They rolled in tanks. They made refugees of that alleged 20%, and prisoners. They killed people, and wrecked things. They did all this with the oldest and least credible excuse in the book - "invitation", "helping". The exact same reason the US invaded Vietnam, Russia invade Afghanistan, any State invades another. Your libertarianism needs rehab. The "help" is an armed robbery of their neighbors, and seizure of the property at issue for the benefit of the "helpers". And it remains accurate. Putin has formed a new cadre of oligarchs, with himself as jefe, as with any mob boss who wins a power struggle. Well, you are wrong about that. Aside from the humor of seeing a self described "libertarian" with a mancrush sing the praises of a KGB thug who has won the latest mob battle and taken power for his syndicate, we have the circumstance that Russia is now governed by an oligarchy. http://www.britannica.com/topic/oligarchy . You do that a lot - personal slandering when you don't know the person. Tip: your odds of being correct are low. Zero, in this case, but low in any case.
This is what your believe, based on NATO propaganda sources. I have access to information from above sides, have looked at all this with a lot of personal interest too, because I have lived in the Ukraine some time ago. And I don't believe this. So, there is a disagreement between us about what are the facts on the ground. Given this disagreement, it is quite nonsensical to see some contradiction between my libertarian principles and what happens there. If I would believe what you believe, my libertarian principles would suggest me to react differently. But I don't. I could try to present you some evidence why I believe what I believe. But it is hopeless. Most sources are Russian or Novorussian sources, there is a lot of evidence which depends on identifying lies (quite simple during a war, with a lot of lies which survive only one/two days when it becomes obvious they are lies) mostly on the Ukrainian side, seeing a lot of videos of openly Nazi content from the Ukrainian science and complete silence about this, and a presentation as pro-Europan democrats in the Western media, down to personal trust based on a history what this person has said in the past. For example, trusting maps. There is a source, militarymaps.info, where information is collected without much control of its seriousness, with sources from above sides. It would be stupid to trust it, but it gives some expectation about where one can expect fighting and so on. The Novorussian maps were not the same, but sufficiently close to this to be plausible. The Ukrainian maps were completely off, simply not serious. Whenever I have seen a map in Western press, it was a copy of the Ukrainian maps. Not really. But, of course, I recognize that you will continue to believe what you believe. As usual without evidence, thus, cheap.
And based on what Putin and other such sources - such as yourself - say that Russia has done. There aren't any facts on the ground - according to you or anyone - that you can square with your previously declared libertarian principles. The very best argument you have, giving you all benefit of presumption, is that stepping on 20% of a population with tanks and State violence rather than have 80% live under oppression agrees with your espoused libertarian principles. It doesn't. One of my sources is you, of course. It's what you described Putin as doing. But not wrong.
Of course it doesn't - the monopoly of force of the state is never in agreement with libertarian principles. But if the action of one state prevents a civil war by giving protection to the 80% who had started an uprise against a putschist junta, I see no particular reason to object much. In this case, you have misunderstood me. The new power Putin has established is not based on oligarchs, but on the military/police/security sector. The economic policy is quite market-oriented, the question is if this will remain so, but it seems that Putin supports this pro-market direction in the power structure too. But pro-market is not necessarily what oligarchs would prefer, and the real politics is, at least sometimes, not what they want. For example, the main issue between Putin and Chodorkowski was the question of taxation of oil exports. Chodorkowski wanted to have all the oil income for himself, Putin has made it a large source of income for the state - by taxation as well as expropriation of Chodorkowski. Or the counter-sanctions - sanctions are, of course, something oligarchs like - it protect the own market form competition. But the sanctions have been on the agrar sector, which is, AFAIK, not really the domain where the oligarchs are strong, it gives much room for small and medium business. This choice was, clearly, also influenced by strategic questions - import independence in a domain where it is essential for survival in a period where increasing conflict has to be expected.
So Russia launched a military invasion into somebody else's country to prevent war from breaking out. That's a classic. The US should have used that one in Iraq. Sole and isolated dictator of a police state, then, not oligarch. My bad - I mistakenly thought he had friends and allies, people helping him rule.
