“Back to the Cold War”rr

Crisis in Ukraine…
…or crisis in the West ?

Part I - Feb-Apr 2014

Guess who …

… “lost touch with reality” ?

Commentator: Unless West Sets ‘Clear
Limits,’ Putin Will Expand Russia Up to
NATO’s Borders
Paul Goble | interpterermag.com | April 30, 2014

Staunton, April 30 – Vladimir Putin will seek to expand Russia’s influence and control
right up to the borders of NATO because the West has shown that it is not ready to
interfere in any serious way to defend countries that have not been able to get into the
Western alliance up to now, according to a Russian political scientist and commentator.

That is “an enormous tragedy” for Ukraine and the other non-Russian countries but it is
one for Russia itself, Aleksandr Avmalgin says. Moscow’s advance is “not for Russia
but for the Putin criminal group which is engaged in a raiding action at the international
level even as it puts in place an autarchic economic model” at home.

Putin’s aggression, he continues, is leading to “the degradation of Russian society

itself,” in much the same way that Hitler’s war led to a similar decay in German society
of the 1930s.”

Consequently, Avmalgin argues, “if the West does not show Putin clear limits beyond
which he must not go, he will not stop, and the world could move toward a nuclear
war.” Unfortunately, he says, “the West does not have such a plan now,” and that
promises the continuation of a “lengthy” period of uncertainty.

According to Avmalgin, Putin is acting the way he is both because of tendencies typical
of aging authoritarian regimes which see their power slipping and decide to double their
bets and because of the increasing willingness of the Kremlin to listen to the hitherto
marginal neo-imperialist ideas of people like Aleksandr Prokhanov.

Until the Crimean Anschluss, Putin appeared to be acting as someone who wanted to
boost Russia’s standing by promoting himself as the leader of “’a conservative
international,’” a policy which “in principle, people in the West were prepared for.” But
after Crimea, no one in the West could accept that that was really all that the Kremlin
leader wants.

Instead, it became obvious, Avmalgin continues, that Putin wanted to “reshuffle the
deck” of the international order so as to gain greater power at home and abroad. But it
is his international actions that are the most frightening because if Putin thinks he can
cut off Russia from the world as Stalin did, then we are dealing with someone who is
out of touch with reality.

Such an effort would ultimately fail but it would lead to a significant further degradation
of Russian society, a society so weakened already that there is unlikely to be any rising
against Putin. The Kremlin leader is already “conducting a bloodless purge,” allowing
those who disagree to leave and rewarding with the spoils of conquest those who
agree to stay.

With regard to Ukraine, however, that strategy didn’t work and won’t, Avmalgin says.
“Putin’s policy toward Ukraine will be much harsher.” He will seize as much as he can
territorially and seek to put the rest of Ukraine under oligarchs loyal to himself.
“Unfortunately,” the analyst says, Putin’s “chances for this are not bad.”
Ukrainians and the West need to recognize that that second part of Putin’s program will
represent “an enormous historical challenge, more than the loss of Crimea or the
Donbass represent.” It would put in Putin’s hands “enormous resources” and show that
“it is possible to buy everyone and everything.”

Putin’s moves up to now, Avmalgin says, have been those of a coolly calculating
security officer. One can’t oppose that “with the aide of sincerity and openness.” Such
things only give the Kremlin new openings.

“The people in the Kremlin,” he says, “having the psychology of intelligence officers do
not believe in the sincerity of revolutions, ideological breakthroughs or public policy.”
Instead, they believe that everything public is organized by people like themselves
behind the scenes and they act accordingly.

“The Kremlin uses the tactic of saboteurs and of ‘green men,’ constantly lies and when
the other side wants to know how it is possible to lie that way, it laughs” because it
thinks that “we all are intelligence officers.”

Avmalgin notes that the situation now is much worse even than in Brezhnev’s times
because then at least, even as the regime used the KGB more or less freely, it always
did so together with “appeals to universalistic values.” Putin’s regime has dispensed
with this: it lies, and it takes what it wants.

According to the Russian analyst, Moscow is going to organize “’a Bosnian scenario’ in
the Donbass,” leaving it within the borders of Ukraine “formally but making it so
autonomous as to be beyond the control of Kyiv,” much as it has already done in
Moldova’s Transdniestria. This will create “’a gray zone’” which will like radiation have
an impact on the rest of Ukraine.

Because of this, some are saying that Ukraine would be better off to cede this territory.
That would be true but only under one condition: Ukraine would have to receive the
guarantees of EU and NATO membership so that any concession now would not
simply create a new place d’armes for further Russian demands and destabilization in
the future.

But there is another problem that Ukrainians and the West must face up to. All
societies are “corrupt, but the situation in the Ukrainian elite is especially bad. Many of
the leaders are pursuing their own agendas rather than acting in the best interests of
Ukraine. And there is the very real fear that one or another of them could be bought off
and betray Ukraine.

Dealing with that is Ukraine’s first challenge. Unless it is met, Avmalgin suggests, the
future will be very bleak indeed, whatever else Moscow does. But it is likely to prove
impossible unless NATO and the West impose limits on Putin’s aggression.
Brzezinski's Rx for Keeping Ukraine Independent
Former National Security Adviser Say West Needs to Arm Ukraine and Stand Up to
Russia's Putin
By Gerald F. Seib connect
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April 29, 2014 6:53 p.m. ET
Zbigniew Brzezinski. TK

What would Zbig do?

Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, that is, and the question is what
to do now in the Ukraine crisis.

Few are better equipped to answer that question than is Mr. Brzezinski. Son of a Polish
diplomat, he has spent a lifetime thinking about the geopolitics of Eastern Europe, from
posts in government, academia and, currently, at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies.

As those who know him would expect, Mr. Brzezinski has a plan: The Obama
administration and its allies should help Ukraine become a truly independent state in
the center of Europe. Here are excerpts of a conversation in which he describes how to
go about that:

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The stakes in Ukraine: "What is at stake is a secure and open Europe," Mr. Brzezinski
says. The alternative is "some sort of a Russian imperial enterprise next door based
largely on force, and as a result probably quite unstable. So the stakes are really
enormous."

The approach the West should take now: The effort at this point, says Mr. Brzezinski,
should be simultaneously two-fold: The first objective should be to see whether an
accommodation with Russia is still possible, which he believes it could be. The second
objective should be to ensure that the Russians, and particularly President Vladimir
Putin, understand the consequences of not reaching an understanding with the
international community.

What goal to pursue: The West should seek "an understanding that Ukraine is free to
pursue its objective to become more European." Under this understanding, Ukraine
wouldn't become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and full
membership in the European Union would still be "some distance away," as it has been
for Turkey for years.
At the same time, though, Ukraine wouldn't become a member of the Eurasian Union
that Mr. Putin is trying to create around Russia's borders. Instead, Ukraine would have
an independent status much like the one Finland enjoys now: "Like Finland, it would
have normal commercial relations with Russia while becoming an increasingly modern
European democracy."

To reach this goal, "we would probably have to put aside the resolution of the Crimean
situation for the moment," and over the longer run help Ukraine seek to reach "a
condominium on Crimea"—some kind of joint control or ownership or oversight.

How to pressure Russia to accept this outcome: This "will only be appealing to the
Russians if they realize that their use of force carries the risk of confrontation. Here I
think it is important for the Ukrainians to recognize that they have to be willing to fight
for what they want. And we have to be willing to make it clear that they will not be
alone."

That means offering Ukraine weaponry—defensive in nature, but suitable for urban
warfare. "I would be willing to promise it to them now," Mr. Brzezinski says, and then
provide the weaponry depending on the circumstances that unfold. Among other things
Ukrainians need, Mr. Brzezinski says, is help from the West to "re-create their army"
and to be able to engage in protracted urban resistance.

The usefulness of economic sanctions: "On sanctions, I think [President Barack]

Obama has played it prudently," Mr. Brzezinski says. Mr. Putin's Russian friends
already have felt real pain; even the Russian president has acknowledged that
sanctions brought some of his allies to "tears." More broadly, Mr. Brzezinski says: "The
Russian economy now is in no shape for expanding sanctions. I think there are strong
elements at the top of Russian society that understand this risk. It could be a
catastrophe for Putin. So the scope of sanctions should keep escalating."

Other sources of pressure on Russia: "I don't think it is going to be easy. But the
Russians have to ask themselves, even if Putin won't, what are the consequences of a
nation of 45 million people turning hostile."

Already, Mr. Brzezinski says, Mr. Putin has to be concerned about the seeds he has
sown next door: "He has created widespread animus toward Russia in Ukraine. And
Ukraine has never historically been anti-Russian."

And it could get worse. Mr. Brzezinski notes that Mr. Putin needs to be concerned
about the ability of outside forces to stir up trouble for him among Russia's own large
ethnic minorities, particularly its Muslim minorities.

How to best explore chances for an understanding with Russia: Mr. Brzezinski
suggests further discussions between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, perhaps escalating to quiet conversations between
Vice President Biden and Russian Prime Minister—and former President— Dmitry
Medvedev if the dialogue progresses. And he suggests that Mr. Obama address the
nation on the issues at stake.
Would America Go to War with Russia?
James S. Robbins | The National Interest | March 22, 2014

Vice President Biden was in Warsaw last week to reassure our eastern NATO allies
that they have the support of a “steadfast ally.” But if Russia moved against Poland or
the Baltic States, would the United States really go to war? Or would we do nothing
and effectively destroy the NATO alliance?

President Obama has ruled out a “military excursion” in Ukraine. America is not
obligated legally to take action against Russia for annexing Crimea. We would not go to
war if Russia mounted a large-scale invasion of Ukraine to restore the ousted, pro-
Moscow government of Viktor Yanukovych, currently under U.S. sanctions. And we
would not even send troops if Ukraine was partitioned, or absorbed by Russia.
Americans have no interest in such a conflict, and no stomach for it.

NATO allies are a different matter. The North Atlantic Treaty is a mutual-defense pact,
and Article 5 says that an armed attack against one member state “shall be considered
an attack against them all.” This is a clear red line. The only time Article 5 has been
invoked was in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and most NATO
allies sent troops to support the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Could the current crisis expand to touch NATO? The developing situation in Ukraine
has been compared to Germany’s absorption of Austria in 1938, or the subsequent
partition and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Hillary Clinton compared Russian
president Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, which by extension puts President Obama in
the role of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously failed to achieve
“peace in our time” at Munich.

Push the analogy further. The Second World War was sparked by Warsaw’s resistance
to Berlin’s demand to annex the Polish Corridor, a small stretch of land—smaller than
Crimea—separating the German provinces of Pomerania and East Prussia. Hitler
responded by invading Poland and partitioning it with the Soviet Union. Britain and
France had pledged to defend Polish independence, and two days after Germany
invaded, they declared war. In his war message, Chamberlain explained that Hitler’s
actions showed “there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his
practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.”

This may or may not describe Mr. Putin, as Mrs. Clinton alleged. But if similar
circumstances arise in the near future, will the United States honor security guarantees
made to Poland and the Baltic States when the Russian threat was only a theory?

Mr. Biden stood with Estonian president Toomas Ilves Tuesday to “reconfirm and
reaffirm our shared commitment to collective self-defense, to Article 5.” He wanted to
make it “absolutely clear what it means to the Estonian people” and that “President
Obama and I view Article 5 of the NATO Treaty as an absolutely solemn commitment
which we will honor—we will honor.” Shortly thereafter, Moscow “expressed concern”
about the treatment of ethnic Russians in Estonia. Mr. Putin justified his actions in
Crimea as “restoring unity” to Russian people. Estonia’s population is 25 percent ethnic
Russian, compared to 17 percent in Ukraine, mostly in the north and east part of the
country. Suppose anti-Russian riots “spontaneously” broke out in Estonia. What would
the United States do if Moscow invoked a “responsibility to protect” these people and
bring them “back” to the Motherland? Would President Obama take military action
against Russia over a small, secluded piece of a tiny, distant country? Would it be like
the Polish Corridor in 1939? This is highly doubtful—highly doubtful.
Aren’t we obligated by treaty to intervene? Mr. Biden mentioned the “absolutely solemn
commitment which we will honor.” It was so important he said it twice. However, Article
5 says that NATO members pledge to come to the assistance of the attacked state
using “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” It doesn’t
take a White House lawyer to see the gaping loophole—President Obama can simply
deem that the use of U.S. force isn’t necessary. He can walk back the red line, as he
did with Syria. Stern talk and minimal sanctions would follow, but Estonia would lose
some, if not all of its territory. And in practical terms it would mean the end of NATO,
which is one of Moscow’s longstanding strategic objectives. Mr. Putin’s chess game
does not end in Crimea.

James S. Robbins is Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign
Policy Council in Washington, DC.

[ the end of NATO or the end of Obama? does anyone remember Dallas? ]
Kerry Sees Ukraine Crisis as Uniquely Putin's
Secretary of State Says More Sanctions May Be Needed Unless Russia Leader Stops
Intimidations

Wall Street Journal | April 29, 2014

Secretary of State John Kerry has been thinking about, talking through and wrestling
with the Ukraine crisis for weeks, but he still grasps for words to describe the
motivations of the man at its center: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"You almost feel that he's creating his own reality, and his own sort of world, divorced
from a lot of what's real on the ground for all those people, including people in his own
country," Mr. Kerry said in an interview late Monday.

Mr. Kerry spoke just hours after President Barack Obama's administration announced
another round of economic sanctions on Russian individuals and companies, and just
hours before Europeans were to announce full details of their own new sanctions, all
taken in hopes of somehow stopping Mr. Putin's intimidation of neighboring Ukraine.
But the secretary didn't sound as if he thinks his work on the sanctions front is done
with this latest round, the fourth so far.

Asked why the administration continues to punish individual Russians or single

Russian companies rather than impose broader penalties on whole sectors of the
Russian economy—the energy, financial or defense sectors, for instance—Mr. Kerry
replied: "We're inches away from that now. And if they continue on this path, that's
where it's heading."

He also argued strongly—and there is some evidence to support the argument—that

the sanctions are biting at the top end of the Russian economic and political power
structure. The best argument that the economic threat is making a difference is simple:
Whatever else Mr. Putin has or hasn't done, he hasn't taken the fateful step of sending
his troops across the border directly into eastern Ukraine.

But while sanctions may be pinching Kremlin cronies, the conversation with Mr. Kerry
leaves no doubt that he sees Russia's actions as the product not of any collective
Russian view of the world, but of the determination of an individual: Vladimir Putin.

The Ukraine crisis, Mr. Kerry said, is "obviously very personally driven in ways that I
think are uniquely inappropriate to 21st century leadership." He added: "It's an amazing
display of a kind of personal reaction to something that just doesn't fit into the lessons
learned for the last 60 years or 70 years. It's so divorced that it leaves you feeling badly
for the consequences. I think the Russian people are going to pay a price for this. It's
unfortunate for the Russian people, who clearly don't fit into the costs that are being
attached to this, because it appears to be so personal to President Putin."

Mr. Kerry said he finds the Russian leader's appeals to nationalism in particular
"dangerous in this time and place."

And he discounted the idea that the Russia's actions are unfolding spontaneously.
"There's no question that plans were executed in a thoughtful way in Crimea" when
Russia annexed that Ukrainian peninsula, Mr. Kerry said. More broadly, he added:
"Obviously there's a plan. And it's being carried out with a sort of singular resolve, I
guess is the way to put it."
Less clear is whether the West has found any way to stop the plan from unfolding
further. Aside from his strong belief that economic sanctions are the best and most
promising tool for getting Russia's attention, Mr. Kerry also said the U.S. has and will
provide help to the Ukrainian armed forces. But he dismissed as unrealistic those who
argue providing lethal military aid quickly would produce a substantial change.

"Any sound military thinking understands that equipment of a defensive nature, that
would actually make a difference, would take a significant amount of time to train up
on, let along get there," he said. "Building capacity in an army the size of Ukraine's to
stand up to an army with the capacity and the size of Russia's, that's not an overnight
task."

Mr. Kerry also has been devoting hours of time and thousands of miles of travel to
diplomatic efforts. The results, he acknowledged, are "disappointing"—a result he
ascribes as "an example of bad faith and absence of legitimacy."

Nor does he sound like someone holding great hope for diplomatic fruits in the near
term: "Look, that's what this building does. That's what I'm supposed to do. You're
supposed to try to find a diplomatic solution to things. If you can't do that then you have
to take the steps necessary to enforce your policy."

His greatest fear now? "I think it could deteriorate into hot confrontation," even
without Russian troops crossing into Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. "And there are
provocateurs who are perfectly capable, who are trying to instigate that kind of flare-
up."

The fact it hasn't happened so far, he said, is a tribute to the discipline and restraint of
the fledgling Ukrainian government. "But obviously," he added, "you could have a flash
point here."
Putin’s Useful Idiots
Slawomir Sierakowski | NY Times | APRIL 28, 2014

Western intellectuals have long had a soft spot for Russia. Voltaire, the French teacher
of tolerance and a great friend of Catherine the Great, said that he would gladly move
to Russia, though only if its capital were Kiev, not icy St. Petersburg. Johann Gottfried
von Herder, the German philosopher of enlightened nationalism, dreamed that he
would obtain earthly glory as the “new Luther and Solon” for an as-yet-unspoiled
Ukraine, which he would transform into a “new Greece” within the Russian empire.

And in the last century intellectuals like André Gide, Pablo Neruda and Jean-Paul
Sartre all stumped for the Soviet Union as what Lenin allegedly called “useful idiots,”
apologizing for its monstrosities long after the rest of the world recognized them.

To those in the Eastern Europe left — myself included — who know Russia better than
most, such naïveté has long been a source of chagrin. And yet it continues, even
today, as many American and Western European intellectuals do all they can to
minimize the dangerous aggression by Vladimir V. Putin.

Writing in The Nation, the Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen argued that Mr. Putin was
largely blameless for the conflict in Ukraine, that he had tried to avoid it but that the
West had forced his hand. In Mr. Cohen’s eyes, the West has unnecessarily humiliated
Russia by inviting countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary to join
NATO.

Ukraine, he wrote, is part of Russia’s sphere of influence, so why can’t we just accept
Mr. Putin’s proposal that Ukraine be federalized, with neutrality guaranteed in a new
constitution?

Mr. Cohen’s defense of Russia’s sphere of influence overlooks the question of whether
the countries that fall within it are there by choice or coercion. Ukraine is willing to be in
the Western sphere of influence because it receives support for civil society, the
economy and national defense — and Russia does nothing of the kind.

Mr. Cohen and others don’t just defend Russia; they attack the pro-democracy activists
in Ukraine. Another American pundit, Max Blumenthal, described the Euromaidan
movement as “filled with far-right street-fighting men pledging to defend their country’s
ethnic purity.”

True, such people were present at the square, but they were marginal figures, and
slogans about ethnic purity never gained popularity. Yes, generally speaking, Ukraine
has its skinheads and its anti-Semites and even serial killers, pedophiles and Satanists.
They are not present in smaller or larger numbers than in any other country, even in
the most mature European state.

In one particularly egregious passage, Mr. Blumenthal writes about how the “openly
pro-Nazi politics” of the Ukrainian political party Svoboda and its leader, Oleg
Tyagnibok, “have not deterred Senator John McCain from addressing a Euromaidan
rally,” nor did it “prevent Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland from enjoying a
friendly meeting with the Svoboda leader this February.”

That distorts how these things work. A whole range of Western political leaders
traveled to Euromaidan, and virtually all of them were photographed with Mr.
Tyagnibok. For better or worse, Svoboda was part of the coalition of parties behind the
Euromaidan movement, and they had agreed to support one another. Americans would
behave exactly the same way in a similar situation.

Strangely, Western intellectuals seem unbothered by anyone who notes the similarity
between their pronouncements and Russian propaganda. Indeed, they dismiss such
charges out of hand. Zoltan Grossman, who teaches at Evergreen State in Olympia,
Wash., writes that it is “wrong and irresponsible to assert that the presence of fascists
and Nazis in the new government is merely Russian propaganda.”

For Dr. Grossman, inconvenient details are less important than the fact that Dmytro
Yarosh, the leader of the far-right organization Right Sector, had been appointed
deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

That sounds ominous, until you realize that Mr. Yarosh is not formally a member of the
government, and that in February he met with Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine and gave
public assurances that Right Sector intended to fight all instances of anti-Semitism,
xenophobia and chauvinism.

What naïve American intellectuals say free of charge, the canny Gerhard Schröder, the
former German chancellor, says for 250,000 euros a year as a board member of
Gazprom, the Russian oil giant. Mr. Schröder, the German father of “Gazprom
socialism” — a new subspecies of limousine liberalism — has repeatedly embarrassed
Berlin by supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

He isn’t alone — another former chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, has likewise sung
Russia’s praises of late, as has Günter Verheugen, a prominent former European
Union commissioner.

What drives these men? Is it a case of poorly conceived pacifism? An eruption of

remorse for war crimes carried out against Russians, so many years ago? Or the
Stockholm syndrome of a victim fascinated by his executioner?

Obviously, they are entitled to their opinions. But in speaking out this way they are
doing great damage to Germany’s postwar government, built on a commitment to
democracy and national self-determination, everything that is currently under attack by
Mr. Putin.

The irony is that by standing beside Russia and pointing fingers at fascist phantoms in
Ukraine, Western intellectuals are aligning themselves not just with the autocrat in the
Kremlin, but the legions of far-right parties across Europe that have come to Russia’s
defense, among them Hungary’s Jobbik, Vlaams Belang in Belgium, Austria’s Freedom
Party, Italy’s Lega Nord and the French Front National. Who says Russia needs
propaganda? It already has its useful idiots.

Slawomir Sierakowski is a sociologist, a founder of the Krytyka Polityczna movement

and the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Warsaw. This article was
translated by Maria Blackwood from the Polish.
Who Is Getting Whacked by the Latest
Sanctions on Russia—and Who Isn't
BY JULIA IOFFE | NEW REPUBLIC | UKRAINE APRIL 28, 2014

On Monday morning, President Obama, speaking from Manila, announced a new

round of sanctions against Russia, designed to punish the Kremlin for blowing up the
Geneva agreement. On the list are “seven government officials, including two key
members of the Russian leadership’s inner circle, and 17 entities,” including little
boutique banks owned by Putin’s buddies who were hit by the first round of sanctions.

Here’s what it all means.

Who’s not on the list?

Administration officials are flaunting the fact that they had the gumption to sanction
Sergei Chemezov, the arms trade overlord and close Putin ally, and Igor “Darth Vader”
Sechin (also known as “the scariest man on earth” and head of state oil company
RosNeft). These two are some of scariest, most powerful dudes Putin has working for
him.

But equally telling are the names not on Monday’s list: Alexei Miller, head of Russian
state gas giant Gazprom. There’s a rumor going around that Miller was on the list but
was taken off to appease the jittery Europeans, who still rely on Gazprom for much of
their gas. According to American officials, there was no draft and no erasure, but not
including Miller on the list this go-around was indeed a concession to a reluctant and
Russia-dependent Europe, which the Obama administration has been hauling along
with a tremendous amount of patience. “Europeans have come a long way, especially
given where they started,” says one administration official involved in the sanctions
deliberations.

RosNeft. Sechin’s sanctioning is a big deal and the White House banning him from
traveling to the U.S. is a big deal. Since 2011, Sechin has been traveling to the U.S.—
somewhere this former Soviet spook had never been—rather frequently: that year,
Rosneft and ExxonMobil inked a deal that swapped Exxon’s new exploration rights in
the Russian Arctic for RosNeft’s right to explore in the Gulf of Mexico. While
sanctioning Sechin is not enough to freeze this deal—apparently, Exxon has been
quite nervous about losing access to the resource-rich Arctic—this is certainly flirting
with it.

Russian state media companies, the ones responsible for the relentless propaganda
campaign, including the broadcast in which one Russian propagandist threatened to
turn the U.S. into “radioactive ash.” This is especially clear in looking at the balance of
who from Putin’s inner circle bears the brunt of the sanctions: the Rotenberg brothers
and Gennady Timchenko, but not Yuri Kovalchuk, who was on the first list of sanctions.
Kovalchuk is a key figure not just because he’s in Putin’s inner circle, but because
Putin also trusts him to own—and thereby control—key media assets.

This was by design. According to several current and former government officials, the
White House has consciously avoided going after the Russian media—unlike the
Europeans, who, last month, sanctioned telejournalist Dmitry Kiselev, he of the
radioactive cloud—in part out of principle, in part out of fear of the optics of the world’s
most lecture-y democracy attacking even a sham press. “There’s been a little bit of
reluctance to go after the media at least for now, though that could be revisited,” says
the administration official. (The others weren’t willing to be quoted.) “It isn’t really
media, it’s more a propaganda apparatus, and we might go after that later. But we
wanted to start somewhere else.”

That said, the White House did sanction Aleksei Pushkov, a rabidly anti-American
television personality. Their cover? He’s the head of the Russian parliament’s foreign
affairs committee.

Who is on the list?

Non-people. This is important, as sanctioning whole businesses affects a whole layer

of implicit, complicit individuals. This is something unique to U.S. policy. Watch to see
who is on the European list announced today, for example. It will be just individuals, not
entities. Why? European sanctions norms call for targeting specific individuals
demonstrably tied up with X act of aggression, rather than entities.

The boutique banks—or “crony banks,” as U.S. officials are calling them in private—are
not a crucial part of the Russian economy, but they matter for other reasons. SMP
Bank, for instance, is ranked 36th among Russian banks, in terms of the size of its
assets, as determined by the Russian Central Bank. InvestCapitalBank is 90th. But
both banks are owned by the Rotenberg brothers, Putin’s childhood friends and judo
buddies. They are not retail banks that have civilian clients and give out car loans;
rather, they service the Rotenberg’s various projects, like building pipelines for
Gazprom. And the Rotenberg company responsible for that (StroyGazMontazh, or
SGM) was sanctioned, too.

This approach is more comprehensive than simply saying the Rotenbergs can’t visit
New York; instead, it seeks to paralyze several arms of their financial empire, which
both enables Putin’s rule, and directly, existentially benefits from it. And, so far, it
affects them without inflicting the civilian casualties that would result from sanctioning a
major Russian retail bank, like Sberbank.

What’s the point?

The psychological factor of naming these banks is not to be underestimated. First of all,
it removes the curtain cloaking this shadowy “crony economy,” full of small, strange
banks whose business is far from obvious. It shows the Russians that we know how
and by whose hands the economy runs. Furthermore, says prominent Russian
economist Sergei Guriev, “the continuation of adding companies and banks indicates
that future sanctions may include certain truly systemic financial institutions.”

For instance, in the tense lead-up to Monday’s announcement, GazpromBank and VEB
(a massive bank close to Putin that is responsible for financing much of the Sochi
Olympics) were rumored to be on the sanctions list, which depressed the Russian
market. Stocks immediately rebounded when investors learned they were not (yet)
being targeted. This kind of volatility—especially when coupled with the ratings
downgrade—serves to further undermine Russia’s economy.

The radioactive factor is also an important one. StroyGazMontazh may not have any
U.S. business and Arkady Rotenberg may have no U.S. assets—an unlikely
proposition, but let’s go with the hypothetical—but given U.S. dominance of the world
financial system, the Rotenbergs’ days of smooth sailing may just be over. “I don’t think
the Russians quite understand the extent to which the world financial system is
integrated with the dollar and the U.S. financial system,” says one administration official
involved in the sanctions deliberations. “I don’t know if these people have assets in the
U.S. I always suspected most of their assets are in Europe. But once the U.S. banking
system has redlined you, it’s hard to do business. You’re radioactive.”
Which is why it’s starting to work. Western financing in Russia has seized up.
According to an investor note sent out by the political risk management firm Eurasia
Group,

U.S. and EU actions to date have hurt Russia's economy. Capital outflows
are soaring, contributing to S&P's 25 April downgrading of Russia's foreign
currency sovereign rating. The Russian market is off roughly 10% since the
takeover of Crimea. Foreign banks have become more skittish about lending
to Russian firms.

Here are the U.S. government estimates of the pain:

This is [sic] contributed to sharp declines in the value of Russian equities,

which are down almost 15 percent this year, and the Russian ruble, which
has depreciated almost 9 percent against the dollar since January 1st.

The Russian stock market is performing worst among major emerging

market economies this year. And the ruble is also the worst performing
currency among major emerging markets over the same period.

Our sanctions and the overall increase in uncertainty in the Russian

economy have led investors to demand significantly higher risk premiums to
hold Russian government debt, causing the country’s 10-year bond yields to
increase nearly 175 basis points since the start of the year. That is worse
performance than high-risk borrowers such as Greece and Portugal.
Russia’s 10-year bond is now trading at about 9.7 percent, and things are so
bad that the Russian government was forced to cancel a recent bond auction
because of a lack of investor demand.

None of which is to say it’s changing Putin’s calculus. In fact, I’d argue that the more
we press on him, the more he’ll dig in. That’s just his style. But at least it’s some form
of punishment, which is more than the Bush administration did when Putin invaded
Georgia.
Obama’s half-measures give Vladimir Putin
little to fear
The Post’s View | By Editorial Board, Washington Post April 28

VLADIMIR PUTIN’S assault on Ukraine has been relentless and increasingly reckless:
Forces working with Russian personnel in eastern Ukraine are torturing and murdering
opponents and holding international observers hostage. In contrast, President Obama’s
response has been slow and excruciatingly measured. New U.S. sanctions announced
Monday fall well short of the steps that senior officials threatened when the Russian
offensive in eastern Ukraine began three weeks ago.

No wonder that, even as he announced them, Mr. Obama expressed skepticism that
they would work. “We don’t expect there to be an immediate change in Russia’s
policy,” a top aide told reporters. This official acknowledged that the United States
could take steps that would impose “severe damage on the Russian economy” but was
holding them back. The obvious question is: Why would the United States not aim to
bring about an immediate change in Russian behavior that includes sponsorship of
murder, torture and hostage-taking?

Mr. Obama said the sanctions, aimed at business cronies of Mr. Putin and their firms,
are “calibrated” to “change his calculus.” As in the failed attempt to change the
calculations of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the White House is assuming that a
ruler engaged in wanton aggression can be gently steered to an off-ramp with half
measures. The strategy was worth trying after the Ukraine crisis began in late
February, but the Russian president, like Mr. Assad, has made a mockery of the
administration’s diplomacy, blatantly ignoring the agreement accepted by his foreign
minister in Geneva 11 days ago.

U.S. officials say that “sectoral” sanctions against Russian banks and the energy and
mining industries are being held in reserve as a deterrent against a Russian invasion of
Ukraine. But that seems to imply a writing-off of Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and its
systematic and increasingly brutal effort to create chaos in eastern provinces. And
hasn’t Russia already invaded Ukraine? Kiev’s intelligence service says at least 30
officers of the Russian military intelligence service have been directing the assaults on
local governments; a White House statement Monday said, “Russia’s involvement in
the recent violence in eastern Ukraine is indisputable.”

A better explanation was hinted at by a senior official who said the administration did
not want to act without the European Union, which announced its own minimalist
sanctions expansion Monday. The official also said that the administration needed to
consider “the effect on the global economy.” That suggests the U.S. sanctions policy is
“calibrated” less toward rescuing Ukraine than toward avoiding steps that would ruffle
feathers in Brussels or set back U.S. economic growth in an election year.

Those are understandable motives, but they ought to be trumped by the imperative of
standing unambiguously against the first forcible change of borders in Europe since
World War II. By choosing not to use the economic weapons at his disposal and
broadcasting that restraint to the world, Mr. Obama is telling Mr. Putin as well as other
potential aggressors that they continue to have little to fear from the United States.
Refusing to ‘Die for Narva’ Would Be End of
NATO and the West, Piontkovsky Says
Paul Goble | interpetermag.con | April 29, 2014

Staunton, April 29 – The Kremlin thought it had a winning propaganda theme offered
up by some in the United States by “the sacramental question: ‘Do you want to die for
Narva?’” Andrey Pionkovsky says, because in fact no one in the West “will ever go to
war with Russia in the defense of Estonia” or Latvia or Ukraine.

But what Vladimir Putin apparently “underestimated” is another fundamental reality: If

NATO ever fails to defend the territory of its members, that will be not only “the end of
NATO” but also “the end of the US as a world power [and] the withdrawal of the West
from World History”.

In a post on Ekho Moskvy today, the Russian analyst said that Putin had made a
number of ideological missteps since he launched his Ukrainian campaign, including
drawing on Hitler’s speech about the Sudetenland for his comments about Crimea, and
statements by some of his supporters about Russians being the descendants of Aryan
tribes.

Those were serious mistakes, but they ultimately may not matter as much as Putin’s
increasingly expansive talk about Novorossiya and even northern Kazakhstan as part
of his “Russian world” and as potential objects of his drive to go down in history as the
latest “ingatherer of Russian lands.”

Putin has said these things because they play well at home and because he was
confident that he could intimidate the West to the point that it would take no action
against him. To be sure, Piontkovsky continues, the West “always was prepared to
sacrifice Ukraine,” pointing to “the first automatic action” of the US and NATO that they
excluded any military response because Ukraine is not part of the Western alliance.

“In reality,” the Russian commentator says, “who would go to war with a nuclear super
power in order to defend a state about which no one had taken any obligations. It was
[quite] possible to forget about the Budapest memorandum as a meaningless piece of
paper.” After all, “a chicken is not a bird, and a memorandum is not a treaty.”

But Putin’s initial success at intimidation of the West not surprisingly has led him to
overreach. If he takes in all of the Russian lands in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan,
“what then remains to support the vitality of the idea of the ingathering of Russian
lands? Narva. Russian Narva. A city of Russian military glory” that is now within the
borders of a NATO country.

According to Piontkovsky, the current power balance between the conventional forces
of NATO and those of “the Russian world” is such that regardless of how many “little
green men” came from Russia to Narva to secure the conduct of a referendum about
unification with Russia, they could be liquidated by [NATO] forces in the course of half
an hour.”

But as the Russian commentator notes, the question is not whether such Russian
subversive forces could be liquidated but rather whether they would be. That this might
be a real question was suggested by its being raised in the United States by people
ranging from “the veteran of Soviet intelligence Dmitry Konstantinovch Tsimes to that
veteran of American diplomacy Henry Kissinger.”
It seemed obvious to both the Kremlin and these analysts that the West “would never
go to war with Russia” to defend Estonia or Latvia just as it had not been willing to do
so over Ukraine. But what Putin failed to recognize is that “the West cannot in any case
allow itself to refuse to defend militarily the territory of a NATO member country.”

“Does the West have a way out of this logical trap?” Piontkovsky asks, and he
suggests that the West is moving toward it. It is doing everything it can not to allow “the
dilemma of Narva” to arise, and that has serious consequences for Putin and all
because of his acceptance of the notion that the old idea of “the ingathering of Russian
lands” can be revived.

The sanctions regime of the West is beginning to hurt not only Russia but the
economies of other countries. But, after Putin suggested in his speech of March 18 that
he would follow that old notion, he “became for the West an existential problem” even if
the West has to suffer as well to solve.

And the West is set, in order to avoid the Narva question, to move beyond just
economic sanctions and to show to Russians and the world “the nature and structure of
the personal wealth of Putin and his closest cronies.” That step is “a politically much
more terrible threat to him” than any simple freezing of accounts would be.

That is because, Piontkovsky says, “to continue successfully his [self-proclaimed]

historical mission of spiritual leader of the Russian World will be extremely problematic
for him if that is his reputation in the eyes of his subordinates.” And the American
announcement that it will pursue this issue is for Putin “the last warning” that he is
going to have to choose between “the ingathering of Russian lands and [having]
American dollars.”
Europe Lacks Founding Father as Russia
Sows Divisions
By James G. Neuger – Bloomberg - Apr 28, 2014

What the European Union needs is someone like John Jay.

