Michael Totten has produced what I think is the best analysis of the Ukraine crisis that I've yet read. Here's an excerpt.
Whether we and the Ukrainians like it or not, Ukraine is still a buffer state within Moscow’s sphere of influence. The US has little more leverage there than Russia has in Canada. And since ethnic Russians outnumber ethnic Ukrainians in the Crimea by more than two-to-one, a Russian invasion of that part of the country is a bit like a French invasion of Quebec—troublesome indeed, and infuriating to the capital, but different from, say, a North Korean invasion of Quebec. That’s why Russia could take it without firing a shot and why nobody shot at the Russians.
. . .
The fact that Crimea has a large Russian population and is pro-Russian politically is no excuse for Putin to lop it off Ukraine. If the reason why is not obvious, ask yourself how you’d feel if the Mexican government seized San Antonio, Texas, and said, hey, it has a Hispanic majority, so it’s ours now. Or if the United States conquered and annexed Toronto and said, hey, we’re all English-speaking North Americans here with a common ancestry, so what’s the big deal?
That's basically what Russia is doing.
And that was Adolf Hitler’s justification for taking the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in the run-up to World War II. Putin is not Hitler, but he’s pulling the same kind of stunt and expecting to get away with it for exactly the same reason. Nobody wants to blow up the world over this sort of thing.
There's more at the link. Recommended reading.
Peter
2 comments:
If this is the best analysis you've read, you need to read more. Totten is degenerating into some sort of neocon. The U.S. is engaged in destablizing all of these countries. They use these faux revolutions to extend their influence, probably most directly through these loans. The Crimea was not always a part of Ukraine, and there are existing treaties between the two nations allowing a certain level of Russian military presence there. Now, the U.S. got the elected Ukriane thrown out, and now has declared some other government legit and the Russians take action. Why is their action any more or less appropriate than the state department's action?
Could it be because we no longer have any freaking sense in this country? Democracy was never a very good idea in the first place, but now the word functions as a title- if your nation is a democracy, it simply means that the State Department has blessed it and nothing more.
This is a huge mess.
Hitler is running this country. I see little difference between a community organizer and a house painter.
The next election will tell much about intentions for the one after that. And with Connecticut about to go full tilt civil war, I am not sure who would be the allies in the next world war.
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