All the elements are already in place for miscalculation and the nightmare scenario for the West: a shooting war with Russia.
17-Apr 2014: Diplomats claim to have reached a deal on defusing Ukraine crisis. However a Russian statement to "disband illegal armed groups" also is referring to the groups in Kiev - while the West and the Americans are referring to pro-Russian armed groups in the east - and not Kiev. So we don't see this as anything resembling authentic agreement here - just more polite polarization and entrenchment.
17-Apr 2014: A false news story spins out of control (first appearing here) of a leaflet telling Jew's to register in eastern Ukraine. The US Secretary of State John Kerry treats flyer as fact.
"Ukrainian National Guardsmen overnight on April 17 killed 3 rebels and injured 13 more when a group tried taking over their military base in Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast’s . According to Ukrainian sources 63 rebels were captured."
[Above] 16-Apr 2014: What might be 05 Blue MiG-29C one of eight Fulcrums of Ukrainian Air Force Ukrainian Falcons Aerobatic Display Team colors. 05 Blue may have been forward deployed to Vasilkov AB similar to some other MiG-29s for protection of the Capital.
Also four (4) of the best Su-27P examples of 831st TAB of Myrgorod AB have been detached to Kulbakino AB and the Air Command Center of UkAF has doubled their number this past week. These are: 45 Blue, 46 Blue, 100 Blue, and 101 Blue respectively. Primary role is air defense and their secondary role is CAP for Ukrainian Su-25s performing CAS.
Despite assertions from Brussels - NATO will not be able to project air power very effectively in a confrontation with Russia. This will force NATO reliance on Tomahawk and Cruise-missile class weapons.
16-Apr 2014: Separatists taking victory lap in Ukrainian army vehicles in Kramatorsk. In Slovyansk the Ukrainian army refused to shoot fellow countrymen and some Ukrainian troops defected or are returning to barracks on buses. Remarkable.
Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/AP
[Above] This UkAF Su-27P over Kramatorsk armed with three R-27s, two R-73s, fake underside canopy paint, and previously unseen dark nose.
Misinformation/disinformation are tools of armed conflict. Here appears to be a good example? The Americans are not immune from this behavior (far from it) and we will catch them out - soon enough. How committed the Ukraine military is - to actually defending Ukraine against Russia - is with near certainty being overstated by the West.
15-Apr 2014: Ukrainian troops have reportedly retaken an airfield in the eastern city of Kramatorsk. Here are two videos of a UkAF Su-27P and Su-25S over Kramatorsk (UkAF aircraft are also reported over Slovyansk).
Video: Sergey Gakov
[Below] 13-Apr 2014: We don't know what is video is - but it claimed to be a firefight between Ukrainian forces and Russian or pro-Russian paramilitaries in Slovyansk.
13-Apr 2014: Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian paramilitaries have traded gunfire in Slovyansk in mainland eastern Ukraine. Government forces were supported by at least one Mi-24 gunship. At least one Ukrainian officer KIA, many WIA on both sides. Russia has requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council.
"In the latest volume of his acclaimed biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert A. Caro repeats a long-standing but erroneous myth about the Cuban missile crisis. Drawing on early accounts of the crisis, he describes a confrontation on Oct. 24, 1962, between American destroyers and Soviet ships carrying nuclear missiles to Cuba. According to Mr. Caro, the Soviet vessels were “within a few miles” of the blockade line, but turned away at the last moment.
This was the moment when Secretary of State Dean Rusk, by his own account, uttered the most memorable line of the missile crisis: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
The “eyeball to eyeball” imagery made for great drama (it features in the 2000 movie “13 Days”), but it has contributed to some of our most disastrous foreign policy decisions, from the escalation of the Vietnam War under Johnson to the invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush.
If this were merely an academic debate, it would not matter very much. Unfortunately, the myth has become a touchstone of toughness by which presidents are measured. Last month, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on President Obama to place a “clear red line” before Iran just as “President Kennedy set a red line during the Cuban missile crisis.”
