The U.S. and its European allies can take steps to isolate Russia diplomatically, which would undermine Putin’s claim that his country is again ascendant as a world leader. They can also take steps that would pinch the Russian elite, which relishes its access to Western Europe.
Some of the moves would sting. But none is likely to greatly change the behavior of Putin, experts say.
“Putin is prepared for this kind of international backlash,” said Eugene Rumer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was the U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia until December. “In his mind, this won’t be paying too much of a price.”
Sudetenland. Let’s chip in and buy Obama an umbrella. A war in Europe was unthinkable only a few months ago. This man’s legacy will be beyond your comprehension. And for those of you who don’t quite get it, this is not about Ukraine. It’s is about Cuba and Venezuela. There will be Russian nuclear ballistic missiles in the Western hemisphere before Summer. And he will play golf.
Oh for the love of Pete! Is there any event that can occur anywhere in the world without someone drudging up the false analogies of the 1930’s. Putin is not Hitler. He is not trying to take over the world. Quite the contrary.
What no one (at least in our media) wants to acknowledge is that the Ukraine has been a part of Russia for most of the last 700 years. It borders Russia and the Crimea is the home port of a significant part of the Russian Navy. The Crimea is also Russia’s only major warm water port. It has been a vital piece of real estate for Russia since at least the reign Czar Peter the Great.
Anyone who thought that Russia was going to stand by and allow a group of nationalists, almost certainly encouraged by Western intelligence services, depose a legitimately elected, albeit heavy handed, government and drag the Ukraine into the anti-Russian EU and maybe even NATO was delusional.
Russia is reacting in much the same way we would if China started meddling in the affairs of Mexico or Canada. Russia has legitimate interests in the Ukraine. The United States on the other hand has at least since the Clinton Administration been doing its best to surround Russia with anti-Russian states, and has succeeded to a remarkable degree.
This is not to excuse an armed invasion of a sovereign country. But it is to say that attempts to bring up the 1930’s analogy are risible. Russia’s interests in the Ukraine are both ancient and vital to her national security. Ignoring those interests demonstrates either a breathtaking ignorance of history or blind prejudice.
Actually, with respect to Crimea and eastern Ukraine, I tend to agree with AO. Russia has a major naval port at the southern tip of Crimea and while I don’t especially support an invasion to hold it, I am stunned that our “intelligence” services don’t seem to have realized Putin would do this. Several analysts I respect are suggesting that Ukraine is one of those cobbled-together countries and might reasonably be split into east and west. If Putin contents himself with Crimea and the east Europe may consider itself lucky.
The Russian and Iranian efforts in the Americas are a different story. It is to be hoped we will oppose those, but with this administration, who knows?
Except that the US and Europe guaranteed the Ukraine’s borders. But of course that was only a scrap of paper and the Ukrainians were stuped fools to believe in solumn promises from the West.
Poland and others learned some years ago not to believe any promises from the US these days. With our current administration and the military draw-down we are in no position to help Ukraine or other European countries. Europe should look to itself because we’re not going to be helping. These are just the facts, and there it is.
#2 John Ad Orientem
[blockquote]What no one (at least in our media) wants to acknowledge is that the Ukraine has been a part of Russia for most of the last 700 years. It borders Russia and the Crimea is the home port of a significant part of the Russian Navy. The Crimea is also Russia’s only major warm water port. It has been a vital piece of real estate for Russia since at least the reign Czar Peter the Great.[/blockquote]
Thank goodness someone is here to talk some common sense – we can rely on you AO. After all, what is less than 25 years as an independent sovereign nation recognised by the members of the United Nations compared to 300 plus years of Russian domination? The Ukrainians are so ungrateful for the benefits of their Russian connection: the starvation of millions [some estimates say up to 10 million] in the ‘breadbasket of the Soviet Union’ in the 1930’s; the enforced deportations of so many Germans, Crimean Tatars and Cossacks; and the destruction of the intellectual and artistic elite.
Perhaps Russia should assert its rights to its “vital piece of real estate” in Finland, Poland, East Prussia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, Austria and all the other renegade countries which left the Soviet Empire, just as it also did in the so-called independent sovereign country of Georgia?
[blockquote]Anyone who thought that Russia was going to stand by and allow a group of nationalists, almost certainly encouraged by Western intelligence services, depose a legitimately elected, albeit heavy handed, government and drag the Ukraine into the anti-Russian EU and maybe even NATO was delusional.[/blockquote]
Very true, I can tell you how shocking is the antagonism of the Western powers with their banks and their so-called trade missions heading off to Moscow. In my own country I have seen the gulags built for the imprisonment of ordinary Russian oligarchs in Kensington and Chelsea and the way they are put on display to the baying crowds in the directors’ boxes at our football grounds and made to eat our horrible food in our 5-star hotels and Michelin restaurants.
What life is that when they could go back to starving in a hovel and working in a tractor factory under a 5-year Russian plan?
And then of course there are their pretend Ukrainian Orthodox churches [not the real thing under the Moscow Patriarchate] which have been encouraging and saying prayers as the “group of nationalists, almost certainly encouraged by Western intelligence services, depose a legitimately elected, albeit heavy handed, government” as that government legitimately went about its lawful business of murdering those protesters and squirreling away state funds. After all, that government was only following Russian orders in order to get the next tranche of funds it needed.
PM, I’m betting you and I don’t agree about what the US should or should not be doing — I hope we do *nothing* militarily interventionist *at all*.
But thank you for the above clarity. There’s really no spinning just what Russia has done [and what it will do with other non-Nato Eastern European countries. But . . . that’s who they are. Permanently predatory and expansionist. And that’s who they will remain.
The problem is that if the West had done something militarily in 1935 when Germany entered the demiliterized Rhineland they might not have had to make a stand in Munich and later in Poland.
A full scale mobilization of NATO and moving troops to the NATO countries eastern borders would not be amiss. But I don’t expect the West to do anything that will cause Putin to loose a second of sleep. And that means that the next crisis started by the Russians could be much more serious.