Appealing in 1787 for the ratification of the U.S. constitution, the American founding
father said “a cordial Union, under an efficient national government” would provide “the
best security that can be devised against hostilities from abroad.”

From Ukraine’s upheaval and the renewed Russian menace to Syria’s civil war and
chaotic post-revolutionary Libya, today’s EU confronts no shortage of external dangers.
But instead of knitting the bloc’s 28 countries together, the threats have exposed what
is keeping them apart.

“The EU is internally divided about the right answer,” said Jan Marinus Wiersma, a
former Dutch member of the European Parliament who is now with the Clingendael
Institute in The Hague. “As long as there is no common direction in how to react to
Russia’s ambitions, we will keep a divided Europe.”

Throughout history, perils from abroad have been spurs to unity. Continued British
animosity after the American revolution led to the setup of the U.S. federal government;
the consolidation of federal power after the U.S. Civil War was one of the factors that
led Britain to turn its Canadian colonies into a confederation. Switzerland evolved out of
a medieval alliance to defend Alpine trade routes.

Limited Authority

The modern-day EU has taken a different path, and hasn’t gotten as far. Post-World
War II western Europe relied on the U.S. for defense, allowing it to stitch together a
market that culminated with the creation of the euro currency in 1999. The result is a
loose federation with limited authority in Brussels and most power residing in national
capitals such as Berlin, Paris and London.

Europe doesn’t need to be much more than that, said Thomas Hueglin, a professor at
Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, who studies federal systems. What
matters is that the decision-making apparatus that was revamped in response to the
euro debt crisis brings back the prosperity that nurtured the bloc in the past, he said.

“When people think of federalism, they have in mind this idea of the American federal
state, so strongly and overpoweringly centralized,” Hueglin said. “But the European
Union is a much more decentralized form of federalism that is a more adequate model
in a globalizing world.”

Asia Pivot

That thesis is being tested by U.S. military disengagement from Europe and focus on
Asia. President Barack Obama’s four-country tour of the Pacific rim that ends tomorrow
affirms the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, even if it is punctuated by small-scale European
deployments to show NATO resolve against Russia. From authoritarian Belarus
through the Caucasus, to the Middle East and the unfinished Arab Spring across the
north of Africa, the EU is ringed by downtrodden economies plagued by social and
religious strife, in many cases ruled by dictators or sham democrats.
Wedged against Poland and the Baltic states, Belarus has managed to antagonize
both the EU and Russia. President Alexander Lukashenko, once dubbed Europe’s last
dictator for a litany of human rights violations, broadcast that he is no puppet of the
Kremlin. “I’m not toilet paper,” Lukashenko, whose regime is under EU sanctions, told a
Minsk audience including the Russian ambassador on April 22.

Syrian ‘Carnage’

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and infiltration of southeast Ukraine has captured so

much attention that former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair felt compelled to warn that a
graver crisis is unfolding to the south, pitting the forces of modernity against the forces
of reaction in the Muslim world.

“Ukraine has served to push the Middle East to the inside pages, with the carnage of
Syria featuring somewhat, but the chaos of Libya -- whose government we intervened
to change -- hardly meriting a mention,” Blair, now a United Nations envoy to the
Middle East, told an audience at Bloomberg’s London office on April 23. “However, the
Middle East matters. What is presently happening there still represents in my view the
biggest threat to global security of the early 21st century.”

Syria’s three-year civil war has left at least 150,000 dead. Egypt underwent two popular
uprisings, the first to end military rule and the second to restore it. Two prime ministers
of Libya have quit in as many months, reflecting the country’s lurch toward failed-state
status three years after Muammar Qaddafi’s ouster. Turkey, once seen by the EU as a
bridge to the Muslim world, is regularly condemned for democratic infringements such
as the censoring of Twitter Inc. services; its bid for EU membership is moribund.

Jell Together

Believers in a more centrally managed Europe contend that unstable surroundings will
jell the EU together, just as the looming presence of the British navy helped unite the
United States.

“European integration is a tool for a better future and to keep that peace on our
continent, in our own countries, in the Balkans and in our neighborhood in Ukraine,”
Guy Verhofstadt, a former Belgian prime minister, current candidate for European
Commission president and author of “United States of Europe,” said in the European
Parliament on April 16.

Compared to past federations forged in hostile environments, today’s EU faces more

diffuse hazards. Only Russia, with 40,000 troops mobilized on Ukraine’s borders,
stands for military aggression. Even that old-style threat has failed to bring European
governments together: economic sanctions against Russia have yet to materialize,
almost two months after the EU warned of “additional and far-reaching consequences
for relations in a broad range of economic areas” unless the Kremlin leaves Ukraine in
peace.

National Front

Disorder on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea hasn’t bolstered the pro-EU
cause; the opposite is the case. With EU-wide unemployment at 10.6 percent and
youth unemployment at 22.9 percent, protest parties such as Marine Le Pen’s National
Front in France are cashing in on fears of economic disruption, an influx of refugees
and the export of radical Islamist ideologies from trouble spots in the Middle East and
Africa.
Elections to the EU parliament on May 25 are shaping up as a no-confidence vote in
people in power, whatever their political hue. Le Pen’s party may win more seats than
any other French party, with 24 percent of the national vote, according to a CSA poll for
Nice-Matin and BFM TV published on April 24.

Across the EU, none-of-the-above parties may pick up 12.5 percent of the seats in the
next parliament, up from 4.3 percent in the current term, according to projections by
PollWatch, an independent statistical organization.

Internal ‘Incapacity’

That outcome would turn the parliament, which serves as a lower house in EU policy
making with the national governments functioning as a more influential senate, into the
battlefront between EU promoters and rejectionists united by distaste for anything with
the “Brussels” label, putting a coherent foreign policy even more out of reach.

“We reflect in our foreign policy the incapacity we also show internally to deal with the
financial crisis,” said Ana Gomes, a Portuguese socialist campaigning for a third term in
the EU parliament. She said the election may produce “a more fragmented Europe, a
more polarized situation that can be in the first moments even extremely dangerous to
the European project.”
Four Ways The Ukraine Crisis Could
Escalate To Use Of Nuclear Weapons
Loren Thompson, Contributor | Forbes | 4/24/2014

In 1983, the ABC television network broadcast a movie called The Day After about how
a superpower nuclear exchange devastated the lives of typical Americans in two
midwestern cities. The conflict began with a Russian troop buildup in Eastern Europe
(which Moscow initially claimed to be a military exercise), and then gradually escalated
to a point where both sides launched their nuclear missiles for fear of losing them in a
preemptive attack. Coming as it did during a period of U.S.-Soviet tensions and
controversy surrounding Reagan Administration nuclear policies, the broadcast
attracted a huge audience of over 100 million viewers; it is still the highest rated made-
for-television movie in U.S. history.

Americans haven’t thought much about such scenarios since the Cold War ended,
because the Soviet Union dissolved and the ideological rivalry between Washington
and Moscow ceased. However, this year’s crisis over Ukraine is a reminder that
Russia remains a nuclear superpower, and that the geopolitical sources of its security
concerns have not vanished. In fact, Moscow may have greater reason for worrying
today, because it has lost the buffer of allies that insulated it from Western attack
during the Cold War, and now finds its capital only a few minutes from the eastern
border of Ukraine by jet (less by missile). If you know the history of the region, then it
is easy to see why Moscow might fear aggression.

Although the Obama Administration is responding cautiously to Moscow’s annexation

of Ukraine’s province of Crimea in March, its credibility is on the line with regional allies
and Russian leader Vladimir Putin has not been helpful in defusing the fears of his
neighbors. Having fomented revolt in eastern Ukraine, Moscow now says it might be
forced to come to the aid of ethnic Russians there (it has massed 40,000 troops on the
other side of the border, in what was first called an exercise). Meanwhile, the U.S. has
increased its own military presence in the neighborhood, reiterating security
guarantees to local members of NATO. So little by little, tensions are ratcheting up.

One facet of the regional military balance that bears watching is the presence of so-
called nonstrategic nuclear weapons on both sides. Once called tactical nuclear
weapons, these missiles, bombs and other devices were bought during the Cold War to
compensate for any shortfalls in conventional firepower during a conflict. According to
Amy Woolf of the Congressional Research Service, the U.S. has about 200 such
weapons in Europe, some of which are available for use by local allies in a war. Woolf
says Russia has about 2,000 nonstrategic nuclear warheads in its active arsenal —
many of them within striking distance of Ukraine — and that successive revisions of
Russian military strategy appear “to place a greater reliance on nuclear weapons” to
balance the U.S. advantage in high-tech conventional weapons.

A 2011 study by the respected RAND Corporation came to much the same conclusion,
stating that Russian doctrine explicitly recognizes the possibility of using nuclear
weapons in response to conventional aggression. Not only does Moscow see nuclear
use as a potential escalatory option in a regional war, but it also envisions using
nuclear weapons to de-escalate a conflict. This isn’t just Russian saber-rattling. The
U.S. and its NATO partners too envision the possibility of nuclear use in a European
war. The Obama Administration had the opportunity to back away from such thinking
in a 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, and instead decided it would retain forward-
deployed nuclear weapons in Europe under a doctrine known as extended deterrence.
Eastern European nations that joined NATO after the Soviet collapse have been
especially supportive of having U.S. nuclear weapons nearby.

So improbable though it may seem, doctrine and capabilities exist on both sides that
could lead to nuclear use in a confrontation over Ukraine. Here are four ways that what
started out as a local crisis could turn into something much worse.

Bad intelligence. As the U.S. has stumbled from one military mis-adventure to
another over the last several decades, it has become clear that Washington isn’t very
good at interpreting intelligence. Even when vital information is available, it gets
filtered by preconceptions and bureaucratic processes so that the wrong conclusions
are drawn. Similar problems exist in Moscow. For instance, the Cuban missile crisis of
1962 arose partly from Soviet leader Khrushchev’s assessment that President
Kennedy was weaker than he turned out to be, and the U.S. Navy nearly provoked use
of a nuclear torpedo by a Russian submarine during the blockade because it misjudged
the enemy’s likely reaction to being threatened. It is easy to imagine similar
misjudgments in Ukraine, which Washington and Moscow approach from very different
perspectives. Any sizable deployment of U.S. forces in the region could provoke
Russian escalation.

Defective signaling. When tensions are high, rival leaders often seek to send signals
about their intentions as a way of shaping outcomes. But the meaning of such signals
can easily be confused by the need of leaders to address multiple audiences at the
same time, and by the different frames of reference each side is applying. Even the
process of translation can change the apparent meaning of messages in subtle ways.
So when Russian foreign minister Lavrov spoke this week (in English) about the
possible need to come to the aid of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, Washington
had to guess whether he was stating the public rationale for an invasion, sending a
warning signal to Kiev about its internal counter-terror campaign, or trying to
accomplish some other purpose. Misinterpretation of such signals can become a
reciprocal process that sends both sides up the “ladder of escalation” quickly, to a point
where nuclear use seems like the logical next step.

Looming defeat. If military confrontation between Russia and NATO gave way to
conventional conflict, one side or the other would eventually face defeat. Russia has a
distinct numerical advantage in the area around Ukraine, but its military consists mainly
of conscripts and is poorly equipped compared with Western counterparts. Whichever
side found itself losing would have to weigh the drawbacks of losing against those of
escalating to the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Moscow would have to contemplate
the possibility of a permanent enemy presence near its heartland, while Washington
might face the collapse of NATO, its most important alliance. In such circumstances,
the use of “only” one of two tactical nuclear warheads to avert an outcome with such
far-reaching consequences might seem reasonable — especially given the existence of
relevant capabilities and supportive doctrine on both sides.

Command breakdown. Strategic nuclear weapons like intercontinental ballistic

missiles are tightly controlled by senior military leaders in Russia and America, making
their unauthorized or accidental use nearly impossible. That is less the case with
nonstrategic nuclear weapons, which at some point in the course of an escalatory
process need to be released to the control of local commanders if they are to have
military utility. U.S. policy even envisions letting allies deliver tactical warheads against
enemy targets. Moscow probably doesn’t trust its allies to that degree, but with more
tactical nuclear weapons in more locations, there is a greater likelihood that local
Russian commanders might have the latitude to initiate nuclear use in the chaos of
battle. Russian doctrine endorses nuclear-weapons use in response to conventional
aggression threatening the homeland, and obstacles to local initiative often break down
once hostilities commence.
When you consider all the processes working to degrade restraint in wartime — poor
intelligence, garbled communication, battlefield setbacks, command attenuation, and a
host of other influences — it seems reasonable to consider that a military confrontation
between NATO and Russia might in some manner escalate out of control, even to the
point of using nuclear weapons. And because Ukraine is so close to the Russian
heartland (about 250 miles from Moscow) there’s no telling what might happen once
the nuclear “firebreak” is crossed. All this terminology — firebreaks, ladders of
escalation, extended deterrence — was devised during the Cold War to deal with
potential warfighting scenarios in Europe. So if there is a renewed possibility of
tensions leading to war over Ukraine (or some other former Soviet possession),
perhaps the time has come to revive such thinking.
It is time for the West to move ahead without
Russia
By John McCain, John Barrasso, John Hoeven and Ron Johnson, Washington Post
Saturday, April 26,

John McCain, John Barrasso, John Hoeven and Ron Johnson, all Republicans,
represent Arizona, Wyoming, North Dakota and Wisconsin, respectively, in the Senate.

We recently visited Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Moldova. In each country,
our allies want a stronger immediate response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its
ongoing subversion of Ukraine. They also believe, as we do, that Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s latest acts of aggression require an enduring strategic response from
the United States, Europe and NATO. It should be clear to all that Putin’s Russia has
taken a dark turn. There is no resetting this relationship. We cannot return to business
as usual.

Western countries had high hopes for our relationships with Russia after the Cold War
and acted on that basis. We provided billions of dollars to help Russia’s transition from
communism. We created new mechanisms for consultation. We expanded trade.
NATO committed not to deploy significant military capabilities onto the territory of new
alliance allies, even as it expanded. In short, the West sought to include Russia in the
promise of a Europe whole, free and at peace — a vision we still believe would benefit
all participants.

Unfortunately, hope of a constructive relationship with Russia under Putin has

vanished. A friendly rival has become, at best, an unfriendly adversary. Putin will not
compromise his quest to dominate Russia’s sovereign neighbors (not least as a cynical
way to build support at home for his corrupt and autocratic rule). He may play along
with Western diplomats eager to avoid conflict, as happened recently in Geneva, but
only as a way to consolidate his gains, divide the United States and Europe, play for
time and prepare to push further. Western weakness emboldens Putin. The only thing
he respects, and that can change his calculus, is greater strength.

We must make policy on this basis. In the short term, the United States must expand
sanctions to major Russian banks, energy companies and other sectors of Russia’s
economy — such as the arms industry — that serve as instruments of Putin’s foreign
policy. We should also expose the most egregious corruption of Russian officials and
cut off those people, their business associates and relatives from Western economies
and travel. Some of our European allies may hope to avoid tough sanctions, but weak
measures will not stop Putin, and the costs of doing so will only grow with time.

Ultimately, Putin’s actions in Ukraine require a strategic response. This does not mean
a new Cold War. But it does require recognizing Putin’s geopolitical challenge to the
post-Cold War order in Europe and preparing for a more competitive relationship with
Russia.

NATO must recommit to its core missions of deterrence and collective defense. This
requires a rebalancing of the alliance’s force posture and presence. NATO military
capabilities must be increased and more evenly distributed across the alliance,
including a more robust and persistent presence in Central Europe and the Baltic
countries. Some steps in this direction are underway; these actions must be
sustainable and enduring.
For NATO to do more for its members, its members have to do more for themselves
and the alliance. The United States must reverse harmful cuts to its defense budget.
And NATO allies must meet their commitment to spend at least 2 percent of GDP on
defense as soon as possible.

We also need a transatlantic energy strategy. Europe remains dependent on Russian

oil and gas, while U.S. supplies are growing faster than our ability to bring them to
market (indeed, about $1.5 million worth of gas has to be “flared” — that is, burned
uselessly because there is not enough capacity to transport or refine it — each day in
North Dakota alone). It will take years to align European demand and U.S. supply, but
we must start now. European countries must invest in the infrastructure to receive
liquefied natural gas from the United States, as Lithuania is doing, and transmit it
across Europe. For our part, the Obama administration should lift holds on terminal
applications for liquefied natural gas and ensure their expeditious processing so the
private sector can build new capacity for transport and storage. These actions could
weaken Putin, support our allies, strengthen the U.S. economy, increase federal
revenue and create thousands of good jobs.

Another fact repeatedly highlighted during our trip is that Putin is winning the war of
ideas among Russian-speaking peoples in the former Soviet Union. Putin’s
propaganda rests on lies, but it is effective and hardly refuted. We have all but given up
on communicating the truth, in Russian, to Europe’s Russian-speaking populations.
This needs to change, and the old state-run public diplomacy is not necessarily the
answer. The private sector can play an important role.

Finally, the West must provide far greater diplomatic, economic and military support to
Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and other European countries that aspire to be part of our
transatlantic community. We must show all of these countries that, as long as they
meet the rightfully high standards for membership, the doors to NATO and the
European Union remain open and the fundamental choices about their future foreign
policy are for them to make — no one else.

The United States and Europe did not seek, or deserve, this challenge from Putin’s
Russia. But we must rise to it all the same. Our shared interests and values depend on
our resolve.
Readout of the President’s Call with
President Hollande, Chancellor Merkel,
Prime Minister Renzi, and Prime Minister
Cameron
The White House Office of the Press Secretary April 25, 2014

Today the President spoke with President Hollande of France, Chancellor Merkel of
Germany, Prime Minister Renzi of Italy, and Prime Minister Cameron of the UK to
consult about the alarming situation in eastern Ukraine. The leaders noted the positive
steps that Ukraine had taken to move forward on the actions to which it committed in
the April 17 joint statement by Ukraine, Russia, the European Union, and the United
States – including proposing an amnesty law for those who will peacefully leave the
buildings they have seized in eastern Ukraine, supporting the work of the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and committing themselves once
again to a process of constitutional reform and decentralization. The leaders also
agreed that Russia had not reciprocated – including by not publicly supporting the
Geneva accord, nor calling on armed militant groups to lay down their arms and leave
the government buildings they’ve occupied – and had in fact continued to escalate the
situation through its increasingly concerning rhetoric and threatening military exercises
on Ukraine’s border.

The President noted that the United States is prepared to impose targeted sanctions to
respond to Russia's latest actions. The leaders agreed to work closely together, and
through the G7 and European Union, to coordinate additional steps to impose costs on
Russia. The leaders underscored that Russia could still choose a peaceful resolution to
the crisis, including by implementing the Geneva accord.

[ “Slowly but surely the EU and the US are forming a joint strategy against Russia”,
says Anders Östlund @andersostlund . Hmm. Sounds good. ]
The Art of Financial Warfare: How the West
Is Pushing Putin’s Buttons
By Leah McGrath Goodman and Lynnley Browning / April 24, 2014 6:06 AM EDT

“We found out by Twitter,” an executive at Gunvor Group Ltd., the world’s fourth-largest
oil trading firm, told Newsweek.

It was midday on March 20 when the executive, sitting at his office computer in
Geneva, glanced up at the screen and got a jolt: A tweet had popped up saying one of
the company’s founders, Gennady Timchenko, a billionaire Russian businessman, had
been placed on a U.S. government blacklist, along with 31 other people and
businesses said to be linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The previous day, Timchenko had finalized the sale of his 43.59 percent stake in
Gunvor to his business partner, Torbjörn Törnqvist, a Swedish oil trader, the firm’s
other co-founder and now its chief executive.

The two men conducted the transaction amid escalating tensions over Putin’s push into
the Crimea region of Ukraine because “they saw the writing on the wall,” the executive
explained, adding that “we weren’t tipped off” about the blacklist.

Gunvor had a narrow escape, and the message was heard loud and clear around the
world: The first salvo in modern warfare is likely to be financial—and the result is
increasingly effective.

“Fifteen years ago, the idea that the Treasury Department would be at the center of our
national security would have been inconceivable,” Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary
for terrorist financing at Treasury, said in an interview. “But we have developed a whole
new set of tools to put at the president’s disposal.”

AMERICA’S NEW WAR ROOM

The control room in this new kind of war is a unit inside the U.S. Treasury Department:
the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) with 730 staff members.

Don’t let the name fool you. This little-known branch of Treasury, created by Congress
in the wake of the September 11 attacks, isn’t just going after terrorists or hunting illicit
offshore money flows anymore. It is using sophisticated financial weaponry to hit
carefully chosen targets linked to hostile governments.

“This is the 21st century version of waging war,” says Judith Lee, a lawyer and
sanctions expert at the firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington.

TFI was responsible for drawing up the blacklist, which sought to paralyze the financial
dealings of Putin’s inner circle as Russian troops advanced on Ukraine’s Crimean
peninsula. In Russia, Treasury’s assault has led to severe disruptions in the financial
affairs of blacklist targets such as Timchenko, as well as Bank Rossiya, a midsized St.
Petersburg bank catering to senior Russian government officials, which has around
$10 billion of assets and which found its Visa and MasterCard services abruptly halted
and its credit downgraded by Standard & Poor’s.

Once blacklisted by Treasury, an individual or corporation can no longer conduct

business using U.S. dollars, which are involved in 87 percent of the world’s foreign-
exchange transactions, according to the Bank of International Settlements.
How does this work? Foreign banks generally “dollarize” payments by routing the
transaction through U.S. banks, which are required to block any payment when a
blacklisted person or entity has a direct interest.

Since sanctions were levied, Treasury has noted an increase in Russia’s capital
outflows—a measure of the money leaving the country. So far this year, it says, these
“have exceeded the entirety of outflows last year.”

While Russia’s economy was already faltering, there are signs the Ukraine crisis is
exacerbating the downturn. The International Monetary Fund recently forecast Russian
growth of just 1.3 percent in 2014, representing a downward revision blamed in part on
the Ukraine crisis. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has given a more dire
growth prediction, warning government officials, “Perhaps it will be around zero.”

A NEW FRONTIER

TFI has lawyers and financial analysts who honed their skills targeting rogue states,
such as North Korea and Iran, and terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda, in addition to
narcotics kingpins in Latin America. Russia presents an entirely new type of challenge.
Here, for the first time, Treasury is pointing its guns at a fellow member of the G-8
group of leading industrialized nations—one with trade ties to the U.S., Europe and
Asia.

In many ways, Russia is Treasury’s test case.

At the heart of Treasury’s power is the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a
division of TFI that compiles and shoots out Treasury’s blacklist, and whose legal
authority stems from executive orders issued by the president.

This branch of Treasury freezes the assets of targets inside U.S. jurisdictions and
imposes millions of dollars of fines on violators, which can include any individual or
entity, foreign or American, found to be doing business with anyone on the blacklist.
The list also applies to entities that are 50 percent or more owned by those that have
been blacklisted. Already there have been ripple effects, with banks from JPMorgan
Chase to Goldman Sachs and financial institutions from MasterCard to Visa scrambling
to stay on the right side of the U.S. law.

“The financial sanctions depend on direct outreach to private financial institutions,

rather than on going to the foreign governments in which those institutions are based,”
says Orde Kittrie, a sanctions scholar and senior defense fellow at the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, a policy-research think tank in Washington. Kittrie was a
senior State Department economic policy official from 1993 to 2004.

Treasury’s blacklist is sent out a bit like a Google alert. “We have an RSS feed with
every financial institution in the country on it, and hundreds of other banks, not just in
the United States but all over the world, who subscribe to the list too,” Adam Szubin,
director of the OFAC, told Newsweek. “We blast it out, and it takes effect instantly.”

Szubin says non-U.S. financial institutions also pay close attention to the list. That’s
because they don’t want the associated risk of dealing with an outlawed individual or
bank, such as Bank Rossiya. “The biggest, most sophisticated banks have it built into
their filters and start screening out potential transactions within minutes,” he says.

Take JPMorgan, for example, which processes up to $4 trillion of payments a day. On

March 26, it incurred the wrath of the Russian Federation when it blocked a routine
payment of $3,080 by the Russian Embassy in Kazakhstan to a Moscow-based
insurer that, only days earlier, had been majority owned by Bank Rossiya.

Although the payment was eventually cleared in early April after it was confirmed that
Bank Rossiya was, indeed, no longer a majority owner, the Foreign Ministry in Moscow
raged at JPMorgan for a week on its website, stating that the bank’s action was
“unacceptable, illegal and absurd.” An insider close to the bank who did not want to be
identified told Newsweek at the time, “The Russian Embassy is going crazy, but what
can the bank do? Unfortunately, it’s caught in the middle.”

Around the same time, both Visa and MasterCard landed in similar hot water over their
interpretation of Treasury’s blacklist, which as of April 11 had grown to include 40
people and business entities. Both credit card companies stopped processing
payments for Bank Rossiya and Moscow’s SMP Bank on March 21, prompting the
banks to accuse the credit card companies of acting illegally against them and their
customers. In the case of SMP, the ban was lifted by March 23, according to
MasterCard, after Treasury provided some clarity, but the ban on Bank Rossiya, one of
Treasury’s “specially designated nationals,” remains in place.

Upon hearing of Bank Rossiya’s quandary, Putin (who was not named to Treasury’s
blacklist, mostly out of deference to his position as president) stated that he would
open an account there immediately.

As with JPMorgan, most banks’ compliance desks use sophisticated software and
filters to screen out suspicious financial activity, including blocking the payments of
anyone tied to the OFAC’s blacklist.

“Once you’re on an OFAC list, no bank anywhere will deal with you,” says Lee, who
specializes in international trade regulation involving economic sanctions, embargoes
and export controls. “The interconnectedness of global processing systems means that
what’s now new is the lack of places to hide.”

Treasury’s blacklist now has 5,843 persons and entities on it. That’s an increase of
more than 150 percent over the past decade. Data provided exclusively to Newsweek
by Treasury show it has named 558 new persons and entities to its global blacklist
every year, on average, for the past four years through the end of 2013, compared with
391 on average the prior four years. Getting on the list requires clearance from multiple
agencies and the Department of Justice. But getting off the list is harder.

“We have one client who has been dead for eight months—he’s still on the list,” says
Sam Cutler, a policy adviser at Ferrari & Associates, a Washington law firm that
consults on U.S. sanctions. “Osama bin Laden is still on it. He’s been dead for years.
From a legal standpoint, you are better off being designated a Foreign Terrorist
Organization than being designated by Treasury.”

TAKEN BY SURPRISE

Alarm bells rang inside the U.S. Treasury Department on February 21, around the time
then-president Viktor Yanukovych disappeared and fled to Moscow amid escalating
protests against his Kremlin-backed government.

Szubin said his group immediately began gathering intelligence on Russia.

“There was a need here for a rapid response—and rapid in a meaningful, not just
symbolic, way—to identify key [Russian] cronies and key financial networks,” he said.
At the end of February, amid reports that Russian troops in Crimea were moving out of
their barracks, the White House told Treasury that it was preparing executive orders
signed by the president and designed to legally underpin the blacklist.

“This is the first time we have articulated such transparent, well-defined sanctions
levels,” says Mujtaba Rahman, head of European analysis for research and consulting
firm Eurasia Group in London. “There are three levels with escalating triggers and
consequences, with level one being symbolic, level two targeting individuals and level
three threatening to punish entire sectors of the Russian economy.”

Russia is at level two.

A former senior Treasury official tells Newsweek that “right now, we’re still doing shots
across the bow and letting the dust settle. But if Putin takes on more, then the die is
cast.”

GLOBAL DOMINATION

Until recently, the U.S. relied largely on centuries-old methods of international statecraft
rooted in bombs, boots on the ground and broad sanctions—like trade embargoes—
used as blunt, unilateral instruments for crushing its opponents. This frequently created
unwanted collateral damage that crippled neighboring countries and their economies.

In the new world order of highly targeted financial sanctions, Treasury has turned
globalization, and financial domination, to its advantage.

“It wasn’t easy,” recalls the mastermind of this new order, Juan Zarate, a Harvard-
trained lawyer who is now a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies, a Washington–based think tank. The FBI and the Justice Department didn’t
want Treasury meddling with law enforcement. “We had to prove that the greatest
power Treasury has…had nothing to do with guns and badges,” he says, “and
everything to do with markets and our financial suasion.”

In March 2003, an old Treasury division known as the Office of Enforcement was
transferred, along with most of its staff, to the newly created Department of Homeland
Security. For those left behind, it was a ghost town. Gone were the customs agents,
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms suits and Secret Service officials. In their place was a
new, elite force led by Zarate: half a dozen Treasury officials and analysts grappling for
a new way to approach national security.

Zarate, who had joined Treasury two years earlier at the age of 30 after prosecuting
terrorists at the Department of Justice, presided over what was initially called the
Executive Office for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. The group began slowly
piecing together a sprawling network of resources, drawing from the international
banking system, the global intelligence community, federal agencies, formal and
informal networks of domestic and international regulators and law-enforcement
officials, and what the Treasury likes to call “all-source” data. (Don’t ask them what it
means, they won’t tell you. An email heavily vetted by top Treasury officials and their
representatives and sent to Newsweek stated: “ALL THE CONTACTS—with the
financial community, U.S. government agencies, other financial ministries and central
banks AROUND THE WORLD—AND ALL THE FINANCIAL TOOLS.” [Capitals theirs,
not ours.])

Zarate’s eureka moment came late one spring night in 2003, during a chat in his
second-floor office with Glaser, then a junior Treasury official. “Our financial reach was
so far and deep,” Zarate remembers thinking. “It’s a system that we dominate. And we
could use that as the basis of a conduct-based approach of financial sanctions rather
than a trade-based or diplomatic-based approach.”

In 2004, Zarate’s group, by then called TFI, became the nerve center of the U.S.
Treasury. It has what Glaser describes as arguably the most formidable Rolodex of
financial and intelligence contacts in the world, from central banks to finance ministries
to heads of state and law enforcement officials, in addition to every U.S. agency.

Within months, Stuart Levey, another Harvard-trained lawyer and then a senior Justice
Department official working on counterterrorism, was sworn in as the nation’s first
under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. His role was senior to that of the
startlingly young Zarate, although top officials inside Treasury credit Zarate with
building the model for Treasury’s modern-day financial war machine and winning the
support of both Republican and Democratic administrations. (Zarate wrote about the
expansion of financial warfare in his 2013 memoir Treasury’s War.)

The model was so successful, Levey, who initially worked under President George W.
Bush, was asked to stay on by President Barack Obama when he took office in 2009.
Levey, according to one high-ranking official who worked with him for his entire tenure
at Treasury, took Zarate’s idea and ran with it, raising financial warfare, as the official
put it, to another level.

Levey, who is now chief legal officer at London-based bank HSBC Holdings, declined
to speak with Newsweek for this story.

Will precision financial warfare make Putin blink?

The White House has "written off" trying to deal with Putin, says a person briefed on
the administration's thinking, adding that administration officials see "no point in trying
to reach him directly."

Another former senior Treasury official tells Newsweek, “These sanctions are designed
not to have him back off Crimea, which we've already lost, but to act as a prophylactic"
against future aggression. "We have a chance of succeeding and in not bringing down
Russia and the world economy."
Russian Ex-Prime Minister: Widen
Sanctions on Putin’s Elite Allies
Atlantic Council | April 23, 2014

Kasyanov Urges West to Urgently Sanction Hundreds of Russian Legislators,

Ministers

The United States and European governments should expand their prohibitions on
travel and financial transactions by domestic political allies of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, his former prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov said today. The West
should sanction all members of the Russian parliament who voted to support Putin’s
annexation of Crimea and to authorize Russian military operations in Ukraine,
Kasyanov said in a speech and interview at the Atlantic Council.

As many US legislators and policy specialists argue for broader sanctions to target
wide swaths of Russia’s economy, and for military support for Ukraine, Kasyanov urged
the West to avoid such steps, and instead attempt a “weakening of cohesion of
[Putin’s] ruling group by individual sanctions … against those people who wanted to
destroy European security.” A failure to strengthen sanctions could embolden Putin to
continue attacks on Ukraine or even neighboring Moldova, he said.

Kasyanov, who served under Putin as prime minister from 2000 to 2004, now co-
chairs an opposition group, the Republican Party of Russia-People’s Freedom Party.
He spoke to diplomats, policy specialists and journalists in a forum moderated by the
Atlantic Council’s executive vice president, Damon Wilson.

In an interview for the Atlantic Council’s website, Kasyanov added that such sanctions
should target all legislators who voted to approve a treaty annexing Crimea or to
authorize Putin to send Russian forces into Ukraine. They also should hit government
ministers and key business allies of Putin still untouched by the US and European
strictures, he said. Last month, 598 of Russia's 605 parliament members approved
Crimea's annexation, according to the state-run news agency, ITAR-TASS. In March,
the US government and the European Union each sanctioned about 30 individuals,
including Russian officials, for helping to enable Putin's attacks on Ukraine.

Kasyanov urged the US and European governments to sustain the political and
financial support they have offered Ukraine, with a top priority being a “credible, … free
and fair election” on May 25 for a new president. Former President Viktor Yanukovych
fled Kyiv in February following months of mass street protests against the corruption of
his government, and his alignment with Russia rather than the European Union.
Kasyanov called for broad financial support to help Ukraine re-schedule payments on
its massive debts and “to allow the government [to] stand up, to be strengthened, and
to work out this set of [economic] reforms supported by the whole world.” He
applauded western help for Ukraine to diversify its energy sources and become less
dependent on gas supplies from Russian state-owned corporations dominated by
Putin.

Among Kasyanov’s remarks were these:

After Putin’s 2008 attack on Georgia, a weak US and European response emboldened
him. After two Russian neighbors, Ukraine and Georgia, sought to take preliminary
steps in 2008 to join the NATO alliance, Putin sent Russian troops into Georgia, seizing
the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “A few months after, business turned [out]
to be as usual,” in Russia’s relations with the West, Kasyanov said. In subsequent
years, US and European companies or governments pursued business deals with
Putin’s government, he noted, citing France’s agreement to build at least two high-tech,
Mistral-class warships for Russia’s navy. “German companies … pressed their
government to continue … getting profitable contracts,” he said. Putin came to feel that
“he got a special ticket issued by the West” that left him free to act as he wished in the
lands of the former Soviet Union, Kasyanov said.

Putin was surprised by the West’s stronger reaction to his attacks on Ukraine. In recent
months, “Mr. Putin and his team, they didn’t expect that the West would react … I
would say, with effective measures.”

Sanctions should immediately be applied to more Russian officials and business

executives who are giving key support to Putin, to prevent further attacks by his
regime. "Effective measures means individual, targeted sanctions,” Kasyanov said. “Me
and my party, we are for such sanctions – that’s sanctions not against the people of
Russia, that’s sanctions not against the Russian Federation. … That’s sanctions
against those people who wanted to destroy European security.”

He added: “In fact, I would say, the sanctions already are bringing appropriate effect.”
While changes in Putin’s policies are not yet visible, the individual sanctions have
altered “the atmosphere” of decision-making in Putin’s inner circles.

“The West should press now” for “Putin to make a statement” calling on the Russian-
backed armed groups who have seized towns and local government buildings in
eastern Ukraine “to immediately hand over [their] weapons” in accord with the
international agreement reached in Geneva this month. And it should back that
demand by expanding immediately – “tomorrow,” Kasyanov said – the list of Russian
officials to be subjected to travel and financial sanctions.

