Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[JMA]

Too much criticism of Putin going on around here I believe.

Putin has only made his move because he believes he will get away with it. That directly means that the US and the EU misread the developments in post-Soviet Russia and now do not have the stomach for a confrontation which will have a negative impact on their – mainly the EU countries individual economies.

Putin made his move in Georgia in the last months of Bush 43’s presidency and now in the year of the mid-term elections. This is more a strategic weakness of the US than genius on behalf of Putin. I will state further that I would have expected the US to pull out of Europe some time ago given that they were funding more than 70% of NATO’s costs.

What is quite obvious is that there was individual and collective incompetence among the US and EU countries in failing to read the warning signs of a Russia morphing into a criminal dictatorial state massively funded by oil and gas revenues. Obama was warned by McCain, Romney and Palin yet was too clever by half. The Germans blinded by the commercial opportunities post-Soviet Russia offered convinced themselves that a commercial inter-dependence would ensure stability. Britain was in no position to do anything other than accept their London financial system being used to launder the Russian oligarchs ill gotten gains. In fact it would be hilarious if it were not so tragic.

It is clear than the US, rather like post-WW2 Britain, has lost the appetite for foreign adventures and entanglements. So better the US stays out of it and let the Europeans deal with trouble their own back yard. This must include the State Department especially that Nuland woman of “f*** the EU” infamy and the CIA.

The EU’s options are limited in options as the sanctions route will be too painful to bear for the sake of the peoples in the sights of an expansionist Russia. You can hear the Germans saying that the self-determination and freedom of the peoples of Crimea, Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania etc is not worth the pain of sanctions and the possible loss of 350,000 jobs dependent on Russian trade. When the crunch comes the new supposedly self-styled ‘moral’ Germans will revert to type.

We can complain all we like about Putin but the bottom line is that it has been a massive miscalculation by the US and Germany and other EU countries, which has offered this option to Russia. Putin has exploited obvious weakness… no genius in that.

The two nations Europeans need to keep an eye on are the Germans and the Russians – with historical justification – and both need to be emasculated to prevent history repeating itself. Germany whilst economically strong would not frighten Luxemburg militarily but this is not the case with Russia.

In response to this recent Russian military aggression Russia should be reduced to the level where they will never be able to embark on military adventurism ever again. Sadly there are not enough political ‘balls’ across the whole of ‘western’ Europe and North America to put Russia firmly and finally in its place.

@Firn

My take was and still is:

1) Russsia needs the Krim for military reasons.

2) Russia needs some parts of the Ukraine for military and economic reasons.

3) The western Ukraine was a glacis for Russia.

3) Russia faced the problem that they may lose all this to a combination of (stupid) western political actions and soft power (EU).

Result: We saw already the occupation of the Krim and IMHO we will see the occupation of parts of eastern Ukraine in the future.

OTOH Despite the nice Russian performance, I have problems to sell this as real Russian strategic success, Putin had to choose between pest and cholera. He had to invest to maintain the status quo, that is a loss when the opponent had to invest much less.

And to sell Putin as extremly gifted strategist ignores the basic fact, that Russia was not able to control her backyard in the last years and will be unable to provide something that has a chance against the eroding soft power of the EU. Putin is good in his field (ex-KGB), but he stinks when we are talking about the creation of stable and competitive society. Good fever curve is the emmigration of well educated Russians, I bet it will will continue.

On "our" side we were reminded as Fuchs put is, that we have some ugly gaps in our strategic set up which may here and there lead to a small version of August 1914.