First, "military invasion" is an exaggeration, the military already has been there, and it was asked by the legal authorities for support. And, different from Iraq, where no civil war danger existed before the invation and the civil was started by the invasion, the civil war - which has started in other parts of the Ukraine - was really prevented in Crimea. If you don't remember, a day before the speznas started to guard the parlament, there was a mass demonstration before this parlament, with a massive conflict between different sides, some injured and one AFAIR dead. This in the context of the Ukraine, where a few days ago hundreds have been killed in similar demonstrations. He has a lot of them. He has public support in the 90% range. And has even been elected in democratic elections. Not that I would care about this - he knows, as well as the 1% in the West, how to manage a democracy. But he has, really, much more friends than, say, Merkel. In Russia as well as around the world.
Who are his "friends"? I don't see many leaders stopping by to visit him unless those leaders want something like weapons. His support is contrived by a media that his "party" oversees that only what he wants to be seen about himself is projected into the civilians to brainwash them as to what he wants them to know. No media ever once said it might have been Russian troops who fired the missile that brought down the civilian aircraft by Russian missiles. Matter of fact the Russian news never even brought up the destruction of that plane that showed Russian troops were even anywhere near that plane.
So what? If all the guys at http://www.rferl.org/content/russia...n-organization-summit-brics-ufa/27120442.html want to buy Russian weapons, this is certainly good news for the Russian military sector.
So Russia is once again selling weapons as its chief export as we all know but can't manufacture anything else that the world needs. With an economy based solely upon weapons it won't be long before Russia once more goes bankrupt due to only one thing it can sell that others need. To me selling only weapons that other countries use to kill with isn't much to rely upon for one day those weapons might be used against Russia. Iran buys plenty of weapons and has stated over and over it wants to slaughter anyone who doesn't believe in Allah which Russia doesn't. In Chechnya they get weapons from Iran to fight Russia with so the same weapons that Russia sells to Iran many times end up in Chechnya killing Russians.
That's your claim. Of course, given that it is the only state able to resist a military blackmail of the US (maybe China is able too - but this is already more questionable), and does not want to loose this status, it has to invest something into modern weapons. Once it does, it has a lot of old weapons to sell. Thus, a quite reasonable choice to sell weapons, in particular if there is a large market of all those not liked by the US. But it is, of course, wrong that there is nothing else. In particular, Russia is one of the greatest exporters of wheat. And this will probably become even stronger. In Soviet time, the USSR was importing wheat. Certainly no. And, don't forget, what it really needs to survive - bread, oil, weapons - it has enough so that it is even an exporter. Nonsense. There are even jews in the Iranian parlament, and nobody slaughters them. Nonsense too. The chechen fundamentalists (sunni) were supported by Saudi-Arabia (sunni), the greatest enemy of the Iran (shia). And the chechens are today strong supporters of Russia. Because Putin has been able to create a union with the traditionalist Chechens (which are Sufi) against the islamist fighters (Saudi-arabian wahabis). So that Chechnya is today even safer for Russians than some other Caucasian regions. And if some Chechen fundamentalists start to fight, the Chechens manage this themself - and the Russian army can remain in the background. Moreover, because of its support for Southern Ossetia and Abchasia (above moslem countries) against Georgia Russia has now a lot of support from moslems in general.
To win a war one must obtain their intended objectives and maintain them. Conflict between nations, known as war, cannot occur if there are no nations. War often leads to a winner or at least the eventual cessation of hostilities but it doesn't have to be that way. War could lead to annihilation or to never ending conflict. As long as it is seen as beneficial and it is actually possible to go to war there will be wars. The moment in time when either of these conditions ceases to exist, war will also cease to exist.
In this sense the definition of war proper could change to include any armed or perhaps unarmed conflict where there is something to gain and it is possible to do so. The conditions of cessation perhaps remain? Interesting.
Simplistic approach, no very simplistic approach Some parts of the uni country will have something other parts of the uni country want OR Some people will have beliefs in one part of the uni country than other people in other parts of the uni country believe Guess what are the two main causes of war? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!