A failure to strengthen sanctions and increase pressure on Putin could lead him to
attempt “a further intervention, even in Transnistria” – the region of Moldova, adjacent
to Ukraine, where Russia for years has backed a secessionist movement. Many
analysts have suggested that Putin might try to seize southern Ukraine to connect its
Transnistrian client region to a zone of contiguous Russian control extending hundreds
of miles westward beyond Russia’s borders.
Eastern Europe Frets About NATO’s Ability
to Curb Russia
By STEVEN ERLANGER | NY Times | APRIL 23, 2014

OVER CONSTANTA, Romania — High over the Romanian border, a sophisticated

NATO surveillance plane kept a close watch on Russian movements below. Its radar
screens came alive with a cat-and-mouse game between a Russian surveillance jet
buzzing an American guided missile destroyer in the Black Sea and a squadron of
NATO fighter jets that chased it away.

It was a scene reminiscent of the Cold War, and NATO’s mission was meant to
reassure allies that are feeling newly vulnerable to Russian threats after Moscow’s
muscular intervention in neighboring Ukraine.

But it provided little comfort to NATO’s Eastern European members, which are growing
increasingly nervous about Russia’s moves and the alliance’s ability, or even
willingness, to counter them.

Today’s NATO, hollowed out by years of European military cuts and deployed mostly to
help fight far-off battles in places like Afghanistan and Libya, is no longer as prepared
to counter a newly assertive Kremlin, its own leaders acknowledge.

Western European members of NATO may regard the conflict over Ukraine as remote,
an annoying threat to their business ties to Moscow, said Artis Pabriks, who was
Latvia’s defense minister until he stepped down in late January. “But for us, it’s not
about money, it’s existential,” he said. “You guys may remain with your freedoms, but
we may not, so it’s different.”

NATO itself is awakening to the altered circumstances. Ukraine, said Maj. Gen. Andrew
M. Mueller, who commands NATO’s fleet of 17 surveillance planes, “made us re-
emphasize the mission we were built for.”

“We’re augmenting NATO defenses inside NATO,” he added. “We’d gotten away from
that a bit with Afghanistan and Libya.”

But it will take more than a change of emphasis to re-energize a military alliance that
has badly eroded since 1989. The United States is responsible for 75 percent of NATO
military spending, and only a handful of European countries meet the alliance’s target
of having military budgets of 2 percent of gross domestic product.

NATO is the front line of response to increased tensions with Russia, but the
reluctance of the United States and its Western European allies to beef up the alliance
reflects an ambivalence about confronting Russia too frontally, either militarily or
through punishing economic sanctions.

The reluctance is particularly strong among some NATO members, like Spain, Italy,
France and Germany, with major business and energy ties to Russia. They would like
to see a quick return to the status quo ante.

But in a division reminiscent of the debate over “New Europe” and “Old Europe” during
the Bush years, NATO members near the Russian border say that era is over.

“The fundamental understanding of security in Europe has now collapsed,” said

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia. “Everything that has happened since 1989
has been predicated on the fundamental assumption that you don’t change borders by
force, and that’s now out the window. Political leaders need to recognize that the old
rules no longer apply.”

The surveillance fleet is owned by NATO, with money and staffing contributions from
17 nations. It is under the direct control of the top NATO commander, Gen. Philip M.
Breedlove of the United States Air Force, who can deploy the planes without consulting
with member states. General Breedlove became NATO commander in July, and he has
been outspoken about the new threat from Russia.

The Obama administration has so far rejected suggestions, including some from senior
officials in the State Department, to significantly increase the tiny presence of American
or NATO troops, or the supplies of military equipment, in countries bordering Russia.
The White House does not want NATO to pour fuel on the fire, a senior official said, but
it did recently commit American troops for temporary exercises in Poland and the
Baltics. But the total number is tiny: about 600 paratroopers normally based in Italy.

“This is very symbolic reassurance, very carefully calibrated to ratchet up if need be,”
said Sean Kay, a former Pentagon adviser on NATO. Washington does not want to
feed the notion of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the West is determined
to encroach on traditional Russian turf, he said. But some argue that for Washington to
do so little is an invitation to Mr. Putin to do more.

NATO has refrained from deploying substantial numbers of troops in member states
bordering Russia, in accordance with a unilateral promise made to Moscow in 1997,
when Russia was behaving more cooperatively.

For the same reason, although the Baltic nations have been full members of NATO
since 2005, there was no military contingency plan to defend them until 2009, after
Russia’s war with Georgia. Now, with the annexation of Crimea and the threat to
eastern Ukraine, many in Northern Europe believe that posture must change.

The euro currency crisis and weak growth have hit Europe hard, however, making
budget cuts widespread, with military spending among the easiest areas to cut
politically.

In 2013, among the few NATO countries that met the 2 percent target, according to
NATO figures, were the United States, at 4.1 percent, and Britain, at 2.4 percent.
Estonia was at 2 percent, and Greece, though debt-saddled, spent 2.3 percent. France
was at 1.9 percent, and Turkey and Poland were at 1.8 percent, while Italy spent only
1.2 percent of its G.D.P.

Two new members, Spain and Hungary, along with two apparently vulnerable Baltic
countries, Latvia and Lithuania, spent less than 1 percent. Even wealthy Germany
spent only 1.3 percent. Over all, European members of NATO were at 1.6 percent.

But pleas for more spending may fall, as usual, on ears otherwise occupied with
domestic budget constraints.

NATO has been trying to respond, Mr. Ilves, the Estonian president, said. “Everything
that has been said sounds good, and NATO has announced various air and sea
measures,” he said. “But when it actually starts happening, it will sound and look even
better.”

What countries like the Baltic States, Poland and Romania need are “boots on the
ground, a presence in the region,” Mr. Ilves said, as well as air defenses, not just air
policing.
Despite the recent statements from NATO, Mr. Pabriks, the former Latvian defense
minister, said, “the Polish and Baltic publics are not certain.”

“Compared to what Russia has been building up on our borders,” he added, “we are a
demilitarized zone, and that will have to change.”

No one doubts NATO’s capacity to stand up to Russia militarily. But if Mr. Putin sees
opinion in NATO as “divided or undecided about whether Latvia’s security has the
same value as Germany’s, then he may challenge it,” Mr. Pabriks said.

“If he does, and NATO doesn’t respond in force, NATO is dead,” he added. “We have
to give a clear signal that this is a red line, not a red line as in Syria, but that if you
cross this line we will shoot.”

Mr. Pabriks noted that five minesweepers — two from Norway and one each from the
Netherlands, Belgium and Estonia — would conduct an exercise in the Baltic Sea until
the end of May. “They’re not battleships, of course. It’s clearly a signal, but obviously
not enough.”

General Mueller, the surveillance fleet commander, said he was facing staffing cuts
despite the re-emergence of the Russian threat. “The challenge is to get the European
nations to spend the money on defense,” he said. “We feel it today. This incident has
made people step back and think that those who were pushing to spend money were
more farsighted, and maybe we should listen to them.”

Capt. Bogdan Drelciuc, 32, one of two Romanians on board the surveillance plane,
returned early from a rotation in Afghanistan, after the Ukraine crisis began, to help
coordinate these new flights with the Romanian military. “I think my country is
concerned, for sure,” said the captain, who was 7 in 1989 when Communism
collapsed. “We have a direct border with Ukraine, and we requested NATO support,
and why not?”
EXCLUSIVE—NATO Russia Expert: Why
Putin Can Win
by Breitbart News | 23 Apr 2014

Chris Donnelly served four NATO Secretary Generals as Special Adviser for Central
and Eastern Europe. Author of Red Banner - The Soviet Military System in Peace and
War, he now directs the UK's Institute for Statecraft, and before advising the highest
level of NATO was director of the Soviet Studies Centre at the Royal Military Academy,
Sandhurst.

Breitbart News asked him, "What does Putin want, and can he win?"

Breitbart News: With the movement of American troops from Italy to Poland and the
Baltic states, is the Ukrainian crisis over?

Donnelly: No. It has just begun. All the states on the periphery of the Russia
Federation are now very vulnerable – not just the "Stans" of Central Asia, but also
Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova and even the Baltic states. And the danger is
not simply a classic military one. Just look at the financial and investor markets. Since
the crisis began, foreign investment in any of these states has become practically
impossible. They have been isolated, and that is exactly what the Kremlin wants. This
isolation from international markets strengthens Putin's position and his power over
these countries.

Breitbart News: What is Putin's strategic goal; is it really the recreation of the Soviet
Union?

Donnelly: Language matters. In Russian there is more than one way to talk about the
independence of a nation. Nezavisimyy is the obvious word used to talk of
independence, but in fact it is better translated as "legal independence," de jure
independence. The word that expresses true independence is samostoyatel'nyy, a
word that is best translated as the ability for somebody to stand on their own two feet.

We now know that Moscow has been running a program for years to undermine the
actual independence of her neighbors while maintaining the illusion that they are still
free – just as during the Cold War, Hungary, Poland, or any of the Warsaw Pact
nations may have been legally independent, but they were in fact under the control of
the Kremlin. This is the power that Putin wants Russia to have once again.

Breitbart News: The Western response has been delayed and confused. Why?

Donnelly: The current political leadership in Washington, in London, in the West in

general, does not understand Russia, its strategic culture, what it wants, and how it
intends to achieve it. During the Cold War with the USSR we developed a whole
industry of educational and research institutions that produced Sovietologists who
would be hired by our governments and intelligence services to inform policy and
strategy at the highest level, from George Kennan, the author of the Long Telegram, to
Richard Pipes, the leader of President Reagan's 'Team B.' How many people inside
government in the US or the Western allies of NATO have even read the Long
Telegram, or know that Stalin was responsible for the death of an estimated seven
million Ukrainians? As a result, much has been written and said about the crisis that is
simply wrong. We need to illuminate the facts, uncover the Kremlin's lies.
Breitbart News: Is the inadequacy of the West's response just a function of ignorance
of Russia?

Donnelly: No. It's deeper. We don't even have the right vocabulary. We do not
understand Putin's way of war. To our citizens, war is Saving Private Ryan. That's not
Putin's war. Russia was a military superpower, but it was also masterful at the indirect,
non-kinetic way of war. See the book Unrestricted Warfare authored by two colonels in
the Chinese army. This is a superb guide to how to defeat a nation that is militarily
much more powerful than you. It lists all the various ways you can undermine a strong
Western nation without firing a shot: the use of economics, the NGO sector,
sympathetic members of your ethnic diaspora, or space and the cyber domain. Russia
has honed this mode of war since the fall of the Soviet Union and used it in Georgia
and now Ukraine and its neighboring nations.

Breitbart News: Russia today has an economy the size of California, or the Republic
of France. Could they win this war?

Donnelly: Vladimir Putin is a long-term strategic thinker whose goal is to rebuild

Russia's greatness, and he has a natural advantage. It is relatively easy to defeat an
adversary who does not have a game plan, even if they are stronger than you. You
may have a PhD and an IQ of 160, but if you've never played chess before and have
never heard of the Fool's Mate stratagem, a child can defeat you with it in two moves.

Also, you hear the constant refrain, such that "Russia would never do X because it has
too much to lose." This betrays a complete misunderstanding of the difference between
the strategic culture of Russia and the culture of our politicians. The winner may simply
be the side that is least concerned of losses in general. That is definitely not us.
(Editor's Note: The estimates for WWII are that the USSR lost 14% of its population –
22 millions lives. The figures for the US and UK by comparison are 0.3% of the
population and 419,000 dead, and 0.95% of the population and 450,000 killed.)

Breitbart News: What should America and her NATO Allies prepare for?

Donnelly: Yanukovych has placed pro-Russian governors into key positions in regions
where there are ethnic Russians. Putin's recent unequivocal statement that he will
invade if force is used in these sovereign Ukrainian territories is not grandstanding.
These are not empty threats from a person unwiling to use force. We have been
completely outmaneuvered by Putin. The deployment of 600 troops to NATO-allied
nations is not a serious response to the violent redrawing of European borders. 600
troops is less than a token.

Breitbart News: If you were asked to help prepare a truly strategic response by
America and her allies, where would you begin?

Donnelly: Firstly, our politicians must be led to understand that this crisis is not about
Russia – which hasn't really changed – but about Ukraine. Putin has been able to
achieve what he has achieved because we were unprepared and Kiev was weak. We
need to focus on Ukraine. The biggest blow to Moscow's dream of renewed Russian
hegemony in Europe would be to help Ukraine become a unified and well-functioning
member of the democratic West. We need to stop talking and help, help the legitimate
political elite in Kiev build a future for its citizens in which they enjoy the liberties and
freedom we have come to dearly cherish.
Russia Is in No Economic Shape to Fight a
War
By Anders Aslund | The Moscow Times | Apr. 22 2014

Last Friday evening, the Russian Security Council met. In attendance were 12 men —
almost all of whom are around 60 years old and who once worked in the KGB in St.
Petersburg — and one woman. Many have speculated that they might have agreed on
a plan to invade eastern and southern Ukraine after Putin revived the term
"Novorossia," or New Russia.

None has significant economic insights. In the U.S., by contrast, the slightly larger
National Security Council includes several economic officials, starting with the treasury
secretary because the U.S. considers national security decisions economic issues as
well.

Not surprisingly, the Kremlin seems oblivious to Russia's economic weakness. In his
marathon television show last week, Putin said: "There are certain apprehensions [from
the West] with regard to Russia itself — its huge territory, potential growth and power.
This is why they prefer to cut us to size and take us to pieces."

But Russia has only a 2.9 percent share of global gross domestic product. This is only
6 percent of NATO's GDP. In 2012, Russia's defense expenditures corresponded to
one-tenth of NATO's defense expenditures. A country so economically weak would be
well advised not to challenge far wealthier and stronger neighbors. To make matters
worse, Russia has few allies.

In particular, Russia is likely to be highly vulnerable to financial sanctions. One month

ago, the Western discussion on possible sanctions against Russia focused on whether
they could be effective. During the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund in
Washington April 12 to 13, the question was turned around: Do we really want to
destroy Russia that fast? The dominant theme was that geopolitical risk is back, and
Russia is seen as the main risk.

Official Russian reactions to the Western threat of sanctions have been that Russia's
state corporations would invest in Russia and that Russia would establish its own
payments system, making itself independent of the Western financial system. But none
of this is realistic.

In its March report on the Russian economy, the World Bank showed that the country's
total foreign debt at the end of January was $732 billion. The distribution between
public and private debt is only available from October last year. Then, state banks had
$128 billion and nonfinancial state corporations $164 billion of foreign debt. Adding $80
billion of government foreign debt, Russia's total public foreign debt was $372 billion,
while its international currency reserves are $477 billion, but much of those can be
frozen as well.

This makes Russia highly vulnerable to international financial sanctions. In an insightful

article in Foreign Affairs magazine on April 10, Robert Kahn argued that "Russia's
relationship to global financial markets — integrated, highly leveraged and opaque —
creates vulnerability, which sanctions could exploit to produce a Russian 'Lehman
moment': a sharp, rapid deleveraging with major consequences for Russia's ability to
trade and invest."
That could mean a "sudden stop" of international finance to Russia, which would have
devastating consequences for its economy. State banks and other state-controlled
corporations are not creditors to the West but big borrowers. Companies such as
Rosneft have larger debts than their market capitalization, and their debts are held
abroad. If they are not able to roll over their large foreign debts, they will be starved of
capital.

In recent weeks, the discussion in Washington has hardly been about whether to
sanction Russian state banks but rather which ones and when is the best time to do it.
Any significant bank that established itself in Crimea would be sanctioned.
Gazprombank appears a prime target since its beneficiary owner, Bank Rossiya, is
already sanctioned. In addition, it is relatively small and not that well connected with the
rest of the financial system, so it could be used as a trial balloon.

Ukraine's Prosecutor General's Office has just initiated a criminal case against
Sberbank, and probably will for other Russian state banks, for "financing terrorists,"
which is considered an extremely serious crime in the U.S.

Based on recent U.S. statements, it would be surprising if Washington does not

sanction one or several Russian state banks this week.

Moreover, Kahn writes, "The West can mete out some degree of financial punishment
without even explicitly sanctioning Russian banks." This can be accomplished by
simply tightening rules governing due diligence and money-laundering activities.
Usually, sanctions are only effective if European countries apply the sanctions as well,
but given the dominant role of the U.S. in the regulation of global finance, little can be
done without the approval of U.S. authorities. Recently, U.S. law enforcement fined
British bank HSBC $1.2 billion for having laundered drug money in Mexico.

Putin's idea of a Russian payment system is a pipe dream. Who would accept Russian
credit cards abroad? The big Russian state banks have already problems maintaining
elementary correspondent relations because of their opacity. VTB Capital, for example,
has complained about regulatory problems in London.

To judge by growth forecasts, JP Morgan and Finnish BOFIT assess that sheer market
volatility in March alone shaved off 2 percentage points from Russia's expected
economic growth this year. In the first quarter, Russia's GDP contracted by half a
percent. In March, the World Bank presented a "high-risk" scenario in which Russia's
GDP would decline by 1.8 percent in 2014, capital flight may reach $133 billion, and
investment may fall by one-tenth. At present, that looks like a low-risk scenario.

The IMF and the Washington-based Institute of International Finance have recently
produced much more pessimistic scenarios, which have not been published as yet.
Both consider stress scenarios with a decline of Russia's GDP this year of about 4
percent, capital outflows in $150 billion to $180 billion and sharply falling exchange
rates. Similarly, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin predicts a capital outflow of $160
billion this year. GDP could fall more because the risks are many, and they are nearly
all on the downside.

The impact of the Kremlin's aggression against Ukraine on the Russian economy will
be powerful and multifaceted. The country's international currency reserves will fall, but
probably not below $350 billion. The ruble exchange rate will plunge, while inflation and
interest rates will rise, reducing investment and consumption. The main positive effects
will come from the cheaper ruble that will boost exports and improve the current
account as well as the budget balance. The central problem will be falling standard of
living, which is vital for Putin's power.
If Russia's National Security Council had invited one of the country's many good
economists, it would probably have heard that Russia is in no shape to carry out an
aggressive war in Ukraine.

Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in
Washington.
[ the UK, France, Poland on one side … Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain on the other…
wait a minute, is this Cold War 2.0 or WWII 2.0 ???!!!  ]
The EU Remains Hopelessly Divided Over
Stronger Sanctions On Russia
Raoul Ruparel, Contributor | Forbes Business | 4/22/

Last week I helped create the Open Europe Dove/Hawk scale which outlines where EU
member states stand with regards to pushing further sanctions on Russia.

Developments over the weekend have again proved that the deals agreed on paper do
not guarantee results on the ground. We once again find ourselves back in a familiar
stand-off with Russia pushing its rights to defend ethnic Russians in the face of
perceived unrest and the West (EU and USA) threatening further sanctions. But can
the EU ever really agree on deeper sanctions? If not, why not?

The scale is designed as follows: Based on recent public announcements, Open

Europe has put together a scale which attempts to pin down where each EU member
state stands on further sanctions against Russia. The scale runs from -5 to +5, with -5
being the most ‘dovish’ – i.e. against further sanctions – and +5 being the most
‘hawkish’ – i.e. in favour of further action against Russia. The scale is not meant to
suggest which position is preferable. It is simply an attempt to pin down where each
country stands. This is then plotted against the total trade turnover each country has
with Russia (as a % of 2012 GDP). This allows the picture to factor in economic links to
Russia.

The level of divergence between EU member states is clear and is, by now, well
known.

However, what is less clear is the motivation behind each country’s position. As the
graph highlights there is no clear correlation between trade links with Russia and an
aversion to stronger sanctions. The same goes for the level of energy dependency on
Russia (although these will undoubtedly play a role in some cases). So what other
potential factors could be influencing each country’s position? Below are a few ideas.
Security concerns: This category includes the Baltics (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia)
and Poland. They have a long and chequered history when it comes to Russia. Have
clearly nailed their colours to the EU mast and are keen to push back against Moscow.
Finland and Sweden are likely also impacted by these concerns somewhat.

Fear over wider economic and financial uncertainty: One surprise from the scale is
the ‘hawkishness’ of countries such as Spain, Italy and Luxembourg. They have no
clear economic or energy links with Russia and yet remain strongly against sanctions.
A potential factor could be the fear over a trade war with Russia spilling into wider
economic and financial uncertainty in the eurozone, thereby pushing it back into a
deeper crisis.

Special interest concerns: While these factors may not determine the overall position
of the country, they certainly weigh on the thinking. This applies specifically to: France
with its on-going arms deals with Russia, Germany with its significant automotive and
machinery trade with Russia and Cyprus with its significant financial reliance on
Russia. Other factors such as the ones above also play a role but these issues
certainly weigh on various countries thinking.

This is not exhaustive list but highlights that the variety of views in Europe are driven by
a variety of factors. Not only will deeper sanctions on the part of the EU require
unanimous agreement, but focusing sanctions on specific sectors or firms gets
increasingly difficult because they will asymmetrically impact different countries.

EU agreement on deeper sanctions is not impossible, but the barriers remain very high
and it would require a serious escalation. In the interim, Russia will likely continue to
exploit the West’s divided approach.

[ “Spain, Italy and Luxembourg. They have no clear economic or energy links with
Russia” – R U sure ? Italy’s ENI has a lot ]
Germany’s Dangerous Blindness Over
Russia
Posted by: Judy Dempsey | Carnegie Europe | Wednesday, April 23,

A great and dangerous change is slowly creeping through Europe, eroding the special
consensus that was established after 1945 and reaffirmed after the collapse of the
Berlin Wall in 1989.

That consensus, forged by the United States and especially the precursor to the
European Union, the European Coal and Steel Community, was about accepting as
inviolable the borders drawn up at the Yalta Conference in 1945. Ethnic minorities
would be protected. The horror of World War II was enough for Western Europe’s
leaders to realize why such a consensus was necessary.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is now doing everything in his power to break that
conviction. European leaders’ disunity and Germany’s weakness in recognizing what
Putin is doing have the potential to undo the post-1945 consensus.

Were that to happen, Putin could celebrate victory: he would have undermined, and
perhaps even destroyed, the united, strong, multiethnic, democratic Europe embodied
in the EU that he has long feared. It behooves Germany to exert the strongest
leadership to stop this from happening.

By annexing Crimea and creating instability in Eastern Ukraine, Putin has thrown down
the gauntlet to European governments. European leaders now have to decide, and
quickly, if they are prepared to allow Putin to change borders in such a systematic
fashion and set ethnic groups against each other.

In the case of Eastern Ukraine, he is doing this through proxy pro-Russian militia
groups. Their anonymity is insidious. With his skillful manipulation of this situation,
Putin is showing that he knows exactly how to tap into European sensitivities,
weaknesses, and divisions over Russia.

In Germany, there are influential voices that equate Putin’s takeover of Eastern Ukraine
with the interim Ukrainian government’s actions, as if the two were on a level playing
field. Yet Russia is invading. Ukraine’s government is trying to resist, with extraordinary
restraint.

Gernot Erler, the German government’s envoy for Russia, has refused to criticize
Putin’s actions. At the same time, he blamed the Ukrainian government for not
disarming some Far Right Ukrainian groups, as was agreed to in a multiparty accord
forged in Geneva on April 17. As if those Ukrainian groups could counter a huge
Russian military presence! “Both sides aren’t making enough of an effort to actually
implement the agreement,” Erler said.

Erler’s interview to German radio on April 22 was highly revealing of the attitude of the
traditionally pro-Russian part of the German establishment. People in that camp refuse
to make the intellectual leap and tell the German public that Europe’s borders are being
changed by force.

Indeed, as if it were business as usual, the government-founded Petersburg Dialogue

will take place on April 23 in the eastern German city of Leipzig. The former Social
Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schröder created the bilateral discussion forum in 2001
with the support of Putin. The idea was to promote greater trust between Germany and
Russia—anchored in civil society.

However, the forum has completely shied away from tackling controversial issues such
as Putin’s increasingly authoritarian rule and his suppression of civil society
movements. The group’s leading members have close contacts with the Kremlin. Yet
for the sake of realpolitik and business interests, the Petersburg Dialogue has
continued.

Andreas Schockenhoff, the gutsy conservative lawmaker who was Erler’s predecessor
and who continues to speak out against Russia’s actions in Eastern Ukraine, has
repeatedly argued that the Petersburg Dialogue is not an independent forum. Instead,
he says, it is a Kremlin tool. Given what is happening in Ukraine, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel should have postponed the forum.

Even that gesture would have been too much for the German organizers. It would have
meant taking a stand against what Putin is doing instead of equating his actions in
Eastern Ukraine with Kiev’s actions—or, worse, condoning them.

This attitude points to a refusal by German Social Democrats and the business
community, but also by the German public, to see how Putin threatens Europe.

Putin’s tactics of fomenting ethnic unrest to change borders is dangerous for Europe.
“There is not a country in Europe that does not have national minorities,” Polish
Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said in a recent interview with the Washington Post. “If
we went back to protecting them through changing borders, we would be back in the
hell of the twentieth century and before. That is why what President Putin has done in
Crimea and is now doing in Eastern Ukraine is so threatening to all of us.”

What Sikorski did not say was that Russia’s actions, unchecked, could mean the end of
Europe’s post-1945 economic and political architecture. In so many European
countries, Far Right movements are now also challenging those values through their
contempt of ethnic minorities and tolerance. What a coincidence that they don’t criticize
Russia. Don’t European leaders see how the Europe that was built after 1945 is
coming under threat?
Germany Helped Prep Russia for War, U.S.
Sources Say
Josh Rogin | The Daily Beast | 04.22.14

Over the past few years, NATO countries have helped Russia revolutionize its armed
forces. Now questions are arising about a German defense contractor that trained the
Russian military.

The world was shocked when Russian special operations forces invaded Crimea with
advanced technology, drastically improved operations, and with so much operational
security that even agencies in the U.S. intelligence community didn’t see it coming. In
Washington, government and congressional leaders are wondering how the Russian
special operations forces got so good, so fast, without anyone noticing. Some are
wondering how much help Russia had from the West.

In 2011, for example, the German defense contractor Rheinmetall signed a $140
million contract to build a combat simulation training center in Mulino, in southwest
Russia, that would train 30,000 Russian combat troops per year. While the facility
wasn't officially scheduled to be completed until later this year, U.S. officials believe
that Germany has been training Russian forces for years.

Rheinmetall defended the project even after the invasion of Crimea, up until the
German government finally shut it down late last month. But many tracking the issue
within the U.S. government were not happy with Germany's handling of the Russian
contract, and worry that some of the training may have gone to the kind of special
operations forces now operating in and around Ukraine.

“It’s unfortunate that German companies were directly supporting and training Russia’s
military even during the attacks against Ukraine,” one senior Senate aide told The Daily
Beast. “The U.S. government should call on our NATO allies to suspend all military
connections with Russia at this point, until the Russians leave Ukraine, including
Crimea.”

According to the Congressional Research Service, Rheinmetall’s partner in the deal

was the Russian state-owned Oboronservis (“Defense Service”) firm. The training
center, modeled after one used by the German Bundeswehr, was to be “the most
advanced system of its kind worldwide.” Reinmetall saw the contract as a precursor to
several more projects “in light of the plans to modernize the equipment of the Russian
armed forces.”

U.S. officials, now looking back, are privately expressing anger and frustration about
the German work with the Russian military. While definitive proof is hard to come by,
these officials look at the radical upgrade of Moscow’s forces–especially its special
operations forces–experienced since they last saw major action in 2008's invasion of
Georgia. The U.S. officials believe that some of the German training over the last few
years was given to the GRU Spetsnaz, the special operations forces that moved
unmarked into Crimea and who can now be found stirring up trouble in eastern
Ukraine.

“People are pissed,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily Beast. “The chatter
inside the Pentagon is that the training they were providing was going to Spetznaz.”

Rheinmetall did not respond to a request for comment.

Russia maintains close economic ties with many NATO states–especially Germany. By
some estimates, the country exported nearly $50 billion in goods to Russia in 2013.
Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of German jobs depend on Russian trade.

The armed forces of NATO members have also been working with their counterparts in
the Russian military, on and off, for years. Russia has held joint military exercises with
both Germany and the U.S., for example. America has bought Russian helicopters to
use in Afghanistan. And Moscow allows NATO equipment to pass through Russian
territory as the gear comes into and out of the war zone.

To the Congressional Research Service, “Rheinmetall’s construction of an army

training center could be viewed in the context of the broader bilateral defense
cooperation between Germany and Russia,” the service writes in its report. “The
German… government’s approval of the contract to construct a training center also
appears to be in line with long-standing German policy to promote military training and
joint exercises with partner countries.”

But some on Capitol Hill see the Rheimetall contract as only one example of the folly of
several NATO countries that rushed to sign lucrative defense contracts with Russia
after President Obama declared a new “reset” policy with the Russian Federation.
Lawmakers have tried to halt the French sale of the Mistral, an amphibious warship, to
the Russian Navy. Some are also unhappy about the Italian sale of Lynx armored
personnel carriers to Russia.

A Senate aide said that one of Rheinmetall’s contributions was to help the Russian
army and GRU Spetznaz upgrade their gear. Reports show that the Russian military
units both inside Ukraine and amassed on its eastern border are sporting brand new
communications equipment, body armor, personal weapons, and ammunition. Taken
together, it gives them a huge tactical advantage over the beleaguered Ukrainian
armed forces.

Top defense officials are now acknowledging that Russia’s military has been
revolutionized in recent years. This month, Vice Admiral Frank Pandolfe, the director
for strategic plans and policy for the military’s joint chiefs of staff, told Congress in open
testimony that in recent years Russia has created regional commands that “coordinate
and synchronize planning, joint service integration, force movement, intelligence
support, and the tactical employment of units” in what he deemed “snap exercises,” or
military training missions that can be ordered at a moment’s notice.

In the testimony, Pandolfe also said Russia has placed greater emphasis on the use of
Special Operations Forces as well as information and cyber warfare. Experts said that
Russian military doctrine was dramatically updated in the past few years and clearly set
out Russia’s plans for modernization and a focus on highly trained rapid reaction
special forces. But in the West, the papers were not well read, much less understood.

The Russians also changed their doctrine to reflect that they viewed the threat as not
coming from a conventional war, but from the need to protect Russian populations in
unstable states facing what they deemed to be Western aggression.

“This wasn’t just about implementing lessons learned from [the 2008 invasion of]
Georgia, it was about giving them a basis for a different kind of operations,” said Fiona
Hill, a former top intelligence official on Russia, now with the Brookings Institution. “We
should have been paying more attention to this. There have been these signals for a
long time, but we have been misreading them.”

Western and NATO countries believed they could tie Russia into greater military
cooperation through engagement, but now have realized that Russian was probably
never really interested in that. The Russian military is now organized to respond to
conflicts caused by such things as popular revolutions, political crises, and domestic
insurgencies.

“Everyone was looking for a way to cooperate with the Russian military and rushed to
find ways to do it, including us,” said Hill. “Whatever we do now, we have to be mindful
that the Russians have been preparing for something else.”

Andranik Migranyan, a past member of Russia’s Presidential Council and currently an

adviser to the Vladimir Putin administration, told reporters that ever since the Georgia
war, Russia has been spending to radically upgrade its military, but that the West has
only itself to blame for not following along.

“We have new armament, new army, new training,” he said. “It’s very strange you are
not following what’s happening.”
Putin’s Perilous Course
Jeffrey D. Sachs | Project Syndicate | APR 21, 2014

NEW YORK – The dangers of the crisis in Ukraine cannot be exaggerated. Russian
President Vladimir Putin is overtly and covertly inciting separatism in eastern Ukraine,
and has declared Russia’s unilateral right to intervene there, in complete contravention
of international law. Russia’s provocative policies are putting it on a collision course
with the West.

Putin explained his point of view in a recent television appearance: Russia’s current
international borders are provisional, determined by accidents of history, such as the
transfer of Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, or the transfer of Russian territories
to eastern Ukraine in the 1920’s. Putin claims that it is Russia’s right and duty to defend
ethnic Russians in neighboring countries, especially in light of the arbitrariness of the
existing borders.

If ethnic Russians call for a return to Russia, Putin asserts, then Russia must heed their
call. Putin pointedly reminded listeners that eastern Ukraine was called “Novorossiya”
(New Russia) in Czarist times, clearly implying that it could be Novorossiya again.

Evidently, Putin believes that relentless pressure and claims over neighboring states,
designed to undermine their sovereignty and force them to accede to Russian
demands, will result in a stronger Russia, better able to confront the West. In the recent
past, Russia sharply opposed American and NATO military intervention in Libya, Syria,
and Serbia on the grounds that the West was violating those countries’ sovereignty.
Now Putin claims the right to ignore neighboring countries’ sovereignty on the pretext
that Russia is merely defending the rights of ethnic Russians abroad, up to and
including their right to secede and join the Russian homeland.

Putin no doubt hopes to create facts on the ground – as in Crimea – without provoking
a severe Western reaction. Even without an invasion, Russia can use threats, displays
of military power, secret operations, and heated rhetoric to destabilize its neighbors.
That may be enough to achieve Russian foreign-policy aims, including its neighbors’
docility.

But Putin’s adventurism is likely to end very badly for Russia. Though the West is
justifiably reticent to be drawn into any military confrontations with Russia beyond
NATO’s boundaries, and is even reluctant to apply economic sanctions, Putin’s actions
have triggered a strong and growing anti-Russian backlash in the US and Europe. The
West’s response will intensify dramatically if Russia deploys forces across its borders,
whatever the pretext; should Russia adopt subtler methods of political destabilization,
Western pressure will build more gradually, but build it will.

Existing trade, investment, and financial relations between Russia and the West are
already becoming severely frayed. New investment projects and joint ventures are
being put on hold. Loans from Western investors to Russian entities are being called in.
Russian banks and companies will face a growing credit squeeze.

In the short term, Russia has ample foreign-exchange reserves to offset capital
outflows; but the reversal of capital flows will begin to bite within a matter of months.
Following Russia’s forcible takeover of Crimea, it is almost unimaginable that normal
economic relations between Russia and the West could survive Russian intervention,
subversion, or annexation elsewhere in Ukraine.
In other words, if Cold War II sets in, as appears increasingly likely, Russia would be
the long-term economic loser. The European Union can certainly survive without
imports of Russian natural gas, even with a full cutoff. Russia’s gas exports to Europe
constitute less than 10% of the EU’s primary energy consumption. Russia, on the other
hand, would suffer a major loss of revenues.

Putin seems to believe that Russia can offset any worsening of economic relations with
the West by strengthening its economic relations with China. But technologies and
business are too globally intertwined to divide the world into economic blocs. China
knows that its long-term economic prosperity depends on good economic relations with
the US and Europe. Putin seems not to understand this point, or even the fact that the
Soviet economy collapsed as a result of its isolation from technologically advanced
economies.

Russia’s future economic strength depends on its ability to upgrade technologies in key
sectors, including aviation, high-speed rail, automobiles, machinery, and heavy
industry. That can be achieved only if Russian companies are more closely integrated
into global production networks that knit them together with German, Japanese,
American, and Chinese firms that rely on cutting-edge technology and advanced
engineering.

Of course, matters could become much worse. A new cold war could all too easily turn
hot. Many in the US are already calling for arming Ukraine as a deterrent to Russia.
But, while military deterrence sometimes works, the West should emphasize trade and
financial retaliation, rather than military responses to Russian provocations. Military
responses could provoke disaster, such as turning Ukraine into a Syria-type battlefield,
with untold thousands of deaths.

There can be no doubt that NATO will defend its own members if necessary. But
Russia’s belligerency and appalling behavior should not permit Western hardliners to
gain control of the policy debate. Hardline approaches brought expanded conflicts in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, leading to plenty of deaths but not to meaningful
political or economic solutions in the affected countries. War is not politics by other
means. War is mayhem and suffering.

Putin is no doubt acting in Ukraine with domestic politics very much in mind, using his
adventurism abroad to shore up his political base at home. The Russian economy is
flagging, and the population is weary of repression, not to mention Russia’s pervasive
corruption. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and threat to invade eastern Ukraine appear
to be hugely popular. It remains a terrifying reality that politicians often perceive war to
be an antidote to internal weakness.