While researching a 2008 book on the missile crisis, I plotted the positions of Soviet and American ships during this period, on the basis of United States intelligence records. I was stunned to discover that the lead Soviet ship, the Kimovsk, was actually 750 miles away from the blockade line, heading back toward the Soviet Union, at the time of the supposed “eyeball to eyeball” incident. Acting to avert a naval showdown, the Soviet premier, Nikita S. Khrushchev, had turned his missile-carrying freighters around some 30 hours earlier.
Kennedy was certainly bracing for an “eyeball to eyeball” moment, but it never happened. There is now plenty of evidence that Kennedy — like Khrushchev — was a lot less steely-eyed than depicted in the initial accounts of the crisis, which were virtually dictated by the White House. Tape-recorded transcripts of White House debates and notes from participants show that Kennedy was prepared to make significant concessions, including a public trade of Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey and possibly the surrender of the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay.
While the risk of war in October 1962 was very high (Kennedy estimated it variously at between 1 in 5 and 1 in 2), it was not caused by a clash of wills. The real dangers arose from “the fog of war.” As the two superpowers geared up for a nuclear war, the chances of something going terribly wrong increased exponentially. To their credit, both Kennedy and Khrushchev understood this dynamic, which became particularly evident on the most nerve-racking day of all, “Black Saturday.”
By Saturday, Oct. 27, the two leaders were no longer in full control of their gigantic military machines, which were moving forward under their own momentum. Soviet troops on Cuba targeted Guantánamo with tactical nuclear weapons and shot down an American U-2 spy plane. Another U-2, on a “routine” air sampling mission to the North Pole, got lost over the Soviet Union. The Soviets sent MiG fighters into the air to try to shoot down the American intruder, and in response, Alaska Air Defense Command scrambled F-102 interceptors armed with tactical nuclear missiles. In the Caribbean, a frazzled Soviet submarine commander was dissuaded by his subordinates from using his nuclear torpedo against American destroyers that were trying to force him to the surface.
When it was all over, Kennedy aides sought to spin the crisis by depicting their man as fully on top of the situation. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later praised the “mathematical precision” with which Kennedy calibrated his threats of force against Cuba and the Soviet Union and the “composure, clarity and control” the president displayed.
14-Apr 2014: A Russian Su-24 [above] makes repeated passes at the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) which had entered the Black Sea around 10-April. The USS Cook [below] is a 'Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer' equipped with the Aegis phased array radar (known as the Aegis Compact System). Lets hope the events regarding the USS Vincennes shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 - have been corrected?
The White House tapes demonstrate that Kennedy was a good deal more nuanced, and skeptical, about the value of “red lines” than his political acolytes were. He saw the blockade — or “quarantine,” as he preferred to call it — as an opportunity to buy time for a negotiated settlement. But his aides came to believe their own propaganda. They thought that strategies like “controlled escalation” would work equally well against the North Vietnamese. In the judgment of Clark M. Clifford, who succeeded Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense in 1968, they “possessed a misplaced belief that American power could not be successfully challenged, no matter what the circumstances, anywhere in the world.”
President Bush made a similarly fateful error, in a 2002 speech in Cincinnati, when he depicted Kennedy as the father of his pre-emptive war doctrine. In fact, Kennedy went out of his way to avoid such a war. Far from “ignoring” Khrushchev’s public offer of a Turkey-Cuba missile trade, Kennedy described it as a “pretty good proposition,” and sent his brother to seal the deal with the Soviet ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin on the night of Oct. 27. (As it turned out, the Americans were able to keep the missile deal secret for many years.)
In deciding how to respond to Khrushchev, Kennedy was influenced by his reading of “The Guns of August,” Barbara W. Tuchman’s 1962 account of the origins of World War I. The most important lesson he drew from it was that mistakes and misunderstandings can unleash an unpredictable chain of events, causing governments to go to war with little understanding of the consequences.
It is a lesson that Presidents Johnson and Bush would have been wise to ponder when considering what to do in Vietnam and Iraq, and one that remains valid today."
