RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272076/russia-ukraine-confrontation-sea-raises-stakes-joseph-klein

A military confrontation erupted directly between Ukrainian and Russian military forces last Sunday off the coast of the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula when two Ukrainian cutters and a tugboat heading from one Ukrainian port to another attempted to pass through a narrow sea passage known as the Kerch Strait. The strait is close to the Crimean Peninsula that separates the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. Russia would not let the ships pass, blocking them with a grounded tanker under a bridge Russia had constructed linking the Crimea Peninsula it had illegally annexed in 2014 with the Russian mainland. Not able to proceed to their destination because of Russia’s blockage, the Ukrainian cutters reportedly turned around. According to Ukraine’s account, Ukraine’s vessels were heading back to where they came from when Russia fired on the ships, injuring several sailors. Russia then seized the vessels, with what has been reported to be either 23 or 24 sailors on board. A Russian court on Tuesday ordered 12 of the captured sailors to remain in Russian custody for at least two months. The other captured sailors could meet the same fate when they are expected to appear in Russian court on Wednesday. If convicted on charges of colluding to cross Russia’s border illegally, the sailors could be jailed for as long as six years.

Although all-out war has not broken out yet, the region is on edge as Russia tries to leverage its control over Crimea on the ground to establish its claims of territorial dominion over the surrounding waters. Russia is also demonstrating its power over Ukraine’s economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin is ratcheting up pressure on Ukraine’s economy by limiting its freedom to send ships to ports on the Sea of Azov. Freedom of passage is necessary for Ukraine to support heavy industry on which thousands of Ukrainians depend for their livelihood. By land and sea, Russia is tightening the noose around Ukraine’s neck.

On Monday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko declared martial law in the troubled areas of his country bordering Russia for 30 days after receiving approval from Ukraine’s parliament, a move that Russia condemned as a provocation. “The imposition of martial law in various regions potentially could lead to the threat of an escalation of tension in the conflict region, in the southeast” of Ukraine, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/the_russians_and_the_kerch_bridge_what_would_reagan_do.html

Every story has a starting point. Don’t start with the Russian capture this week of two (or three) Ukrainian ships and the injury to three (or six) Ukrainian sailors. The Russian habit is to do as it likes with smaller countries and then announce that the other guy did it (or it never happened at all). That is the story of the Russian war in Ukraine and the 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea, and that is the Russian story of the Ukrainian ships – two ships, not three, three injured not six; anyhow, Ukraine was sailing out of its lane.

Start instead with the bridge over the narrow Kerch Strait that opened earlier in 2018. It is the only entrance to the Azov Sea from the Black Sea, spanning the Taman Peninsula in Russia and the Kerch Peninsula in Crimea. Earlier plans for the bridge were completed between Russia and Ukraine, but that was before the Russians occupied Crimea. There is an agreement for Ukrainian passage to its two ports along the Azov Sea, but Ukraine has complained that the bridge is the beginning of a blockade that would ultimately control or end Ukrainian shipping. There have been delays for Ukrainian ships passing through, sometimes days, and oh, by the way, the bridge is very low – nearly flat – over the water, meaning that Ukrainian ships over 115 feet can’t pass at all. And now there is a Russian ship parked under the bridge, blocking traffic.

It is estimated that Ukrainian shipping through the strait is down nearly 25% since the bridge opened – as the Ukrainians feared and as the Russians planned.

Now what?

Neither the U.S. nor NATO has an obligation here – Ukraine is not a member – but freedom of navigation is one of the defining principles of international law. The U.S. faces countries chipping at the edges of it elsewhere – China in the South China Sea and Iran in the Persian Gulf, with plans for Yemen on the Red Sea. Giving Russia a pass will make the other cases more difficult.

WWRRD? What would Ronald Reagan do?

During the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Iran attacked Kuwaiti, then other Gulf State, then other non-combatant tankers and merchant ships. Shortly thereafter, Iraq took the same steps. In 1986, Kuwait asked to have the U.S. Navy escort its tankers as protection, but U.S. law forbids escorting civilian vessels under a foreign flag. So the ships were reregistered and reflagged, and both Iran and Iraq decided that the cost of attacking American-flagged ships outweighed the benefits. The operation lasted until late in 1987.

President Donald Trump has proven, as Ronald Reagan did, that he is willing to take measures commensurate with the scope of an international problem.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/11/27/donald-trump-right-can-choose-either-europe-us-not/

Ever since Theresa May’s ill-fated decision to call an election and the consequent loss of her majority, very little has gone right for Britain’s beleaguered prime minister. Having finally got Brussels to agree some sort of a withdrawal deal, it now seems overwhelmingly likely that her own parliament will brutally vote it down.

As is often the way with middle course strategies, her deal has ended up offending almost everyone. The country, and parliament, are too divided, too entrenched and immovable in their views, to allow for compromise. Remorselessly, apparently irredeemably, we are drifting towards the mother of all political crises, perhaps the biggest of many of our lifetimes. May’s only hope is that Brussels comes to her rescue, and offers sufficient in the way of concessions – say allowing the UK unilaterally to withdraw from the customs backstop – to get her over the line. But it is an increasingly forlorn prospect.

As if things were not bad enough, along comes Donald Trump to deliver, as is his way, the final coup de grâce, insisting in effect that Mrs May’s deal would be incompatible with a meaningful US free trade agreement. Since free trade deals with other parts of the world were meant to be the big economic dividend from Brexit, this is something of a blow.

But it was also only a statement of the bleedin’ obvious; the closer you are to one trading bloc, the less easy it is to strike a deal with another, and that’s precisely the dilemma that Mrs May’s deal has highlighted. By trying to stay close to Europe, she makes it very hard to be close to America at the same time.

Trade was always as much about geopolitical power and heft as the Ricardo-esque textbook ideal of mutually beneficial commercial interaction and progress. We’d like it to be the latter; but the way of the world is the former. Mr Trump has laid this harsh reality bare, demolishing some of the wilder fantasies about “Global Britain”, free to trade as it likes with the rest of the world once released from its European shackles. What Trump is saying is that you can have a deep and meaningful trading relationship with either the US or Europe, but not both; it’s us or them.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/pushing-shoving-south-china-sea/

Warships pushing and shoving in the South China Sea might be nothing to worry about in the short term, but what implications do such incidents have for the area, including countries further abroad such as Australia?

Aggressive naval manoeuvring between the warships of nations who don’t like each other is nothing new. A standard tactic is to deliberately plot a collision course, and then, if you’re the aggressor, change speed or course by a few knots or degrees and just miss your opponent. Crossing his bow then dumping garbage over the stern of your ship so he has to steam through it is another one.

These doings might seem silly but they have a method in their madness. Forcing your opponent to back down is pushing him onto the back foot, as boxers say. Warfare is won by aggression, something warriors learn in the Principles of War. And being a successful aggressor heightens morale on your side, another imperative if you want to win.

The recent shoving between the US destroyer Decatur and the Chinese Luyang-class destroyer Lanzhou was not nearly as fraught as it might have been. These manoeuvres can quickly escalate—if both nations want them to—to fire-control radars “lighting up” their target; missiles and guns being trained towards the potential enemy, and in the more physical sense, one vessel refusing to back down from contact. Having your ship “T-boned” might involve costly damage, injuries, even loss of life, but it shows your ship, and by implication your nation, is not in a mood to back down.

It needs to be understood, though, that such aggressive manoeuvring is almost always done with the full knowledge of the senior command of the navies involved, and from there the political structure above them.