七
“Wars and Rumors of War”
By Richard Klass
Huffingtonpost.com
08/31/2014
The United States faces the possibility of greater involvement in two wars: one with Russia and one with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, aka the Islamic State. One is a throwback to nationalist wars of the past. The other is a worrying harbinger of the future. But for Ukraine the future is now. [美國面臨了在兩場戰爭擴大介入的可能性: 一場是與俄羅斯的戰爭，一場是與伊斯蘭國的戰爭。]
The Russian invasion and undermining of Ukraine continues as do the absurd denials by Russian President Vladimir Putin. . The latest front around the port city of Mariupolin southeast Ukraine appears aimed at opening a land corridor to the previously seized Crimea. It could also presage a push to extend the land corridor to Transnistria, the ethnic Russian part of Moldova. This would cut off Ukraine from the Black Sea and leave it a land-locked rump state. The rebels and their Russian supporters deem this the "Novouisiya" or New Russia and Putin continues to deny Russian involvement while saying a new state must be part of any negotiated settlement.
The response from the European Union (EU) is predictable: another gradual tightening of economic sanctions crafted not to hurt themselves too much. Such incremental steps give Russia time to adjust.
Putin knows that the sanctions are causing more pain to Russia than they and the Russian counter boycott of European food products are causing the West. He is betting, however, that his autocratic Russia has a much greater tolerance for such pain than the democracies of the West.. After all the West cannot even bring itself to call the invasion an invasion, let alone an act of war.
While Putin reaps the rewards of political popularity and an unmistakable message to Russia's "near abroad", European and American special interests and economic malaise dampen the Western response. To date, he is winning the bet. Russia is willing to tolerate current and increased levels of pain. Europe and the U.S. not so much.
With Russia on the march in Ukraine and the Islamic State sweeping across the Mesopotamian desert obliterating the Syria - Iraq border, NATO will meet this week in Wales. The first priority should be Ukraine. ISIL can wait. It will be slowed by current U.S. bombing policy and diplomacy to coordinate or at least de-conflict regional interests. cannot be effective until there is a credibly inclusive government in Baghdad.
The first thing on NATO's agenda is to call the invasion an invasion and aggressively refute Putin's lies. Polls show Russians oppose an invasion but believe his lies. Every effort should be made including information warfare and social media to alter this misperception. Actions to support this strategy could include a staged walk out if he addresses the U.N. General Assembly this fall and moving the 2018 world cup to the Netherlands. Russian university students in the U.S. should have their visas revoked and be sent home.
Next, Putin's calculus must be changed. Both the energy and financial sanctions, should be severely tightened. And the sanctions should be imposed in a quantum leap, not gradually. Identified accounts of Putin and his close collaborators in western financial institutions should be frozen.
Ukraine must be helped and Russia weakened militarily. NATO infrastructure funds should be used to purchase the two assault ships being built in France for Russia. All sales of military equipment and technology should be suspended. NATO should accelerate moves to preposition equipment and headquarters in Poland and the Baltic and increase exercises of a rapid deployment force in the region. Ukraine should be provided military training, logistic support and equipment, especially anti-tank and anti-aircraft systems.
Some will contend that such moves will provoke Putin. But Putin continues to provoke the West and not responding has only encouraged him. Might this back him into a corner? Yes so NATO needs to offer an exit ramp. The West will offer to lift the sanctions and commit to a lengthy moratorium on Ukraine joining NATO. Ukraine will agree to protections for Russian ethnic citizens and language. In return, Putin will withdraw all his forces and "volunteers" from Ukraine, cease all support to the rebels and agree to international monitoring of a new referendum in Crimea.
If Putin accepts such an offer, we will know his real concerns are NATO on his border and a hostile Ukraine, both legitimate. If he declines and continues his invasion and dismemberment of Ukraine, we will know he seeks a New Russia. In that case we will be in a New Cold War and, sooner or later, a hot one. [若普金繼續侵略烏克蘭，且對烏克蘭進行裂解，我們就可確認他是
八
歐巴馬對外界對他在外交與國際事務的政策、態度、作為與不作為的
底下這一篇「紐約時報」的報導指出，歐巴馬日前在募款活動中，對
歐巴馬顯然注意到現在的民調結果，民調顯示，雖然較大比例的美國
“Seeking to Ease Worries, Obama Says the World Has Always Been ‘Messy’”
By PETER BAKER
New York Times
AUG. 29, 2014
NEWPORT, R.I. — If the world seems troubled by all manner of calamities these days, President Obama does not want Americans to worry too much. After all, he said Friday, “The world has always been messy”; it is just more apparent because of social media. And, he added, today’s geopolitical threats are far less perilous than those of the Cold War.