Both Russia and the West have played fast and loose with international law in recent
years. The West violated national sovereignty in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and
Syria. Russia is now playing the same card with shocking brazenness in its own
neighborhood, often justifying its actions by pointing to Western precedents.

But Russia’s true long-term interests lie in multilateralism, integration into the world
economy, and the international rule of law. Putin’s current path is strewn with grave
hazards. He is undermining Russia’s economic prospects, while confronting the world
with a growing threat of war. Our only hope is that all sides return to the principles of
international law, which they have forsaken for too long.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development, Professor of Health Policy

and Management, and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is also
Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium
Development Goals. His books include The End of Poverty and Common Wealth.
The West Needs a Non-Recognition Policy
for Crimea Now
Paul Goble | interpretermag.com | April 21, 2014

Staunton, April 20 – The US Department of State has declared that Washington will
never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but such declarations, important as
they are, need to be given real content to ensure that no part of the government,
intentionally or otherwise, takes steps that undermine that policy.

In short, what is needed now is a new non-recognition policy. That is all the more
important now given continuing Russian meddling in Ukraine and elsewhere in the
former Soviet space.

Given all that has happened since Moscow’s seizure and annexation of Crimea, it may
seem to some that any such call has been overtaken by events. But in fact, continuing
Russian aggression in Ukraine and elsewhere in the former Soviet space make it even
more important.

The immediate danger of not having such a clearly defined and articulated policy was
highlighted earlier this month when the Voice of America put up on its website — and
then fortunately took down — a map showing Crimea not as an internationally
recognized part of Ukraine but as part of the Russian Federation whose government
under Vladimir Putin has engineered its annexation by force and the threat of force.

But the larger dangers are even greater.

Since at least 1932, it will be recalled, the United States has maintained as a matter of
principle that it will not recognize changes in international borders achieved by the use
of force unless or until they are sanctioned international agreement. That doctrine was
enunciated by Henry L. Stimson, the US secretary of state at the time, in response to
Japan’s seizure of China’s Manchuria province and subsequent creation of the puppet
state of Manchukuo.

While the US has not always adhered to this doctrine has not always been followed, it
has never denounced or disowned it. And in one case, its articulation and maintenance
helped right a terrible wrong and contributed to a most positive outcome.

The most forceful expression of the Stimson Doctrine was US non-recognition policy
regarding the Soviet seizure of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940 under the terms
of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin.

On July 23, 1940, US Undersecretary of State Sumner Wells declared that the Baltic
countries had been “deliberately annihilated by one of their more powerful neighbors”
and that the US would continue to stand by its principle in their defense “because of the
conviction of the American people that unless the doctrine in which these principles are
inherent once again governs the relations between nations, the rule of reason, of
justice and of law – in other words, the basis of modern civilization itself – cannot be
preserved.”

That declaration was given content by a policy that the United States followed until
1991 when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania escaped from Soviet occupation and
recovered their de facto independence, a policy that included among other things,
provisions that the US would maintain ties with the diplomatic representatives of the
pre-1940 Baltic governments and that the Baltic flags would continue to fly at the State
Department, that no map produced by the United States government would show the
Baltic states as a legitimate part of the USSR but would carry the disclaimer that the
US did not recognize their forcible incorporation, and that no senior US official would
visit the Baltic countries while they were under Soviet occupation.

It is important to remember what such policies did not mean. Neither the Stimson
Doctrine nor Baltic Non-Recognition Policy called for American military action to
liberate occupied territories, but both provided enormous encouragement to the
peoples of these occupied areas that they would at some point once again be free and
thus reflected the principles and values of the American people.

Why shouldn’t such a policy be announced now? There are three main objections,
none of which withstands examination. The first is that the US has not always lived up
to its doctrines either in its own actions or in its willingness to denounce the use of
force to change borders. Washington did not issue such a policy after the Soviet
invasion of Georgia in 2008, for example; why should it do so now? But arguing that
past mistakes should be repeated just because they were made once is hardly
compelling.

Second, it is said that Crimea is only part of a country and therefore a non-recognition
policy regarding it couldn’t look exactly like Baltic non-recognition policy. That is true. A
new non-recognition policy would not include maintaining ties with any pre-occupation
government but it could keep senior American officials from visiting the peninsula and
include continuing US recognition of Ukrainian passports of the residents of that
peninsula, much as the US did in the case of holders of pre-1940 Baltic passports.
Arguing that you can’t get everything and therefore should do nothing, a suggestion
made all too often of late, isn’t very compelling either.

And third, it is maintained that Putin isn’t Stalin and that the US shouldn’t anger him
because we have so many concerns in common. Tragically, some US officials have
even insisted that Putin shouldn’t take anything we say or do about Ukraine
“personally.” That is absurd. Putin is the aggressor in Crimea and Ukraine more
generally. If we make him uncomfortable, we are only doing the minimum to live up to
our principles.

Moreover, despite what Moscow suggests and some of its supporters in the West say,
some future Russian leader or even Putin himself will cooperate with us when he or
they see it is in their interest. US non-recognition policy regarding the Baltic countries
did not prevent the US and Stalin’s USSR from becoming allies against Hitler or the US
and later Soviet leaders from cooperating. Again, the objections fall away.

It is thus time for a new non-recognition policy so that at a minimum no one will ever
see a map of Ukraine put out by the US government that shows part of that country
belonging to another.
Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to
Russia
By ANDREW HIGGINS, MICHAEL R. GORDON and ANDREW E. KRAMER
NY Times April 20, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine — For two weeks, the mysteriously well-armed, professional gunmen
known as “green men” have seized Ukrainian government sites in town after town,
igniting a brush fire of separatist unrest across eastern Ukraine. Strenuous denials from
the Kremlin have closely followed each accusation by Ukrainian officials that the world
was witnessing a stealthy invasion by Russian forces.

Now, photographs and descriptions from eastern Ukraine endorsed by the Obama
administration on Sunday suggest that many of the green men are indeed Russian
military and intelligence forces — equipped in the same fashion as Russian special
operations troops involved in annexing the Crimea region in February. Some of the
men photographed in Ukraine have been identified in other photos clearly taken among
Russian troops in other settings.

And Ukraine’s state security service has identified one Russian reported to be active
among the green men as Igor Ivanovich Strelkov, a Russian military intelligence
operative in his mid- to late 50s. He is said to have a long résumé of undercover
service with the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian general staff, most
recently in Crimea in February and March and now in and around the eastern Ukrainian
city of Slovyansk.

“There has been broad unity in the international community about the connection
between Russia and some of the armed militants in eastern Ukraine, and the photos
presented by the Ukrainians last week only further confirm this, which is why U.S.
officials have continued to make that case,” Jen Psaki, the State Department
spokeswoman, said Sunday.

The question of Russia’s role in eastern Ukraine has a critical bearing on the
agreement reached Thursday in Geneva among Russian, Ukrainian, American and
European diplomats to ease the crisis. American officials have said that Russia would
be held responsible for ensuring that the Ukrainian government buildings were vacated,
and that it could face new sanctions if the terms were not met.

The Kremlin insists that Russian forces are in no way involved, and that Mr. Strelkov
does not even exist, at least not as a Russian operative sent to Ukraine with orders to
stir up trouble. “It’s all nonsense,” President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday during a
four-hour question-and-answer session on Russian television. “There are no Russian
units, special services or instructors in the east of Ukraine.” Pro-Russian activists who
have seized government buildings in at least 10 towns across eastern Ukraine also
deny getting help from professional Russian soldiers or intelligence agents.

But masking the identity of its forces, and clouding the possibilities for international
denunciation, is a central part of the Russian strategy, developed over years of conflict
in the former Soviet sphere, Ukrainian and American officials say.

John R. Schindler, a former National Security Agency counterintelligence officer who

now teaches at the Naval War College, calls it “special war”: “an amalgam of
espionage, subversion, even forms of terrorism to attain political ends without actually
going to war in any conventional sense.”
And one country, Mr. Schindler noted in an article last year in which he coined the
term, that particularly excels at special war is Russia, which carried out its first post-
Soviet war to regain control of rebellious Chechnya back in 1994 by sending in a
column of armored vehicles filled with Russian soldiers masquerading as pro-Moscow
Chechens.

Russia’s flair for “maskirovka” — disguised warfare — has become even more evident
under Mr. Putin, a former K.G.B. officer whose closest advisers are mostly from that
same Soviet intelligence agency.

For nearly two months now, the shaky new Ukrainian government has been left to
battle phantoms, first in Crimea and now in eastern Ukraine, where previously fringe
pro-Russian political activists have had their fortunes lifted by small but heavily armed
groups of masked men.

In the eastern city of Slovyansk, under the control of pro-Russian insurgents for more
than a week now, the green men have worked hard to blend in with locals but have
occasionally let the mask slip, apparently to send a clear message that any push to
regain control by Ukrainian forces would risk bringing down the wrath of the Russian
military.

A gradation of forces control the city and other areas now in the hands of separatist
rebels, ranging from clearly professional masked soldiers and unruly groups of local
men in camouflage, rifles slung over their shoulders, to teenage boys in sweatpants
carrying baseball bats or hunting knives. At most times, only the local toughs are visible
on the streets.

But when a woman sidled up to one of the masked gunmen in the city’s central square
last week and asked where he was from, she got an answer that summed up Russia’s
bedeviling and constantly shifting disguises. The gunman initially said he was “from
Russia,” but when pressed, said coyly that he was “from New Russia,” a long-forgotten
czarist-era term revived last week by Mr. Putin to describe a large section of eastern
and southern Ukraine.

Asked by the woman what would happen if the Ukrainian Army attacked, he replied,
“We have to stand for only 24 hours, to tend the fire, and after that, a one million man
army will be here.”

When a Ukrainian armored column approached the town last Wednesday and then
swiftly surrendered, a group of disciplined green men suddenly appeared on the scene
and stood guard. Over the course of several hours, several of them told bystanders in
the sympathetic crowd that they were Russians. They allowed themselves to be
photographed with local girls, and drove an armored personnel carrier in circles to
please the crowd.

“It’s hard to fathom that groups of armed men in masks suddenly sprang forward from
the population in eastern Ukraine and systematically began to occupy government
facilities,” Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, NATO’s top military commander, wrote in a blog
post on the alliance’s website. “It’s hard to fathom because it’s simply not true. What is
happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and organized,
and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.”

His evidence, however, was mostly circumstantial: Pro-Russian gunmen “exhibit telltale
military training and equipment”; they handle weapons like professional soldiers, not
new recruits to a pickup “self-defense” force; they carry weapons and equipment that
are primarily Russian Army issue, not gear “that civilians would be likely to be able to
get their hands on in large numbers.” General Breedlove conceded that such points,
taken alone, might not prove much, “but taken in the aggregate, the story is clear.”

Heightening skepticism of Russia’s denials is also the fact that Mr. Putin, after denying
any Russian link to the masked gunmen who seized government buildings in Crimea
and blockaded Ukrainian military bases there, last week changed his story and said,
“Of course, Russian servicemen did back the Crimean self-defense forces.”

More direct evidence of a Russian hand in eastern Ukraine is contained in a dossier of

photographs provided by Ukraine to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, a Vienna-based organization now monitoring the situation in Donetsk and
other parts of the country. It features pictures taken in eastern Ukraine of unidentified
gunmen and an earlier photograph of what looks like the same men appearing in a
group shot of a Russian military unit in Russia.

One set of photographs shows what appears to be the same gunman in pictures taken
in the Crimean annexation and more recently in Slovyansk. Another features a portly
bearded man photographed in Slovyansk on April 14, wearing a camouflage uniform
without insignia, but six years earlier, had been photographed during Russia’s invasion
of Georgia with a Russian special forces patch on his left arm.

Another character in Ukraine’s case against Russia is Mr. Strelkov, the alleged military
intelligence officer who Kiev says took part in a furtive Russian operation to prepare for
the annexation of Crimea and, more recently, in insurgent action in Slovyansk.

No photographs have yet emerged of Mr. Strelkov, but the Security Service of Ukraine,
the successor organization to what used to be Ukraine’s local branch of the K.G.B., has
released a sketch of what it says is his face.

The security agency, known by its Ukrainian abbreviation S.B.U., first identified him
publicly early last week after releasing an audio recording of what it said was a
recording of an intercepted communication between Russian operatives in eastern
Ukraine and their controller back in Russia.

In the recording, a man nicknamed “Strelok” — who the Ukrainian agency says is Mr.
Strelkov — and others can be heard discussing weapons, roadblocks and how to hold
on to captured positions in and near Slovyansk with a superior in Russia.

The superior, clearly anxious to keep Russia’s role hidden, can be heard ordering his
men on the ground in Ukraine not to identify themselves and to find someone with a
Ukrainian accent who can give an interview to a Russian television channel. It was very
important, he added, to say on air that all the pro-Russian insurgents want is
“federalization,” or constitutional changes to give eastern Ukraine more autonomy.

Military analysts say the Russian tactics show a disturbing amount of finesse that
speak to long-term planning.

“The Russians have used very specialized, very effective forces,” said Jacob W. Kipp,
an expert on the Russian military and the former deputy director of the United States
Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

“They don’t assume that civilians are cluttering up the battlefield; they assume they are
going to be there,” he said. “They are trained to operate in these kind of environments.”

Andrew Higgins reported from Kiev, Michael R. Gordon from Washington, and Andrew
E. Kramer from Slovyansk, Ukraine.
In Cold War Echo, Obama Strategy Writes
Off Putin
By PETER BAKER | NY Times | APRIL 19, 2014

WASHINGTON — Even as the crisis in Ukraine continues to defy easy resolution,

President Obama and his national security team are looking beyond the immediate
conflict to forge a new long-term approach to Russia that applies an updated version of
the Cold War strategy of containment.

Just as the United States resolved in the aftermath of World War II to counter the
Soviet Union and its global ambitions, Mr. Obama is focused on isolating President
Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside
world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively
making it a pariah state.

Mr. Obama has concluded that even if there is a resolution to the current standoff over
Crimea and eastern Ukraine, he will never have a constructive relationship with Mr.
Putin, aides said. As a result, Mr. Obama will spend his final two and a half years in
office trying to minimize the disruption Mr. Putin can cause, preserve whatever
marginal cooperation can be saved and otherwise ignore the master of the Kremlin in
favor of other foreign policy areas where progress remains possible.

“That is the strategy we ought to be pursuing,” said Ivo H. Daalder, formerly Mr.
Obama’s ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs. “If you just stand there, be confident and raise the cost gradually and
increasingly to Russia, that doesn’t solve your Crimea problem and it probably doesn’t
solve your eastern Ukraine problem. But it may solve your Russia problem.”

The manifestation of this thinking can be seen in Mr. Obama’s pending choice for the
next ambassador to Moscow. While not officially final, the White House is preparing to
nominate John F. Tefft, a career diplomat who previously served as ambassador to
Ukraine, Georgia and Lithuania.

When the search began months ago, administration officials were leery of sending Mr.
Tefft because of concern that his experience in former Soviet republics that have
flouted Moscow’s influence would irritate Russia. Now, officials said, there is no
reluctance to offend the Kremlin.

In effect, Mr. Obama is retrofitting for a new age the approach to Moscow that was first
set out by the diplomat George F. Kennan in 1947 and that dominated American
strategy through the fall of the Soviet Union. The administration’s priority is to hold
together an international consensus against Russia, including even China, its longtime
supporter on the United Nations Security Council.

While Mr. Obama’s long-term approach takes shape, though, a quiet debate has roiled
his administration over how far to go in the short term. So far, economic advisers and
White House aides urging a measured approach have won out, prevailing upon a
cautious president to take one incremental step at a time out of fear of getting too far
ahead of skittish Europeans and risking damage to still-fragile economies on both sides
of the Atlantic.

The White House has prepared another list of Russian figures and institutions to
sanction in the next few days if Moscow does not follow through on an agreement
sealed in Geneva on Thursday to defuse the crisis, as Obama aides anticipate. But the
president will not extend the punitive measures to whole sectors of the Russian
economy, as some administration officials prefer, absent a dramatic escalation.

The more hawkish faction in the State and Defense Departments has grown
increasingly frustrated, privately worrying that Mr. Obama has come across as weak
and unintentionally sent the message that he has written off Crimea after Russia’s
annexation. They have pressed for faster and more expansive sanctions, only to wait
while memos sit in the White House without action. Mr. Obama has not even imposed
sanctions on a list of Russian human rights violators waiting for approval since last
winter.

“They’re playing us,” Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, the ranking Republican on the
Foreign Relations Committee, said of the Russians, expressing a sentiment that is also
shared by some inside the Obama administration. “We continue to watch what they’re
doing and try to respond to that,” he said on CNN on Friday. “But it seems that in doing
so, we create a policy that’s always a day late and a dollar short.”

The prevailing view in the West Wing, though, is that while Mr. Putin seems for now to
be enjoying the glow of success, he will eventually discover how much economic harm
he has brought on his country. Mr. Obama’s aides noted the fall of the Russian stock
market and the ruble, capital flight from the country and the increasing reluctance of
foreign investors to expand dealings in Russia.

They argued that while American and European sanctions have not yet targeted wide
parts of the Russian economy, they have sent a message to international businesses,
and that just the threat of broader measures has produced a chilling effect. If the
Russian economy suffers over the long term, senior American officials said, then Mr.
Putin’s implicit compact with the Russian public promising growth for political control
could be sundered.

That may not happen quickly, however, and in the meantime, Mr. Obama seems intent
on not letting Russia dominate his presidency. While Mr. Obama spends a lot of time
on the Ukraine crisis, it does not seem to absorb him. Speaking privately with visitors,
he is more likely to bring up topics like health care and the Republicans in Congress
than Mr. Putin. Ukraine, he tells people, is not a major concern for most Americans,
who are focused on the economy and other issues closer to home.

Since returning from a trip to Europe last month, Mr. Obama has concentrated his
public schedule around issues like job training and the minimum wage. Even after his
diplomatic team reached the Geneva agreement to de-escalate the crisis last week, Mr.
Obama headed to the White House briefing room not to talk about that but to hail new
enrollment numbers he said validated his health care program.

Reporters asked about Ukraine anyway, as he knew they would, and he expressed
skepticism about the prospects of the Geneva accord that his secretary of state, John
Kerry, had just brokered. But when a reporter turned the subject back to health care,
Mr. Obama happily exclaimed, “Yeah, let’s talk about that.”

That represents a remarkable turnaround from the start of Mr. Obama’s presidency,
when he nursed dreams of forging a new partnership with Russia. Now the question is
how much of the relationship can be saved. Mr. Obama helped Russia gain admission
to the World Trade Organization; now he is working to limit its access to external
financial markets.

But the two sides have not completely cut off ties. American troops and equipment are
still traveling through Russian territory en route to and from Afghanistan. Astronauts
from the two countries are currently in orbit together at the International Space Station,
supplied by Russian rockets. A joint program decommissioning old Russian weapons
systems has not been curtailed.

Nuclear inspections under the New Start arms control treaty Mr. Obama signed in his
first term continue. The Air Force still relies on rockets with Russian-made engines to
launch military satellites into space, although it is reviewing that. The United States has
not moved to try to push Russia out of the W.T.O. And the Obama administration is still
working with Russia on disarming Syria’s chemical weapons and negotiating a deal
with Iran to curtail its nuclear program.

“You can’t isolate everything from a general worsening of the relationship and the
rhetoric,” said Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs at Harvard University and an adviser to multiple administrations on
Russia and defense policy. “But there’s still very high priority business that we have to
try to do with Russia.”

Still, the relationship cannot return to normal either, even if the Ukraine situation is
settled soon, specialists said. “There’s really been a sea change not only here but in
much of Europe about Russia,” said Robert Nurick, a Russia expert at the Atlantic
Council. “A lot of the old assumptions about what we were doing and where we were
going and what was possible are gone, and will stay that way as long as Putin’s there.”

Mr. Nurick said discussion had already begun inside the administration about where
and under what conditions the United States might engage with Russia in the future.
“But I can’t imagine this administration expending a lot of political capital on this
relationship except to manage it so that the other things they care about a lot more
than Russia are not injured too badly,” he said.

[ “preserve, minimize, ignore” – as if Putin could be “ignored”…

“Mr. Obama’s aides noted the fall of the Russian stock market and the ruble, capital
flight from the country… “ all of which began way before the Crimea invasion.
“Obama seems intent on not letting Russia dominate his presidency” – still thinks he
can choose.
To sum up: he’s going to spend the last 2 ½ years of presidency trying to make up for
the mistakes he made in the first 5 ½ years. Big deal.
Go back to your churches, Barack. ]
U.S. ground troops going to Poland, defense
minister says
By Fred Hiatt | Washington Post | April 18 at 3:53 pm

Poland and the United States will announce next week the deployment of U.S. ground
forces to Poland as part of an expansion of NATO presence in Central and Eastern
Europe in response to events in Ukraine. That was the word from Poland’s defense
minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, who visited The Post Friday after meeting with Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday.

Siemoniak said the decision has been made on a political level and that military
planners are working out details. There will also be intensified cooperation in air
defense, special forces, cyberdefense and other areas. Poland will play a leading
regional role, “under U.S. patronage,” he said.

But the defense minister also said that any immediate NATO response to Russian
aggression in Ukraine, while important, matter less than a long-term shift in the defense
postures of Europe and America. The United States, having announced a “pivot” to
Asia, needs to “re-pivot” to Europe, he said, and European countries that have cut back
on defense spending need to reverse the trends.

“The idea until recently was that there were no more threats in Europe and no need for
a U.S. presence in Europe any more,” Siemoniak said, speaking through an interpreter.
“Events show that what is needed is a re-pivot, and that Europe was safe and secure
because America was in Europe.”

How likely is such a reversal on defense spending? Siemoniak said there was
widespread support at a recent meeting of European defense ministers. “Now they’ll go
back to their presidents, prime ministers and ministers of finance, and this will stop
being easy,” he admitted. “But the impetus is very strong.”

The strongest impetus, he said, is not even Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, but
President Vladimir Putin’s bald lies about Russian actions there and his exposition of a
new doctrine allowing Russia to intervene in any country where Russian-speaking
populations are, in Russia’s judgment, under threat. This poses a potential danger to
the Baltic nations, which are members of NATO, and even more to Moldova, Belarus
and central Asian nations that are not, he said.

Like President Obama, Siemoniak said it’s too soon to judge the agreement reached
Thursday in Geneva to defuse tensions. He said he believes that Russia’s “special
operation in eastern Ukraine didn’t go as planned” and that Putin may have decided to
play a longer game.

“He holds different instruments that he can use to influence events in Ukraine,”
Siemoniak said. Putin will keep in reserve the option of an outright military incursion,
“but the political, military and financial costs would be gigantic.” The 46-year-old
minister mused that until recently NATO was wondering what mission it would have, if
any, once its troops came home from Afghanistan.

“Now we have an answer to that question,” he said.

Betrayal of Ukraine in Geneva ‘Worse than
Munich,’ Illarionov Says
Paul Goble | interpretermag.com | April 18, 2014

Staunton, April 18 – What the US, the EU and Ukraine itself agreed to in Geneva is
“worse than Munich” because Kyiv joined in giving international sanction to actions of
the Russian aggressor and opening the way for the transformation of the internal
arrangements of Ukraine regardless of what Ukrainians want, according to Andrey
Illarionov.

As bad as the Munich accord of 1938 was – and it has long been a synonym for the
appeasement of an aggressor — the Russian commentator continues, at least the
Czechoslovaks at that time were not forced to participate in it and agree to the
dismemberment and redesign of their country. And because Czechoslovakia was not
invited to Munich, its people considered that they had been betrayed. Now, Illarionov
suggests, Ukrainians must “wake up” to the horrible reality that they have been
betrayed not just by the West but by their own government and are now very much on
their own.

In his words, the accord shows that “Putin has received everything he wanted” or “even
more,” the commentator says, and then outlines his reasons for that devastating
conclusion.

First, he says, “Ukraine has de facto agreed to ‘foreign administration’” because it has
agreed that outside forces, the West and Russia, even though both have failed to fulfill
their obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, the West by backing away from
insisting that Russia respect it and Russia by openly violating it.

Second, the Geneva accord says nothing about the removal from the territory of
Ukraine “Russian forces, including the special forces of the GRU, FSB, Special
Operations Forces and others.” The silence of the agreement on that point “de facto”
legalizes their presence; they will certainly remain.

Third, Illarionov points out, the document “says nothing about Russian aggression,”
“not a word about the war that has been conducted by the Putin regime against
Ukraine.” Moscow and perhaps others will treat that as a legalization and legitimation of
Russian aggression, and that in turn may open the way to more of it.

Fourth, the Geneva agreement says nothing about the preservation of the territorial
integrity of Ukraine. Given that Russia has already annexed Crimea, Moscow’s
violation of the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine has been “legalized” not
just by the West but by Kyiv as well.

Fifth, Illarionov continues, there is “not a word” in the document about Crimea, a
shortcoming that Moscow will see as a legitimation of its annexation.

Sixth, the accord’s words about the participation of Ukraine’s regions in the
constitutional development of the country in effect “gives a legal basis for the
separatists to block the unitary character of the Ukrainian state.”

Seventh, the accord gives “all the separatists” an amnesty.

Eighth, its call for the liberation of all building and institutions and the disarming of
“’self-defense’” forces should have been done anyway, but now those who seized
these buildings will walk away unpunished and invited to take part in the political
process.

Ninth, Illarionov continues, the accord presupposes that Ukraine will become a federal
state — even though such a development “does not enjoy any significant public
support in any region of Ukraine” but only reflects what Moscow wants. Tenth, that sets
the stage for more Crimeas and the creeping dismemberment of Ukraine.

Eleventh, “the result of the process of federalization” will not be a federal Ukraine but
rather the creation of a “Novorossiya (‘from Kharkhiv to Odessa’) about which Putin
spoke so inspiringly” the same day this accord was being signed.

Twelfth, the agreement does not guarantee the holding of presidential and
parliamentary elections, a fact that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed
and one that means that “the Russian powers will continue to undermine them … and
say that the authorities in Kyiv are illegitimate, as Putin said” again on the same day
the accord was signed.

Thirteenth, “according to the document,” Illarionov says, all “serious organized forces
capable of opposing Russian aggression” such as the Maidan Self-Defense groups and
the Right Sector will be disarmed and disbanded, leaving Ukraine without anyone to
defend it given the weakness of the Ukrainian army and militia.

Fourteenth, because the document requires the disbanding of such units, any use of
force by pro-Moscow groups against them, an action that was a violation of national
and international law before Geneva has now become “perfectly legal” and thus can be
expected.

Fifteenth, there is no reason to think that Russia will live up to the provisions of this
accord any more than it did the Budapest Memorandum but both Russia and the West
will insist that Ukraine do, something that will further unbalance the playing field against
Ukraine and Ukrainians.

Sixteenth, despite polls showing that a majority of Ukrainians favor having their country
become a member of NATO, the Geneva accord specifies that Ukraine will remain
outside of that “bloc” and thus face Russian power on its own.

And seventeenth, Illarionov says, Ukrainians must now recognize that they have not
only lost Crimea to Russia but may lose far more, that their state is at risk of
dismemberment, and that those on whom they had hoped to rely to defend their
position have betrayed them.

The Russian commentator concludes with two extremely disturbing comments. On the
one hand, he says, what has now happened is that a major European country has
been seized “without the use of tanks” because its own rulers have been “traitors” and
that this seizure has been legitimated by the West. And on the other, while Esau
exchanged his birthright of a bowl of food, Ukraine has given up something essential
without getting even that in return.
[ Here is the text of the infamous agreement : ]

Geneva, 17 April 2014

140417/01

JOINT STATEMENT

Geneva Statement on Ukraine

Representatives of the European Union, the United States, Ukraine and the
Russian Federation issued today the following statement:

" The Geneva meeting on the situation in Ukraine agreed on initial concrete
steps to de-escalate tensions and restore security for all citizens.

All sides must refrain from any violence, intimidation or provocative actions. The
participantsstrongly condemned and rejected all expressions of extremism, racism
and religious intolerance, including anti-semitism.

All illegal armed groups must be disarmed; all illegally seized buildings must be
returned to legitimate owners; all illegally occupied streets, squares and other public
places in Ukrainian cities and towns must be vacated.

Amnesty will be granted to protestors and to those who have left buildings and other
public places and surrendered weapons, with the exception of those found guilty of
capital crimes.

It was agreed that the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission should play a leading role in
assisting Ukrainian authorities and local communities in the immediate implementation
of these deescalation measures wherever they are needed most, beginning in the
coming days. The US, EU and Russia commit to support this mission, including by
providing monitors.

The announced constitutional process will be inclusive, transparent and accountable. It

will include the immediate establishment of a broad national dialogue, with
outreach to all of Ukraine’s regions and political constituencies, and allow for the
consideration of public comments and proposed amendments.

The participants underlined the importance of economic and financial stability in

Ukraine and would be ready to discuss additional support as the above steps are
implemented.”

[ nice piece of crap indeed ]

Putin's Office Threatens To Mobilize
interpretermag.com | 2014-04-18 19:26:13

In a significant escalation of rhetoric, not only does Putin's press secretary admit that
there are Russian troops on the border with Ukraine, but he says that they are there to
respond if Russia is driven "into a corner." RFE/RL reports:

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has confirmed that Russia does have
troops near the Ukrainian border and that some of those forces are stationed there "on
a permanent basis."

Peskov said additional forces are in the area along Russia's border with Ukraine but
only "as reinforcement aganst the background of what is going on in Ukraine."

Peskov also said Washington's threats of additional sanctions against Russia if

Moscow does not adhere to the terms of an agreement reached yesterday in Gevena
between top diplomats from Russia, Ukraine, the United States, and European Union
were "absolutely unacceptable."

"We can mobilize our whole society if someone starts driving Russia into a corner," he
said. "Thank God, it is impossible to drive Russia into a corner."

Previous to this, the Russian line has been that the troops were there as part of drills
that are unrelated to the crisis in Ukraine. To our knowledge, the troop deployment has
not changed, just the way Moscow is now talking about them.

NATO Commander Says Russian Troops

Are In East Ukraine
interpretermag.com | 2014-04-18 17:57:58

The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Philip Breedlove, has stated quite
clearly that he believes that Russian troops are already operating in eastern Ukraine
and are in fact leading the pro-Russian militias:

It’s hard to fathom that groups of armed men in masks suddenly sprang forward
from the population in eastern Ukraine and systematically began to occupy
government facilities. It’s hard to fathom because it’s simply not true. What is
happening in eastern Ukraine is a military operation that is well planned and
organized and we assess that it is being carried out at the direction of Russia.

President Barack Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Prime Minister David

Cameron, President François Hollande, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen and many others have publicly stated their belief that Russian forces
are behind the events in Ukraine. I would like to provide some observations from
our analytical experts to help explain why I strongly agree with these world leaders.

 The pro-Russian "activists” in eastern Ukraine exhibit tell-tale military training

and equipment and work together in a way that is consistent with troops who
are part of a long-standing unit, not spontaneously stood up from a local
militia.
  The weapon handling discipline and professional behavior of these forces is
consistent with a trained military force. Rifle muzzles are pointed down,
fingers not on triggers, but rather laid across trigger mechanisms.
 Coordinated use of tear gas and stun grenades against targeted buildings
indicates a level of training that exceeds a recently formed militia.
 Video of these forces at checkpoints shows they are attentive, on their feet,
focused on their security tasks, and under control of an apparent leader.
This contrasts with typical militia or mob checkpoints, where it’s common to
see people sitting, smoking, and so forth.
 The way these forces target government buildings, hit them in coordinated
strikes and quickly secure the surrounding area with roadblocks and
barricades is similar to what we’ve seen in Crimea. Again, indicative of a
professional military force, acting under direction and leadership, not a
spontaneous militia.
 Finally, the weapons and equipment they carry are primarily Russian army
issue. This is not the kind of equipment that civilians would be likely to be
able to get their hands on in large numbers.

Any one of the points above taken alone would not be enough to come to a
conclusion on this issue, but taken in the aggregate, the story is clear.

His post also provides other news stories that support his case, and it seems the
BBC is working on compiling video evidence as well.
Russian Diplomats Are Eating America's
Lunch
By JAMES BRUNO | Politico | April 16, 2014

Working the Afghanistan account at the State Department in the late 1980s, I
occasionally met the Russian muckraking journalist Artyom Borovik. Before he joined
the vanguard of those agitating for change during glasnost, he had served as a Soviet
diplomat. The son of a Novosti journalist posted to New York, Borovik spoke nearly
unaccented English and excellent Spanish. He was as comfortable in an Afghan tea
house as he was at a Manhattan Starbucks. Borovik, in short, was the cream of the
crop of Russian youth from which the Foreign Ministry traditionally recruits its
diplomats: urbane, multilingual, with elite educations and the skills to deftly navigate
foreign societies.

Borovik died in 2000 in a still-unsolved Moscow plane accident days after producing a
scathing article about an ascendant Russian politician, Vladimir Putin, who was about
to become president. Borovik quoted Putin in an article as saying, “There are three
ways to influence people: blackmail, vodka, and the threat to kill.”

Whether or not Putin has expanded his tools of persuasion, he’s got good help in the
influence department. In the lead-up to four-way talks over Ukraine and Secretary of
State Kerry’s consultations with European leaders this week, Russian ambassadors
are using their many close connections with continental elites to press Putin’s case, to
seek to stifle or limit economic sanctions and to foster divisions between Washington
and its allies. In most cases these Russian envoys have spent the bulk of their
diplomatic careers dealing with the countries to which they are posted and have
extensive decades-long contacts with whom they can speak, often in the latters’ native
languages. This gives them a decided edge.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is fairly typical. A graduate of the prestigious
Moscow Institute for International Relations (known by its Russian acronym, MGIMO)
and 42-year Foreign Ministry veteran, Lavrov speaks fluent English as well as
Sinhalese, Dhiveli and French. A former U.S. ambassador who had dealt with Lavrov at
the United Nations described him to me as disciplined, witty and charming, a diplomat
so skilled “he runs rings around us in the multilateral sphere.”

Russia has always taken diplomacy and its diplomats seriously. America, on the other
hand, does not. Of this country’s 28 diplomatic missions in NATO capitals (of which 26
are either currently filled by an ambassador or have nominees waiting to be confirmed),
16 are, or will be, headed by political appointees; only one ambassador to a major
NATO ally, Turkey, is a career diplomat. Fourteen ambassadors got their jobs in return
for raising big money for President Obama’s election campaigns, or worked as his
aides. A conservative estimate of personal and bundled donations by these fundraisers
is $20 million (based on figures from the New York Times, Federal Election
Commission and AllGov). The U.S. ambassador to Belgium, a former Microsoft
executive, bundled more than $4.3 million.

By contrast, all but two of Moscow’s ambassadors to NATO capitals are career
diplomats. And the two Russian equivalents of political appointees (in Latvia and
Slovakia) have 6 and 17 years of diplomatic experience respectively. The total number
of years of diplomatic experience of Russia’s 28 ambassadors to NATO nations is 960
years, averaging 34 years per incumbent. The cumulative years of relevant experience
of America’s ambassadors are 331, averaging 12 years per individual. Russia has 26
NATO ambassadors with 20-plus years of diplomatic service; the United States has 10.
Furthermore, 16 American envoys have five years, or fewer, of diplomatic service. The
figure for Russia: zero. Five U.S. NATO posts currently have no ambassador. None of
Russia’s is vacant. With Michael McFaul’s departure in February, there is no U.S.
ambassador in Moscow at the moment.