Michael Dobbs is the author of “Six Months in 1945: F.D.R., Stalin, Churchill and Truman — From World War to Cold War,” the final volume in a trilogy about the cold war. A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 16, 2012, on page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Price of a 50-Year Myth.
- All media found here is for scholarship and research purposes and protected under U.S. Internet ‘Fair Use’ Law -
17-Apr 2014: Diplomats claim to have reached a deal on defusing Ukraine crisis. However a Russian statement to "disband illegal armed groups" also is referring to the groups in Kiev - while the West and the Americans are referring to pro-Russian armed groups in the east - and not Kiev. So we don't see this as anything resembling authentic agreement here - just more polite polarization and entrenchment.
17-Apr 2014: A false news story spins out of control (first appearing here) of a leaflet telling Jew's to register in eastern Ukraine. The US Secretary of State John Kerry treats flyer as fact.
"Ukrainian National Guardsmen overnight on April 17 killed 3 rebels and injured 13 more when a group tried taking over their military base in Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast’s . According to Ukrainian sources 63 rebels were captured."
Also four (4) of the best Su-27P examples of 831st TAB of Myrgorod AB have been detached to Kulbakino AB and the Air Command Center of UkAF has doubled their number this past week. These are: 45 Blue, 46 Blue, 100 Blue, and 101 Blue respectively. Primary role is air defense and their secondary role is CAP for Ukrainian Su-25s performing CAS.
Despite assertions from Brussels - NATO will not be able to project air power very effectively in a confrontation with Russia. This will force NATO reliance on Tomahawk and Cruise-missile class weapons.
Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/AP
[Above] This UkAF Su-27P over Kramatorsk armed with three R-27s, two R-73s, fake underside canopy paint, and previously unseen dark nose.Misinformation/disinformation are tools of armed conflict. Here appears to be a good example? The Americans are not immune from this behavior (far from it) and we will catch them out - soon enough. How committed the Ukraine military is - to actually defending Ukraine against Russia - is with near certainty being overstated by the West.
15-Apr 2014: Ukrainian troops have reportedly retaken an airfield in the eastern city of Kramatorsk. Here are two videos of a UkAF Su-27P and Su-25S over Kramatorsk (UkAF aircraft are also reported over Slovyansk).
Video: Sergey Gakov
Video: Sergey Gakov
[Below] 13-Apr 2014: We don't know what is video is - but it claimed to be a firefight between Ukrainian forces and Russian or pro-Russian paramilitaries in Slovyansk.
13-Apr 2014: Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian paramilitaries have traded gunfire in Slovyansk in mainland eastern Ukraine. Government forces were supported by at least one Mi-24 gunship. At least one Ukrainian officer KIA, many WIA on both sides. Russia has requested an emergency meeting of the UN security council.
"In the latest volume of his acclaimed biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert A. Caro repeats a long-standing but erroneous myth about the Cuban missile crisis. Drawing on early accounts of the crisis, he describes a confrontation on Oct. 24, 1962, between American destroyers and Soviet ships carrying nuclear missiles to Cuba. According to Mr. Caro, the Soviet vessels were “within a few miles” of the blockade line, but turned away at the last moment.
This was the moment when Secretary of State Dean Rusk, by his own account, uttered the most memorable line of the missile crisis: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”
The “eyeball to eyeball” imagery made for great drama (it features in the 2000 movie “13 Days”), but it has contributed to some of our most disastrous foreign policy decisions, from the escalation of the Vietnam War under Johnson to the invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush.
If this were merely an academic debate, it would not matter very much. Unfortunately, the myth has become a touchstone of toughness by which presidents are measured. Last month, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on President Obama to place a “clear red line” before Iran just as “President Kennedy set a red line during the Cuban missile crisis.”
While researching a 2008 book on the missile crisis, I plotted the positions of Soviet and American ships during this period, on the basis of United States intelligence records. I was stunned to discover that the lead Soviet ship, the Kimovsk, was actually 750 miles away from the blockade line, heading back toward the Soviet Union, at the time of the supposed “eyeball to eyeball” incident. Acting to avert a naval showdown, the Soviet premier, Nikita S. Khrushchev, had turned his missile-carrying freighters around some 30 hours earlier.