Governing at a time of war, terrorism and disease, and frustrated on multiple fronts at once, Mr. Obama finds himself trying to buck up supporters heading into a crucial midterm election season. The succession of international crises has taken a toll on the public mood, not to mention his own poll ratings, and he seems intent on reassuring Americans that the challenges are manageable.
As he spent Friday sweeping through New York and Rhode Island to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for vulnerable Democrats, Mr. Obama addressed that public apprehension directly, acknowledging that many Americans “are feeling anxious” about their country and its place in the world. The showdown with Russia over Ukraine, the emergence of a radical new Islamic caliphate in Syria and Iraq, and the rise of China have stirred unease about the future of the United States, he said.
“If you watch the nightly news, it feels like the world is falling apart,” he said at a Democratic fund-raiser in Purchase, N.Y., just north of New York City. Expanding on a theme he has touched on at recent fund-raisers, Mr. Obama agreed that “we are living through some extraordinarily challenging times” and “I can see why a lot of folks are troubled.”
But Mr. Obama said Americans should remain calm and confident. “We will get through these challenging times just like we have in the past,” he said. “This is not something that is comparable to the challenges we faced during the Cold War.”
Mr. Obama attributed much of the turmoil to a rupture of the old order in the Middle East that is playing out across that region in often bloody and unpredictable ways, all of which “makes things pretty frightening.” But he said that the Middle East has “been challenging for quite a while” and that in some ways the main difference was that Americans were paying more attention because of the advent of new technologies bringing home faraway events in visceral ways.
“The truth of the matter is that the world has always been messy,” he said. “In part, we’re just noticing now because of social media and our capacity to see in intimate detail the hardships that people are going through.”
But on a day that Britain raised its terrorist threat level because of concerns about extremists in Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama said his “main message” was that “America’s military superiority has never been greater” and that its defenses are stronger than they were before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
A day after saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” to take on Islamic radicals in Syria, Mr. Obama made little effort to explain his approach to tackling myriad problems in the world, nor did he respond to critics who blame him in part for making those problems worse through what they say are ineffective policies. But he said that Russia and China were not countries to envy or fear and that America was still best-positioned for the future.
Mr. Obama flew to Westchester County, N.Y., for two events benefiting the Democratic National Committee. The first was a closed-door round table with about 25 supporters paying as much as $32,400 apiece. The event was hosted by George Logothetis, a shipping heir and chairman of the Libra Group, and his wife, Nitzia Logothetis, founder of Seleni, a nonprofit organization promoting mental health for women around the world. It was held at the home of Camilo Patrignani, the chief executive of Greenwood Energy, a subsidiary of Libra, and his wife, Lucia.
Evidently, during the event, Mr. Obama encountered some of the anxiety he later referred to, because at his next stop, which was open to reporters, he said someone had just suggested that he declare a national state of emergency, a notion he quickly discounted as not the way the United States worked.
That second event was a barbecue at the estate of two longtime benefactors, Robert Wolf, the former chairman of UBS Americas, and his wife, Carol Wolf, the coordinator of special projects for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
九
美國主流媒體對歐巴馬在外交與國際事務或政策的批評，看起來很持
在英國的主流媒體中，今天的倫敦「金融時報」出現一篇對歐巴馬較
“Division and crisis risk sapping the west’s power”
By Gideon Rachman
Financial Times
September 1, 2014
---America’s allies have come to rely excessively on the US to guarantee their security
The people who prepare President Barack Obama’s national security briefing must be wondering what to put at the top of the pile. Should it be the Russian assault on Ukraine, or the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (known as Isis) in Iraq and Syria? And what items should go just below that?