Domestically, the situation is equally worrisome. Three-quarters of the top policy and
management positions at the State Department currently are occupied by non-
diplomats, mainly Democratic Party activists or liberal think tankers. “Most are
competent, but must pass an ideological test to be appointed,” a former senior official
who worked with Obama’s appointees at State told me. “These positions,” she added,
“are handed out based on party connections and loyalty.” In the hands of these
decision-makers, all major foreign policy issues are viewed through an “ideological
prism as opposed to an eye toward the long-term interests of the United States,” she
said. The White House’s National Security Council staff, furthermore, has ballooned
from about four dozen three decades ago to more than twice that today, a shift that has
had the effect of concentrating power in the White House, and infusing key decisions
with political calculations.

By contrast, the Russian Foreign Ministry is staffed top to bottom with career diplomats.

So, just how much are we disadvantaged in the diplomatic game over Ukraine?
Consider these three strategically situated countries.

Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel is walking a political tightrope. On the one hand,
she and the German public are as outraged over Moscow’s Crimea annexation as
anyone. But Germany depends on Russia for a third of its energy needs, and when it
comes to trade, the Germans sell almost as much to Russia as they buy, with 300,000
jobs dependent on German-Russian trade. Both sides have much to lose should major
sanctions be imposed against Russia.

The Russian ambassador to Germany, Vladimir Grinin, who joined the diplomatic
service in 1971, has served in Germany in multiple tours totaling 17 years, in addition
to four years in Austria as ambassador. He is fluent in German and English. He has
held a variety of posts in the Russian Foreign Ministry concentrating on European
affairs. Berlin is his fourth ambassadorship.

The U.S. ambassador to Germany, John B. Emerson, has seven months of diplomatic
service (since his arrival in Berlin) and speaks no German. A business and
entertainment lawyer, Emerson has campaigned for Democrats ranging from Gary Hart
to Bill Clinton. He bundled $2,961,800 for Barack Obama’s campaigns.

Norway: Norway rivals its Russian neighbor in gas exports to the European Union,
supplying 20 percent (compared with 25 percent from Russia). Should Russia cut back
gas exports to Europe by 20 percent, Norway could easily make up the difference. Oslo
suspended all military cooperation with Moscow right after the latter’s incursion into
Crimea. Tens of thousands of Russian troops have maneuvered closer to the Nordic
and Baltic nations, leading the Norwegian defense minister to call for historically neutral
Sweden and Finland to join NATO.

Vyacheslav Pavlovskiy has been Moscow’s envoy in Oslo since 2010. A MGIMO
graduate and 36-year diplomatic veteran, he speaks three foreign languages.

President Obama’s nominee as ambassador to Norway, hotel magnate George Tsunis,

bundled $988,550 for Obama’s 2012 campaign. He so botched his Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearing in February with displays of ignorance about the country
to which he is to be posted that Norway’s media went ballistic and he became a
laughingstock domestically. He is yet to be confirmed.
Hungary: Bordering Ukraine and reliant on Russia for 80 percent of its natural gas
imports, Hungary has come out against sanctions against Russia. Domestically, a rise
in anti-Semitism and extremism has accompanied a low-growth economy.

Russian envoy Alexander Tolkach, a 39-year Foreign Ministry veteran and MGIMO
alumnus, is on his second ambassadorship; he speaks three foreign languages.

Colleen Bell, a producer of a popular TV soap opera with no professional foreign affairs
background, snagged the nomination of U.S. ambassador to Hungary with $2,191,835
in bundled donations to President Obama. She stumbled nearly as badly as Tsunis
before her Senate hearing with her incoherent, rambling responses to basic questions
on U.S.-Hungarian relations. She also awaits Senate confirmation.

With the exception of the U.S. mission to NATO in Brussels, which is headed by a
former army general, this talent imbalance is matched at the other European
embassies headed by non-career ambassadors.

With so many dilettantes in charge of U.S. foreign policy at home and abroad,
how can Washington hope to compete with a highly trained Russian diplomatic cadre
whose president’s tool kit of statecraft centers on the application of “blackmail, vodka,
and the threat to kill” to achieve his ends?

“The Russians take a much longer-term view. They’ll wait us out, knowing the
American people will eventually forget about Crimea,” said a former U.S. diplomat with
years of service in Russia and its “near abroad.” This is where smart and vigorous
diplomacy on the ground is key. A unified NATO will gain more respect from the
Kremlin than a divided one. And it is the job of diplomats on the ground to try to
convince wary Europeans to slash economic ties with Moscow should it come to that.

U.S. ambassadors lacking in knowledge of national security, statecraft and European

politics as well as long established contacts in the host government are at a clear
disadvantage. And those who won their positions through the exchange of cash or
cronyism often earn little respect among Europeans, inventors of modern diplomacy.
This is not to say that some highly talented non-career ambassadors cannot be
effective in pressing Washington’s positions. By and large, however, they lack in
innovative diplomacy and often miss opportunities, according to two former U.S.
envoys who have worked with political appointees. And the hand-holding they require
from their career staff limits what those professional diplomats can get done.

Russia’s diplomats have their own shortcomings. Rigidly trained in the mechanics of
diplomacy, they tend to confine their contacts with the foreign ministries of the
countries in which they are serving, neglecting to engage with a cross section of
society as American diplomats are trained to do. Their bureaucratic culture
“discourages innovation and risk-taking,” noted the diplomat who had served in Russia
and former Soviet republics. “Our diplomacy has heart. Russian diplomacy has power,”
she added. A former senior official who has dealt with Putin noted, “Russian diplomats
are backward in social media and feel most comfortable in places like their own.”

Meanwhile, diplomacy over Ukraine intensifies. Secretary of State John Kerry returns
to Europe Thursday for talks in Geneva with Lavrov, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy
Deshchytsia and the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. Moscow has
proposed “an authentic Ukraine-wide dialogue involving all political forces and regions”
while fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine and amassing troops along the Russia-
Ukraine border. Kerry’s job is to test Moscow’s sincerity, but also to stiffen the spine of
our NATO allies by getting them to agree to enforce harsher sanctions should Russia
show a lack of commitment to a genuine settlement and instead destabilize or invade
Ukraine.

John Kerry is nobody’s fool. The 28-year veteran of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and diplomat’s son is an equal match to Sergei Lavrov, who is on a very
short leash, as all Russian and Soviet foreign ministers have been. Having worked with
and hosted Kerry over a period of years when serving abroad as a Foreign Service
officer, I have been impressed with his preparedness, probity, intellect and forward
thinking.

Overall, though, we are outmatched diplomatically. Obama’s foreign policy apparatus is

bloated at the White House level, over-politicized at the State Department and
dismissive of the expertise to be gained from career diplomats, with decision-making
tending toward groupthink in an echo chamber. And if the White House believes it can
achieve its goals toward Moscow by sending TV soap opera producers, hoteliers and
other campaign contributor neophytes to face veteran Russian diplomats in key
European capitals, it is nothing short of delusional. At the very least, Obama risks
stumbling in his pursuit of foreign policy goals in a situation where every mistake
counts.

James Bruno is a retired Foreign Service officer, writer and blogger. His book, “The
Foreign Circus: Why Foreign Policy Should Not Be Left in the Hands of Diplomats,
Spooks and Political Hacks,” is now out.

[ Well said… And what about Italy’s new Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini, whose
experience in foreign relations amounts to “dealing with the Middle East dossier” for the
Left Democrats, i.e. former Communist Party? ohmygod…. ]
Iranian Officials Warn Russia Not to Dismiss
U.S. Sanctions Threat
ByJay Solomon | Wall Street Journal | April 17, 2014

TEHRAN — Russian President Vladimir Putin has belittled the threat of more American
sanctions over the crisis in Ukraine. But Iranian officials and businessmen are privately
warning the Kremlin not to be so dismissive.

Government technocrats and bankers in Tehran, during interviews over the past week,
voiced astonishment over just how much damage the U.S-led sanctions campaign on
Iran has had on their economy over the past three years.

Many said they had initially believed that a large oil-producing country like Iran — or
Russia for that matter — would largely be immune to Western financial penalties. They
said they didn’t believe European countries would back up Washington’s economic
threats, due to the energy supplies and corporate profits they stood to lose.

These Iranians said they had been mistaken, and that Russia should be worried.

“The U.S. sanctions are vicious because they largely just targeted our banks,” said a
senior Iranian banker. “The Americans essentially forced businesses to choose
between doing business in dollars or dealing with Iran. That’s a no-brainer for most.”

Iran’s oil exports have been cut in half over the past three years after the U.S. Treasury
sanctioned Iran’s central bank, Bank Markazi. These sanctions, coupled with the
mismanagement of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad‘s government,
contributed to a deep economic contraction in Iran, which continues, said Iranian
officials.

Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, took power in August promising to get the
American sanctions lifted through negotiations with Washington over Tehran’s nuclear
program.

Both the U.S. and Iran have targeted July to reach a deal. But Iranian officials privately
worry about the long-term impact on their economy if the negotiations fail.

The Obama administration says they’re looking to fashion a financial war on Russia
from lessons they’ve learned from Iran over the past three years.

Over the past month, President Barack Obama has issued executive orders that allow
for the sanctioning of Russian banks if Mr. Putin doesn’t take steps to pull his forces
out of Ukraine.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is holding talks on Thursday in Geneva with his
Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Ukraine. If no progress is made, U.S. officials
said they’re preparing to put in place new sanctions on Russian businessmen and
companies.

[ “Ouch! Who said it wouldn’t hurt ?!?! “ By the way :

Bloomberg News, 18-4-14
U.S. Said to Warn Money Managers of More Russia Sanctions
The Obama administration told asset managers last week that it was planning
additional sanctions against Russia over the conflict in Ukraine. ]
Putin challenges Brussels to a gas duel
Szymon Kardaś | Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW) | Warsaw | i2014-04-16

On 10 April, President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to 18 European countries (recipients

of Russian gas transported via Ukrainian territory), in which he called for urgent
consultations with Russia on the crisis in the Ukrainian economy and the security of
gas transit through Ukraine. However, he threatened that the lack of a positive
response would force Russia – in compliance with the gas contract signed in 2009 – to
introduce a prepayment system for gas deliveries to Ukraine which, if Kyiv cannot meet
them, may result in interruptions in gas supplies to European customers (as, according
to Vladimir Putin, Ukraine could siphon off gas assigned to importers in Europe for
itself).

The Kremlin’s diplomatic gambit is not only a propaganda gesture. Russia is also trying
to take advantage of the crisis to implement the key objectives of its gas policy
regarding Ukraine: to take control over that country’s gas infrastructure and maintain its
position as the dominant gas supplier. It is possible that in the face of the problems in
EU/Russian gas relations which have built up over recent years (such as the
implementation of the Third Energy Package, and the European Commission’s antitrust
proceedings against Gazprom), Russia intends to use the Ukrainian crisis as an
instrument to force the EU into strategic concessions which would lead to a substantial
revision of EU/Russian energy cooperation. Although Putin’s letter does not prejudge
the suspension of gas supplies to Ukraine, it is very likely that Russia will not hesitate
to do so if the European partners prove unwilling, at least partially, to take Russia’s
demands into account.

The propaganda narrative and the diplomatic trap

In listing the elements of Ukraine’s drastic economic situation (including a gas debt
which the Russian side estimates at up to US$35.4 billion), Vladimir Putin has
presented Kyiv as an unreliable partner, unable independently to meet its obligations.
Putin blamed the European Union, in turn, for not taking a constructive approach to
discussions on the effects of Ukraine’s signing of the EU’s Association Agreement; and
for a trading policy which has led to adverse changes in Ukraine’s trade balance (a
Ukrainian deficit of US$10 billion). Putin also stated that the solution to this situation is
to hold urgent consultations, at the level of ministers of economy, finance and energy,
in order to develop a joint plan to stabilise the economic situation in Ukraine and
guarantee the security of gas transit through its territory.

This tendentious narrative concerning the Ukrainian economy ignores crucial factors
which have had a significant influence on its condition for many years: the very
disadvantageous gas contract signed in January 2009 on conditions imposed by
Moscow (the price of gas, calculated for Ukraine on the basis of the contract price
formula , was one of the highest in Europe); as well as the high level of Ukraine’s
economic dependence on Russia, which makes it easier for the Kremlin to exert
economic pressure, thus limiting Kyiv’s room for political manoeuvre.

Putin’s call for European countries to hold urgent consultations is an attempt to

objectify Ukraine in Russia’s relations with European states. This is part of a
consistently pursued strategy to delegitimise the new Ukrainian leadership in Kyiv
which has been in charge since the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych. The fact
that the letter was sent to individual EU countries, and that the recipients did not
include European Commission (which was only informed of the letter), is an illustration
of Moscow’s traditional strategy of conducting relations with EU countries in a bilateral
format, rather than with the Union as a whole. It is also a diplomatic trap set by Russia
for the EU. If the talks were held on Russian terms, the Kremlin would most likely take
that as recognition of the truth of Putin’s diagnosis of the situation, which would
strengthen Russia’s negotiating position. Any rejection of the Russian proposal will, in
turn, be justified by Moscow as an excuse to resort to harsher economic measures
against Ukraine (introducing prepayments for the gas settlement, and reducing or even
halting gas supplies to Ukraine).

Russia’s objectives in its Ukraine gas policy

The need which Putin has signalled to resolve the issue of transit of gas through
Ukraine together with Russia’s European partners reflects Moscow’s traditional
objectives in its gas policy towards Kyiv. These include the strategic importance of
taking control of Ukraine’s gas infrastructure (transmission networks and gas storage).

This is confirmed by, among others, the statement by Ivan Grachev, the head of the
State Duma’s energy committee, who suggested that Ukraine’s gas debt to Russia
could be remedied by giving Gazprom ownership of the Ukrainian infrastructure.
Another acceptable variant for Moscow could be the creation of a trilateral Russian-
Ukrainian-German gas consortium. The reactivation of this old idea is being considered
in the context of an interparliamentary group on energy made up of representatives
from the State Duma and the German Bundestag. Grachev, acting as co-president of
the group from the Russian side, said on 24 March that the consortium’s shareholders
could be German energy companies, Ukraine’s Naftogaz (or its legal successor) and
Gazprom.

Although no details of any proposals to allocate shares in any possible consortium are
yet known, we may assume that Moscow would seek to gain a controlling stake within
it. The participation of German partners would make it easier to convince the
government in Kyiv to agree to restructure Naftogaz and provide funding for the
necessary modernisation of the Ukrainian grid.

Moscow may be hoping that the prospect of restrictions or interruptions in gas supplies
to the EU (as a consequence of Ukraine siphoning off gas as a result of Gazprom
introducing prepayments with Naftogaz, which Russia expects to happen) will persuade
its European partners to put pressure on Kyiv to accept Russia’s proposal.

If Russia took partial or complete control of the transmission infrastructure, this in turn
would allow it to implement another important goal: that of maintaining its position as
the dominant supplier of gas to Ukraine, and to counteract any attempts to diversify
sources of supply. This is particularly important in the context of recent consultations
between Ukraine and Slovakia on the possibility of initiating reverse gas supplies from
the European Union to Ukraine; Naftogaz’s talks with the German company RWE and
the French GdF as potential alternatives gas suppliers to Gazprom; as well as
Ukraine’s plans for the extraction of shale gas.

The Ukrainian crisis as a pretext to revise gas cooperation with the EU

The increase in tension in Russian/Ukrainian gas relations may be important in the

context of energy problems between Russia and the EU.

Moscow considers the implementation of the Third Energy Package in EU countries as

a political tool by Brussels to fight Gazprom, and as an ‘unnecessary’ obstacle to the
full implementation of strategic Russian energy projects, principally Nord Stream and
South Stream. In the first case, at the beginning of March, the European Commission
postponed the date for the decision to allow use of the full capacity of the OPAL
pipeline, which is a land extension of the Nord Stream (the final decision should be
taken in the next few weeks); this would mean a failure to uphold the decision of the
German regulator allowing Gazprom to use the full capacity of the OPAL pipeline, and
by extension the Nord Stream. In the second case, the EC has called into question
whether the bilateral agreements concluded by Russia with the countries through which
the South Stream pipeline is to pass are in compliance with EU law; Russian/EU
negotiations on this issue are being conducted by a special expert-level working group.

The Kremlin has also been critical of the antitrust proceedings being carried out by the
European Commission against Gazprom since September 2012; the first phase of the
proceedings – which will probably be unfavourable for the Russian company – should
be completed before the end of this spring.

It cannot be ruled out that the threat of another gas crisis in relations between Russia,
Ukraine and the EU will be used by Moscow as a pretext for a more assertive
expression of its postulates (which it has put to Brussels over the last few months) to
revise energy cooperation between the EU and Russia, the main component of which
is an exemption from the application of EU regulations to cross-border projects (mainly
South Stream and Nord Stream). Russia’s expectations in this area have been
repeatedly declared in public statements by Russian government representatives, as
well as in specific diplomatic proposals (in 2012, Russia twice sent Brussels a draft
agreement which would have comprehensively regulated the issues of cross-border
EU-Russian cooperation in the energy sector).

Conclusions

Although President Putin’s letter does not assume the interruption of gas supplies to
Ukraine, by signalling the possibility it proves that Russia is ready to take such a step, if
its European partners prove unwilling to offer a ‘constructive’ response which would
take Russian demands into account.

Reducing or stopping the gas supply would indeed risk some economic costs for
Russia, related to a drop in profits from deliveries to European customers and the need
to pay compensation in the event of any claims from European customers (the
Russian/Ukrainian gas crisis in 2009 reduced Gazprom’s profits from supplies to
Europe by US$1.1 billion); in the long-term, it could also worsen Russia’s strategic
position on the European market (another gas crisis would reinforce the determination
of the EC and the majority of member states to accelerate the diversification of supply
sources onto the EU market and reduce their dependence on imports from Russia).

However, given Europe’s current high level of dependence on Russian supplies (in
2013, Russia reached a record 30% share of the European market), and the limited
opportunities for EU consumers to diversify their gas sources over at least the next 3-4
years, Moscow may decide to opt for confrontation, especially when the prospect of
achieving its strategic policy objectives in its relations with Ukraine and the EU is at
stake.
Russia’s New Challenge to Europe
Ulrich Speck | Carnegie Europe | Article April 17, 2014

Russia’s actions in Ukraine are forcing Europeans to reconsider long-held

assumptions about their relations with Russia. It is time for the EU to get tough
with the Kremlin.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its amassing of troops on the border with Ukraine
have come as a geopolitical shock to Europe. These events are forcing the EU to
reconsider long-held assumptions about its relations with Russia and about the
character of the European order.

For more than two decades, the EU assumed that Russia was on a path of
transformation, heading toward liberal democracy and a market economy. A long and
rocky path, of course, but one that would leave Russia looking much like a European
country. All EU policies toward Russia were based on that assumption and were meant
to encourage and support Russia on that path.

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Russian presidency in 2012 and his increasingly
autocratic policies have already cast serious doubt on this paradigm. Now, the ongoing
unrest in Ukraine is making it clear that Russia is on a different trajectory. Moscow is
challenging the fundamental international norms on which the European state system
relies: territorial integrity and the sanctity of borders. Putin is openly contesting
Europe’s peaceful order.

These developments come as a shock to a Europe that had assumed that its
partnership with Russia would continue to deepen and that a conflict with Russia had
become unthinkable. The assumption among most European experts and policymakers
was that Putin would not openly challenge the West because of Russia’s
interconnectedness with Europe and its dependence on energy sales and technology
transfer. They also believed Putin highly valued membership in Western clubs that
gave Russia global leverage.

But a new geopolitical constellation appears to be emerging in Europe’s East.

Europeans must now answer the difficult question of how to deal with a Russia that is
simply not interested in the kind of mutual engagement the EU has offered for the last
twenty years. It is time for the EU to adopt a firm stance toward the Kremlin.

The Return of Imperial Russia

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has seemed on track to become a
normal nation-state. But its behavior in the Ukraine crisis makes Russia look like an
imperial power again.

Nation-states have clearly defined borders, while empires consist of centers and
peripheries without such clear delineations. Empires have little respect for the territorial
integrity of other states, and they expect weaker neighbors to subordinate themselves
to the imperial center. Countries in the vicinity of empires do not possess full
sovereignty.

The Ukraine crisis has made it evident that there is a pattern emerging in which Russia
encroaches on the sovereignty of its neighbors. When Russia went deep into Georgian
territory in 2008 and tried to split off the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, most
Western observers saw this as a one-off event provoked by Tbilisi. But now it seems
that Russia is a revisionist power that does not accept the status quo of 1991.
At the moment, it is unclear how far this ambition goes and what price Russia is ready
to pay for its renewed imperialist adventures. But it is quite possible that Ukraine could
be just the beginning of a new push to regain influence and control over the entire post-
Soviet space.

Control of the Post-Soviet Space Over Relations With the West

For years, the prevailing view in the West was that Russia objected only to NATO
membership for the former Communist countries and not to closer relations between
those states and the EU. Today, however, preventing neighboring countries from
seeking closer association with the EU is a key goal of Russian foreign policy.

In 2013, it became clear that Moscow would try to derail the European aspirations of
post-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe and the Southern Caucasus. In September of
that year, Armenia suddenly canceled a political and economic association agreement
with the EU that it had been planning to initial at a summit in Vilnius two months later.
Yerevan announced that it wanted to join the Russian-led Eurasian customs union
instead. It was widely assumed that this U-turn was due to pressure from Moscow. The
Ukraine crisis started when Kiev made a similar U-turn shortly before the same Vilnius
summit.

The fear in European capitals now is that Russia will try to prevent Moldova and
Georgia from signing their EU association agreements, planned for June 2014, by
provoking similar conflicts and crises.

If forced to choose, Moscow apparently prioritizes control of countries in the post-

Soviet space over good relations with the EU and the United States. Moscow seems
ready to accept a considerable amount of tension in its relations with Brussels and
Washington to keep its neighbors away from those Western powers.

This gamble seems to be paying off domestically, at least in the short term. Putin’s
approval ratings have gone up. The country’s new, imperialist foreign policy seems to
please a majority of Russians. It may well become a key building block of a new
ideology centered on conservative values and nationalism.
Careful to Avoid a Strong Western Response

While Moscow is prepared to accept some tension with the West, it is aware that it is
too dependent on Europe to endure comprehensive economic sanctions should the
Europeans opt to impose them. What Russia wants to prevent is a united Western front
that is ready to seriously confront and push back against Moscow.

As a result, the Kremlin is choosing its tactics carefully to avoid such an escalation. It is
employing covert action in Ukraine and denying all responsibility for events there.
Russia is acting in phases, moving quickly and decisively on the ground before pausing
to check the Western reaction and engage in talks. In addition, the Kremlin is trying to
win allies in Europe and the United States and spread its narrative in the West.

The experience of the 2008 Russian-Georgian war, after which Russian-Western

relations were quickly restored, may have led the Kremlin to conclude that the risk of
confrontation was manageable this time around. And the West’s muted response to the
annexation of Crimea, which now seems to have been largely accepted as a fait
accompli, may have reinforced the view in Moscow that Russia should not be overly
concerned about the prospect of lasting damage to its relations with the West.

The calculation in the Kremlin appears to be that the West would be prepared to accept
Russian control of Ukraine if the alternative were a conflict with Russia.
The EU Did Not Intend to Confront Russia

The EU, meanwhile, slid into the conflict with Russia unintentionally. The union’s
relations with its Eastern neighbors are governed by the Eastern Partnership (EaP), an
initiative that was not designed as a tool for use in a geopolitical struggle. This policy
was never meant to challenge Russia.

The EaP offers market access and political and economic support to six
countries―Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine―in return for
reform. However, the EaP does not hold out the prospect of EU membership, and by
offering only association and free trade, the EU sent the signal that it did not seek a
geopolitical competition with Russia.

When it became visible in 2013 that Moscow opposed such agreements, EU member
states failed to stand up for the EaP. They did not react to Russia’s blocking of
Ukrainian imports in August 2013. They did not work hard to win over broad public
support for EU association in Armenia or Ukraine. And they did not signal to Moscow
that they were determined to support their Eastern neighbors’ freedom to choose their
own alliances.

Despite having initially signed up to the EaP, the member states’ political support for
the partnership was halfhearted at best.

Germany’s Reluctant Leadership

Despite being cautious, and nervous about a geopolitical confrontation with Russia,
Berlin has assumed some leadership during the Ukraine crisis. It was German
Chancellor Angela Merkel who became Putin’s main European interlocutor. She played
a key role in shaping the EU’s plan for three escalating levels of sanctions against
Russia, of which the first two are now in place. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier played an active role as well, often by working with his Polish and French
counterparts in a format known as the “Weimar triangle.”

With the Ukraine crisis, the question of how to deal with Russia has become a hotly
debated topic in Germany. German public opinion is divided on the issue. Merkel, while
cautious in her public remarks, represents a camp that is in favor of a tougher
response, while Steinmeier, a longtime collaborator of former chancellor Gerhard
Schröder, represents a more reluctant camp. Both leaders, however, believe that the
German approach needs to combine the threat of sanctions with diplomatic initiatives
toward Russia.

Three elements are shaping German opinion: hope to restore Germany’s partnership
with Russia, a fear of confrontation, and economic ties. An alliance with Germany has
always been a key goal for Putin, who in the 1980s was a KGB agent in East Germany.
There has been sympathy in Germany for such an alliance, especially among the
Social Democrats, the party of Schröder and Steinmeier. But as Russia has become
more authoritarian and aggressive of late, fear of a new cold war has reemerged as a
fundamental dimension to the German debate and has overshadowed any perspective
of closer cooperation. Meanwhile, in terms of economic interests, Russia is an
important market for some large German companies, and Germany gets more than a
third of its gas and oil from Russia.

While Germans are largely sympathetic toward a Ukraine fighting for reform and are
shocked at Russian military aggression, they would generally prefer not to be forced to
confront Russia. A recent poll found that 49 percent of Germans would like the country
to take “a middle position between the West and Russia,” and support for tough
sanctions is rather low. This general mood limits the chancellor’s room for maneuver.

Germany has played a very active and visible role in the current crisis, yet it has always
been keen to work with the EU to forge a strong joint approach. The fact that Berlin has
supported the idea of sending EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton as the only EU
representative to multiparty talks on Ukraine on April 17 in Geneva demonstrates that
Germany is very much interested in keeping Brussels in the game.

The EU Is Divided About Confronting Russia

The question of how to deal with an aggressive Russia is splitting the EU. Western and
Southern member states tend to be reluctant to challenge Moscow over Ukraine, while
Northern and Eastern countries are more willing to adopt a confrontational course.
Western and Southern Europeans do not feel the same urgency to stabilize the
Eastern neighborhood as many Central Europeans do; they have a very different
history and threat perception. Western EU member states tend to favor keeping good
relations with Moscow and see less need to confront Russia.

When it comes to weighing up the merits of a more muscular reaction, there are two
opposing arguments at play. Some take the view that the West should not directly
counter Russian military aggression in order not to escalate the situation in Ukraine or
provoke Russia. Most Central Europeans, however, would like NATO to offer greater
reassurance to send a clear signal of deterrence to Moscow.

U.S. Engagement

During the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, the United States has
generally assumed that the EU would take the lead on stabilizing its neighborhood. But
the more the situation in Ukraine has escalated, the more the United States has
stepped up its role. After some initial frictions, the United States and the EU are now
cooperating closely on Russia and Ukraine.

Washington has played an important role in reassuring NATO allies in Central Europe
by boosting its presence. Indeed, as is often the case, the United States is more
outspoken and appears more decisive to confront Russia than Europe is.

In addition to its support through NATO, Washington is also engaged in high-level

diplomacy. Regular phone calls take place between Obama and Putin, and U.S.
Secretary of State John Kerry is heavily involved in talks with Russia and Ukraine. The
United States has also applied sanctions in the form of travel bans and asset freezes.

But it is the EU that has the strongest card―the threat of economic sanctions that
would hurt, given European-Russian economic interconnectedness.

Conclusion

The Ukraine crisis has revived the prospect of a confrontation between Europe and
Russia. Europeans must face questions of hard security that they hoped they had left
behind forever. For years, the concept of defense meant supporting military operations
abroad; now, territorial security is back on the agenda.

This is certainly not the beginning of a new cold war. But a Russia that attacks a
neighbor out of the blue is a discomforting reality that requires Europeans to reconsider
fundamental assumptions about their security and their relations with Russia and the
common neighborhood.
Europeans must accept that, in contrast to EU countries, Russia did not become a
“postmodern” state keen to strike deals, build joint institutions, deepen
interconnectedness, and engage in win-win solutions. Instead, Russia remained a
sovereign state with the mind-set of a traditional power, including the ambition to
dominate and even conquer other countries.

For two decades, the EU has offered Russia a closer relationship based on
“postmodern” terms, but Moscow has rejected that offer. Instead, the Kremlin appears
to see the EU’s approach to Russia as a sign of weakness and an implicit
acquiescence to the Kremlin’s ambition to reshape the neighborhood according to its
imperialist designs.

The EU has two options in response to Russia. It can openly or quietly accept that
Russia is again assuming the role of an imperial power in the post-Soviet space. That
means that the international order as enshrined in the UN Charter does not fully apply
to post-Soviet countries, which would have only a diminished form of sovereignty―or
even none at all. That would also carry the risk of Russia becoming accustomed to
using military aggression as a means of conducting foreign policy.

In the short term, such a response would relieve Europeans from the pressure to
confront Russia now, as it would make it possible to restore good working relations with
Moscow. In the longer term, however, Europeans would end up with a neighbor who
might become a serious security threat.

The other option is for the EU to clearly signal to the Kremlin that it is ready to defend
the international order and the territorial integrity and sovereignty of post-Soviet
countries. An EU prepared to assume such a role would react to Russian aggression in
the common neighborhood immediately and decisively with all diplomatic and
economic means available. It would improve deterrence inside NATO and would
support post-Soviet countries in their efforts to build up their defenses. It would work
with the United States on a joint strategy to prevent Russia from undermining stability
in the EU’s neighborhood. And it would redouble its efforts to make Russia reconsider
its aggressive turn by offering the country more incentives to become a partner in a
mutually beneficial relationship.

Such a course would be more demanding in the short term. But it would have a good
chance of deterring the Kremlin from further imperialist adventures.
Forcing Russia Out of Markets Seen as
Ukraine Leverage
By Kasia Klimasinska | Bloomberg | Apr 17, 2014

Forcing Russia out of global financial markets is the strongest tool at U.S. President
Barack Obama’s disposal if he wants to stop Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions,
according to former government officials and sanctions specialists.

Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Russian, Ukrainian and European Union
officials in Geneva today to discuss the situation in eastern Ukraine.

An administration official warned yesterday that if the talks fail, the U.S. is ready to take
further steps, targeting people in the Russian president’s inner circle and entities they
oversee. Industry-specific sanctions are also an option, according to the official, who
spoke about private talks on condition of anonymity. Experts say these may produce
more significant results.

“The biggest weapon in terms of sanctions would be similar sanctions to what we did in
Iran and basically try to exclude Russia from international financial markets,” said
William Pomeranz, deputy director of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian
Studies of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. “The Russians fear that, and
that is what the Russians want to avoid.”

Obama avoided specifics in an interview yesterday with CBS News while vowing new
punishment if Putin doesn’t halt support for Ukraine’s separatist militias and pull back
troops from the border.

“Putin’s decisions are not just bad for Ukraine, over the long term they’re going to be
bad for Russia,” Obama said.

Treasury’s Powers

The U.S. Treasury Department has powers to freeze Russia’s access to bank loans,
credit cards, clearing and settlements of transactions. That would basically force
Russia out of the global markets, said Robert Kahn, a senior fellow for international
economics at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Treasury could develop a list of specific transactions that it is prepared to block,

communicate that to the Russians, and then follow up with specific guidance, said
Kahn, a former official at the International Monetary Fund, Treasury and Federal
Reserve.

So far, the Treasury has designated two companies -- OAO Bank Rossiya and
Crimean natural gas company Chernomorneftegaz - - and a group comprised mostly of
Crimean separatist leaders and oligarchs connected to Putin, such as Gennady
Timchenko, who partly owns natural-gas producer OAO Novatek.

Targeting Banks

Going after a single bank has a larger “ripple effect” than blocking an individual or a
company in any other industry, said Douglas N. Jacobson, a sanctions lawyer at
Jacobson Burton PLLC in Washington.
“It does have a secondary effect,” Jacobson said, “because the large European banks
and the large Japanese and the other, more Western banks, will be much more
reluctant to engage” with banks that would be blocked by the U.S.

The reach of sanctions used so far on the financial industry was demonstrated when
the U.S. designated Bank Rossiya, leading Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. to cut
services for the St. Petersburg-based lender.

The U.S. Treasury has used financial-industry sanctions extensively with Iran. It
worked together with European counterparts to exclude the regime from banking
services and to ensure lenders observe the sanctions.

Penalties Paid

ING Groep NV in June 2012 agreed to pay $619 million to settle U.S. charges it
falsified financial records to bypass sanctions on countries including Cuba and Iran.
HSBC Holdings Plc in December 2012 agreed to pay $1.92 billion to settle U.S. probes
of laundering funds of sanctioned nations.

Under the threat of significant fines for violating sanctions, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
temporarily suspended a payment of less than $5,000 to a Russian firm that isn’t even
on the blacklist. It let the payment go through earlier this month, following consultation
with the U.S. regulators.

“Because such financial sanctions rely on the judgment of banks, which are easily
scared into doing even fewer financial transactions that they were permitted to do,
those sanctions can easily become even more serious than originally intended,” said
former Central Intelligence Agency official Paul Pillar. “That’s exactly what we’ve seen
happening in Iran.”

In the case of Iran, allies in Europe joined the sanctions. Anders Aslund, a senior fellow
at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said that in
Russia’s case, cooperation with other global players isn’t as necessary.

“The U.S. has massive impact in the world of finance since the world is so
interconnected,” he said. “Do sanctions on the four big Russian state banks and that
will have a big negative impact and continue to sanction Putin’s cronies.”
US financial showdown with Russia is more
dangerous than it looks, for both sides
The US Treasury faces a more formidable prey with Russia, the world's biggest
producer of energy with a $2 trillion economy, superb scientists and a first-strike
nuclear arsenal
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Telegraph | 16 Apr 2014

The United States has constructed a financial neutron bomb. For the past 12 years an
elite cell at the US Treasury has been sharpening the tools of economic warfare,
designing ways to bring almost any country to its knees without firing a shot.

The strategy relies on hegemonic control over the global banking system, buttressed
by a network of allies and the reluctant acquiescence of neutral states. Let us call this
the Manhattan Project of the early 21st century.

"It is a new kind of war, like a creeping financial insurgency, intended to constrict our
enemies' financial lifeblood, unprecedented in its reach and effectiveness," says Juan
Zarate, the Treasury and White House official who helped spearhead policy after 9/11.

“The new geo-economic game may be more efficient and subtle than past geopolitical
competitions, but it is no less ruthless and destructive,” he writes in his book Treasury's
War: the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.

Bear this in mind as Washington tightens the noose on Vladimir Putin's Russia, slowly
shutting off market access for Russian banks, companies and state bodies with $714bn
of dollar debt (Sberbank data).

The stealth weapon is a "scarlet letter", devised under Section 311 of the US Patriot
Act. Once a bank is tainted in this way - accused of money-laundering or underwriting
terrorist activities, a suitably loose offence - it becomes radioactive, caught in the "boa
constrictor's lethal embrace", as Mr Zarate puts it.

This can be a death sentence even if the lender has no operations in the US.
European banks do not dare to defy US regulators. They sever all dealings with the
victim.

So do the Chinese, as became clear in 2005 when the US hit Banco Delta Asia (BDA)
in Macao for serving as a conduit for North Korean commercial piracy. China pulled the
plug. BDA collapsed within two weeks. China also tipped off Washington when Mr
Putin proposed a joint Sino-Russian attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds in
2008, aiming to precipitate a dollar crash.

