That is because Russia can cut off Nordstream gas to Germany anytime it
wants.
On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 7:08 AM, Walter Iwaskiw <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's discouraging that Germany opposes expelling Russia from the G-8:
>
> "In television interviews, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States
> might impose sanctions, boycott the Sochi meeting in June and expel Russia
> from the G-8. Germany, however, publicly expressed opposition to expulsion,
> an ominous sign for Mr. Obama since any meaningful pressure would need
> support from Berlin."
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 9:06 AM, <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Sorry if somebody already posted this already
>>
>>
>> Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday
>> that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with
>> reality, people briefed on the call said. "In another world," she said.
>>
>>
>> Pressure Rising as Obama Works to Rein In Russia
>>
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/03/world/europe/pressure-rising-as-obama-works-to-rein-in-russia.html?_r=0
>> By PETER BAKER
>> MARCH 2, 2014
>>
>> WASHINGTON -- As Russia dispatched more forces and tightened its grip on
>> the Crimean Peninsula on Sunday, President Obama embarked on a strategy
>> intended to isolate Moscow and prevent it from seizing more Ukrainian
>> territory even as he was pressured at home to respond more forcefully.
>>
>> Working the telephone from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama rallied allies,
>> agreed to send Secretary of State John Kerry to Kiev and approved a series
>> of diplomatic and economic moves intended to "make it hurt," as one
>> administration official put it. But the president found himself besieged by
>> advice to take more assertive action.
>>
>> "Create a democratic noose around Putin's Russia," urged Senator Lindsey
>> Graham, Republican of South Carolina. "Revisit the missile defense shield,"
>> suggested Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. "Cancel Sochi,"
>> argued Representative Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who leads the
>> Intelligence Committee, referring to the Group of 8 summit meeting to be
>> hosted by President Vladimir V. Putin. Kick "him out of the G-8"
>> altogether, said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Democratic whip.
>>
>> The Russian occupation of Crimea has challenged Mr. Obama as has no other
>> international crisis, and at its heart, the advice seemed to pose the same
>> question: Is Mr. Obama tough enough to take on the former K.G.B. colonel in
>> the Kremlin -- It is no easy task. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told
>> Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was
>> not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. "In
>> another world," she said.
>>
>> That makes for a crisis significantly different from others on Mr.
>> Obama's watch. On Syria, Iran, Libya and Egypt, the political factions in
>> Washington have been as torn as the president over the proper balance of
>> firmness and flexibility. But as an old nuclear-armed adversary returns to
>> Cold War form, the consequences seem greater, the challenges more daunting
>> and the voices more unified.
>>
>> "It's the most important, most difficult foreign-policy test of his
>> presidency," said R. Nicholas Burns, a career diplomat who became under
>> secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration. "The stakes are
>> very high for the president because he is the NATO leader. There's no one
>> in Europe who can approach him in power. He's going to have to lead."
>>
>> Mr. Obama came to office with little foreign-policy experience and has
>> been repeatedly tested by a new world in which the main threats are Islamic
>> extremism and civil war. While increasing drone strikes and initially
>> building up forces in Afghanistan, he has made it his mission to pull out
>> of two long wars and keep out of any new ones.
>>
>> But the limits of his influence have been driven home in recent weeks,
>> with Syria pressing its war against rebels and Afghanistan refusing to sign
>> an agreement allowing residual American forces. Now the Crimea crisis has
>> presented Mr. Obama with an elemental threat reminiscent of the one that
>> confronted his predecessors for four decades -- a geopolitical struggle in
>> the middle of Europe. First, the pro-Russian government in Kiev, now
>> deposed, defied his warnings not to shoot protesters, and now Mr. Putin has
>> ignored his admonitions to stay out of Ukraine.
>>
>> Caught off guard, Mr. Obama is left to play catch-up. With thousands of
>> reinforcements arriving Sunday to join what American officials estimated
>> were 6,000 Russian troops, Mr. Putin effectively severed the peninsula,
>> with its largely Russian-speaking population, from the rest of Ukraine.
>>
>> "Russian forces now have complete operational control of the Crimean
>> peninsula," a senior administration official said on the condition of
>> anonymity.
>>
>> No significant political leaders in Washington urged a military response,
>> but many wanted Mr. Obama to go further than he has so far. Senator Bob
>> Corker of Tennessee, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee,
>> has already devised language to serve as the basis for possible bipartisan
>> legislation outlining a forceful response, including sanctions against
>> Russia and economic support for Ukraine.
>>
>> The president has spoken out against Mr. Putin's actions and termed them
>> a "breach of international law." But he has left the harshest condemnations
>> to Mr. Kerry, who on Sunday called them a "brazen act of aggression" and "a
>> stunning willful choice by President Putin," accusing him of "weakness" and
>> "desperation."
