Partition, with Russia getting back the Crimea. It's the only way this is going to be resolved short of triggering a very hot and nasty little war. Before you object just remember that the Crimea was historically part of Russia under the Tsars in the age of Imperialism. It only went over to Ukraine in 1954 when Kruschev redrew the maps. Before that it belonged to Russia. Before that it belonged to the Ottoman Empire (pre-18th century.) Before that to the Mongols. Most of the people who live there are Russian speakers. There are no specifically Ukrainian interests involved in the region. It's already autonomous from the central government, which is why this happened so quickly after the Russian puppet in Kiev fell. Putin will not want independence for the Crimea due to the implications in a million different places in Russia. So that leaves just giving the Russians the place and that beats the hell out of watching Ukrainians get slaughtered and put back under the Russian yoke. Putin will probably try to avoid the outcome because he really wants all of Ukraine under the Russian sphere of influence but ultimately he will have to say yes.
This is wild. If Russia forces move from the peninsula into Ukraine... Of course all EU nations don't agree on next action, and will balk and wait. Sanctions will hurt Russia, but trade will continue with Iran and China. We should do nothing until EU gets their shit together and make a decision, of course we should support EU decision. This is EU backyard not ours.
We're going to have to lead on this. Russia is a global problem not an EU problem. The Chinese are watching us like hawks right now trying to figure out how much they could get away with on their territorial boundaries. Whose problem will that be if we decide Russian territorial aggression is an EU problem?
EU has to be in this 100%. Too many USA led fronts in too short a period of time. Where Russia is right now, everything stays put, with sanctions. If Russia invades main Ukraine... Idk? There's a Russian war ship in Havana, that shit gets sunk. The territorial disputes with China are between China and Japan and Taiwan, correct? Are the Chineses really a major problem at the moment? It seems like business continues as usual. I think our relationship with the Chinese is fairly good. We also have a strong military presence in the region. This is all bad though, can't see anything good from here.
Crimea is pretty much lost at this point. If Russia decides to invade any other provinces, it might get ugly. Mobilization is already under way in Kiev and many other cities.
If you don't want to take a shit get off the pot. Either the US is the world's hall monitor or we're not the world's hall monitor. If we're not the world's hall monitor the Chinese and the Pakistani's will figure it out pretty quickly and really go to work on India, not to mention other less provocative moves by the Chinese much closer to their sphere of influence. Do you know how many US warships are within firing range of the Russians? That would be most of them that are not in port in the US and probably a few that are in port. Japan, South Korea, Vietnam are all small potatoes compared to India. In a de-stabilized world there are probably a half dozen potential WWIII scenarios out there but the Sino-Indian front is probably second only to Eastern Europe in terms of destructive capacity. Just to send a minor chill up your spine, one of the areas that China claims in India is Jammu and Kashmir. Yes, that Kashmir, the one that Pakistan and India have been fighting over since partition. There are three end results that I can see here. 1. Realpolitik screws the Ukrainians Kissinger style and the world lets Russia walk back in and setup another minority puppet government. 2. We wind up with a much less stable world as the Russians maintain their presence in the Crimea without an agreement and do everything they can to de-stabilize the Ukraine. 3. We work out an accommodation with the Russians that allows them to control Crimea in return for hands off rest of the Ukraine. 3 looks a whole lot better than 1 or 2 even if it comes attached to an agreement that keeps the Ukraine out of NATO and demilitarized. Ukrainians are the people we should be worried about here. The solution should serve their desire for freedom and independence. In the process we'd have begun to set boundaries for Russia and some of the other states casting a covetous eye on their neighbors.
I don't think much will happen unless Russia tries to invade motherland Ukraine. Crimea is already in a weird political situation. They are not a part of Ukraine 100%. And if I am not wrong, Turkish government can claim Crimea based on Treaty of Lausanne ( http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/332502/Treaty-of-Lausanne ) Now it is obvious, Russia is flexing its muscles. Putin can't afford new Ukraine government make Ukraine a part of European Union.
This is the definition of US foreign policy since at least 1991 and probably more like 1948. We're one big entangled alliance with everybody who is not shooting at us. With the people shooting at us we're trying to draw them into an entangling alliance of some sort. Just think of it as the Brer Rabbit Strategy and the world is our Tarbaby.
We should ask the French for help in our struggle against the British. Maybe they will send troops and ships to help us out. Lafayette has arrived! We're saved. The founding fathers would understand each alliance we're in. It's the whole picture that would have them rubbing their chins.
Listening to John Kerry bluster about how you can't just invade countries on a pretext like you did in the 19th century I was thinking really hard about Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, etc, all the places where the US has used a trumped up pretext to try to topple a government we didn't like. The contradictions in play are just very hard to manage from any rational point of view. Putin is going to laugh at us and stay put if that's the direction we take in trying to deal with this. The better direction by far is to defend democracy and try to work out a deal that allows the democratic aspirations of the Ukraine to be fulfilled. The other thing about Kerry's general posture is that it is heavily slanted towards portraying Putin and the Russians as criminals outside the international order. That's a very bad posture to take because it's going to further offend the Russians and inflame tensions and even assuming it works where do you go next? Y'aint gonna find anybody willing to sign on to a regime changing military operation like the one that toppled Saddam. The US needs to figure out the correct posture to take and then be consistent. We're not going to get anything constructive done spitting into a microphone about things that are fairly obvious but clearly not fixable at this point.
Looks like Russia denied the Ultimatum reports coming from the Ukrainian side. Wait and watch. This thing can potentially become a big issue if Putin doesn't start to think with his head.
Putin just knows that Obama can only talk, talk and talk. He's seen red lines drawn in Iran and Syria that led to no serious consequences for either. The only thing that can really affect Russia is if Europe stops buying their oil and natural gas, but I doubt that's gonna happen.
There's no military alternative here. Two nuclear weapons using powers have never squared off face-to-face. The US/EU fighting the Russians would be a catastrophic disaster at this point, particularly for the Ukrainians. The alternatives are all economic-based and as such represent soft power unlikely to stop immediate hard power at work. The solution is to work out a agreement that gives the Russians the thing they can take anyway, and already actually possess, and to begin the process of solidifying the EU response to an aggressive Russian Bear waking up after years of slumber. Ukrainians are better off if they don't have the Crimea at this point. It will always be a festering thorn in their side if they somehow hold onto it. The Russians have the demographic majority in the territory and a historical claim to it and nothing is going to change those facts on the ground.
Putin has seen that Obama is a pussy. He's got no intent on saving the Crimea or Ukraine. Putin has been calculating his moves and I don't buy the line that Putin wants to stop at just the Crimea. (BTW my great great grandfather fought for the British military in the 1st Crimean War) Putin is an old Soviet scumbag, his goal is to bring the Soviet Union (in 2014 terms) back into prominence, what is the term. A tiger can't change his stripes.
