Ukraine - Victory, or A Lull Before the Storm?

I guess I am a paranoid. I look at current events and see a play about the period before WW2. Putin is playing Hitler. Obama is playing Neville Chamberlin, and the Chinese are playing the Japanize. From my view it is 1936-39 right now. History repeat again.

I only hope that Winston is out there somewhere.

 

Or...some crazy anarchist might assassinate some obscure member of European royalty, and cause a re-run of 1914-1918. Prince William, and the Duchess of Cambridge ought to be feeling rather nervous at the moment...

Australians will probably be hoping that a Younger Winston is nowhere to be found.

 

I thought the South Africans who hope there was no younger Winston.

 

The younger Winston merely GTFO of South Africa during the Boer War....which was of no great significance to the Boers. The experience did, however benefit his political career, and made him some money by its inclusion in his memoirs.

A somewhat older younger Winston was the architect of the failed Gallipoli campaign, and during WWII the failed Greece /Crete campaigns: Each of which, Australians were significantly involved in and suffered considerable casualties.

 

Yeah, Winston kept up his refrain that the Mediterranean was "the soft underbelly of Europe." That wasn't what the ANZACs found at Gallipoli, nor what the yanks found at Anzio, thirty years later.

The parallels of WWI and WWII are amazing, as are the parallels between what our friend Putin is doing at the moment, and what Der Fuhrer did seventy years ago.

 

What Winston failed to recognise and acknowledge was that to actually get into the soft underbelly of Europe; that boney, indigestible SOB called Italy and its never ending procession of mountain peaks, valleys and rivers had to be munched on first. Plenty of teeth broken in that exercise. They tried at much cost to avoid some of the slogging up the Apennine Mountain Range, by an amphibious left hook at Anzio.

Oh BTW I believe the Salonika Front was another of Winston's achievements also...in 1915 after Gallipoli had been conceded to the Turks. Macedonian front - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Salonika - "The largest internment camp in Europe," so said the laughing Germans. Winston was one of those characters in history who became one of the "great men of history" because he didn't give up. He kept on swinging, fair ball or foul. In the realm of sports, Babe Ruth was one such "strike out king," as was Reggie Jackson, Alex Rodriguez, and Jose Canseco. The great ones ignore the strikeouts, keep on swinging, and eventually the bat and the ball connect, and great things happen. Winston kept on swinging, and refused to skulk away after the disasters at Gallipoli and Salonika, and Norway in 1940. There's something to be said for dogged persistence.

Right now, the Ukraine could do with a leader with stamina and dogged persistence, because Russia is not going to just go away because of sharply worded notes of protest from the American White House.

 

Agreed. Even though defeated in the first post war British national election, he did persist and came back for one more time as Prime Minister. He had his moments of inspired leadership without a doubt. His greatest contribution to the cause was his leadership and dogged determination to see a cause through to ultimate victory. His ability to wield an alliance with as disperate people as Roosevelt and Stalin, without murdering either was a testament to what he did best...being persuasive.

As to Winston's abilities as a military strategist, well, it was a blessing that Hitler and Mussolini were worse at it than he was.

 

US Paratroopers Deploy to Poland and Baltics

Apr 22, 2014 | by Richard Sisk
About 600 paratroopers from the Army’s 173rd Infantry Brigade were headed to Poland and the Baltic states Tuesday to shore up NATO allies during the Ukraine crisis.

Pentagon officials said that 150 of the "Sky Soldiers" from the 173rd based in Vicenza, Italy, would deploy to Poland on Wednesday. By the weekend, additional 150-troop units were to be on the ground in each of the Baltic states -- Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia -- for joint training with local forces, the officials said.

"The message is to the people of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia is that the U.S. takes seriously its obligations to European security," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.

At a Pentagon briefing, Kirby stressed that the deployments were a U.S. action and were being ordered by Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove in his role as head of the U.S. European Command and not as the Supreme Commander of NATO.

In another move to deter Russia, the Navy announced that the Aegis destroyer Taylor was entering the Black Sea Tuesday to replace the destroyer Donald Cook "to promote peace and stability in the region."

The presence of the Cook prompted official Russian to charge that the U.S. was attempting to move missile defenses closer to Russia.

 

Embassy extraction teams if things go pear shaped?

 

As long as things don't go mushroom shaped we are OK!