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US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

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Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
Among NATO nations, Poland is not in the traditional Western European-US sphere (they and US Catholics think they are but nobody else does). Neither are Turkey, Romania, Albania, Croatia, Slovakia (though Czechia is), Slovenia, or Hungary. Greece is weird -- it's on the bubble. So that chops 9 off the 28 to start with.

The natural geographic division is to have Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Balkans be the Romulan Neutral Zone between the Russians in the east, the EU in the west, and Turkey in the south and everybody pray they can sort out the Middle East.
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I believe our past relations with Poland are underweight to our psychological bond. Polish Americans are a huge percentage of our citizenry. Also remember that much of Poland is former Germany...and I believe Germans are still the most popular single heritage in the US. And collectively there are quite who have eastern European heritage (not a single country, but culturally similar unlike FR/UK/DE). Many Americans have visited places like Prague and Budapest in the last 20 years. The big reason that Poland and some other countries have not had such a major history with the US is that they are just on the other side of a Germany that has dominated the continent both for good and bad. So our activity in Europe has often stopped there.

Lastly, our concept of Poland, the Baltics, and other eastern Europeans is tied to their status in broader Europe. These are largely EU countries and NATO countries. By association with Britain and broader Europe, they're part of the team...they're roommates. So I agree, outside of a populist Trump...we'd go to the wall for an invaded Poland (and many of the rest of them).
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

But Trump hasn't offered me the opportunity to be the most powerful VP in history...in charge of domestic and foreign policy. So what do I know.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

5mn_Major said:
I believe our past relations with Poland are underweight to our psychological bond. Polish Americans are a huge percentage of our citizenry. Also remember that much of Poland is former Germany...and I believe Germans are still the most popular single heritage in the US. And collectively there are quite who have eastern European heritage (not a single country, but culturally similar unlike FR/UK/DE). Many Americans have visited places like Prague and Budapest in the last 20 years. The big reason that Poland and some other countries have not had such a major history with the US is that they are just on the other side of a Germany that has dominated the continent both for good and bad. So our activity in Europe has often stopped there.

Lastly, our concept of Poland, the Baltics, and other eastern Europeans is tied to their status in broader Europe. These are largely EU countries and NATO countries. By association with Britain and broader Europe, they're part of the team...they're roommates. So I agree, outside of a populist Trump...we'd go to the wall for an invaded Poland (and many of the rest of them).
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Oh, I think we would defend them if they were invaded, but because of politics -- as you said, there's a huge Polish Catholic presence in the US. They were also very, very useful to Reagan as a partner in a cultural proxy war against the Soviets -- one which JP2 was perfectly happy to play up to. Reagan used the Poles the way Bush Sr. used the Kuwaitis -- he needed a victim so he could project the rhetoric he had decided on anyway, but with a damsel in distress.

American Catholic conservatives still have an enormous allegiance to Reagan for this, without a doubt. They have turned Poland into a sort of Eastern European Israel -- a cartoon stand-in for political point-scoring. But that's still a social fact, and that is every bit as compelling as a real fact.
 
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Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
That's part of the brief moment. In fact, that's it's crowning moment..
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that is their most visible moment. mookie would offer the poles crowning moment was mounting their dam horse and fighting the ****ing germans while the ***** french opened the door and asked to be ass****ed and said thank you and please, then begged to be made head of vichy. then the brits gave away central europe while sitting and waiting (along with the ***** vichy frogs) to have their asses saved AGAIN but the US of A!!! and then.... THEN.. after the war we left the poles hanging behind stalin so jfk could nail some kraut kunt and cry ich bein ein berliner for those bastids who started it in the first place.

THAT my friend is the defining moment for the poles.

the fact that we needed help from them to unpin soviet support in eastern europe 40yrs after leaving them hanging, and get the US off their lazy *** to bring down the USSR is the goddan icing!!!
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

mookie1995 said:
that's just mean.....
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True, though.

Also, note that these were the Warrior French. The French only wound up wussy because WW1 knocked the stuffing out of them while we were picking the cotton seed out of our butts wondering how to spell "Kaiser." 2M dead, 4M wounded out of a total population of 40M, and those casualites were highly focused among the young. Check out France's population pyramid as of 1 Jan 1934. Holy sh-t! That left a mark.

Prior to WW1, even with Sedan, the French were the military standard on the continent. They were certainly a far more prestigious dance partner than Australia-with-black-people.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
Among NATO nations, Poland is not in the traditional Western European-US sphere (they and US Catholics think they are but nobody else does). Neither are Turkey, Romania, Albania, Croatia, Slovakia (though Czechia is), Slovenia, or Hungary. Greece is weird -- it's on the bubble. So that chops 9 off the 28 to start with.

The natural geographic division is to have Finland, the Baltics, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Balkans be the Romulan Neutral Zone between the Russians in the east, the EU in the west, and Turkey in the south and everybody pray they can sort out the Middle East.
Click to expand...

Poland has no natural boundaries for its borders. It's flat. An armor division's dream. Plus, it was wiped off the face of the earth by treaty (Vienna??) back in the 1800's only to be resurrected after Versailles. Stalin then shifted Poland a few hundred miles West after WW-II to give him more depth if (when) the Huns decided to take on Mother Russia again. They're the whipping boy of Eastern Europe.

