Originally Posted by Millennium3:
Richard North recommended this from the Wall Street Journal - I think he is probably right - along with the other isolating actions which are already being taken.

Free Trade Can Fight Terror - WSJ.com

I agree with free trade and I do think it can help to lessen the causes of terrorism, but I thought that you were opposed to free trade? :-)

Moreover, the argument in that article is particularly about stimulating investment and growth so that disaffected young people (of whom there are many in the rapidly-expanding populations of the Muslim world) have better prospects and do not fall prey to extremism. But that is not the issue with Russia at all, which has a declining population and which itself is holding back free trade (witness its appalling treatment of companies like BP).
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Forget the Finlandisation of Eastern Europe, this one is proposing the Finlandisation of Britain too:

Originally Posted by Gregory Lauder-Frost:
We are now too small a country to be tagging along with the USA trying to play big world power. We simply are not. Moreover, we are a small island and a first class target for any well-armed country. Where once they would have had to wipe out an entire Empire to eliminate Great Britain now they only have a small island to deal with. It would be too easy and people need to sit back and say: now is the time to become 100% neutral.

See: Finlandization
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Originally Posted by Unionist:
I agree with free trade and I do think it can help to lessen the causes of terrorism, but I thought that you were opposed to free trade? :-)

Moreover, the argument in that article is particularly about stimulating investment and growth so that disaffected young people (of whom there are many in the rapidly-expanding populations of the Muslim world) have better prospects and do not fall prey to extremism. But that is not the issue with Russia at all, which has a declining population and which itself is holding back free trade (witness its appalling treatment of companies like BP).

By stimulating trade which takes Russian goods to the US they will be less inclined to break ties.

I am not in favour of unrestricted trade generally, but the US will continue whatever.

My main interest is UK trade - if UKIP or another eurosceptic party did get their hands on the machinery of government. Although that is now looking so unlikely that we may as well start learning to become model citizens!
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Russia has decidedly influenced eastern Europe for centuries. All was peace and quiet in eastern Europe under the three great Empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. The West's great "moral authority" in supporting the Serbs in their dispute with Austria brought catastrophe to the Twentieth Century. We don't want that repeated this century.

The time has come to step back from eastern Europe. Forget about your "moral authority" which is just a nonsense. Eastern Europe, or Georgia, is none of our business. May the best man win.
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Let's leave Iraq out of this entirely. The "end" of the previous Gulf encounter was a conditional ceasefire, not peace - therefore, since Iraq was not keeping to the conditions, the resumption of hostilities and the subsequent "invasion" of Iraq was perfectly legitimate.

What's more relevant to the current event is the NATO bombardment of Serbia. Strange how the US wasn't too worried about sovereignty back then. Of course, the people the US sided with back then were shouting "ethnic cleansing" in much the same way that the idiot running Georgia is doing now. And it's as much BS now as it was then. I'd love to know what's really going on in this power-play.

The "invasion" of Georgia? With modern artillery managing 50 miles easily, the only way to stop someone from using it against your civilians is to go into the aggressor country and dismantle it. Which is exactly what Russia has done.

As for the "threat" to Poland, well it's not really a threat is it? It's someone stating the obvious.
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Originally Posted by John Connor:
Let's leave Iraq out of this entirely. The "end" of the previous Gulf encounter was a conditional ceasefire, not peace - therefore, since Iraq was not keeping to the conditions, the resumption of hostilities and the subsequent "invasion" of Iraq was perfectly legitimate.

What's more relevant to the current event is the NATO bombardment of Serbia. Strange how the US wasn't too worried about sovereignty back then. Of course, the people the US sided with back then were shouting "ethnic cleansing" in much the same way that the idiot running Georgia is doing now. And it's as much BS now as it was then. I'd love to know what's really going on in this power-play.

The "invasion" of Georgia? With modern artillery managing 50 miles easily, the only way to stop someone from using it against your civilians is to go into the aggressor country and dismantle it. Which is exactly what Russia has done.

As for the "threat" to Poland, well it's not really a threat is it? It's someone stating the obvious.

I do believe that the invasion of Iraq was contrived, so it did change the rules also the US did take their eye off the ball with Georgia - they could have made the Russia's action much more difficult if they were not focussed elsewhere. However, I fully agree that we casual observers have little or no idea as to what is really happening!
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Originally Posted by Millennium3:
I do believe that the invasion of Iraq was contrived

I agree that it was contrived. Just not illegal. :-)
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Originally Posted by John Connor:
I agree that it was contrived. Just not illegal. :-)

A legal contrivance - with a lot of dead bodies.
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Back to the topic of Russia's threats/pressure against its neighbours, there is an excellent piece in the Weekly Standard by Fred Kagan:

Originally Posted by :
Thus we see Putin's playbook for the restoration of the Russian Empire. Every former Soviet Republic has a significant population of Russians--in some states more than half the population is ethnically Russian. Moscow has now asserted that it can use military force to defend not only the lives but the "dignity" of those "citizens." It has asserted that Russian Federation law applies not only to those citizens, but to the non-Russian leaders in whose countries they live. And it has asserted that it can use military force preemptively on foreign soil if it sees a threat to its forces or to its "citizens." If these assertions are allowed to stand, the independence of the former Soviet republics is effectively at an end.

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Nearly 20% of the population of Latvia, and a similar percentage in Estonia, do not have full citizenship rights. They, or their forebears, arrived as a result of the wholly illegal Molatov-Ribbentrop Pact and are seen as illegal invaders. In Latvia, where I was part of the 2006 election mission, the issue was high on the agenda as these people do not have a vote. The Russians in Lithuania are equal citizens.

To become a full citizen a Russian in Latvia, born and living there since the 1940 invasion, has to take a Latvian language exam (many never bothered to learn Latvian during the Soviet Era), pass a history test and sign a declaration that the 1940 annexation was unlawful. Many refuse and lose civic rights.

Russia might see this as affecting the dignity of these people, who look to Russia for protection, and might intervene on any pretext.

Latvia and Estonia are full members of NATO and the EU. An invasion of either means we enter a state of war with Russia.
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