The violent anarchy in Libya, the dangerous stalemate in Afghanistan, the looming political crisis in Hong Kong, or a confrontation between Chinese and US planes, near Hainan island?
The US president might reasonably ask why all these crises are breaking out at the same time. His critics have a ready answer. They argue that the Obama administration has shown itself to be weak and indecisive. As a result, America’s adversaries are testing its limits and the US-led security order is under challenge in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
There is no doubt that the US is war-weary after the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the multiplication of security crises around the world is not just about Mr Obama and the US. In fact, the obsession with what the Americans are doing points to the underlying problem. Its allies have come to rely excessively on the US to guarantee their security.
As a result, the biggest weakness in the global security system is not a lack of resolve in Washington, but the learned helplessness of America’s regional allies. The Nato summit this week in Wales represents a crucial opportunity for America’s most important allies to start doing more to share the burden. If they fail, the inability of the US to police the world alone will become increasingly apparent, and the various global security crises will intensify.
The pattern of Nato spending reflects Europe’s increasing reliance on the US. At the height of the cold war, America accounted for roughly half the military spending of the alliance, with the rest of Nato accounting for the other 50 per cent.
Now, however, the US accounts for some 75 per cent of Nato spending. Last year, of the 28 Nato members, only the US, Britain, Greece and Estonia met the alliance’s target of spending at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. Even the UK may soon slip below 2 per cent, with the British army on course to shrink to about 80,000, its smallest size since just after the Napoleonic wars.
Even when it comes to the non-military side of security, the Europeans have lagged well behind. The US was quicker to push through sanctions on Russia, and its measures have been tougher, despite the fact that Russia’s undeclared war in Ukraine is a much more direct threat to Europe.
This same over-reliance on the US is evident in the Middle East. The rise of Isis is a massive threat to the dwindling band of stable regimes in the region, above all Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. In recent years, these countries have spent lavishly on their armies and air forces. And yet it has been left to the US to wage the bombing campaign against Isis, while the nations of the Gulf Co-operation Council keep their 600 combat planes on the tarmac and complain about American weakness.
A similar pattern is on display in Asia, where US allies such as Japan and the Philippines agitate for the US to increase its military commitment to the region in response to an increasingly assertive China. And yet, even as they call for US help, America’s allies in east Asia have been unable to present a united front, in opposition to China’s maritime claims.[同樣的模式也在亞洲呈現，像日本與菲律賓這樣的
This litany of allied weakness is dangerous precisely because America is indeed more reluctant to “bear any burden” (in President John F Kennedy’s famous words) to uphold the international order. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars have left their marks. So has the financial crisis of 2008. Mr Obama’s reluctance to deploy military force is not an aberration or a personal folly. It is an accurate reflection of the mood of the American people, with opinion polls showing the highest levels of isolationism in more than 50 years.
The pattern of Nato spending reflects Europe’s increasing reliance on the US
That mood could shift in response to Russian aggression and to the chaos in the Middle East. However, even if it does, the days when the US was capable of being the world’s super-cop – with relatively little assistance – are coming to a close.
The World Bank estimates that this year, China will probably become the world’s largest economy, measured by purchasing power. America’s defence budget is falling, as the US struggles to control its national debt. The gradual relative decline of the US is a much worse problem than it might otherwise be, because America’s closest allies in the EU are in the grip of severe economic crises, which are eroding their ability to exercise power.
Collectively, the west now accounts for a decreasing share of the world economy – as new sources of power and wealth rise up in Asia. A western-dominated world is therefore in danger of looking increasingly like an anachronism – and that is the proposition that, in their different ways, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, Isis and the Chinese military are testing.
The perception of declining western power now threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The only way for North Americans and Europeans to stop that happening is to work together with greater determination and purpose to combat the crises burning out of control on the fringes of Europe, in Ukraine and the Middle East. That work needs to start at this week’s Nato summit.
As Benjamin Franklin put it: “We must all hang together or, assuredly, we will all hang separately.”
台灣建州運動發起人周威霖
David C. Chou
Founder, Formosa Statehood Movement
(an organization devoted in current stage to making Taiwan a territorial commonwealth of the United States)
沒有留言:
張貼留言