I’m merely imploring Western leaders – who might eventually have to play Churchill and FDR to Putin’s Hitler – to show that you’ve learned from history by standing up to this bully if he even attempts to take the Crimea. (The president of China might have to play Stalin….)
Don’t stand by and let him take it, as your historical namesakes did when Hitler took the Sudetenland; and the rest, as we say, is history.
(“Putin as Hitler; Crimea as Sudetenland,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 26, 2014)
Less than 24 hours after I telegraphed this ominous analogy, Putin deployed troops to take Crimea, validating it:
Russia and the West are on a collision course over Crimea after Moscow was accused of orchestrating a ‘military invasion and occupation’ of the peninsula, as groups of apparently pro-Russian armed men seized control of two airports. Russian troop movements were reported across the territory.
One Ukrainian official claimed late last night that 2,000 Russian troops had arrived in Crimea during the course of the day, in 13 Russian aircraft.
(London Guardian, February 28, 2014)
Far more ominous, though, is that Obama reacted moments ago with nothing more than sketchy words that probably just insulted and emboldened Putin:
- Insulted by inviting Putin to join him and European leaders in fashioning a political solution to this civil unrest. After all, this would be like Putin inviting Obama to join him and Latin American leaders (of countries like Cuba and Venezuela) in fashioning a political solution to similar unrest in Puerto Rico.
- Emboldened by failing to take immediate steps calculated to check Putin’s moves on the ground. Instead, Obama warned that “there will be costs” if Russia intervenes. Well, Russia has intervened. What are the friggin’ costs, Obama?!
Then, of course, there’s the folly of Obama hailing Ukrainian leaders for their restraint in the face of Russian troops taking over their country. Why not just tell them to go fiddle, Obama?!
This intervention makes the “Georgia precedent” I delineated below – in “Ukraine’s (Peaceful) Orange Revolution Turns Red … with Blood” (February 25, 2014) – even more instructive. But I’ve been warning for over a decade about Putin’s intent to re-form the former republics of the Soviet Union in his image.
Here’s an excerpt from “Tensions Simmering Between Mother Russia Her Former Dependent Territory,” June 6, 2008, which explains not only this intent but his geo-political justification as well:
Russian President Vladimir Putin began making moves to foment and enable separatist passions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two pro-Russian provinces in the former Soviet republic of Georgia…
It alarmed many international observers that he was making these moves pursuant to the geopolitical chess playing that characterized the Cold War. They failed to fully appreciate, however, that he was also making them to counter what he perceived as U.S. (and EU) moves to foment and enable separatist passions in Kosovo, a province of the former Yugoslav republic of Serbia…
I fear EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana going on a mission now to talk peace with Putin is rather like British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain going on a mission in 1938 to talk peace with Adolf Hitler. Because, as I have documented in a series of articles over the past few years, Putin is every bit as determined to reassert Russia’s Cold-War sphere of influence over Eastern Europe as Hitler was to assert his Nazi influence over all of Europe.
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Obama keeps insisting, “this is not a Cold War game of chess.” Except that, to Putin, it is; and he’s playing to win.
Putin takes Crimea; your move, Obama….
In the meantime, what does it say about the kind of respect Putin has for Obama, when Obama was on TV just days ago telling the world that Putin assured him that he would not be sending Russian troops into Ukraine? Frankly, it says that Putin has about as much respect for Obama as Hitler had for Chamberlain, when he sent Chamberlain off to tell the world that he would not be sending German troops into Czechoslovakia … beyond the Sudetenland (aka “peace for our time”). Ha!
What Obama should do
Obama is threatening to boycott the G8 summit in Sochi in June, the way he boycotted the Olympics there last month. But Putin has made it demonstrably clear that he couldn’t care any less about such boycotts.
Instead, Obama should call for NATO military exercises on Ukraine’s Western border post-haste to counter Russian military exercises on its Eastern border.
Ironically, Obama already has U.S. war ships in the Black Sea, off the coast of Ukraine, which he deployed as part of a fanciful mission to evacuate Team USA if terrorists attacked the Olympic Games.Therefore, he should redeploy them on a more appropriate mission (i.e., to assume a war footing), while deploying additional ships as a viable show of force.
Once he has made all of these military counter-maneuvers (on the proverbial chess board), then Obama can begin matching Putin’s political maneuvers in kind — complete with having European leaders (like Angela Merkel) prevail upon the Ukrainian parliament to issue a formal request for NATO to help the country reclaim its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Not least because Russia has clearly violated The Budapest Memorandum it signed in 1994 with the United States, the United Kingdom and Ukraine, in which it promised to “respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons. Indeed, affirming my Hitler-Putin analogy even further, this Memorandum is proving every bit as useless today as the 1939 Anglo-Polish Agreement the United Kingdom and France signed to guarantee Poland’s sovereignty and independence against German aggression ultimately proved.
Again, political rhetoric and economic threats mean nothing when Russia is mobilizing to assert control over vast regions of Ukraine. And, for those claiming that the United States has no strategic interest there, just remember that people were saying the same about Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Above I cited the truism that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Equally pertinent is the truism that the only way to deal with a bully is to punch him in the face. Incidentally, Obama’s right-wing critics (like Senator Lindsey Graham) are trying almost maniacally to goad him into rash military action, positing that this is the only way he can prove that he’s got balls. But they are like the idiots who’d yell, jump!, when they come across a person standing on the ledge of a high rise. Obama only needs to demonstrate that he’s willing and able to counter Putin not just with meaningful political rhetoric but strategic economic sanctions/military moves as well.
Let us not be fooled again by the folly of the The Great Illusion. In other words, do not bank on Putin recognizing that Russia has too much to lose by risking war with Europe and the United States over Crimea. Because, like all bullies, he’s predicating his march of folly on nobody standing up to him.
Related commentaries:
Putin as Hitler…
Tensions simmering…
Ukraine’s (peaceful) revolution
* The commentary was originally published yesterday, Friday, at 8:17 pm