Ukraine Always Get What You Want

Someone told me that Kazakhstan has inferior potassium!

 

A small lobe of Kazakhstan crosses the Urals so it technically is European, I was told.

That said, Western media will pay little attention to it.

 

In all seriousness, Kazakhstan is loaded with natural resources. I believe that elevates to the level of a "strategically important" backwater.

Kazakhstan - Mining Equipment and Services

And as for a potential war there, it might not be a question of "want to."
It's landlocked, sandwiched between several other nations we're not particularly friendly with at the moment — Russia and China being the two biggest, with Iran and Afghanistan right down the block — and who probably wouldn't want the U.S. or NATO staging military operations from within their borders. We'd need a high level of cooperation from about a half-dozen countries that aren't in a mood to give it to us.
When we went into Afghanistan, we only had to pass over Pakistan. There's no way to get to Kazakhstan without overflying at least one of Iran, Afghanistan, Russia or China. Good luck with that.

 

Where do we stand with Georgia and Azerbaijan? If we could stage there (or Turkey and fly over said countries) and get to the Caspian, we’d have access. But that is an unfriendly corridor.

 

Turkey will do what it did before the Iraq War and prevent the U.S. from staging ops there. Folks don’t remember that was a big part of U.S. strategy for that war, and Erdogan’s party said no.

IIRC the Azerbaijanis are closer with the Russians and we’re closer with the Armenians.

 

Not sure. Reading up on them in the CIA Fact Book, neither seems to be highly enamored with Russia or Iran. Russia did the same thing to Georgia that it did to Ukraine, and that it's threatening to do with Kazakhstan.

We used to have some marriages of convenience with a couple of the Stans during the War on Terror, but I'm not sure if that's the case any more. Even if we did, you still need to go past those other hostile actors or forge a multi-national alliance. Going through Georgia/Azerbaijan means navigating the Black Sea (which Turkey would put the kibosh on, to say nothing of the hazards posed by the Russia-Ukraine war); or the Middle East as a whole. You could probably drop a reaction force in there, but secure long-term logistics would probably be a problem even for us.

 

Things are looking grim in Ukraine, if this Politico story is on point.

It's actually upsetting to read. I continue to wish/hope that Putin would die/be killed. He is everyone's problem, as I read somewhere else today.

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-ukraine-losing-russia-war/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

 

I can think of half a dozen corks in the ass of progress who infest our Congress who would improve things a great deal if they'd just up and die.

 

Incredible as this sounds, Putin suddenly dying might make things even worse. I think Medvedev is the one who would step up to replace him. Putin is evil, but Medvedev is evil AND batshit crazy.

 

Batshit crazy drunk.

 

It won't take Putin suddenly dying to put a succession plan in place. Medvedev succeeded Putin once while the Russian constitution still mattered.

 

Apparently the Ukrainians have shot down a long-ranger Russian nuke bomber about 250 miles inside Russia.
Good for them.