Mr Zarate told me that the US can "go it alone" with sanctions if necessary. It therefore
hardly matters whether or not the EU drags its feet over Ukraine, opting for the lowest
common denominator to keep Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hungary and Luxembourg on board.
Washington has the power to dictate the pace for them.

The new arsenal was first deployed against Ukraine - of all places - in December
2002. Its banks were accused of laundering funds from Russia's organised crime rings.
Kiev capitulated in short order.

Nairu, Burma, North Cyprus, Belarus and Latvia were felled one by one, all forced to
comply with US demands. North Korea was then paralysed. The biggest prize yet has
been Iran, finally brought to the table. "A hidden war is under way, on a very far-
reaching global scale. This is a kind of war through which the enemy assumes it can
defeat the Iranian nation," said then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iran's Majlis.
He meant it defiantly. Instead it was prescient.

The US Treasury faces a more formidable prey with Russia, the world's biggest
producer of energy with a $2 trillion economy, superb scientists and a first-strike
nuclear arsenal. It is also tightly linked to the German and east European economies.
The US risks endangering its own alliance system if it runs roughshod over friends. It is
in much the same situation as Britain in the mid-19th century when it enforced naval
supremacy, boarding alleged slave ships anywhere in the world, under any flag, ruffling
everybody's feathers.

President Putin knows exactly what the US can do with its financial weapons. Russia
was brought into the loop when the two countries were for a while "allies" in the fight
against Jihadi terrorism. Mr Putin appointed loyalist Viktor Zubkov - later prime minister
- to handle dealings with the US Treasury.

Mr Zarate said the Obama White House has waited too long to strike in earnest,
clinging to the hope that Putin would stop short of tearing up the global rule book.
"They should take the gloves off. The longer the wait, the more maximalist they may
have to be," he said.

This would be a calibrated escalation, issuing the scarlet letter to Russian banks that
help Syria's regime.

He thinks it may already too late to stop Eastern Ukraine spinning out of control, but
not too late to inflict a high cost. "If the US Treasury says three Russian banks are
"primary money-laundering concerns", do you think that UBS, or Standard Chartered
will have anything to do with them?"

This will graduate to sanctions on Russian defence firms, mineral exports and energy -
trying not to hurt BP assets in Russia too much, he adds tactfully - culminating in a
squeeze on Gazprom should all else fail. Whether you are for or against such action,
be under no illusion as to what it means. We would be living in a different world, and
Wall Street's S&P 500 would not be trading anywhere near 1,850.

It is true that Russia is not the power it once was, as you can see from these Sberbank
charts showing relative economic size against China and Europe.
This is not a repeat of the Cold War. There is no plausible equivalence between Russia
and the West, and no ideological mystique.

It has $470bn of foreign reserves but these have already fallen by $35bn since the
crisis began as the central bank fights capital flight and defends the rouble. Moscow
cannot easily deploy the reserves in a slump without causing the money supply to
shrink, deepening a recession that is almost certainly under way. Finance minister
Anton Siluanov says growth may be zero this year. The World Bank fears -1.8pc, while
Danske Banks says it could be -4pc.

Putin cannot count on global allies to carry him through. Only Venezuela, Bolivia,
Cuba, Nicaragua, Belarus, North Korean, Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Armenia lined
up behind Mr Putin at the United Nations over Crimea, a roll-call of the irrelevant.

Yet as the old proverb goes: "Russia is never as strong as she looks; Russia is never
as weak as she looks."

Princeton professor Harold James sees echoes of events before the First World War
when Britain and France imagined they could use financial warfare to check German
power.

He says the world's interlocking nexus means this cannot be contained. Sanctions risk
setting off a chain-reaction to match the 2008 shock. "Lehman was a small institution
compared with the Austrian, French and German banks that have become highly
exposed to Russia’s financial system. A Russian asset freeze could be catastrophic for
European – indeed, global – financial markets," he wrote on Project Syndicate.

Chancellor George Osborne must have been let into the secret of US plans by now.
Perhaps that is why he issued last week's alert in Washington, warning City bankers to
prepare for a sanctions fall-out. The City is precious, he said, "but that doesn't mean its
interests will come above the national security interests of our country".

The greatest risk is surely an "asymmetric" riposte by the Kremlin. Russia's cyber-
warfare experts are among the best, and they had their own trial run on Estonia in
2007. A cyber shutdown of an Illinois water system was tracked to Russian sources in
2011. We don't know whether US Homeland Security can counter a full-blown "denial-
of-service" attack on electricity grids, water systems, air traffic control, or indeed the
New York Stock Exchange, and nor does Washington.
 "If we were in a cyberwar today, the US would lose. We're simply the most dependent
and most vulnerable," said US spy chief Mike McConnell in 2010.

The US defence secretary Leon Panetta warned of a cyber-Pearl Harbour in 2012.

"They could shut down the power grid across large parts of the country. They could
derail passenger trains or, even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with
lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down
the power grid across large parts of the country,” he said. Slapstick exaggeration to
extract more funds from Congress? We may find out.

Sanctions are as old as time. So are the salutary lessons. Pericles tried to cow the city
state of Megara in 432 BC by cutting off trade access to markets of the Athenian
Empire. He set off the Pelopennesian Wars, bringing Sparta's hoplite infantry crashing
down on Athens. Greece's economic system was left in ruins, at the mercy of Persia.
That was a taste of asymmetry.

[ one reader’s comment :

"Superb scientists"? Maybe once upon a time, and maybe Russians working in the
West. But along with everything else Russia's universities have been thoroughly
corrupted-just look at Putin's ridiculous degree. There hasn't been an important book or
major discovery to come out of the country in decades.
Agreed.]
Former Sec. of State - Russia Engaged In
Grotesque Orwellian Propaganda
interpretermag.com 2014-04-16 16

Strobe Talbott, who was Deputy Secretary of State from 1994 to 2001 and is currently
associated with Yale University and the Brookings Institution, has just spoken to
MSNBC. His assessment is grim: Putin wants to destabilize not just Ukraine, but all
countries in eastern Europe (and beyond) which Russian wants to become either
"vassal states that basically take orders from Moscow, or basket cases." Talbott also
speaks about Russia's PR campaign:

"This is not 'effective PR.' This is the worst, most grotesque kind of Orwellian
propaganda. We haven't seen this kind of 'Big Lie' since the darkest days of the Cold
War, and... we have to be very very careful about accepting the Russian version of
what's happening there (in Ukraine)." Talbott goes on to say that the polling is clear --
as The Interpreter has pointed out -- that very few in eastern Ukraine support declaring
independence or joining eastern Ukraine.

See the video of Talbott's full remarks.

Putin’s Russia as a State Sponsor of
Terrorism
Alexander J. Motyl | World Affairs Journal | 14 April 2014

Putin’s Russia has become what the US Department of State calls a “state
sponsor of terrorism.”

Here’s how: After the Anschluss of Crimea, Putin had three options. He could invade all
or parts of Ukraine, or hope that pro-Russian demonstrators would flood Ukraine’s
streets and assert their “people power.” The first option has not been pursued, perhaps
because it’s too risky. The second failed, as the vast majority of Ukraine’s southeastern
citizens have remained indifferent or opposed to unification with Russia.

That left Putin with one remaining option: terrorism.

Here’s why Putin’s Russia qualifies as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to

Section 2656f(d) of Title 22 of the United States Code:

(1) the term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory
of more than one country;

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated
against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents; and

(3) the term “terrorist group” means any group practicing, or which has significant
subgroups which practice, international terrorism.

There is overwhelming evidence of Russia’s direct and indirect involvement in the

violence that rocked several eastern Ukrainian cities on April 12–13. Russian
intelligence agents and spetsnaz special forces are directly involved; the weapons and
uniforms worn by the terrorists are of Russian origin (a point made by the US
ambassador to Kyiv, Geoffrey Pyatt); and the assaults on government buildings in
Slavyansk, Mariupol, Makiivka, Kharkiv, Yenakievo, Druzhkivka, Horlivka, Krasny
Lyman, and Kramatorsk were clearly coordinated by Russian intelligence. As EU High
Representative Catherine Ashton delicately put it in a statement yesterday (pdf):

I am gravely concerned about the surge of actions undertaken by armed individuals

and separatist groups in various cities of Eastern Ukraine…. I reiterate the EU's strong
support for Ukraine’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity and call upon Russia to
do so as well. To this end, the Russian Federation is urged to call back its troops from
the Ukrainian border and to cease any further actions aimed at destabilizing Ukraine.
(Emphasis added.)

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark was more blunt,
stating that the attacks were not spontaneous and represented the second stage of
Russia’s plan to occupy Ukraine (the first being the occupation of Crimea).

Does the behavior of the pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine involve “premeditated,
politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets”? Obviously.
Does this violence involve “citizens or the territory of more than one country”? Yes, it
does. The violence therefore qualifies as international terrorism, and its perpetrators
are obviously “terrorist groups.” QED.
By the way, the European Union’s far more detailed definition of “terrorist acts” should
dispel any lingering doubts one may have had that the violence in eastern Ukraine
qualifies as terrorist:

“Terrorist acts” mean intentional acts which, given their nature or context, may
seriously damage a country or international organization and which are defined as an
offence under national law. These include:

 attacks upon a person's life which may cause death;

 attacks upon the physical integrity of a person;
 kidnapping or hostage taking;
 causing extensive destruction to a Government or public facility, a transport
system, an infrastructure facility;
 seizure of aircraft, ships or other means of public or goods transport;
 manufacture, possession, acquisition, transport, supply or use of weapons,
explosives, or of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons,
 participating in the activities of a terrorist group, including by supplying
information or material resources, or by funding its activities in any way, with
knowledge of the fact that such participation will contribute to the criminal
activities of the group.

In order for these acts to constitute terrorist acts, they must be carried out with the aim
of seriously intimidating a population, or unduly compelling a Government or an
international organization to perform or abstain from performing any act, or seriously
destabilizing or destroying the fundamental political, constitutional, economic or social
structures of a country or an international organization.

In light of Russia’s direct and indirect promotion of international terrorism in eastern

Ukraine, Russia obviously qualifies as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and, after formally
being declared as such, must be immediately subjected to the sanctions the United
States is legally bound to impose on state sponsors of terrorism. (Naturally, the EU
should follow suit.) Here’s the State Department:

Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for
acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the
Export Administration Act, section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act, and section 620A
of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions
resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign
assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual
use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions

laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors.
Currently there are four countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran,
Sudan and Syria.

That list should now consist of five rogue countries—unless, of course, both
Washington and Brussels prefer to supplement their weak-kneed response to Putin’s
violation of international norms with an implicit endorsement of terrorism.
Five Reasons Obama Won't Push Harsher
Russia Sanctions—Yet
By Matthew Philips | Newsweek | April 16, 2014

Things are getting worse in Ukraine. The government’s counterassault against pro-
Russian militants has hit road blocks—literally. Ukrainian troops are defecting. Military
convoys sporting Russian flags are still driving into town squares and doing victory laps
as Ukrainian military helicopters hover above. NATO, meanwhile, is upping its
presence as satellite photos show Russian forces building up just across the border.

While Europe’s leaders edge closer to imposing strict economic sanctions against
Russia, the U.S. finds itself in a bind. It has been three weeks since President Barack
Obama signed an executive order granting authority to go beyond slapping travel bans
and asset freezes on Putin’s inner circle and actually sanction “key sectors of the
Russian economy.”

Five things stand in the way of quicker action:

1. The U.S. lacks the hard evidence it needs to escalate to tougher sanctions.
After Russia annexed Crimea, the thought was that if its forces moved into eastern
Ukraine, a red line of sorts would’ve been crossed that would justify the use of broader,
more painful sanctions. But the situation has reached a gray area: The Obama
administration clearly believes the Kremlin is directing the pro-Russian protests without
so far mustering much evidence to prove it. With reports that certain pro-Russian
militants are introducing themselves as Russian army officers and the State
Department churning out press releases aimed at proving Russian support for
destabilizing Ukraine, however, we seem to be inching closer. But for now, lacking any
firmer evidence of direct Russian involvement, as long as Putin is making phone calls
to Obama and those Russian forces stay massed on the other side of the Ukrainian
border, it’s hard to see the U.S. upping the ante and going to full-blown, sectorwide
sanctions.

2. The Europeans still need to get on board. Until German Chancellor Angela
Merkel can persuade her fellow Europeans to take a firmer stand against Russia, the
U.S. probably has to wait. “The U.S. is boxed in right now,” says Julianne Smith, Vice
President Biden’s former deputy national security adviser. “If we can’t garner the
cooperation of Europe, the bigger sanctions won’t have teeth. They won’t have enough
impact unless the Europeans join us.”

3. There’s risk in acting alone, and it’s not clear the risk is worth the limited
rewards on offer. Although the Obama administration is emboldened by the success
of the harsh sanctions levied against Iran, Russia’s an entirely different animal. Iran
was already fairly isolated, and the crushing sanctions that went into effect in 2012
were a combination of presidential executive orders, United Nations resolutions, and
acts of Congress. Russia is the eighth-largest economy in the world.

4. The Americans don’t even have the biggest stick to wield. Europe is much more
economically entangled with Russia, and European Union sanctions against broad
swaths of the Russian economy would be much more effective than American ones.
Trade between the U.S. and Russia amounted to just $40 billion last year, or about 1
percent of total U.S. trade, according to U.S. Commerce Department data.

5. There is also blowback to consider. If the U.S. targeted Russia’s energy sector,
cut off trade, or prohibited American companies from doing business there, that would
inflict a certain amount of collateral damage on a handful of large U.S. corporations.
Boeing (BA), for example, relies on titanium from Siberia and has invested $7 billion in
Russia since the early 1990s; the company plans to buy $18 billion of Russian titanium
over the coming decades. Exxon Mobil (XOM) also has a deep partnership with
Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil giant.

Of course, there are those who think the U.S. should stop waiting for the Europeans
and go ahead and act right now on harsher sanctions. Last month the Treasury
Department targeted Russia’s 17th-largest bank, Bank Rossiya, which is said to be a
favorite of top Kremlin officials. “Why not target the 10th-largest bank?” asks Dov
Zakheim, formerly a foreign-policy adviser to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential
campaign and a former Undersecretary of Defense. “We’re working up the ladder too
slowly, and it’s hurting our credibility.”

John Herbst, who was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006, says it’s
“shameful” that the U.S. hasn’t imposed tougher financial sanctions on Russia—
banning certain energy companies from tapping U.S. capital markets, for example, or
working with the British to bar large Russian banks from doing business in London.
Zhakeim suggests preventing commercial flights leaving Russia from landing in the
U.S. as well as placing two U.S. military brigades in Poland. “That would get their
attention,” he says.
Divided we stand - where do EU states stand
on further sanctions on Russia?
Open Europe | 16 Apr 2014

Summary: There is a huge diversity of views within the EU on what to do next with
regards to Ukraine and Russia. This is mostly down to divergent interests (economic,
political and cultural) for different member states, as well as varying views on the
effectiveness and implications of further sanctions. Countries range from Poland and
the Baltics, which have very strong economic links with Russia but remain very
hawkish, likely due to historical experience, to countries such as Bulgaria and some
Mediterranean countries which remain quite dovish. Open Europe has attempted to
quantify this on a Dove/Hawk scale from -5 to +5. The average ranking for EU
members is 0.4 suggesting that the bloc as a whole remains someway off from finding
the unanimity needed to push further sanctions.

In terms of trade links to Russia, Lithuania has the largest trade turnover at almost 32%
of its GDP, while the Netherlands, Slovakia and Estonia also have high levels at 11%,
11% and 14% of GDP respectively. There is however, no strong link between deeper
trading links and a more dovish approach to sanctions on Russia, suggesting the
discussions are informed by a number of complex factors.

Where do EU member states stand on sanctions on Russia, and why?

On 6 March, EU leaders agreed a three staged programme of sanctions against Russia

based on its actions over Ukraine. They stressed that stage three would involve
adopting “additional and far-reaching consequences for relations in a broad range of
economic areas” between the EU and Russia, if Russia takes any further steps to
“destabilise the situation in Ukraine”.

Over the past few days the situation in Ukraine has escalated significantly, however,
EU foreign ministers on Monday decided that the threshold for stage three of sanctions
had not been met. Nevertheless, they did leave the option of further action open. With
the situation continuing to look increasingly unstable, the key questions now are: how
will Europe respond? If it does respond, what will the economic and financial fallout be?

Based on recent public announcements, Open Europe has put together a scale which
attempts to pin down where each EU member state stands on further sanctions against
Russia. The scale runs from -5 to +5, with -5 being the most ‘dovish’ – i.e. against
further sanctions – and +5 being the most ‘hawkish’ – i.e. in favour of further action
against Russia. The scale is not meant to suggest which position is preferable. It is
simply an attempt to pin down where each country stands.[1] This is then plotted
against the total trade turnover each country has with Russia (as a % of 2012 GDP).[2]
This allows the picture to factor in economic links to Russia.
Source: Open Europe and Russian Federal State Statistics Service[3]

The scale highlights the severe divergence in views amongst EU member states, which
is clearly hampering the decision making process. There are some countries (notably
Poland and the Baltics), which believe Russia is directly to blame for increasing
instability in Eastern Ukraine and, therefore, favour strong and direct economic and
financial sanctions on Russia, as well as clear demonstrations of support for Ukraine.

On the other hand there are countries (such as Bulgaria, Luxembourg and some of the
Mediterranean countries), which do not see a direct Russian hand (at least publicly) in
the recent events and, therefore, are not willing to take any measures which could
escalate the situation further.

It is important to ask what is driving these differences but, as is often the case in
Europe, there are a number of factors at play. As the graphic suggests, there is no
strong correlation between the two indicators. There is a slight correlation between
higher trade turnover and ‘dovishness’,[4] but, it is far from conclusive and is certainly
not evidence of causality. Furthermore, some of the countries with the deepest links to
Russia (such as Lithuania, Poland and Latvia) also have the most hawkish position –
this is likely informed by their own historical experience with Russia and concerns over
their own security.

Other countries more removed from the situation, at least in terms of geography, are
more likely influenced by their broader concerns that further sanctions could increase
political and financial uncertainty in Europe.

What form could further sanctions take?

Currently the sanctions have been focused on asset freezes and visa bans for
individuals. However, there remains a distinct possibility that they could be increased,
although given that the average ranking of an EU state on our scale is 0.4, it suggests
that as a bloc the EU remains someway from the unanimity required to push further
sanctions.[5]

In our previous briefing, we examined the areas for potential sanctions in detail.
Broadly, economic sanctions could take the form of: sectoral sanctions, sanctions on
specific firms or broader financial sanctions.
Limiting exports of specific sectors to Russia (such as technology and medical
goods): The EU could adopt more targeted sanctions on specific areas of the
economy where Russia is reliant on external trade. As the graphs below show, while
Russia is strong on exports of ‘mineral products’ (such as oil and gas) and almost self-
reliant in agriculture, it is less so on things such as machinery and chemicals. Targeting
sanctions on exports to Russia in these areas could have a more profound impact,
since Russia may find it easier to diversify sales of commodities than source new
products. While Russia does have a diversified import base, it still purchases over 50%
from the EU and US. This gives them a strong position to leverage, but also highlights
the cost of sanctions will likely be decreased exports.

Source: Russian Federal State Statistics Service[6]

Target sanctions against specific firms: Given the links between the two economies,
there is no shortage of Russian firms with sizeable investments in Ukraine and links to
the Russian government. The most obvious example is Gazprom, [7] which supplies
the large majority of Ukrainian gas. However, Russian banks such as Sberbank, VEB
and VTB are reported by Reuters to have $28bn in exposure to Ukraine.[8] Russian
mining and metal companies own numerous mills, plants and mines in Ukraine, while
Russian telecoms firm MTS was the second largest mobile provider in Ukraine.[9]
Russia’s flag carrier Aeroflot also has numerous slots in Ukrainian airports. In any
case, such sanctions are not without challenges. Overtly banning trade with such firms
would likely create a significant number of legal challenges.

Limit financial access of Russian firms and government: This would involve
targeting sanctions to lock Russian firms and/or government out of US and EU financial
markets. Despite its strong current account surplus, low external debt and positive net
international investment position, Russia remains reliant on the large liquid financial
markets of the EU and US. Shutting out Russian firms from these markets could
provide an effective mechanism to squeeze the Russian economy. Russian corporate
financing, equities and to a lesser extent government bonds are reliant on external
financing due to the huge capital outflows from the Russian economy.[10] As the
graphs below show, the external debt of Russian firms is significant, with $121bn (6%
of GDP) needing to be rolled over in the next 12 months.[11] Furthermore, the level of
money flowing out of the economy has been substantial – equal to 20% of GDP
between 2008 and 2013, and picking up to $51bn outflow in the first quarter of this
year.
Source: Central Bank of Russia[12]

On top of such economic sanctions, further political actions such as arming Ukrainian
troops, boosting NATO’s military presence in Russia’s neighbourhood and deepening
trade and political ties between the EU and Ukraine remain possible. As with all these
actions, Russian retaliation remains a serious concern.

[1] The scale is based on a variety of factors including public communication from foreign
ministers and leaders of EU member states, as well as research by Open Europe. In particular,
the comments around the most recent foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday 14
April 2014 have been taken into account to provide as up to date picture as possible. The scale
is not exhaustive and there are often differences within governments around the desire for
further sanctions. Ultimately, the scale is meant as a neat way to provide a rough guide to the
views across Europe on Russia. Data for Croatia, Estonia and Latvia are taken from their
national statistics agencies.
[2] Data on trade is taken from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service and then calculated
as a percentage of each country’s GDP based off data from Eurostat. However, the data does
not cover every EU member therefore it is supplemented by data from national statistics
services. Data for Croatia only covers goods.
[3] Russian Federal State Statistics Service, External trade of Russian Federation with other
countries and by commodity structure:
http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/en/figures/activities/ Data for Lithuania
are taken from the CIA World Factbook. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/geos/lh.html Data for Croatia, Estonia and Latvia are taken from their national statistics
agencies.
[4] This is when discounting Lithuania given that it is a significant outlier in the results.
[5] Further sanctions at the EU level will require unanimity. This highlights that, while the EU
average given is un-weighted, this is the correct approach since every member has one vote in
this instance.
[6] Russian Federal State Statistics Service, External trade of Russian Federation with other
countries and by commodity structure:
http://www.gks.ru/wps/wcm/connect/rosstat_main/rosstat/en/figures/activities/
[7] Morgan Stanley Research, Russia Economics and Strategy, 14 March 2014.
[8] Cited by Reuters, ‘Factbox – Russian companies with exposure to Ukraine, 4 March 2014:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/03/04/ukraine-crisis-russia-assets-
idUKL6N0M01OO20140304
[9] Cited by The Moscow Times, ‘Russian firms monitoring Ukraine exposure’, March 2014:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russian-firms-monitoring-ukraine-
exposure/495953.html
[10] For a wide discussion of the financial links to Russia, in particular on the part of the City of
London, see our flash analysis, ‘The Battle of Londongrad – how vulnerable is the City to
financial sanctions on Russia?’, 21 March 2014:
http://www.openeurope.org.uk/Article/Page/en/LIVE?id=19785&page=FlashAnalysis
[11] Central Bank of Russia, Payment Schedule of External Debt of the Russian Federation.
Between April 2014 and the end of Q1 2015, see:
http://www.cbr.ru/eng/statistics/credit_statistics/print.aspx?file=schedule_debt_e.htm&pid=svs&
sid=vd_GVD
[12] Central Bank of Russia, Net Inflows/Outflows of Capital by Private Sector in 2005-2014:
http://www.cbr.ru/eng/statistics/print.aspx?file=credit_statistics/capital_new_e.htm&pid=svs&sid
=itm_49171
Admiral Warns that Risk of Nuclear Conflict
Is Growing
Stratcom: Large-scale Russian strategic nuclear buildup has been underway for
over a decade

BY: Bill Gertz | Free Beacon | April 3, 2014 4:59 am

Russia is engaged in a large-scale buildup of strategic nuclear forces that has been
underway for a decade, the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (Stratcom) told
Congress on Wednesday.

“Russia has maintained and continues to modernize their strategic deterrent capability,”
Adm. Cecil Haney, the Stratcom commander told the House Armed Services
Committee.

The blunt comments came in response to reports that Russian strategic nuclear forces
recently held a large-scale nuclear exercise coinciding with saber-rattling conventional
military deployments close to Russia’s eastern border with Ukraine.

Haney said the Russians conduct periodic nuclear war games and in 2013 produced a
YouTube video that highlighted “every aspect of their capability.”

“But on a day-to-day basis, they exercise and have a readiness posture of their
capability, which we monitor very closely,” Haney said.

State Department cables sent to Washington earlier this year included dire warnings
that Russia is vastly increasing its nuclear arsenal under policies similar to those
Moscow followed during the Soviet era.

The cables, according to officials familiar with them, also stated that the Russian
strategic nuclear forces buildup appears aimed at achieving nuclear superiority over
the United States and not nuclear parity.

The nuclear modernization has been “continuous” and includes adding fixed
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and mobile ICBMs, along with a new class of
strategic missile submarines, Haney said in testimony.

“Russia has articulated their value in having strategic capability, and as such, each
area they have invested in both in terms of nuclear strategic capability as well as space
capability and cyberspace capability in terms of things,” Haney said.

“And as a result, we have seen them demonstrate their capability through a variety of
exercises and operations. They maintain their readiness of that capability on a
continuous fashion. And it’s a capability I don’t see them backing away from.”

By contrast, Haney testified to the committee that U.S. nuclear forces are in urgent
need of modernization to update aging nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and
support and production infrastructure, most of which were made decades ago.

Under budget sequestration, which could be re-imposed in 2016, U.S. nuclear force
modernization will be undermined.

Russia “drew down” some conventional military forces since the end of the Cold War
but “the one area that they maintained was their strategic capability,” the four-star
admiral said, adding: “Their modernization has been occurring over the last decade or
so.”

While Moscow has been aggressively upgrading its nuclear forces, “in our case we
have sustained existing programs,” he said.

“I want to be careful in terms of comparing apples to oranges. It’s just as we look to our
future, you can only sustain what we have for so long.”

Asked by Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) if the U.S. nuclear modernization program is
insufficient, Haney said: “I would say we have plans for our modernization that we must
continue to work through and as long as we stay on course on those plans, we will be
fine.”

“Sequestration as written today puts uncertainty in those plans in terms of what will be
funded into the future, he added.

Rep. Michael Turner (R., Ohio) told Haney at the hearing that Russian actions in
Ukraine should prompt the United States to quickly upgrade its nuclear forces.

“Putin has allowed us, in his most recent actions, to understand that we have been
pursuing a false narrative with respect to Russia — both with respect to our
conventional forces in Europe and our strategic forces,” Turner said.

“We now see that there have been some actions that Russia has been taking,
specifically under the leadership of Putin, that perhaps we have ignored or that we
have diminished in importance,” Turner added. “As we review those issues again,
certainly our nuclear deterrent comes to mind as an issue that needs to be reviewed, in
light of Russia’s actions and Russia’s doctrine.”

U.S. officials have identified the new weapons in the Russian strategic arsenal as a
new mobile ICBM called the Yars-M to be deployed later this year that will use a more
powerful fuel, allowing it to better defeat missile defenses. The missile will have a
range of up to 6,835 miles and have 10 warheads.

Additionally, Moscow announced plans for a new rail-mobile ICBM to be fielded by

2020. The Soviet Union was the first to deploy a rail-mobile SS24 in the 1980s.

New missile submarines that have been deployed include a more modern Bulava
missile.

A Russian strategic nuclear bomber is set for deployment by 2020. The bomber will be
equipped with a new Kh-102 air-launched cruise missile. Moscow also is working on a
new Kaliber submarine-launched cruise missile.

Russian strategic forces also are working on a new hypersonic strategic vehicle that is
designed to be launched by a ballistic missile and maneuvers at very high speed. The
vehicle is designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses.

On other issues, Haney described the current security environment as “more complex,
dynamic, and uncertain than at any time in recent history.”

“Nation states such as Russia and China are investing in long-term and wide-ranging
military modernization programs to include extensive modernization of their strategic
capabilities,” he stated in prepared testimony.
“Nuclear weapons ambitions and the proliferation of weapon and nuclear technologies
continues, increasing risk that countries will resort to nuclear coercion in regional crises
or nuclear use in future conflicts.”

Although a major conflict with nuclear arms is remote, “the existential threat posed by a
nuclear attack requires the U.S. to maintain a credible and capable deterrent force,” he
said.

Building new strategic submarines is the “top modernization priority,” Haney said.

Missile submarines and the Trident II D5 missile is the most survivable leg of the U.S.
three-pronged nuclear deterrent. The other two are strategic bombers and Minuteman
III ICBMs.

Haney also said further arms talks with Russia and resulting cuts, an Obama
administration national security priority, should be mutual and not unilateral.

“I agree with the statement you made there: Any additional reductions in nuclear
weapons require it to be non-unilateral and it has to be in a verifiable manner so that
we can get the benefits such as those we have gotten from the New START Treaty
where we have had access and the ability to be able to verify what Russia has in a very
methodical way and a very open and transparent way,” Haney said in response to
questioning from Committee Chairman Rep. Buck McKeon (R., Calif.).

Rep. Doug Lamborn (R., Colo.) said that under the 2010 New START arms treaty with
Russia, the United States cut its warhead arsenal by 103 while Russia increased its
warheads.

“To me, it is a remarkable situation that we’re decreasing and they are increasing,”
Lamborn said.

Haney responded by stating that Russia has a large tactical nuclear arsenal and that
arms agreements so far were limited to strategic arms that have “come down
appropriately” and allowed for information exchanges and other details of the strategic
forces.

“But is the imbalance roughly 10-to-1 when it comes to tactical warhead and
weapons?” Lamborn asked.

“I would rather not put a number to it in this open forum, sir,” Haney said.
Putin, Ukraine and asymmetric politics
Mark Galeotti of New York University | Business News Europe | April 14, 2014

Successful guerrillas master the art of asymmetric warfare, making sure that the other
side has to play the game by their rules and doesn’t get the opportunity to take
advantage of its probably superiority in raw firepower. Appreciating the massive
military, political and economic preponderance of the West, Russian President Vladimir
Putin is demonstrating that he is a master of asymmetric politics.

The seizure of the Crimea was in many ways a textbook example. The deployment of
elite Russian forces — the “little green men” or “polite people,” depending on whom
you ask — without insignia to take key political and communications centres and lock
Ukrainian forces inside their barracks. The deception may have been pretty
transparent, as they all wore the latest Russian kit and drove military vehicles with
official license plates, but the ruse gave them the crucial hours they needed for their
mission, especially as alongside them were genuine volunteers and paramilitaries.
Were they mercenaries? Local activists? Acting without orders? Unsure what was
happening, reluctant to appear the aggressor, Kiev was paralyzed for long enough that
it didn’t matter what it decided, the Russians were in charge.

Meanwhile, the political dimension: pliable local elites clamoring for Moscow’s
“protection,” popular marches in support of the move, a hurried referendum in favor of
annexation. Before the West and Kyiv alike really knew what was happening, Crimea’s
incorporation into the Russian Federation was a done deal. To be sure, international
recognition is a long way away, but Moscow has always been more interested in de
facto than de jure.

Finlandization

The detail of what is happening in eastern Ukraine is different, but then again so too is
the likely aim. While the idea of gathering these predominantly Russian lands back into
the patrimony may appeal to Putin emotionally, it is unlikely to be his preferred
outcome. After all, unlike Crimea, they also have sizeable ethnic Ukrainian populations,
and while they may be prosperous by Ukrainian standards, they would represent a
serious drain on an overstretched federal budget. Besides which, the art of asymmetric
politics is typically not to aim for an ambitious and obvious target. Seizing eastern
Ukraine would force the West into action; I’d expect to see Nato forces deployed into
the country to prevent any further Russian move, as well as massive economic and
military assistance. It would also bog Moscow down not just into a long-term integration
programme, but also the risk of Ukrainian insurgency (remember all those tempting oil
and, especially, gas pipelines).

Instead, Putin’s ideal outcome is probably a weak and federalized Ukraine that accepts
its position as part of Russia’s sphere of influence. No closer ties with the EU or Nato,
membership of the Russia-led Eurasian Customs Union, and enough autonomy for the
eastern provinces that its elites can continue to be Moscow’s agents within the system
(and protect themselves from corruption investigations and lustration committees). Just
as his threat to eastern Ukraine has meant that the West has pretty much written off
Crimea, so too by massing forces on the border and encouraging local paramilitaries,
Putin can make the “Finlandization” of Ukraine look like the least worst option.

A crucial aspect of this campaign is precisely to inject as much uncertainty and

deniability as possible into the process, and to move either with sudden and irresistible
decision — as in Crimea — or else in small, seemingly meaningless steps. The aim is
to try and make any potential countermove look like overkill. Kyiv could, for example,
potentially deploy regular army units made up of volunteers to shell the government
and police stations taken by local irregulars and Berkut and police volunteers.
However, that would appear to be a dramatic escalation and conceivably the excuse
Moscow would need to send forces into Ukraine. After all, if Kyiv (or its supporters)
seem to be acting as if what was happening was civil war rather than local incidents of
lawlessness, then it plays directly to Moscow’s narrative of a failed state sliding into
anarchy — such that it has a moral duty to secure its borders and protect its
compatriots.

Are there Russian soldiers and agents among them, coordinating and instigating the
attacks as both Kyiv and US Secretary of State John Kerry assert? I have no idea, but I
would expect so. While I have carefully looked at all the photos of alleged Russians in
the recent disturbances, none clearly appeared Russian the way the “little green men”
clearly did, and the professionalism demonstrated by the paramilitaries was generally
limited, at best. Nor are the weapons brandished or uniforms worn ones that could not
be found in Ukraine, especially given the mass defections of police and the arsenals at
their disposal. There are almost certainly are some Russians there — Kyiv claims to
have captured at least one — but, like any good guerrillas, they are hiding amidst the
population.

A Great game, not Cold War

So this is Putin’s guerrilla geopolitics, and so far he’s winning. After all, today’s global
conflicts are not fought between rival blocs of broadly comparable strength, who
therefore agree an unspoken set of rules between them. This is not a new Cold War,
with all the ideological division and stability that entails. If anything, this is closer to the
freewheeling days of the 19th century, and especially the Great Game of imperial
rivalry in Central Asia.

These conflicts will be won by whoever is able to force their enemies to play to their
rules, and by whoever best understands that military force is often the least important
kind of power. Like the Great Game, the struggles will be fought using deniable covert
actions, political misdirection, economic leverage, propaganda, espionage, hackers,
mercenary agents and useful dupes. In the 19th century, wily tribal warlords would sell
their services to the highest bidder; today, it is the political elites of Donetsk and
Kharkiv. Being able to leak an embarrassing phone conversation at just the right
moment (just ask Victoria Nuland) or to have the means to incite local paramilitaries will
be more effective than a whole aircraft carrier’s fighter wing.

In this new Great Game, spies and political operators will be every bit as crucial as
tanks and helicopters. More to the point, it demands flexibility, ruthlessness and clarity
of aim. This is, let’s be honest, the ideal kind of contest for Vladimir Putin and his
Russia.

Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at the SCPS Center for Global Affairs, New
York University
Putin Pushing World to Something Worse
than Cold War, Piontkovsky Say
Paul Goble April 15, 2014 | interpretermag.com

Staunton, April 15 – Vladimir Putin, in his effort to save his rule by intervening militarily
in Ukraine, is pushing the world not toward a new cold war as many say but rather to
something far worse and more dangerous, one in which one or another side may in fact
view the use of force as a reasonable alternative, according to Andrey Piontkovsky.

