military moves before it went into Chechnya and Georgia in both numbers of units and their capabilities.

Technically, Russia still belongs to the G-8 for now, although Moscow isn’t getting to host this year’s summit and won’t be invited to attend it. Much of that reaction is in anticipation of the move into eastern Ukraine anyway. It’s possible that the West will react with much more strength in terms of sanctions and diplomatic isolation in the wake of a full-fledged invasion, but nothing in the painfully slow and incremental response to Crimea gives Putin to worry much about it.

Speaking of painfully slow and not even incremental, European countries aren’t exactly taking the threat of Russian aggression seriously — even now. The EU member states still plan on cutting defense spending as part of their effort to deal with debt crises on the continent:

Military spending across Europe fell dramatically after the Cold War, then ramped up for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the five years since the global financial crisis, it has been cut sharply again — even as Russia’s defense spending has surged by more than 30 percent.

More European cuts are on the way, even as leaders hurl a daily dose of tough rhetoric toward Moscow,

That has frustrated Washington policymakers, who have long agitated for Europe to pay its fair share for security on a continent that, until last month, had looked remarkably tranquil but now faces its biggest crisis since the Cold War.

Speaking in Brussels, Obama chided fellow NATO members for not contributing to the collective defense.

“The situation in Ukraine reminds us that our freedom isn’t free, and we’ve got to be willing to pay for the assets, the personnel, the training to make sure we have a credible NATO force and an effective deterrent force,” Obama said in a news conference at the Council of the European Union.

Only a handful of countries other than the United States met NATO’s target last year of spending at least two percent of gross domestic product on defense. Even stalwart members of the alliance have sharply reduced spending in the past five years, with Germany down by four percent, Britain off by nine and Italy slashing nearly a quarter of its defense budget, according to figures compiled by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Diminished military spending in Europe has contributed to a deep unease among some of the continent’s smallest and weakest nations, which happen to be on the front lines should Russia decide that it’s not content to add Crimea, and wants to go for more.

Conservatives here in the US have heaped plenty of blame on Barack Obama for his lack of leadership and foreign-policy naïveté, much of it deserved. However, it’s difficult to lead a group that seems so determined not to wake up at all. Obama gave a good speech this week in Europe attempted to sound the alarm and to get NATO nations to take its defense posture seriously, but clearly little else than Russian tanks driving into Poland or maybe the Baltics will rouse Europe from its stupor.

At some point, the nations in eastern Europe will start asking themselves whether the Western alliance is worth the effort, and start looking for the best deal they can with Vladimir Putin and Moscow. That’s how international power politics work, whether the US and western Europe wants to admit it or not. Talking about how weak Putin is won’t stop him from overrunning Ukraine, possibly rolling all the way up to Moldova and Transdniester.

Tags: Barack Obama, Crimea, Europe, Moldova, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

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