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Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Crimea


The central question was: "Should Ukraine maintain close ties to Russia or move closer to the European Union and America?"

For the greatest part of the last 300 years the Crimea has been part of Russia and a hefty majority of its people are Russian.  The last elected government of Ukraine was leaning too far toward Russia to suit the people so they ran him out.  They did not make use of any legal process.  Therefore the current government is of questionable legality.

I do not say this to argue in support of Russian President Putin, but rather to point out that the people currently in charge of Ukraine have badly overplayed their hand and they should also be more restrained.

So - how do things work in the new Post Cold War Nuclear age that we live in? We saw in the dissolution of the Soviet Union the decline of a great power.  Now we shall see how the world handles a great power's attempt to expand.

By a great power I mean one that is too big for military discipline.

PS  I recently watched a few minutes of Rachel Maddow on MSNBC.  She was clearly very impressed (as I have always been) with how well the dissolution of the Soviet Union was handled.  The trading of Ukraine's nukes for assurances of its sovereignty by the US, Britain, and Russia(!!).  I didn't see it all, but in what I saw she never once mentioned that it was the Republican, Bush 41, who very deftly handled our side of that.
Posted by Unknown at 7:48 AM

1 comment:

  1. TomMarch 5, 2014 at 6:45 AM

    An entity (and apparently opponent) that is too large to be disciplined militarily creates an overpowering gut desire for exceptionally perceptive and strong leadership in the West. We shall see.

    I agree that the breakup of the USSR was handled deftly and expertly by Bush 41. Foreign policy is a skill he developed as VP and he deserves a lot of credit.

    While Russia’s military might does not rule out military actions in response to the Crimea situation the prospect sure puts your heart in your throat. The President has stated that he had a 90 minute conversation with Putin over the weekend. That was followed by the de facto military occupation of Crimea on Monday. It seems to me that Putin has calculated the consequences of poking a superpower in the eye and found them acceptable. We “the West” will have to make the same calculation.

    I end with this quote from Sun Tzu – “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”

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