Ukraine - Putin is Playing Chess, Obama is playing Marbles

[WuDrWu]

Dennis Miller's take on checkers vs chess.

[DUShock]

Putin knows that the US will not go to war over the Ukraine any more than Russia would go to war with the US over the annexation of Mexico. The question to ask is "Would you wager your child's life on the Ukraine?", my answer is no.

[shocka khan]

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but one of the biggest factors in Europe's non-reaction to Putin is that they get most of their natural gas from Russia. Not only that, IIRC, Russia is Germany's biggest trading partner.

Europe's economy is still suffering after some of their disastrous decisions following the Great Recession. As much as I believe in fiscal restraint and balanced budgets, you don't run budget surpluses when your economy is tanking (which is why they had a double-dip recession). They don't have the stomach for more stringent sanctions against Putin.

As for a steady, reliable supply of natural gas for western Europe, we (the Americans) are working on it. There are plans to compress natural gas, load it into ships and take it to selected ports in western Europe. Unfortunately, a tanker-load of LNG is a floating bomb. This whole plan needs to be thought out carefully.

Another possibility for Europe is Poland. Believe it or not, Poland is sitting on some fairly large deposits of natural gas. In fact their reserves (for both oil and natural gas) were large enough that they didn't suffer from the economic malaise that has descended on Europe. According to some colleagues of mine (from Wroclaw) there is a lot of exploration going on, lots of fracking. The biggest current problem they're facing is that there is no infrastructure (i.e. pipelines) to carry it west.

All that being said, I think whether you like Hillary or not, it is now pretty obvious that she was propping Obama up in the foreign affairs arena. Kerry is an incompetent pompous ass who shoots his mouth off a little too much. So glad that he lost, I would hate to see how bad he would've been as a president. Obama is acting like he's lost in the forest right now, and that's not only on this issue but also Syria and ISIL.

[MoValley John]

Haven't seen it mentioned here, but one of the biggest factors in Europe's non-reaction to Putin is that they get most of their natural gas from Russia. Not only that, IIRC, Russia is Germany's biggest trading partner.

Europe's economy is still suffering after some of their disastrous decisions following the Great Recession. As much as I believe in fiscal restraint and balanced budgets, you don't run budget surpluses when your economy is tanking (which is why they had a double-dip recession). They don't have the stomach for more stringent sanctions against Putin.

As for a steady, reliable supply of natural gas for western Europe, we (the Americans) are working on it. There are plans to compress natural gas, load it into ships and take it to selected ports in western Europe. Unfortunately, a tanker-load of LNG is a floating bomb. This whole plan needs to be thought out carefully.

Another possibility for Europe is Poland. Believe it or not, Poland is sitting on some fairly large deposits of natural gas. In fact their reserves (for both oil and natural gas) were large enough that they didn't suffer from the economic malaise that has descended on Europe. According to some colleagues of mine (from Wroclaw) there is a lot of exploration going on, lots of fracking. The biggest current problem they're facing is that there is no infrastructure (i.e. pipelines) to carry it west.

All that being said, I think whether you like Hillary or not, it is now pretty obvious that she was propping Obama up in the foreign affairs arena. Kerry is an incompetent pompous ass who shoots his mouth off a little too much. So glad that he lost, I would hate to see how bad he would've been as a president. Obama is acting like he's lost in the forest right now, and that's not only on this issue but also Syria and ISIL.

Not to send this thread into a whole different direction but not only does Russia export natural gas to Poland and everywhere else in Europe, they are the big money behind the global anti-fracking movement. They also supply talking points. I'm not convinced that fracking is totally safe, but Russia has really protected their market by going green. That is about the only time you will see Russia give a darn about the environment.