Obama on August 29th:
We are not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem... It is not in the cards for us to see a military confrontation between Russia and the United States in this region. Keep in mind, however, that I'm about to go to a NATO conference. Ukraine is not a member of NATO, but a number of those states that are close by are. And we take our Article Five commitments to defend each other very seriously.
Steyn on August 29th:
If you were the Estonian government, would you actually be reassured by that? And if you were Putin, if you were Putin sitting in the Kremlin, and you just wanted to mess with Obama, wouldn't you be slightly ever-so-tempted just to invade Estonia, just to see whether Obama follows through on that Article Five thing?
Putin on September 5th:
On Friday morning, less than 48 hours after President Obama delivered a speech in Estonia warning that Russian aggression against Estonia could trigger war with the US and NATO, Russian security forces have seized an officer with Estonia's state security bureau at gunpoint and taken him into Russia.
From Benghazi to the Baltic, the world has the measure of Obama. The only people who don't are America's besotted, parochial elite and the deluded electorate who made this man "leader of the free world".
Extra info:
Article 5 is known as the "one-for-all and all-for-one" article, the keystone of NATO as an organization. It states that an "armed attack" against one member is an attack against all and sets in motion the possibility of collective self-defense.
However, it only commits members to "assist the party or parties so attacked" and to take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force…." It does not automatically result in military action.
No comments:
Post a Comment