In a blog post on Ekho Moskvy today, the Russian commentator says that Putin has
“simplified” the task of those who seek to understand Russia. Now, such people only
need to understand what is motivating the behavior of a single individual – in this case,
Putin – and the fact that his actions are guided by “a single criterion – the preservation
of his power for life.”

Putin’s concern is not a “pathological” one but rather “a completely natural worry about
personal physical security” because he “understands perfectly the laws of the
functioning of the system he has helped to build.” And in that system, those who lose
will suffer the fate of Muammar Qaddafi.

Putin’s approach to Ukraine has been both “consistent and logical at every stage,”
Piontkovsky continues. He saw what was happening in the Maidan as representing the
possibility that Ukraine would escape “the chains of the post-communist thieving
regimes … and move toward the European model of economic and political
competition.”

In Putin’s view, such a development could eventually infect Russia as well and
consequently it had to be “liquidated in its cradle” through the defeat of the Ukrainian
revolution and the discrediting of that revolution in the eyes of the Russian people.
Those goals were clearly in evidence in the Kremlin leader’s March 18 speech.

That speech, apparently “unexpectedly” for Putin himself, became something more
because it included a new Russian myth on which he could keep himself in power for
life: a myth intended to replace the one he created at the time of his rise when he and
his handlers presented him as the vigorous young officer who could stop the
disintegration of the Russian Federation by “drowning” the Chechens in “an outhouse.”

But that myth has worn thin with time, and Putin knows from the Soviet case what
happens when the myth dissolved. The USSR kept going until people ceased to
believe in its supposed commitment to the formation of a just society. When they no
longer believed, the Soviet leaders were finished.

They did not adopt a new myth in time, but Putin, recognizing the threat to himself and
his kind of rule, is doing just that and deploying the Russian media to “zombify” the
population in such a way that it will conclude it has no choice but to support his military
plans in Ukraine and his continuation in office forever.

Putin’s call for an in-gathering of the Russian lands on the basis of ethnic Russians
abroad, of course, entails the same risks that were highlighted by Hitler’s call for uniting
all ethnic Germans on the basis of a claim that ethnicity was more important than
citizenship. Such an inversion challenges the entire international system, but Putin
thinks it may save him by recasting him as “the Messiah of the Russian World.”
Many have suggested that such a program “will lead to a new cold war,” but
Piontkovsky says he “categorically” disagrees. Instead, what Putin is doing “will lead
to a situation of relations between Russia and the West that will be much more
dangerous than those in the Cold War.”

During that conflict, US and Soviet leaders, at least after 1962, both “considered
nuclear weapons exclusively as a means of preventing military conflict between them
and as an instrument supporting strategic stability,” and consequently, they did not use
such horrific weapons to threaten one another in the pursuit of their goals.

But now, “a politician who has taken upon himself the mission of restoring the Russian
World by redrawing state borders and having an enormous nuclear arsenal and a
relatively weak conventional army simply is condemned to proclaim” that he has “a free
hand on the entire post-Soviet space” and threaten the West with “mutual suicide” if it
interferes in any way.

This “nuclear bluff is working today in the war with Ukraine,” Piontkovsky says. The
very first words from Washington and Brussels about that conflict were that “military
intervention by the US and NATO was absolutely excluded since Ukraine is not a
member of NATO.”

But what might happen “if tomorrow the residents of [the Estonian city of] Narva have a
referendum about joining Russia? Will tens of millions of people in the US and Europe
take the risk of war with a nuclear super-power and die for Narva? Putin,” at the very
least, “is convinced that no, they are not ready.” And Piontkovsky says he has to agree
with him on that.

But the consequence of that Putin conviction is that “international relations are entering
a stage of instability and volatility greater than at any time in the last 60 some years.”
Indeed, the Russian commentator suggests, the last time they were this great were
during the last months of the life and rule of Stalin.

At that time, Stalin “was concerned and not without reason about the problem of the
preservation of his power and life. And he came up with a three-part reset” to change
that: “ forced march preparation for a third world war, the liquidation of the party
hierarchs, and a radical solution of the Jewish question.”

In March 1953, “the Russian God interfered” and saved Russia and the world from that
outcome. It remains an open question whether that will happen again, Piontkovsky
implies.
Russia Is Quick to Bend Truth About
Ukraine
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN | Ny Times | APRIL 15, 2014

MOSCOW — The Facebook post on Tuesday morning by Prime Minister Dmitri A.

Medvedev of Russia was bleak and full of dread.

“Blood has been spilled in Ukraine again,” wrote Mr. Medvedev, once favored in the
West for playing good cop to the hard-boiled president, Vladimir V. Putin. “The threat of
civil war looms.”

He pleaded with Ukrainians to decide their own future “without usurpers, nationalists
and bandits, without tanks or armored vehicles — and without secret visits by the C.I.A.
director.”

And so began another day of bluster and hyperbole, of the misinformation,

exaggerations, conspiracy theories, overheated rhetoric and, occasionally, outright lies
about the political crisis in Ukraine that have emanated from the highest echelons of
the Kremlin and reverberated on state-controlled Russian television, hour after hour,
day after day, week after week.

It is an extraordinary propaganda campaign that political analysts say reflects a new

brazenness on the part of Russian officials. And in recent days, it has largely
succeeded — at least for Russia’s domestic audience — in painting a picture of chaos
and danger in eastern Ukraine, although it was pro-Russian forces themselves who
created it by seizing public buildings and setting up roadblocks.

In essence, Moscow’s state-controlled news media outlets are loudly and incessantly
calling on Ukraine and the international community to calm a situation that Ukraine, the
United States and the European Union say the Kremlin is doing its best to destabilize.

Even the United Nations weighed in. In a report released Tuesday, the Office of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said that threats to ethnic
Russians in eastern Ukraine, cited repeatedly by Russian officials and in the Russian
news media as a potential rationale for Russian military action, were exaggerated and
that some participants in the protests in the region came from Russia.

“Although there were some attacks against the ethnic Russian community, these were
neither systematic nor widespread,” said the report, which was based on two United
Nations missions to Ukraine between March 15 and April 2.

There is no question that the new Ukrainian government and its Western allies,
including the United States, have engaged in their own misinformation efforts at times,
with officials in Kiev making bold pronouncements in recent days of enforcement efforts
that never materialized. On Tuesday, some American officials were spreading
unverified photographs allegedly showing Russian rocket launchers carried by pro-
Russian demonstrators in eastern Ukraine.

“It’s all lies,” said Lilia Shevtsova, an expert on Russian politics at the Carnegie
Moscow Center. “The Russia leadership doesn’t care about how it’s being perceived in
the outside world, in the world of communication, in the world where we have plurality
of information and where information can be confirmed and checked. This is a radical
change in attitude toward the West.”
Ms. Shevtsova added: “We can’t trust anything. Even with the Soviet propaganda,
when they were talking with the Soviet people, there were some rules. Now, there are
no rules at all. You can invent anything.”

To watch the television news in Russia is to be pulled into a swirling, 24-hour vortex of
alarmist proclamations of Western aggression, sinister claims of rising fascism and
breathless accounts of imminent hostilities by the “illegal” Ukrainian government in
Kiev, which has proved itself in recent days to be largely powerless.

The Rossiya 24 news channel, for instance, has been broadcasting virtually nonstop
with a small graphic at the bottom corner of the screen that says “Ukrainian Crisis”
above the image of a masked fighter, set against the backdrop of the red-and-black
flag of the nationalist, World War II-era Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which inflicted tens
of thousands of casualties on Soviet forces.

Over the course of several hours of coverage on Tuesday, Rossiya 24 reported that
four to 11 peaceful, pro-Russian “supporters of federalization” in Ukraine were killed at
an airfield near the town of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine when a mixed force of right-
wing Ukrainians and foreign mercenaries strafed an airfield with automatic gunfire from
helicopter gunships before landing and seizing control.

In fact, on the ground, a small crowd of residents surrounded a Ukrainian commander

who had landed at the airfield in a helicopter, and while there were reports of stones
thrown and shots fired in the air, only a few minor injuries were reported with no signs
of fatalities.

Adding to the public frenzy about imminent Kiev-ordered violence, Life News, a pro-
Kremlin tabloid television station, offered a bounty of 15,000 rubles, or slightly more
than $400, for video of Ukrainian military forces mobilizing in eastern Ukraine —
suggesting that such activity was secretly underway.

An official with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has
monitors in Ukraine, said they had not seen any direct threats to pro-Russian citizens in
eastern Ukraine, where despite the intense news media attention, protest activity
remained relatively isolated, said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly
about the continuing mission.

In Slovyansk, where pro-Russian forces seized a police station and the local
headquarters of the security service over the weekend, the monitors heard what
seemed to be genuine fear of the authorities in Kiev, this official said, but only because
they were worried that the government would try to retake the seized buildings. “Part of
the reason they had the roadblocks was they were afraid the Ministry of Interior was
going to launch an operation,” the official said.

Russia has flatly denied any role in the unrest in eastern Ukraine, and the Russian
Foreign Ministry, which normally champions the authority of the United Nations,
dismissed the new humans rights report as biased. In a statement, Aleksandr
Lukashevich, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, called it “one-sided, politicized and
unobjective.”

Mr. Lukashevich said the report ignored “the unchecked rise of aggressive nationalism
and neo-Nazism” in Ukraine, adding, “the document abounds in flagrant selectiveness.”

Mark Galeotti, a professor of global affairs at New York University who is teaching in
Moscow this semester, said that some of the lies were blatant. “You can have the sight
of the Russian state honoring the ‘heroes of Crimea’ without finding any need to
reconcile that with the official line that there were no Russian soldiers there,” Mr.
Galeotti said in an interview.

Still, he said the propaganda was strikingly effective in Crimea, throwing the West off-
balance and buying Russian forces just enough time to solidify their control over the
peninsula.

“It was on one level transparent, embarrassingly transparent,” Mr. Galeotti said. “But I
know from my conversations with various people in government, it did create that sort
of paralysis, or uncertainty.”

He added, “In my estimation, all they needed was a six-hour window and, by that point,
they were unassailable.”

In the current situation in eastern Ukraine, the propaganda effort also seems effective,
Mr. Galeotti said, adding that some in the West were giving too much credence to the
Kremlin’s statements. “If you don’t know any better, Ukraine has descended into this
anarchic ‘Mad Max’ wasteland of neo-fascist mobs hunting down ethnic Russians, so of
course something has to be done.”

Mr. Putin said in a phone call Tuesday with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, that
Ukraine was on the brink of civil war, a point Mr. Medvedev also made at a news
conference later in Moscow, adding that the government in Kiev was to blame. Mr.
Medvedev also repeated the Kremlin’s frequent assertion that Russian speakers were
under threat in Ukraine — the very claim United Nations officials rejected in their report.

“The only way to preserve Ukraine and calm the situation,” Mr. Medvedev said,
requires “recognizing that Russian citizens are the same as Ukrainians and, therefore,
can use their own language in everyday life.”

Andrew Roth and Noah Sneider contributed reporting from Moscow, and Andrew
Higgins from Kiev, Ukraine.
Russian Mythbusting
The Putin Doctrine: Myth, Provocation,
Blackmail, or the Real Deal?
Lilia Shevtsova | The American Interest | April 14, 2014

When it comes to explaining Russia’s Ukrainian adventurism, the West has attempted
to hide behind a wall of myths and hope its problems will just go away.

There are all sorts of reasons to be stunned and perplexed today. Stunned by the
reintroduction of the fears and phobias of the 20th century into 21st-century
international affairs. And perplexed by the explanations offered for Putin’s actions in
Ukraine by the world’s best and brightest.

1. How Does the West Read Putin?

Here’s one explanation that has prompted many nods of approval: Putin isn’t quite in
his right mind. As Madeleine Albright has said, “I think that either he does not have the
facts, or he is being fed propaganda… It doesn’t make any sense… Putin is, in many
ways, I think, delusional about this.”

And Brent Scowcroft: “He’s a person full of venom, because he thought that [the Soviet
Union’s] collapse was taken advantage of by the West, or especially the U.S. to take
advantage of Russia… now we’re strong again; you can’t push us around anymore…”

My question is this: If Putin is “delusional” or he “is living in another world” as

Chancellor Merkel has suggested, or if Putin is “full of venom” because he sees that
the United States is strong, why did these observers not notice these things until now?
Why has Putin chosen this moment and not an earlier one to blow up the world order?
And if he is really all that “delusional,” the Western measures to constrain him are
hardly sufficient.

I suspect that all the explanations aiming at provoking doubt as to Putin’s rationality
and inadequacy have their origins in something other than dispassionate analysis. If
Putin just suddenly lost his mind, this lets the political and expert community off the
hook for failing to alert us to what was coming. If the West is dealing with an
unexpected deviation from the norm, this means that the previous policy toward Russia
was essentially correct. The theory of Putin’s “insanity” or “irrationality” would save so
many analytical reputations.

Other explanations fit the traditional “realism” mantra. Here is a line from Kissinger:
“Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” (meaning it can never be just a foreign
country for Russia, of course). That means you can forget about the fiction of Ukrainian
sovereignty. Just let Russia do what it wants, and don’t start quarrels with it. From this
point of view, Ukraine is not a state in the classical sense of the term.

There are a couple more arguments from the Realist playbook that I predict will
become quite popular in the current debates on Russia, because they will spare
everyone the headache of having to comprehend the new reality. (The irony is that
these arguments will end up replicating Kremlin patterns of thought, but I digress…)
What are these explanations? First, that Russia is merely reviving its traditional great
power politics; it has always sought external conflicts to enhance its might. Indeed, this
does seem to present a convincing explanation of Putin’s macho bullying. Nevertheless
I have a couple of questions: If Realists do understand the nature of Russia’s “great-
power” politics, why did they fail to predict its revival? Or did I miss these predictions?
Realists, until recently, tended to support the U.S. “reset” policy, which has been
instrumental in allowing Putin to expand his ambitions. Why is it that even the
shrewdest of Realists has insisted that the United States and Putin’s Russia have
“shared interests”? Why did they contribute to the creation of an impression that Russia
could be persuaded “to advance U.S. goals”?

Here is another version of the Realist’s song, from Anne-Marie Slaughter, who is very
upset by the widespread declarations of the “end of the post-Cold war era,” which she
interprets as the return of the Cold War. (But if this were true, then Russia would have
to be returning to its Soviet-era format…) En route to her critique, Anne-Marie
Slaughter repeats the Kremlin’s main argument that we are all sinners; who is the West
to judge? She writes, “The United States would do well to tone down its sanctimony.
Putin’s annexation of Crimea violated international law. But so did the U.S. invasion of
Iraq and the NATO intervention to protect Kosovo, even if the latter was, to many,
including me, a legitimate violation.” But if we were to pursue this argument to its
logical conclusion, then we would have to agree that all the rules and treaties should be
thrown into the dustbin.

There are a couple of other “truths” that could only raise questions as to why some
representatives of the Western and Russian elites have so much in common. Slaughter
concludes, as do many Russian officials, that Ukraine and the rest of the new
independent states “will flourish over the long time only if they have strong relationships
with both Russia and the EU.” This is a version of the Finlandization scenario. But then
why aren’t the states that are now drifting between Russia and Europe already
flourishing? And what should we do with the countries that do not “flourish” in this way?
Convene a new Yalta conference and sign a new “areas of interests” pact?

Here are some more variations of the Kremlin’s song:

The Kremlin is reacting to the chaos in Ukraine, as well as to the strengthening of

Ukrainian nationalists and the threat of Ukraine’s joining NATO. It is also responding to
Kiev’s attempt to sign the Association Agreement with the EU and the desires of the
Russian-speaking population to return to Russia; Moscow has to react to the
humiliation Moscow suffered at the hands of the West and the United States.

These explanations all but mirror the Kremlin’s rhetoric. They are efforts by the Putin
Apologists’ Club to lay the groundwork for a new “transactional consensus” with Putin’s
Russia. The justification for this scenario is that the West can’t afford to put the boots
on the ground and risk military intervention for Crimea, or even to save Ukraine. That
means it has to make peace with Putin; it has too many commercial interests at stake.

What we are witnessing is the composition of a new mythology. Those who only
recently argued that Russia has lost all imperial ambitions, who counseled that Putin
should be persuaded to cooperate in achieving Western strategic interests, who
engaged Russia in the “reset” and “Partnership for Modernization,” today are on the
podium again.

You can easily tell who the new mythologists are by the political language they employ.
If you hear that Ukraine is a “failed state,” that Russians can be consolidated only by
means of great power politics, that Russia has a historical right to interfere in the affairs
of its neighbors, that Ukraine therefore must be sacrificed, then you know whom you
are dealing with.

The most vocal members of the Apologists’ Club are still German politicians and
experts. Ralf Neukirch in Spiegel Online presents a shocking picture of the German
political debate on Russia: Essentially, it’s dominated by a desperate search for
excuses for the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine. Just look what Germany’s two former
Chancellors have said. “I find it entirely understandable,” says Helmut Schmidt of
Putin’s move. Gerhardt Schröder admitted that he himself (like Putin!) hadn’t always
respected international law.

What is more sad, alarming, and shameful: 200 German intellectuals signed a letter
addressed to Vladimir Putin expressing “their understanding of the Russian reaction to
the Ukrainian developments” and wishing him “strength, resilience, and luck.” The letter
can only give further ammunition to the critics of the West who argue that the liberals
democracies have forgotten their principles.

The question naturally arises: What are the motivations behind the German desire “to
understand” Putin: commercial interests; the old German guilt for the invasion of the
Soviet Union; the idealization of Russia, which is identified with the Kremlin’s rules;
anti-Americanism; fear of destabilizing Russia; the old memory of the German-Russian
pre-war tandem? Perhaps, as one German diplomat explained, Germans still follow
Otto von Bismarck’s axiom that they must have a special relationship with Russia. It’s a
deft 19th-century dodge to avoid 21st-century responsibilities.

German journalist Christian Neef admits, “The view Germans have of Russia is skewed
by romanticism and historical baggage. Without taking a sober look at Moscow, we will
never find an adequate strategy of dealing with Putin’s conservative, anti-Western
approach to power.” Bernd Ulrich in Die Zeit, acknowledging that “Putin is successfully
driving a wedge into Germany,” says that the Ukrainian story and Russia’s role has
forced German society to start a discussion on the most sensitive issues related to the
German political mentality: “Putin has got us talking to each other again. Hopefully.”

How lonely must German President Joachim Gauck feel as he watches his country’s
Ostpolitik unfold. He once gave a speech saying that “politicians always have to take
responsibility for their actions. But they also have to live with the consequences of their
omissions. He who fails to act bears responsibility, too…. The consequences of
inaction can be just as serious, if not worse, than the consequences of taking action.”
When he said this, he must have had German politicians in mind, too.

2. How to Justify the Acquiescence

With all of the simplistic formulas to explain Russia’s actions, we run the risk of seeing
them crystallize into mythology over time, unless we counter them now. Let’s try to
counter a few formulas before they become myth:

The Ukrainian crisis is tantamount to the opening act of a new Cold War.

President Obama was right to say that “this is not another Cold War that we are
entering.” This is true enough, but not because the past cannot be repeated. Rather,
it’s true because we are facing a new reality, and a new kind of confrontation between
Russia and the West. It is no longer about the clash of ideologies or the struggle
between systems and camps, as was the case during the Cold War. But perhaps you
would argue that Putin is offering a new ideology. If so, you must first answer a couple
of questions: What, precisely, are the contents of this ideology? And what country
could we view as a loyal member of the Russia-led club?

We are witnessing a much more complex phenomenon than the return of the Cold
War. Vladimir Putin isn’t just attempting to dismantle the post-Cold War settlement; he
is undermining the remaining elements of the post-Yalta order. This order was devised
by the winners of World War II to prevent certain kinds of wars from happening again
(specifically, to dismantle any potential justification for annexations or violations of
another country’s borders). Putin is trying to assert his right to interpret the global rules
of the game in such a way that Russia may violate them with impunity. The Cold War,
by contrast, was marked by both sides’ adherence to the rules (with the notable
exception of the Caribbean crisis).

The Kremlin’s behavior toward Ukraine was spontaneous; it was forced to react to
events in Ukraine.

Wrong! In fact, the Ukraine crisis is proof that the Kremlin has begun to experiment with
the Putin Doctrine, which was in development long before now. Russia’s actions with
respect to Ukraine are part of the Kremlin’s preventive doctrine, which seeks to ensure
the survival of autocratic rule by restoring militarism and a fortress mentality in Russia.
This is the essence of the doctrine formulated in the Kremlin over the past two years
(although some of its components have been in development since 2007). One of the
key premises of the doctrine stems from the fact that Russia is entering a period of
economic recession. This recession has advanced beyond the point at which it could
be either dismissed or ignored, and it was running the risk of generating a crisis that
the regime would be unable to prevent. The Kremlin team understands this; it hopes to
restore militarism before Russians start taking to the streets. The Kremlin recognizes
both the gravity of the situation in Russia and its inability to control this situation under
the framework of soft authoritarianism.

Ukraine has become the testing ground for this aspect of the Putin Doctrine. Had there
been no Maidan, the Kremlin could likely have counted on some other pretext to
implement the doctrine. To catapult Russia into this new mode, the Kremlin had to
shock the world by turning the chessboard upside-down. There are other side effects of
the Ukraine crisis, of course; It has allowed Russia to demonstrate its imperial
ambitions and its hatred of the Maidan. But its main purpose was to force Russia’s
transition to a different survival formula. Thus, the key problem is not how Russia can
come to terms with a post-imperial life, as many in the West believe. The problem is
that the Russian political elite and major part of Russian society too are convinced that
Russia can’t survive in the other format. They may even be right…

This is not to say that the Kremlin had this specific crisis in mind the whole time as the
instrument of forcing this transition; there are simply too many circumstantial factors
that require adaptation on the part of the Kremlin’s tacticians. Crimea, for instance,
probably wasn’t in the cards before Yanukovych lost power. Nevertheless all of these
events are being shaped with a general goal in mind: returning Russia to its traditional
philosophies of survivalism and mistrust of the outside world.

Revanchism to maintain the status quo.

It is now de rigueur to call Russia a global revanchist power. Even those who
previously argued that Russia was a post-imperial power and a pillar of the postmodern
world have now switched to acknowledging its revanchism. It is important to
understand why the Kremlin has taken on this new role, thereby sacrificing the way of
life previously enjoyed by its elite (cozy integration into and corruption of the West,
aided and abetted by so many helpful Western hands). Was it a drive for hegemony, or
other ambitions? Was it growing frustration with the West’s ham-fisted attempts to cure
Russia of its inferiority complex? Perhaps the Kremlin wanted something. Maybe it
wanted the West to accept the Kremlin’s new demands.

Hardly. The Kremlin has always had trouble formulating exactly what it wants from the
West. What kind of “deliverables” could they extract from the West anyway? Any
deliverable you care to name has already been offered by the West at one time or
another.

The Kremlin is looking for something else entirely. Russia adopted revanchism, rather,
because the man in the Kremlin came to conclusion that the Russian system could not
be preserved any other way. Putin understood that the Russian system of personalized
power could no longer be reproduced by means of imitating the West and integrating
members of the Russian elite personally with the West. For now and the foreseeable
future, the West must not be imitated but rejected and contained.

To that end, Russia seeks to lay claim to the right to interpret the rules of the game
however it sees fit. It isn’t interested merely playing the role of global spoiler. The
Kremlin wants to play the part of the Arbitrator—or, if the West is not ready to accept
this, it would settle for recognition of its role as the world’s enfant terrible, whose whims
and outbursts must be automatically forgiven. I imagine the Kremlin reasoning like so:
The West will not kick us out of international institutions out of fear that we will become
totally uncontrollable. But even if the West kicks us out, who cares? You want to go
back to the G-7? Fine with us. We’ll take our ball and go hang out with the other kids in
the G-20. You want us out of the Council of Europe? Are you sure you want to do that?
You should think twice about releasing the bear. The Apologists’ rhetoric tells us that
they have heard and understood these warnings.

From communism to lawless order.

The Soviet Union offered communist ideology to the world; Vladimir Putin offers the
world something much more exciting than ideology: his services as interpreter of basic
legal principles like legitimacy, legality, self-determination, and territorial integrity. It is
an unsurpassed irony that Putin, the destroyer of the legal system, would now seek to
play the role of interpreter of legal principles, and he would interpret them in his own
way.

The Russian President has recently shown us that he is continuing his search for
justifications for his new global role. By invoking the concepts of the “Russian World”
and “Russians as a divided nation,” Putin has begun to tinker with the explosive
revanchist ideas that Europe attempted to lay to rest in the 20th century. Notably, the
concept of the Russian World undermines Putin’s other brainchild—the idea of the
Eurasian Union. It remains to be seen how the Kremlin will attempt to resolve this
contradiction. To be sure, he can easily live with the ambiguity, leaving the world
mystified as to what he means.

In fact, Putin could mean anything, or he could mean nothing in particular. He wants
you to keep guessing. This is part of the new survival formula for the Russian matrix.
Soviet leaders tried to legitimize their rule with the communist idea. Putin has de-
ideologized the Russian matrix, offering instead a rather bizarre package of
incompatible ingredients. In this he resembles the 19-century socialist Eduard
Bernstein, who said, “The movement is everything. The final goal is nothing.” Putin
might say it like this: “Survival is everything; justification is nothing.”

3. Are We in for a New Confrontation?

How serious is the threat of a new confrontation between the West, which is now
playing the role of the defender of the status quo, and the new Crusader? Putin has
proven that he is not a dogmatist, and he has a wide range of tools at his disposal.
Russia will not necessarily be invading other countries and annexing their territory.
Rather, the Kremlin is aiming at creating a perpetual air of suspense and uncertainty.
There are a number of destabilization scenarios at Putin’s disposal: Russia could go
further into Ukraine; it could destabilize the Ukrainian southeast, as it is now doing in
supporting the separatists who are seizing the official buildings over there; or it could
invade Kazakhstan under the pretext of protecting the Russian-speaking populations
there. The Kremlin will also attempt to create its new Internationale made up of those
who dislike liberal democracies. There are quite a few such actors around the world,
including in the liberal democracies—both on the left and on the right—who are ready
to justify and legitimize the new anti-Western crusade. One has only to listen to the
Western left-wing intellectuals and the leader of the French Right, Marine Le Pen, who
have defended the Kremlin’s actions in Ukraine.

No one knows how this experiment will shake out—not even Putin’s team. But that
doesn’t matter to them. The purpose of this experiment is to postpone the leader’s
inevitable political demise by playing a deadly game of chance. But by raising the
stakes of this game, the Kremlin is heightening the suspense. Moreover, the Kremlin is
drawing the entire world into the game—and not just as spectators.

It’s important to recognize that Putin can tolerate a high degree of cognitive dissonance
as he plays this game. Having played the role of the Terminator, he can just as easily
switch to the role of the Peacemaker by offering the West his “normalization” platform.
This is exactly what he tried to do when he called President Obama on March 30 to
suggest that the two leaders search for a “diplomatic solution” together. This call was
followed by Kerry-Lavrov dialogue on March 31, in which Russia in fact tried to
persuade the United States to strike a new Munich deal on Ukraine. The nature of the
proposed deal, roughly, was the following: agreement to endorse a new Ukrainian
constitution that would transform the country into a loose federation and would
enshrine its “Finlandization” (that is, its acceptance of a non-aligned status). The
Kremlin’s proposal would lead to the reconstruction of the Ukrainian state under foreign
control—and we can all guess who would have a key role in that process. Russia, for
its part of the agreement, would generously agree not to invade Ukraine.

The American side, declaring that no decisions could be made about Ukraine without
Ukraine, did not accept the trade off. But the Kremlin knows it only has to bide its time.
On April 1, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier renewed his push for a
diplomatic solution at a meeting with his French and Polish counterparts in Weimar.
You may recall that this Trio had most recently attempted to persuade the Ukrainian
opposition to sign an agreement preserving Yanukovych in power through 2014 (i.e.
the Agreement of February 21)—an agreement that was immediately rejected by the
Maidan. It is this agreement that the Kremlin is still attempting to restore even today.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister, in his article in the Guardian on
April 7 praised the efforts of the Trio: “We support the appeal by the foreign ministers of
Germany, France, and Poland to implement the 21 February agreement.” If they are
really on the same page, then the three European countries endorse the return of the
corrupted Yanukovych regime, which will immediately bring a new Ukrainian Maidan!
Or perhaps Lavrov misunderstands the position of the Trio? Then their position is so
murky that it is susceptible to misinterpretation!

One should not be misled: the Kremlin’s support of international high-level talks on
Ukraine, with the participation of the EU and the United States, is aimed at one goal:
creating an international mechanism of “crisis solution” in Ukraine which in fact will
mean a mechanism of external governance dictating Ukraine’s reconstitution. Guess
who is planning to play a key role in the international “crisis group” for Ukraine?

Thus, the Kremlin is not sticking to only one, “hard core” scenario. It is ready even to
“help Ukraine” economically, as Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov declared, if
Kiev accepts Russia’s terms, include the demand to restructure the Ukrainian state,
change the government and “legitimize the situation around Crimea.” Isn’t it an
amazing example of diplomatic art—first, we suffocate you, and then we offer to help
you, if you agree to be shackled!

However, the threat of the Russian incursion will be always on the table, for two
reasons: first, it is a means of pressuring the West to agree to the “normalization”
scenario; second, it provides the West with a ready-made justification for coming to an
eventual agreement with the Kremlin (“This is hardly the best of all possible deals, but
at least we’ve avoided the worst one!”)

Putin apparently hopes that the West will eventually be ready to grasp at his
outstretched hand and embark on a new reset. The West is expected to legitimate
Putin’s status quo, which will not in any case bind the Russian leader in any way. On
the contrary: International acceptance of the new status quo will give Putin carte
blanche to violate it again.

4. War President and War Country

Let’s put it bluntly: What Russia did to Ukraine is normally called “war.” It makes no
difference that Ukraine is doing its best not to respond to Russia’s military moves. Putin
has become a wartime President—a transition he has been gearing up for since the
August 2013 trade war with Ukraine. Russian society, completely demoralized by
militaristic propaganda, has consolidated around its flag and leader (he now enjoys 80
percent approval ratings). This isn’t the first time he has attempted to consolidate the
country on a war footing. In fact, it’s his third attempt. (In 1999 Putin consolidated
Russia by starting the second Chechen war, and in 2008 he provoked the war against
Georgia.)

Wartime consolidation, however, is short-lived, and it will eventually be followed by

public discontent with the regime. This means that Putin has to constantly plunge
Russia into wars or into a search for new enemies (external enemies are always better
for producing the patriotic mobilization) in order to feed the militarist paradigm. But
even with the success and popular support he is enjoying today, he has still been
unable to translate these gains into the popular acceptance of his apparent rulership-
for-life (50 percent of Russians tell pollsters he should leave office after his current term
expires in 2018). Therefore, his military adventurism will sooner or later backfire: It
might be exploited by a new authoritarian leader attempting to become Russia’s new
Savior; or Russian society might seize the moment and free itself from the fortress
mentality. The second scenario appears unlikely at this point, but then again we are
living in a time of surprises.

The key question is this: What will happen with Russia and the space around Russia
between now and the moment when Putin’s crusade begins to backfire?

5. On the Western Reaction

If the Kremlin is primarily driven by the goal of shifting its personalized power regime
into a new survival model, then the West is mistaken to react merely to the external
manifestations of the Putin Doctrine. So far the first round of the Western sanctions
over Crimea have apparently been aimed at allowing Putin to save face and stop his
Crusade, lest a few of his loyalists feel some (minor) pain. It was just a shot across the
bow, letting Putin know that the West was prepared to follow up with more serious
punitive measures. The second round of sanctions, coming from the United States, has
more punitive substance, but it also implies that the West has accepted the new status
quo following Crimea’s annexation by Russia. From the Kremlin’s point of view, these
actions could be construed to mean that the West doesn’t want to irritate Putin or make
him feel cornered by attempting to roll back his Crusade; they only want him to promise
not to upset the status quo again.

In an interview on a Russian television station, Sergei Lavrov said, “If they are willing to
accept the first reality, then they will definitely have to accept another one.” He was
referring to the West’s acceptance of the interim Ukrainian government, which,
according to Lavrov, means that the West must also accept the annexation of Crimea.
In a recent interview, Senator Dianne Feinstein demonstrated that Lavrov’s logic, at
least in this case, is correct:

I’m a student in college of Russian history. Any student of Russian history knows how
important the Crimea was and is to Russia. Khrushchev gave the Crimea, ceded the
Crimea, essentially to Russia [sic] in 1954. He did it for, I think, reasons of interests to
Russia. The Crimea is dominantly Russian, a referendum was passed. That, I think,
has been done.

(As a student of Russia’s history, Senator Feinstein should also know that Crimea is
much more important to the Crimean Tatars than to Russians.)

If one were to follow Lavrov’s logic to its conclusion, the West’s acceptance of Crimea
could lead to Western endorsement of “other realities.” Why not? Lavrov himself is sure
that the West would not fight back. As he tweeted on April 12, “The world order is being
restructured. This is a painful process. But the West has to accept it…”

In his interview on Russian television, Lavrov issued an ultimatum to the West

demanding that, during the April 17 high level talks, “all Ukraine, including the regions
have to be represented.” This could have meant only legitimation of the Ukrainian
fragmentation. Moreover, Lavrov was sure that Chancellor Merkel’s position was
compatible with the Kremlin’s posture. “Chancellor said that…the model of future
means that interests of all sides should be balanced. I support her every word and I call
our Western partners to listen to Chancellor Merkel”, advised Lavrov. We’ll see soon
whether the Russian Foreign Minister has read the German Chancellor correctly.

For the Kremlin to accept the existence of “red lines,” the Russian leader and his team
must understand that crossing these lines would have disastrous consequences for
their regime. It is a generally accepted view in the West that economic and financial
sanctions against the Russian elite—at least the part that is responsible for decision-
making—would constitute such a red line. Acceptance of this view is the result of a
belief in the crucial role of globalization and economic and technological
“interdependency.” Russia is part of the global economy, and limiting the ruling team’s
(and the oligarchs’) access to the Western financial system will reduce the money
flowing into Putin’s wallet, bringing them to heel—or so argue the “globalists.” Russia is
too incorporated into the Western trade and financial system; Putin can’t risk being cut
out of it.

Describing “a new kind of containment,” Michael Mandelbaum says that “Putin can’t
survive without the revenues globalization provides him to buy off his people and
former Soviet republics.” Thomas Friedman has also backed this idea of financial
containment. Both may be correct, but only if one looks at the distant future.

But to expect that “the financial containment” of Russia will bring results anytime soon
would be a mistake. For the time being, in fact, it is helping Putin achieve his short-term
agenda. I would argue that the Kremlin must have been aware of the scale and kind of
sanctions that were coming. The current sanction pain is still bearable for the Kremlin
team, considering their hope that switching to a new mode will guarantee their further
survival. Moreover, the Kremlin has prepared itself for these sanctions. (Russia is
preparing changes to federal law that would compensate the elite in the event that
foreign assets are frozen.) For the time being, the Kremlin will use the sanctions as a
justification for its transition to a militarized state.

Moreover, Putin is certainly no “Davos Man.” Yes, he connected to the world through
globalization, but in a different way than most. The Russian ruling elite has used
globalization to corrupt the West, and it will find the ways to use the laundry machine it
has created (with the assistance of many Western helpers) to circumvent the “financial
containment.” Think not? Ask yourself, how many people in the West have we seen
who would agree even “to sacrifice a little” in order to stop Putin?

Anyway, Western sanctions—even if they did seriously affect Putin’s inner circle—are
merely efforts to deal with the effects of Putin’s actions rather than their causes.
Sanctions cannot force Putin’s regime to transform itself, which would in turn transform
his foreign policy doctrine. They cannot change the current model of Putin’s rule—the
Besieged Fortress. Could you imagine what would happen if the Kremlin were to
backtrack on Crimea, when about 80 percent of Russians support the anti-Western
Crusade? Putin would be politically dead in an instant. He can’t stop this rollercoaster,
and furthermore he will have to find new ways to demonstrate that no one can force
him to back down. This is a road leading Russia down into the abyss.

