By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--March 3, 2014
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By Saturday, it was clear that a Russian-held Crimea is only stage one. The upper house of parliament in Moscow unanimously approved the declaration of war, and thousands of pro-Russian demonstrators turned out in the industrial cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to demand Moscow's protection. As in Crimea on Thursday, armed men stormed local government buildings and replaced the Ukrainian flag with Russia's. The eastern regions of Ukraine are Russian speaking but they voted handily for Ukrainian independence in 1991. No serious separatist movement existed there before this weekend. The local business tycoons, who run politics there, had dropped their support for Mr. Yanukovych and backed the new national government. But Kiev has limited control over military units and police, making the east a tempting target for Mr. Putin to install his own men in power. Ukraine borders four of America's NATO allies, who are watching closely how the U.S. and the rest of Europe respond. The U.S. has for more than two decades championed Ukraine's independence as crucial to European security. In exchange for Kiev's difficult decision in 1994 to hand over its nuclear weapons to Russia, the U.S., along with Britain and Moscow, promised to assure Ukraine's territorial integrity in the so-called Budapest Memorandum. Russia is now in breach of this agreement.At this point, economic retribution is our strongest play. The Russians need the markets of the West to bankrule the system of crony capitalism that helps keep Putin in power. If we cut off their access to oil and gas markets, it is the one thing that will create a serious problem for Putin. But we might have never gotten to this point if Putin had any fear whatsoever of his U.S. counterparts. Obama and Hillary Clinton signaled right away in 2009 that Putin had no reason to feel any such fear. Obama is far too busy trying to socialize America to pay attention to exercise any sort of U.S. strategic muscle abroad. Indeed, he ran in part on the notion that America was spending too much time and resources on matters abroad, and he wanted to pull back on that sort of thing. Nice job, champ. Be careful what you wish for.
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