>>
>> In addition to Ms. Merkel, Mr. Obama spoke with his counterparts from
>> Britain and Poland on Sunday and won agreement from all the other G-8
>> countries to suspend preparations for the Sochi meeting and find ways to
>> shore up the economically fragile Ukrainian government. The administration
>> also canceled a trade mission to Moscow and a Russian trip to Washington to
>> discuss energy while vowing to also scrap a naval-cooperation meeting with
>> Russia.
>>
>> In television interviews, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States
>> might impose sanctions, boycott the Sochi meeting in June and expel Russia
>> from the G-8. Germany, however, publicly expressed opposition to expulsion,
>> an ominous sign for Mr. Obama since any meaningful pressure would need
>> support from Berlin.
>>
>> But Mr. Obama offered Russia what aides called an "offramp," a
>> face-saving way out of the crisis, by proposing that European observers
>> take the place of Russian forces in Crimea to guard against the supposed
>> threats to the Russian-speaking population cited by the Kremlin as
>> justification for its intervention.
>>
>> Mr. Obama?s aides said that they saw no evidence of such threats and
>> considered the claim a bogus pretext, and that they wanted to call Mr.
>> Putin"s bluff. Privately, they said they did not expect Mr. Putin to
>> accept, and they conceded that Mr. Obama probably could not reverse the
>> occupation of Crimea in the short term. They said they were focusing on
>> blocking any further Russian move into eastern Ukraine that would split the
>> country in half.
>>
>> Some regional specialists said Mr. Obama should ignore the talk-tough
>> chorus and focus instead on defusing a crisis that could get much worse.
>> Andrew Weiss, a national security aide to President Bill Clinton, said the
>> Obama administration should be trying to keep Ukraine and Russia from open
>> war. "For us to just talk about how tough we are, we may score some points
>> but lose the war here," Mr. Weiss said.
>>
>> The crisis has trained a harsh spotlight on Mr. Obama's foreign policy,
>> with critics asserting that he has been too passive.
>>
>> Mr. Corker traced the origins of Mr. Putin's brash invasion to September
>> when, in the face of bipartisan opposition in Congress, Mr. Obama pulled
>> back from plans to conduct an airstrike on Syria in retaliation for a
>> chemical-weapons attack on civilians. Instead, he accepted a Russian offer
>> to work jointly to remove the chemical weapons.
>>
>> "Ever since the administration threw themselves into the arms of Russia
>> in Syria to keep from carrying out what they said they would carry out, I
>> think, he saw weakness," Mr. Corker said of Mr. Putin. "These are the
>> consequences."
>>
>> Of course, had Mr. Obama proceeded with an attack, he would have paid a
>> different price for ignoring the will of Congress and the grave misgivings
>> of an American public weary of war. Republicans who opposed confrontation
>> in Syria insist this is different.
>>
>> Mr. Rubio, who opposed authorizing force in Syria, agreed that that
>> conflict had serious ramifications for American interests. But he said the
>> showdown in Crimea was about freedom itself and the hard-fought American
>> victory over totalitarianism in the Cold War. In that sense, even
>> Republicans who opposed Mr. Obama in Syria were pushing for a hard line
>> against Mr. Putin.
>>
>> "The very credibility of the post-Cold War world and borders is at stake
>> here," Mr. Rubio said in an interview.
>>
>> Obama aides reject the notion that he has underestimated Mr. Putin. From
>> the beginning, they said, he had a cold-eyed assessment of the
>> possibilities and limitations of engagement with Mr. Putin. And they noted
>> that neither President Bush's reputation for toughness nor his courtship of
>> Mr. Putin stopped Russia from going to war in 2008 with another neighbor,
>> the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
>>
>> While Mr. Obama has not gone as far as many in Washington want him to go,
>> the president has been less focused on immediate actions than on making
>> sure he and America's traditional allies are on the same page. Working from
>> the Oval Office over the weekend, wearing jeans and a scowl, he called
>> several of his G-8 counterparts to "make sure everybody's in lock step with
>> what we're doing and saying," according to a top aide.
>>
>> Administration officials said Mr. Putin had miscalculated and would pay a
>> cost regardless of what the United States did, pointing to the impact on
>> Russia's currency and markets. "What we see here are distinctly 19th- and
>> 20th-century decisions made by President Putin to address problems," one of
>> the officials said. "What he needs to understand is that in terms of his
>> economy, he lives in the 21st-century world, an interdependent world."
>>
>> Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.
>>
>> A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page A1
>> of the New York edition with the headline: Pressure Rising as Obama Works
>> to Rein in Russia.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> InfoUkes Inc. Gerald William Kokodyniak
>> Suite 185, 3044 Bloor Street West Webmaster InfoUkes Inc.
>> Etobicoke, Ontario [email protected]
>> Canada M8X 2Y8 http://www.infoukes.com/
>>
>>
>
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