To all intents and purposes Crimea is now a part of Russia. All that remains is for the United States and Europe to negotiate a way to contain President Putin’s pan-Russian ambitions so that Ukrainians can govern what remains of their country (especially in the East) without undue interference.
Their strategy of containment might work because Obama is finally taking countermeasures that will remind even Putin why the Soviet Union lost the first Cold War. In addition to cancelling preparations for the G8 meeting in Sochi:
The United States has canceled military exercises with Russia over its actions in Ukraine, while boosting military contacts with NATO partners and other nations in Eastern Europe…
The U.S. military is stepping up joint training through an aviation detachment in Poland and boosting participation in a NATO air policing mission…
The administration has already announced a $1 billion economic aid package to Ukraine’s government to help stabilize the Ukraine economy and support elections set for later this year.
(Voice of America, March 5, 2014)
Unfortunately, these countermeasures will not be nearly as effective as they could or should be because European leaders have apparently learned nothing from WWII. Ironically, German Chancellor Angela Merkel seems every bit as eager to appease Putin as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was to appease Hitler. A symmetry made all the more poignant given that she conveyed this eagerness during a February 27 press conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Merkel and Cameron telegraphed their reluctance to join Obama in imposing sanctions designed to strangle Russia’s economy and place travel bans on some of its wealthiest citizens. Incidentally, it speaks volumes that the only reason the threat of travel bans is effective is that rich Russians could not imagine living without being able to travel to or do business in the United States and Europe; whereas I doubt you’d find a single rich American or European who would feel the same way about being banned from traveling to or doing business in Russia.
In any event, these European quislings insist that sanctions would amount to cutting off the nose to spite the face — not only because they conduct so much trade with Russia, but also because they are dependent on Russia for so much of their oil and gas.
Never mind that Russia would really be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it retaliated against these targeted sanctions by launching a full-scale trade war, or by turning off the oil and gas it supplies to Europe – much of which transits through pipelines in Ukraine. After all, as a March 4, 2014 report in oilprice.com duly notes, “Russia needs to sell gas more than the EU needs to buy it.”
But consider for a moment the historic and geopolitical outrage of Europeans looking to Americans to bear the burden (in blood and treasure) of defending them against Putin. These, remember, are the same Europeans who looked to Americans to do the same to defend them against Hitler. And their only reason for doing so this time is that they don’t want to risk losing Russia’s supply of cheap oil?! Hell, given their experience, you’d think they would welcome this opportunity to prove their mettle — not only by imposing draconian economic sanctions against Russia, but also by warning other countries, like China, that any agreement to help Russia compensate by importing more of its oil and gas will trigger direct sanctions against them too.
Remarkably, Europeans seem interested only in assurances from Putin that he is satisfied with Crimea and will take no more territory … for now. Except that, if Putin orders troops into eastern Ukraine – as he’s fomenting the pretext to do, he’s not going to limit his conquest there – as so many pundits are positing. I’m convinced that he would order them to fight all the way to Kiev to avenge the ouster of his puppet president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Whatever the case, just as their predecessors did with Hitler, these nincompoops are only putting themselves in the position of having to make even greater sacrifices down the road when Putin makes his next aggressive move. Talk about being penny wise and pound foolish. After all, Putin’s propaganda has done such a terrific job of convincing Russians that Westerners are undermining their culture at home and threatening the safety of fellow Russians in former republics of the Soviet Union, the credibility of his presidency now depends on backing up his neo-Stalinist rhetoric with avenging military action.
Meanwhile, for those of you who found my “Putin as Hitler…” commentary below unpersuasive, here’s what no less a person than Hillary Clinton said at a fundraiser in California on Tuesday about Putin’s justification for invading Crimea:
Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the ’30s. All the Germans that were … the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people, and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.
(Washington Post, March 5, 2014)
Like me, Hillary took pains during a press conference at UCLA’s College of Letters and Sciences yesterday to clarify that she was making an analogy to Hitler the military adventurer, not Hitler the genocidal maniac. Not least because, like me, if she were making an analogy to the latter, she would’ve cited Putin’s own predecessor, the genocidal Joseph Stalin, for a more appropriate analogy.
Instead, she was merely noting that this “tough guy with thin skin” is using the same pretext to take Crimea that Hitler used to take Sudetenland, which ultimately led to WWII. Her undeniable point being that this pretext and what it portends seem completely lost on European leaders.
In my February 26 commentary below, I invoked the truism that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. And I was referring not just to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, but to Khrushchev’s missile deployment in Cuba in 1962 and Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 as well.
Accordingly, I urge European leaders to stand more in concert with Obama today instead of letting Putin have any time and space to think that he can keep Crimea without suffering any serious consequences.
Finally, a number of you have asked in recent days what I think of U.S. politicians like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham accusing Obama of being weak and having a “feckless” foreign policy. Suffice it to know that, if it were up to these warmongering fools, U.S. troops would now be dying by the hundreds trying to do in Iran, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine what they tried to do in Iraq.
Thank God that, unlike George W. Bush, Obama is strong enough to base U.S. foreign policy on what is in the national interest instead of on what will impress neo-con war hawks. Not to mention that, listening to them, you’d never know Obama has killed many more real al-Qaeda terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, in places like Pakistan and Yemen than Bush killed during his misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the biggest (and most tragic) mistake of Obama’s presidency was allowing politicians like McCain and Graham to goad him into “surging” more troops into Afghanistan to serve as little more than sitting ducks for Taliban fighters.
But their unwitting championing of Putin as a more admirable leader than Obama betrays the fact that far too many Republicans hate their president more than they love their country. Which is why they will say or do anything to undermine his presidency — the welfare of the country be damned.
NOTE: A Russia Today (RT) journalist is being hailed throughout the West for condemning Russia’s invasion of Crimea … on air earlier this week. Her colleague is being hailed even more for resigning on air in protest of the same one day later.
I too hail the one who spoke out on air, Abby Martin (left), especially because she vowed to stay and continue doing so. But I see the one who resigned as little more than an opportunistic grandstander (who I shan’t dignify by naming), especially given her parting shot about RT being nothing more than a Putin propaganda machine. After all, what does it say about her character and credibility if, despite knowing this, she still worked there for over two years. Not to mention that the seemingly courageous act is significantly undermined in both cases by the fact that they performed it from the relative safety of a studio in Washington, DC as opposed to one in Moscow or even Kiev.
Related commentaries:
Putin takes Crimea…
Putin as Hitler…
* The commentary was originally published yesterday, Thursday, at 6:45 am