Poland's big chance was in the 1920's where they could have entered into a partnership with the Ukraine. It would have been a Catholic bulwark against the Communist atheists. But, it fell through and Uncle Joe soon assimilated the Ukraine.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

joecct said:
Poland has no natural boundaries for its borders. It's flat. An armor division's dream.
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Which is why it is a perfect buffer state. You don't have to get right up next to the enemy because you can both see each other coming from 100 miles away. And you don't have to worry about your enemy co-opting the buffer state and fortifying it because you can't fortify a wheat field.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
Which is why it is a perfect buffer state. You don't have to get right up next to the enemy because you can both see each other coming from 100 miles away. And you don't have to worry about your enemy co-opting the buffer state and fortifying it because you can't fortify a wheat field.
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Buffer states are great for those in big countries on the other side of the world who like to not be bothered by major international events. It isn't necessary the best for global peace, at solving the underlying problem and certainly, isn't wonderful for those in the buffer zone who are constantly in permanent bully status (the natural condition for buffer countries). Its a green light for belligerent countries (i.e., Russia) to play havoc. Its better to find a way to fix the underlying tension and/or have mutual national understandings (i.e., today's China and Vietnam). Not easy, but the efforts are worth the outcomes.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

5mn_Major said:
Buffer states are great for those in big countries on the other side of the world who like to not be bothered by major international events. It isn't necessary the best for global peace, at solving the underlying problem and certainly, isn't wonderful for those in the buffer zone who are constantly in permanent bully status (the natural condition for buffer countries). Its a green light for belligerent countries (i.e., Russia) to play havoc. Its better to find a way to fix the underlying tension and/or have mutual national understandings (i.e., today's China and Vietnam). Not easy, but the efforts are worth the outcomes.
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I'm not sure history bears all of this out but it's a valid hypothesis. The bold part is true, though it's better than being forcibly incorporated into one of the major power's empires.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
The bold part is true, though it's better than being forcibly incorporated into one of the major power's empires.
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Which is precisely in part what happened to Ukraine. I think if you asked Europe the status of Ukraine a decade ago, you'd have heard that Ukraine was a buffer between the EU and Russia. Russia has 1/8th the economy of Europe proper and about 1/8the the US and is punching way above its weight primarily due to nukes. Its probably not best to take countries that have been both EU and Nato members and offer those up to be buffers now that Ukraine is now under severe Russian influence. IMO
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

5mn_Major said:
Which is precisely in part what happened to Ukraine. I think if you asked Europe the status of Ukraine a decade ago, you'd have heard that Ukraine was a buffer between the EU and Russia. Russia has 1/8th the economy of Europe proper and about 1/8the the US and is punching way above its weight primarily due to nukes. Its probably not best to take countries that have been both EU and Nato members and offer those up to be buffers now that Ukraine is now under severe Russian influence. IMO
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The problem is right in your post: if Ukraine was a buffer state then the EU and NATO should not have been sniffing around there.

For as long as the Russians have been a force in European geopolitics they have been terrified of being encircled and have communicated this to everybody who would listen. You have to take those things into consideration when building an economic/political "new world order," particular when the Russian leadership has been reorganized as a Caesarist plutocracy rather than a liberal democracy.
 
Kepler said:
The problem is right in your post: if Ukraine was a buffer state then the EU and NATO should not have been sniffing around there.

For as long as the Russians have been a force in European geopolitics they have been terrified of being encircled and have communicated this to everybody who would listen. You have to take those things into consideration when building an economic/political "new world order," particular when the Russian leadership has been reorganized as a Caesarist plutocracy rather than a liberal democracy.
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The Tsar never left. He may have been renamed, but the one guy in charge is central to the Russian psyche.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

joecct said:
The Tsar never left. He may have been renamed, but the one guy in charge is central to the Russian psyche.
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After WW2 there was a whole "X Studies" project where sociologists and anthropologists assigned personality characteristics to whole peoples and cultures. It was an entire academic discipline boiled down to this joke:

Heaven is where the police are British, the lovers French, the mechanics German, the chefs Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.

Hell is where the police are German, the lovers Swiss, the mechanics French, the chefs British, and it is all organized by the Italians.
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It was bunk then and it's bunk now.

The Tsar is back because the Russians never built the institutions to disperse political power to the local level. Ironically, the local soviets were supposed to do just that, which is why Stalin purged them before Lenin's body was cold.
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

Kepler said:
The Tsar is back because the Russians never built the institutions to disperse political power to the local level. Ironically, the local soviets were supposed to do just that, which is why Stalin purged them before Lenin's body was cold.
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Why disperse power when you can just keep it all for yourself and maybe accumulate more along the way!
 
Re: US Foreign Policy: The Wogs Begin at Calais

The Sicatoka said:
Ah, the weakness of the despot: forgetting there's always another despot looking to take power.
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I know no personal cause to spurn at him,
But for the general. He would be crown'd:
How that might change his nature, there's the question.
It is the bright day that brings forth the adder;
And that craves wary walking. Crown him?--that;--
And then, I grant, we put a sting in him,
That at his will he may do danger with.
The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins
Remorse from power: and, to speak truth of Caesar,
I have not known when his affections sway'd
More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof,
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder,
Whereto the climber-upward turns his face;
But when he once attains the upmost round.
He then unto the ladder turns his back,
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees
By which he did ascend. So Caesar may.
Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since the quarrel
Will bear no colour for the thing he is,
Fashion it thus; that what he is, augmented,
Would run to these and these extremities:
And therefore think him as a serpent's egg
Which, hatch'd, would, as his kind, grow mischievous,
And kill him in the shell.
 
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