An analogy:

When UPS was first expanding into worldwide service, they almost got themselves kicked out of Germany the first week. Why? Because they came into the country with their brown trucks and wearing their brown uniforms — and the German people freaked out!

It’s called knowing the audience — or the culture you are in. The German people are extremely self-conscious about brown uniforms. Now UPS wears white uniforms in Germany and drives white trucks.

It’s the same way with the president and his remarks about Alaska. A simple check with any historical experts — heck ANY experts at all, would have told him it was a sore subject.

We actually have a diplomatic staff that is paid to know these things…heck, they have a whole department.

In 1846 the US invaded Mexico and forcibly took from that country land that would become almost the entire present day southwest USA. If Obama went on a state visit to Mexico and said “thanks for the great deal on California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada” that would truly be stupid not to mention offensive to the Mexicans.

In 1867 the US made an offer to purchase Alaska from the Russians. Russia accepted the offer and Alaska became ours. We didn’t invade or threaten to invade the place and there was no duress upon the Russians to give up Alaska ( no duress caused from the US anyway).

So Obama said ‘thanks for the great deal on Alaska’. So what? I’m not aware of any serious revanchist movement in Russia to take back Alaska, nor of any widespread resentment among
the Russian people about the sale of Alaska. Can someone explain to me why Obama’s remark was so dumb, or offensive and/or such a huge gaffe?

Iranian President Ahmadinejad is a rock of sanity compared to Zhironovsky.

The closest equivalent to Zhironovsky that I can come up with in American Politics is Lyndon Larouche and while Larouche wants to arrest Queen Elizabeth, I don’t think he’s ever proposed wiping Great Britain off the map by creating massive tidal waves in the Atlantic by dropping Nuclear Weapons there.

You would figure he would at least be smart enough to get good enough advisers, so he would stop being an international gaffe machine; but he probably thinks he’s second to none.

Now, all of Europe’s leaders have seen just how sad he is in policy and diplomacy.

And Russia is probably starting a countdown to take back Georgia. I’m going with before 2010. Anyone want to start a pool ?

Thanks for the history lesson.

China had stuff the West wanted, tea, textiles, ceramics, opium, etc. The only things the West had that China wanted were specie and otter fur. It was dogma for mercantilists that you didn’t use specie if you could help it. The Russians had Alaska’s otter fur, but the Russians and Chinese hated each other and the Chinese would only let the Russians trade with them at one port well inland on the Amur River. The Russians simply didn’t have the shipping capacity in the Pacific to support their colony and make a profit of the trade. Enter the Americans by the 1840s. New England merchants began to build nimble, easily handled, and relatively shallow draft vessels for The Golden Round trade. The ships used very small crews that worked on sharers of the voyage’s proceeds. They stocked up with trade goods and staples, sailed around Cape Horn and worked their way up the Pacific Coast trading with the coastal Indians and from northern California northward with the Russians. They used rum, sugar, firearms, and all sorts of metal products to trade with the Indians for otter fur and traded both staples and other food stuffs and luxury goods with the Russians in Southeast Alaska and the Aleutians. Since the US had good relations with China, the US traders then sailed directly to Chinese ports where they exchanged otter fur for highly desireable Chinese goods. The return voyage was usually around the Cape of Good Hope and first to the major European ports where they sold or traded the Chinese goods and finally back to New England where they sold or traded the remained of their goods. The average profit on a three to four year voyage was 4000%!

By the 1850s, the US had come to dominate whaling in Alaska waters as well. In fact, $6.8 Million of the $7.2 Million the US paid Russia for Alaska was “reimbursed” by the British in settlement of US claims against Great Britain for the damage done to the US whaling fleet off Kotzebue, Alaska by the British-built Confederate States’ Ship Shenandoah in June of 1865.

In reality, the Russians made a virtue of necessity by “selling” Alaska because we and the British had already pretty much taken it from them and Russia had much better relations with the US than with the British, so they saw it in their interests that we became their Pacific neighbor rather than the British.

Sometimes he just reminds me of a blog troll. It would be funny if it weren’t so existentially risky.