World View: Pentagon Concerned Russia About to Invade Ukraine

This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

• Obama to meet Saudi King Abdullah among significant policy differences
• Pentagon concerned that Russia is about to invade Ukraine

Obama to meet Saudi King Abdullah among significant policy differences

President Barack Obama visits Saudi Arabia on Friday, and will meetwith the King, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. There are significantpolicy differences separating the two:

• King Abdullah first broke with President Obama during the 2011. In Abdullah’s view, Obama humiliated Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak and encouraged him to step down. Abdullah believes Mubarak supported U.S. policy for decades, even when it wasn’t popular to do so, and Obama repaid him by throwing him under the bus. Abdullah concluded that Obama would not hesitate to throw him under the bus just as easily.
• After President Obama’s “red line” flip-flop on Syria last year, Abdullah was so furious that he turned down an opportunity to appoint a Saudi to the United Nations Security Council. He accused Obama and the United Nations of hypocrisy, for allowing Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad to kill and displace millions of civilians with impunity.
• The Saudis believe that Obama is going to permit Iran to develop a nuclear bomb, and fears that it will be used on Saudi Arabia.
• The Saudis consider Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist group, but Obama has all but broken relations with Egypt since last year’s army coup that ousted president Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government. This issue has split the Arab world, with Qatar supporting the MB, and Saudi Arabia is one of three countries that have withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar. Abdullah believes that Obama is a supporter of two of his enemies, Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saudi Gazette and VOA

Pentagon concerned that Russia is about to invade Ukraine

U.S. officials are saying that Russian troops have been flooding intothe region along the border with Ukraine in the last few days. Theestimates of the number of troops range from 30,000 to 80,000, withUkrainian officials claiming that the number is as high as 100,000.

Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Philip Breedlove has saidthat the Russian force on the border “is very, very sizable and very,very ready.” Since the Russian troops are deployed right on the edgeof Ukraine’s border, if they do invade then there’ll be no advancewarning, and no chance for Ukraine’s forces to react. A U.S. defenseofficial says that if Russia were to invade, then this would be “farfrom a bloodless event as we saw in Crimea,” although the Ukrainianarmy would be defeated. It’s possible that the Russian forces couldpush through Ukraine to the other end very quickly, to annex Moldova’sseparatist territory Transdniestria, which is on Ukraine’s westernborder. VOA and AFP and Fox News

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