Kennedy was certainly bracing for an “eyeball to eyeball” moment, but it never happened. There is now plenty of evidence that Kennedy — like Khrushchev — was a lot less steely-eyed than depicted in the initial accounts of the crisis, which were virtually dictated by the White House. Tape-recorded transcripts of White House debates and notes from participants show that Kennedy was prepared to make significant concessions, including a public trade of Soviet missiles in Cuba for American missiles in Turkey and possibly the surrender of the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay.
While the risk of war in October 1962 was very high (Kennedy estimated it variously at between 1 in 5 and 1 in 2), it was not caused by a clash of wills. The real dangers arose from “the fog of war.” As the two superpowers geared up for a nuclear war, the chances of something going terribly wrong increased exponentially. To their credit, both Kennedy and Khrushchev understood this dynamic, which became particularly evident on the most nerve-racking day of all, “Black Saturday.”
By Saturday, Oct. 27, the two leaders were no longer in full control of their gigantic military machines, which were moving forward under their own momentum. Soviet troops on Cuba targeted Guantánamo with tactical nuclear weapons and shot down an American U-2 spy plane. Another U-2, on a “routine” air sampling mission to the North Pole, got lost over the Soviet Union. The Soviets sent MiG fighters into the air to try to shoot down the American intruder, and in response, Alaska Air Defense Command scrambled F-102 interceptors armed with tactical nuclear missiles. In the Caribbean, a frazzled Soviet submarine commander was dissuaded by his subordinates from using his nuclear torpedo against American destroyers that were trying to force him to the surface.
When it was all over, Kennedy aides sought to spin the crisis by depicting their man as fully on top of the situation. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. later praised the “mathematical precision” with which Kennedy calibrated his threats of force against Cuba and the Soviet Union and the “composure, clarity and control” the president displayed.
14-Apr 2014: A Russian Su-24 [above] makes repeated passes at the USS Donald Cook (DDG-75) which had entered the Black Sea around 10-April. The USS Cook [below] is a 'Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer' equipped with the Aegis phased array radar (known as the Aegis Compact System). Lets hope the events regarding the USS Vincennes shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 - have been corrected?
The White House tapes demonstrate that Kennedy was a good deal more nuanced, and skeptical, about the value of “red lines” than his political acolytes were. He saw the blockade — or “quarantine,” as he preferred to call it — as an opportunity to buy time for a negotiated settlement. But his aides came to believe their own propaganda. They thought that strategies like “controlled escalation” would work equally well against the North Vietnamese. In the judgment of Clark M. Clifford, who succeeded Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense in 1968, they “possessed a misplaced belief that American power could not be successfully challenged, no matter what the circumstances, anywhere in the world.”
President Bush made a similarly fateful error, in a 2002 speech in Cincinnati, when he depicted Kennedy as the father of his pre-emptive war doctrine. In fact, Kennedy went out of his way to avoid such a war. Far from “ignoring” Khrushchev’s public offer of a Turkey-Cuba missile trade, Kennedy described it as a “pretty good proposition,” and sent his brother to seal the deal with the Soviet ambassador Anatoly F. Dobrynin on the night of Oct. 27. (As it turned out, the Americans were able to keep the missile deal secret for many years.)
 |
Separatist forces in Slovyansk 13-Apr 2014.
|
It is a lesson that Presidents Johnson and Bush would have been wise to ponder when considering what to do in Vietnam and Iraq, and one that remains valid today."
Michael Dobbs is the author of “Six Months in 1945: F.D.R., Stalin, Churchill and Truman — From World War to Cold War,” the final volume in a trilogy about the cold war. A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 16, 2012, on page A31 of the New York edition with the headline: The Price of a 50-Year Myth.
- All media found here is for scholarship and research purposes and protected under U.S. Internet ‘Fair Use’ Law -
.png)