Meanwhile, the Western response demonstrates not only continuing confusion of the
liberal democracies but their loss of trajectory as well. They are trying to react to the
unfolding new reality by addressing only tactical issues. At the moment Western tactics
are limited to attempts to build an assistance package for Ukraine and the sanctions
package for Russia. But neither the donors nor the Ukrainian government know how to
apply conditionality in such a way that it will guarantee that the assistance will help to
transform Ukraine rather than reproduce the corrupted system. Meanwhile, the IMF
terms could easily ignite Ukraine’s south and east and provoke a real rebellion there.
The sanction package for Russia is an even murkier deal; even a “third round” of
Western sanctions can’t restrain the Kremlin’s revanchism unless it is combined with
coordinated efforts by the Western democracies to dismantle the laundry machine they
created with Russia’s help. This means the West, too, must be prepared to suffer some
pain to its commercial interests. Have we seen any signs that the West is ready for
that?

Western tactics can’t compensate lack of the strategic vision and readiness to think
about the new world order. Moreover, Walter Russell Mead was right to say, “We are
unlikely…to have a sensible Ukraine policy unless we have a serious Russia policy.”
The liberal democracies have to admit that their previous Russia policy, based on the
three premises “engagement, accommodation, and imitation,” does not work any
longer. Their desperate attempts to find a new version of containment that will not
obstruct engagement and cooperation have become an object of mockery in the
Kremlin and only strengthen the Kremlin’s feeling of both impunity and contempt.
“Russia has ruined the world order.” “We have to help Ukraine.” “We are concerned
and worried.” The non-stop Western lamentations only demonstrate the West’s
disorientation.

One has to admit that, even if the West formulates its strategy of dealing with the
ruined global scene, it can’t change the nature of the predatory authoritarianism that
has emerged in Russia. True, this pressure could become a factor accelerating the
Russian crisis, in which case it would become a game changer. But what would a crisis
bring to Russia and the outside world? Wouldn’t the West do anything in its power to
prevent the crisis and the collapse of the Russian matrix? In order to guarantee this
change for the better, Russians would have to concentrate on building an alternative.
The sooner, the better.

The post-Cold War era is over. Many now accept this as fact. But hiding behind new
myths and hoping that the problem will go away on its own would merely extend and
invitation to the revanchists to push further.

We have to give Vladimir Putin credit for doing something positive. He has swept
the cobwebs off the current world order. However, we still don’t know whether
this has been enough to shock the liberal democracies into beginning the
process of rethinking things. Maybe another shock is in order…
Strategy After Crimea
Playing Putin’s Game
Walter Russell Mead | The American Interest | April 15, 2014

It’s time to start thinking strategically about how to deal with Vladimir Putin in a
post-Crimea world.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of Vladimir Putin’s Crimean Gambit, now threatening to
become a Donbas Gambit, it reminds us that the United States still has some
unfinished business in Europe. Putin’s dramatic move into Crimea, and his subsequent
sporting with Ukraine like a cat playing with a wounded mouse, is devastating to liberal
aspirations about the kind of Europe, and world, we would like to live in. It affronts our
moral and political sensibilities, and it raises the specter of a serious and unfavorable
shift in the regional balance of power. But so far, Western leaders have signally failed
to develop an effective response to this, to them, an utterly unexpected and shocking
challenge.

Since the end of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union, successor state to the old
Tsarist empire, fell apart, the former Russian empire has been divided into eleven
separate republics. The closest parallel, an ominous one to many of these states,
would be to what happened the last time the Russian state collapsed, in 1917-1919.
Then as in 1990, the former empire splintered into a collection of separate republics.
Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Central Asian states and the Baltic republics set out
on an independent existence. Then, as Lenin and his heirs consolidated power in
Moscow, the various breakaway republics returned (in some cases more willingly than
others) to the fold. By 1939, when Soviet troops invaded the Baltic Republics, from
Central Asia to the Baltic Sea, almost all of the far-flung dominions of the Romanovs
were once more under a single flag. Only Poland and Finland were able to resist
incorporation into the Soviet Union, and the Poles were forced into the Warsaw Pact.

Lenin and Stalin were able to rebuild the tsarist empire first because they succeeded in
creating a strong state in Russia, second because many of the breakaway states were
divided and weak, and finally because a permissive international environment posed
few effective barriers to the reassertion of Moscow’s power.

There should be little doubt in anyone’s mind today that the Kremlin aims to repeat the
process, and from President Putin’s desk it must look as if many of the pieces for a
second restoration are in place. Many of the ex-Soviet republics are weak, divided and
badly governed. Many are locked in conflicts over territory or torn by ethnic strife.
President Putin, whatever one may think of his methods or of the long-term prognosis,
has rebuilt a strong Russian state that is able to mobilize the nation’s resources in the
service of a revisionist foreign policy. And the international environment, while not
perhaps as permissive as in the immediate aftermath of World War One (when Lenin
gathered many of the straying republics back to Russia’s bosom) or the prelude to
World War Two (when Stalin completed the project), nevertheless affords President
Putin some hopes of success.

At the military level, the United States now has its weakest military presence in Europe
since the 1940s, and with large defense cutbacks built into budget assumptions and
significant commitments elsewhere, it would be extremely difficult for the United States
to rebuild its military presence in Europe without a 180 degree turn by the Obama
administration. The European members of NATO, meanwhile, have continued their
generational program of disarmament even as Russia rebuilt its capacity. Russia’s
military capacity is limited and its ability to project power over significant distances is
small, but the military balance of forces in the European theater hasn’t been this
favorable to the Russians since the end of the Cold War.

But Putin doesn’t need military parity or anything like it. Lenin and Stalin were much
weaker than their potential opponents when they rebuilt the Russian empire under the
Soviet flag, but leaders read world politics shrewdly enough to understand that their
opponents’ greater military power wouldn’t actually come into play. Once Germany,
Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the western allies of World War
One could have imposed almost any settlement they liked on eastern Europe, had they
been willing to back their designs with military force and sustained political energy. But
war weary publics at home, divided counsels among the allies, and a western
preoccupation with the chaos elsewhere in Europe allowed Lenin and Trotsky to regain
much of what was lost in the chaos of transition and civil war. Similarly, the grotesque
parody of foreign policy that shaped British and French designs during the illusion-
ridden 1930s ultimately created a situation in which Moscow could act in the Baltic,
despite its military weakness and economic difficulties.

Putin today must believe that western division and confusion offer him solid assurances
that he can disregard the prospects of western military intervention as long as his
activities are confined to the non-NATO republics of the former Soviet Union. It could
be worse. Under certain circumstances, he may think that the Baltic Republics are fair
game. While all government officials will unite in a hissing of denunciation and denial if
anyone says it out loud, there isn’t a lot of appetite in any of the NATO governments
west of Poland for military action on the Baltic coast. If Russia moved quickly across a
Baltic frontier to ‘liberate’ some ethnic Russians, would NATO send troops to drive the
Russians back out? We are no doubt telling the Russians that the frontiers of NATO
countries are another one of our now-famous red lines, but Putin may think he knows
us better than we know ourselves.

From Putin’s point of view, the EU must present a particularly contemptible picture.
Paralyzed by the poisonous consequences of the euro, divided north and south by the
question of debt and east and west by the question of immigration, the EU is even less
effective and fast moving than usual. George Soros (whose views, one believes, the
Kremlin follows carefully even if it loathes his influence) argues that the minimalist
‘solutions’ the EU adopted to prevent the euro crisis flaring into devastating financial
crises have locked the Union into a path of gradually worsening political crises over
austerity and its consequences. While developments like the Greek return to the bond
markets suggest that even in Europe bad times don’t last forever, Putin apparently not
only believes the Soros analysis; he is acting on it. Russia is pursuing an aggressive,
influence-expanding program inside the EU and NATO as well as outside it. Linking up
with anti-Brussels, anti-Berlin politicians like Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban,
Russia is developing deeper financial, economic and even political links well inside the
divided Union. With business and especially the energy business increasingly
converted into an arm of state power, Russia is developing the kinds of connections
inside the EU that have proved so effective in the post-Soviet space still outside it.

The staggering incoherence of European energy policy (with Germany racing to

dismantle nuclear reactors even as Putin brandishes his energy weapons) is another
sign to the Kremlin that the Europeans are likely to remain both divided and ineffective
against anything short of a tank offensive aimed at the Fulda Gap. As Lilia Shevtsova
demonstrates, the German intellectual and diplomatic worlds now re-echo with excuses
for and rationalizations of Putin’s new course.

Meanwhile, it is not at all clear that the key members of the Union view the eastern
borderlands in the same way. For Poland and the Baltic states, the new Russian
activism is close to an existential threat. Others may actually welcome a newly
assertive Russia as the answer to what is perceived in some quarters as an over-
mighty Germany in the EU. This would not be the first time that influential voices in
Paris called for an entente with an ugly regime in Russia in the interests of the
European balance of power. It was in 1891 that the archconservative Tsar Alexander III
stunned the world by standing as a French naval band played La Marseillaise at
Kronstadt; the secular French Republic was willing to side with an Orthodox absolute
monarch to balance the scales against Bismarck’s Germany.

A century later in 1989 there were many in France who questioned the wisdom of
breaking up the Soviet Union while uniting Germany. The last 20 years cannot have
lessened French doubts about the wisdom of that course, and French qualms about
the proper policy toward Russia find echoes elsewhere. Italy and the members of Club
Med will not want money spent in the east that could go to the south.

None of this would suggest to President Putin that he has much to fear from Europe;
despite the ritual war dances and expressions of hostility in Washington, one doesn’t
see much happening here that would change his calculation about western plans. Is
there a groundswell of public support to boost US deployments in Europe? Are voters
circulating petitions to position US forces on the border of the Baltic states? Is there a
serious move to sign bilateral defense treaties with the endangered states (Georgia,
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus) or to bulk up the US presence in
Central Asia?

No, there is not, and President Putin knows it very well. The United States is a stronger
power in the military sense than Russia, but there is no thirst for war. The United States
today is no more willing to contest Russian power in ex-Soviet space than it was to
stop Hitler’s march into the Sudetenland in 1938.

Policy must always begin with facts, and as western leaders grapple with the new
Russia, western division, weakness and lack of will are where we must begin.
Thumping our chests and making rash, hypocritical boasts about a devotion to freedom
and international law which we do not, in fact possess—at least if it involves spending
real money or running real risks—will only set us up for more humiliating failures. The
strategist must know himself, warns Sun Tzu; we must stop pretending to ourselves at
least that we are more united and strong willed than we really are.

We must also acknowledge the pervasive failure of the Ukrainians and many of their
neighbors to build strong states. It’s not simply that their governments are corrupt and
incompetent and that they aren’t very effective at problem solving or policy making. It’s
not simply that any aid we send them is at high risk of being stolen or wasted. It means
that their institutions and their national establishment are riddled top to bottom with
people whose loyalty has been or can easily be suborned by the Kremlin. It also means
that their military establishments are overwhelmingly likely to be poorly prepared, badly
trained, incompetently led and corruptly managed. There are no doubt exceptions to
these dismal generalizations, but we cannot plan without taking a hard look at the real
state of affairs.

Whatever can be said about the medium to long term, in the here and now we have
allowed ourselves to be outmaneuvered and outwitted, and we don’t have many good
cards to play. Imposing what sanctions the Europeans will accept, and gradually
tightening them over time, may be the best we can do right now; if so, Washington
needs to remember that barking loudly when you can’t bite will be seen as a sign of
impotence and incontinence rather than as exhibiting high principles and moral
commitment.

The West has a Russia problem, and we need to think clearly about our overall
strategic relationship with Russia as the first step in formulating a response to Putin’s
aggression against a peaceful neighboring state. There are two issues here; America’s
generic attitude to Russia as a great power independent from the question of who
wields power there and what his policies are, and America’s specific attitude toward
Vladimir Putin’s regime.

It is on the question of America’s generic relationship to Russia considered abstractly

that the ‘realists’ who would like to reconcile with Putin as quickly as possible have the
strongest case. The Obama administration’s attempt to reset relations with Russia was
an embarrassing failure, but it was rooted in real truths about American interests. While
there are and always will be problematic aspects to the relationship of the United
States with all strong and vigorous powers around the world whose interests and
values sometimes run athwart our own, a strong Russia is or at least can be a good
thing from an American point of view. We would like to see a government in Moscow
that is strong enough to undertake such necessary tasks as the protection and
guardianship of its nuclear arsenal, able to prevent the spread of terrorism, anarchy or
organized crime across its vast territories, and able to play a strong and effective role in
ensuring that the balance of power in northeastern Asia contains a large number of
significant powers. A healthy oil and gas industry in Russia is by no means necessarily
a thorn in America’s flesh; Russian production both stimulates global prosperity by
helping to keep prices lower than they would otherwise be and limits the danger that
supply disruptions in the Middle East can create global economic crises.

The failed reset policy recognized that American policy toward Russia after the Cold
War has been consistently flawed. It was an error of the Clinton administration to
proceed with the construction of a post-Cold War Europe that had no real place for
Russia, and the rise of Putin and Putinism can in part be ascribed both to unwise
western policies and to the attitudes of arrogance and condescension against which
Putin and his allies so vigorously rail.

From these facts, some are already constructing the case for appeasement. Our bad
behavior in the past has made Russia angry and resentful—perhaps angrier than in
strict justice it has the right to be, but emotions often run high. We can and should now
soothe Russia’s frayed sensibilities, flatter its self esteem, and demonstrate that it has
nothing to fear by our generous and far sighted behavior. We should welcome a strong
and perhaps somewhat larger Russia into the circles of great power and turn as blind
an eye as possible to the dismemberment of Ukraine and to future Russian expansion
in the ex-Soviet space. As Putin realizes that the United States and its allies have
repented of our past errors and are willing to allow Russia some ‘reasonable’ room for
expansion and assertion, we can move to a pragmatic new relationship based on a
more stable balance of interest and power.

If only this were true, so that with a small, almost unnoticeable sacrifice of principle and
honor we could buy a quiet life. But life isn’t that easy. Putin, as I have said before, is
no Hitler. But neither is he an Adenauer or Brandt, ready to stand in partnership to build
a liberal world. As Lilia Shevstova notes on this site, Putin has chosen the path of
repression at home and war abroad because these in his view offer the best hope of
preserving his power. Because of the logic of his domestic situation, he has chosen the
dark path of fascism, and is out to change the way the world works in ways that the
United States must, out of its interests as well as its values, resist.

Victories like those Putin has notched up in Ukraine will awaken rather than slake his
ambition. He needs triumphs abroad to vindicate and justify his rule and his repression
at home, and foreign policy victories are like cocaine when it comes to their impact on
public opinion: the buzz of each hit soon wears off, leaving only the craving for another
and larger dose. Putin has grown and will grow hungrier and more reckless with each
gain notched, each victory achieved. His contempt for the moral and political
decadence of the West will be confirmed, his ideas of what he can attempt will grow
more audacious, and his power to advance his agenda will grow as weakness and
concession undermine our alliances and tilt the political balance in a growing number of
states to lean his way. And other leaders around the world will have observed that the
world order so laboriously erected on the ruins of World War Two by the United States
and its allies is a hollow façade.

We are on track to repeat all the follies of the tragic period between the two world wars.
At Versailles and through the1920s, the West fanned the flames of German rage by
treating the defeated enemy with open contempt and by erecting a new European
order that flagrantly ignored German wishes and interests. This is how we treated
Russia in the 1990s. The West provided economic aid to the “Weimar Russia” of Boris
Yeltsin much as the Young and the Dawes plans helped Germany relaunch its
economy in the 1920s. But in the 1990s as in the 1920s the West was uninterested in
addressing nationalist grievances or in strengthening genuine moderates. For
democratic Weimar politicians, the West had nothing to offer on the Rhineland, nothing
on the Saar; for Hitler, all of that plus Austria and the Sudetenland were suddenly on
the table. We weakened our friends and empowered our enemy. We cannot and must
not repeat this mistake now. Russia may have legitimate grievances and it certainly
has interests that ought to be taken into account, but as long as Vladimir Putin stands
at the head of affairs, Moscow must expect no favors from the West. Our message
should be that the West will concede nothing to Putin, but is prepared to work
constructively with a different Russian government to make Russia powerful and
respected at home and abroad. Through continuing study and reflection in the West
combined with track two exchanges and back channel conversations, we should
develop a joint vision for an attractive and realistic Russian future so that Putin will be
seen more clearly as what he is: an obstacle to rather than an instrument of Russian
national power and prestige.

Back to the Basics: NATO and Hard Power

Our new policy towards Putin’s new Russia must begin with NATO. Before we can
hope to induce Putin’s Russia to respect anything else, we must teach it that NATO is
real and that we are in earnest. This probably cannot be done at this point without
substantial and visible upgrades to NATO’s presence in the periphery states of the
alliance. There will have to be more NATO installations and more US troops in places
like Estonia and Romania. Right now, there is a non-negligible chance that Russia
might try to create facts on the ground inside one or more of the Baltic Republics. The
border defenses of those republics must be reinforced to make that impossible. That
move may infuriate Putin but it will also be a healthy reminder of his impotence in the
face of genuine allied resolve, and will make a serious war crisis less likely. There is a
real security threat to the Baltic states, and any failure to address that proactively would
be reckless imprudence. There are burglars in the neighborhood and the windows and
doors must be bolted shut.

Words, given the plethora of empty ones we have uttered in the recent past, are no
longer enough by themselves, but as we take effective steps to shore up NATO’s
defenses, the President should ask both houses of Congress to pass resolutions
reaffirming America’s solemn commitments to its treaty allies. It would be the duty of
Republicans who are serious about defense to support him in this. One cannot expect
unanimity in a large, diverse and free country like ours, but rallying the nation to the
cause of NATO is in the President’s job description now, and it is incumbent on
Republicans to support any constructive steps the President takes to shore up the
national defense. Every manifestation of public unity and political will around the
Atlantic alliance will have an impact on the Kremlin’s calculations, especially when
these are backed by concrete steps to secure the frontiers.
That does little for Ukraine, and this is regrettable, but Ukraine never requested much
less obtained membership in NATO. There is a fundamental difference between
countries who are members of an alliance and those who are not; we are not obliged
(beyond the gauzy sentiments of the UN Charter) to defend every country in the world
against every predator. Reinforcing the boundaries of NATO will demonstrate the value
of an American alliance to current and potential allies. In that way, we can transform
Putin from NATO’s aspiring gravedigger to its chief publicist; if we now bolster NATO to
make our allies safe we can still emerge from this crisis with an invigorated rather than
a weakened alliance network. There are things the United States can and should do to
help the people of Ukraine in this time of crisis, but in the immediate future our military
measures must aim at reinforcing our existing alliances rather than expanding them.

Additionally, President Obama should review planned cuts in the defense budget and,
while continuing to eliminate waste, scale back planned cuts in American forces. Even
anti-tax Republicans in Congress should agree to raise new revenues to cover these
costs; few things would send as powerful a signal of American purpose as a bipartisan
commitment to raise taxes in support of our alliance obligations. If far Left Democrats
and isolationist Republicans want to oppose these measures, let them do so—but the
sensible center can and should prevail.

It is also worth remembering the role that Ronald Reagan’s high tech military buildup
played in bringing the Soviet leaders of the 1980s down to earth. The United States
has the ability to deprive Russia’s nuclear arsenal of much of its utility through
improved missile defense and the development of other high tech weapons and
systems. Russian nationalists might rethink their strategy if it was clear to them that
provoking the United States triggers a response that further undercuts Russia’s military
claims to strategic parity.

Beyond NATO: American Policy in Europe

The United States has tried to disengage from Europe three times since the end of the
Cold War, and each time the disengagement failed. The Clinton administration tried to
outsource Yugoslavia to the Europeans in the 1990s and was ultimately pulled into the
Balkans. George W. Bush tried to conduct foreign policy around and over the heads of
“Old Europe”; the experience was not a success. President Obama has similarly
sought to relegate America’s European engagement to the rearview mirror, and
President Putin has demonstrated yet again that the consequences of American
disengagement are bad.

European peace and prosperity without close American engagement and support has
been impossible since World War One, and since World War One it has been
impossible for the United States to ignore the consequences when things go badly for
Europe. Perhaps after more than a century it is time to face up to the reality that our
political and military as well as our commercial interests are tangled up in Europe for
the long run and that we must manage our engagement more effectively and actively
than we’ve done for some time.

Given what we’ve seen in Ukraine, the US and the EU need to work much more closely
together on policy vis a vis the non-Russian former Soviet states. This policy can’t be
seen as simply legalistic or commercial, expanding free trade zones or supporting the
rule of law and the development of institutions; security issues are also involved.

More, Europe’s failure to develop coherent energy policy is clearly a contributing factor
to Putin’s transparent contempt for the bloc as well as to Europe’s continuing
vulnerability to Russian pressure. Europe’s countries have many voices when it comes
to energy policy; the United States needs to play a larger and more constructive role in
the continent’s musings over energy policy, and the new American reserves now
coming on line could be part of a long term strategy to reduce Europe’s vulnerability to
energy blackmail.

The US may also need to consider how it can play a more useful role in Europe’s
internal debates over economic policy. Europe’s weakness before Russian pressure is
both directly and indirectly attributable in part to the fallout from the euro disaster.
Economic pain has divided the union, alienated many voters both from Brussels and
their national authorities, reduced Europe’s energy and resources for external policy
ventures, contributed to the bitterness over immigration and fueled the rise of the
extreme right wing parties Putin now seeks to mobilize. Important American interests
have been seriously harmed by the monetary muddle in Europe, and Washington
needs to think more carefully about how it can play a more consequential and
constructive role.

The rise of fascist and near fascist parties across the European Union is a much more
serious concern of American policymakers now that President Putin has embraced the
toxic cocktail of ultra-nationalism, street violence and open hatred of liberal order as
part of his international program. Russia is once again prepared to wage ideological
war against the liberal west as it did in Soviet times, and a significantly enhanced and
upgraded Ministry of the Dark Arts is now working overtime to spread propaganda,
recruit supporters and make mischief for the liberal west whenever and however it can.
In Europe and elsewhere, the United States and its allies will once again have to dust
off some of our Cold War methods and programs, and here we are currently operating
at a serious disadvantage. Putin the old KGB man has made substantial investments in
the Dark Arts; they are cheaper than other forms of power projection, they build on the
considerable legacy of the Soviet era, and they exploit the weaknesses of open
societies. Today’s neo-fascism is capable of uniting the far Left and the far Right in
anti-liberal ‘popular fronts’ in various ways and in Europe and elsewhere, the United
States will once again engage in ideological battles with an unscrupulous and
intelligent foe.

The Troubled East

Naked Russian aggression in Ukraine and the potential that Russian adventurism will
spread chaos in the rest of the neighborhood have drawn world attention to the former
Soviet states on Europe’s frontiers. Europe’s eastern problems don’t begin where the
EU and NATO end. In Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania, the process of European
expansion has run into deep trouble, and the situation in many of the former Yugoslav
territories leaves much to be desired. Greece and Cyprus remain alienated from the
west, members of the EU but drawn to Russia through cultural and in some cases
economic ties.

It is difficult to guess Putin’s next steps, and it is far from clear that he is acting from a
master plan rather than improvising in the heat of battle. Nevertheless, the most
important objective for him may not be the southeast of Ukraine, where his forces are
running rampant through the country’s industrial heartland. Instead the great prize may
be the southwest, an area that includes the Black Sea port of Odessa and gives him a
boundary not only with the pro-Russian breakaway Transnistrian statelet, but with
NATO and the EU itself. To fan the forces in the EU that resent the technocratic
dictates of Brussels, to cultivate a sense of pan-Slavic unity that looks to Mother
Russia, and to provide aid and encouragement for anti-western leaders like Hungary’s
Orban would suit Putin very well.

The EU is currently struggling in the southeast of Europe. The Balkans and Hungary
are not doing well, and efforts to build western style states and institutions in countries
with very different histories and traditions have not had the hoped for success. The
euro crisis did not affect these countries directly, as none of them other than Cyprus
and Greece have the exquisite happiness of belonging to the currency union, but the
continental recession and crisis dealt a damaging blow to western prestige. Western
countries who can’t agree on much else agree that welfare-scrounging immigrants from
the Balkans are a curse and scourge, and the list of western countries looking to limit
immigration from the southeast is long. This does not go over well with public opinion in
the Balkans. Should Russia continue to gain economic clout and work more
consciously to build political relationships with important parties and leaders in these
EU and NATO member states, both NATO and the European Union could soon
become houses much more divided than they already are, and Russia could gain
significant influence in the internal councils of the EU, not to mention de facto vetoes
over decisions like NATO expansion. We should not confuse all of this with a global
contest on the scale of the Cold War; even if Putin succeeds in uniting all the ex-Soviet
states under the Russian flag, his Greater Russia would be a smaller and more poorly
situated power than the Soviet Union. Germany remains united, Poland is free, and
Russia cannot hope to dominate Central Europe as the USSR once did.

European fecklessness dragged the Clinton administration kicking and screaming into
the morass of the bloody wars of the Yugoslav succession; the Obama administration,
despite its eagerness to scale back, is already feeling the tidal pull back into a larger
and potentially even more difficult region at a time when the options are all
unappealing. Appeasing Putin won’t work; opposing him is going to be difficult and
expensive, but ignoring him will be impossible.

President Obama once hoped he could manage a kind of global triage. We could pivot
away from a Europe that didn’t need us and a Middle East that didn’t want us into an
Asia that both needed and wanted our presence. These days the White House is facing
a harder but perhaps more durable truth: the United States needs to pivot back toward
the world.
For How Long Can Obama Sidestep His Red
Line With Russia?
by CAROL E. LEE | Wall Street Journal | Apr 14, 2014

The crisis in Ukraine is moving at a pace that could place a problem that ranks low in
the minds of Americans, and some West Wing aides, high on the White House’s list of
political issues that could ensnare the president this election year.

That’s a challenge for White House aides who want President Barack Obama to keep
his public focus on the economy and other domestic issues. Because it appears Mr.
Obama this week is faced with another one of his red lines, this time in eastern
Ukraine.

That requires decisions about sanctions on Russia’s key economic sectors, which the
president has warned could also hurt the U.S. economy. Mr. Obama has done little to
prepare Americans for the fallout of an escalated confrontation with Russian President
Vladimir Putin, even though his aides have analyzed the impact on the U.S. of different
sanctions on Russia’s key economic sectors. In fact, Mr. Obama has gone out of his
way lately to keep the Ukraine crisis from knocking him off message.

The tension between a White House that’s determined to stick to its agenda and a
White House at the center of a major international crisis with potentially widespread,
long-term repercussions was on vivid display last week.

White House press secretary Jay Carney fielded question after question about Russia
and Ukraine during the daily press briefings. Yet Mr. Obama was talking about equal
pay for women and civil-rights issues. He did not step out to publicly address Ukraine
last week. A White House statement on a call he held with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel was the most tangible sign that he was engaged on the issue.

Senior administration officials held a briefing laying out the president’s week for
reporters eager for information about the White House’s approach to the Ukraine crisis.
The officials offered nothing in their remarks about the issue and had little to say when
asked questions about it.

Perhaps the biggest sign of the split-screen reality hanging over a White House that’s
working to minimize how much the president’s message gets co-opted by this foreign-
policy crisis was the muted approach the administration took to announcing new
sanctions against Ukrainian officials on Friday. The White House didn’t put out its own
announcement on the sanctions, and there was no conference call with senior officials,
as with the previous two rounds.

It will be difficult for the White House to continue its public hands-off approach. As the
crisis escalated into eastern Ukraine–despite Mr. Obama warning Mr. Putin that such a
move marked a red line that would trigger harsh sanctions–criticism of the president’s
leadership also ratcheted up.

“Where is the president of the United States?” Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), a frequent
critic of Mr. Obama on foreign-policy issues, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“Shouldn’t the president of the United States be speaking forcefully and strongly? And
didn’t the president say if they carried out further actions, there would be further
sanctions? So far, we haven’t heard anything.”
Mr. Obama now faces a test. He’s trying to convince reluctant European leaders,
whose economies are much more closely tied to Russia, to back tougher sanctions,
and he’s under increasing pressure domestically to back up his threat to Mr. Putin with
action. He found a way around outright confrontation with Syria after drawing a red line
over the use of chemical weapons. Whether there’s a similar diplomatic resolution to be
had with Russia remains to be seen, but it’ll be increasingly hard for Mr. Obama to
sidestep the issue this week, and in the ones ahead.
Muddying the waters in Ukraine
By Bridget Kendall
Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News 14 April 2014

For weeks the Kiev authorities have feared a possible Russian invasion. And Western
powers have warned Moscow to pull back its massed troops from near the Ukrainian
border or else.

But now the crisis has come, instead of Russian tanks rolling into eastern Ukraine, it
has turned out to be something more insidious and less clear-cut.

Many of the most recent groups seizing buildings and setting up roadblocks in the east
of the country have looked well organized and professional.

Journalists on the scene have reported that those involved are often masked, or in
identical uniforms, or carrying arms they seem prepared to use.

Sometimes they've arrived together by bus. Sometimes they've been seen giving or
taking orders, and then disappearing. Some have had distinctly Russian accents.

Certainly among them there are disenchanted locals. But the ringleaders, those
instigating the most serious acts of defiance, have looked suspiciously like specially
trained forces, sent in deliberately to stir up unrest and challenge Kiev's ability to
maintain control.

Shifting the blame

Russian officials, of course, dismiss out of hand any Moscow involvement and insist
this is a grassroots protest by locals, desperate to preserve their region's close ties to
Russia and fed up with what they see as an illegal government in Kiev.

The recent uprisings, goes the argument, were not ordered by Moscow, but are simply
the result of locals taking matters into their own hands "out of despair".

No wonder Russian officials repeatedly insisted there were no plans to "send Russian
troops across the border".

President Putin does not want to bear responsibility for starting a war.

Instead, as his Foreign Ministry on Sunday night made clear, he wants the Kiev
government to take the blame, either for failing to restore order, or for using the army
against its own people.

Either way, Moscow stands to win, calculating that a weakened Kiev may then be
forced to do what Moscow has been demanding all along: allow Ukraine's eastern
industrial belt to detach itself from central government and build instead closer ties with
Russia.

Elections and sanctions

So where is this crisis heading? Much will depend on what happens on the ground in
eastern Ukraine in the next few days. Given the fast pace with which events unrolled in
Crimea it's hard to predict what might happen next.
Clearly what Russia wants to avoid is a presidential election in Ukraine at the end of
May which manages to vote in a new president in a credible election with a mandate to
rule throughout the country.

So further destabilization before then seems likely, as will be calls to boycott the
election as the date draws closer.

Further afield, more Western sanctions against Russia are surely on the cards.

The US has already said as much, though getting a consensus from all 28 EU
members may prove more complicated when they are facing not a clear-cut Russian
invasion but a murkier meddling which is harder to prove.

In theory, current tensions could be eased at diplomatic talks already planned for
Thursday in Geneva.

They are supposed to bring together the US, the EU, Ukraine and Russia.

But if Russia sees no sign of Kiev being willing to give way on the crucial question of
devolution in eastern Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already
signalled he may not turn up.

More generally a slow divorce between Russia and the West is quietly underway.

Sanctions apart, individuals, companies and governments are already taking steps to
disengage: repatriating profits, cancelling orders, suspending bilateral co-operation and
readjusting plans for the future. The process is patchy.

Some East-West collaboration and contacts are unaffected.

But as the crisis in Ukraine deepens, the gap between the two sides widens, making it
ever harder to reverse.
Ukraine’s Defense Dilemma
Judy Dempsey, Nonresident Senior Associate Carnegie Europe | Monday, April 14,
2014

Just days before U.S., EU, Ukrainian, and Russian diplomats meet in Geneva to
discuss the crisis in Ukraine, pro-Russian militiamen are rushing to establish facts on
the ground in Eastern parts of the country. Their actions are creating a hugely difficult
dilemma for Kiev.

On April 12 in the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, close to the Russian border,
well-armed pro-Russian gunmen seized government buildings and police stations.
They also set up barricades in the towns, with little resistance from the local security
forces.

The men then tore down the Ukrainian flag, hoisted the Russian one, and read out a
declaration of independence, following the template of separatists in the Crimean
peninsula. There is little doubt that the Kremlin is behind some of these militias as it
tries to destabilize Ukraine before the country votes for a new president in May. “This
instability was written and choreographed in and by Russia,” said Samantha Power,
U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

But by April 13, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov had clearly had enough. He
deployed special forces under the command of the interior and defense ministries. The
attacks in the country’s East were “a display of external aggression from Russia,”
Avakov said.

Indeed, Russia has maneuvered its neighbor into a dangerous no-win situation. If the
Ukrainian authorities had continued doing nothing, Russia would have accused them of
failing to restore order and defend the Russian minority in Eastern Ukraine (as if
Russians hadn’t provoked the violence in the first place). In that case, Russia might
have engineered an “invitation” to enter Ukraine and protect the ethnic Russians.

Yet now that the Ukrainian government is trying to defend the country’s integrity and
end the violence, Moscow will accuse Kiev of threatening or even attacking the ethnic
Russians in Eastern Ukraine. Again, the next step could be for Russia to be “invited” to
send help.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is eager to exploit Kiev’s dilemma. “Ukraine
was demonstrating its inability to take responsibility for the fate of the country,” he said.
At the same time, Lavrov warned that any use of force against Russian speakers
“would undermine the potential for cooperation,” including during the talks in Geneva,
scheduled for April 17.

In parallel to its provocations on the ground, Russia has already mapped out its plans
for Ukraine. It wants a federal model for the country. That would reduce the role of the
central authorities and give the regions more autonomy in a way that Moscow could
exploit at Kiev’s expense.

Russia also wants Ukraine to remain neutral, which would prevent the country from
joining NATO. Russia, in short, is insisting on telling another country how it should be
governed and what political direction it should take.

It is well known that several European countries, including Germany, do not want
Ukraine to join NATO. Nevertheless, it is staggering and shameful to see how
European countries are allowing Russia to set Ukraine’s security and political agenda.
NATO, for its part, has taken an unusually robust stance by openly criticizing the
Kremlin. It has rushed to bolster the defenses of its Eastern European members, while
also pledging to help train Ukraine’s armed forces.

Ukraine, NATO, and the EU do not want a military confrontation with Russia. But nor
does Ukraine want to see further parts of its territory brought under Russian control.
That is exactly what Ukraine’s acting President Oleksandr Turchynov said on April 13,
when he stated that he would not allow a repetition of what happened in Crimea.

As it is, Ukraine and the West have ceded Crimea to Russia. That must surely have
boosted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s confidence to try and grab further bits of
Ukraine.

With Crimea signed away, the West has to find ways to defend the rest of Ukraine. As
difficult as that may be and as much as European countries fear the cost of serious
economic sanctions, there is no choice. Europe’s governments, already wobbly over
Ukraine, cannot allow Russia to reshape borders as it wants. Ultimately, this is about
Europe making a choice: defending democracy, security, and borders, or giving in to
Putin’s brand of politics.
Ukraine crisis: Big test for Europe
Gavin Hewitt, Europe editor BBC News 14 April 2014

For Europe these spring days may prove to be a defining moment. Its protests over
Russian action in Ukraine have gone unheeded. Its pleas have been disregarded. In
recent weeks its hand in the crisis has only weakened.

Europe's foreign ministers meet on Monday in Luxembourg. They are in danger of

losing the ability to influence events.

At stake is not just the risk of a descent into civil war in Ukraine, but whether the
European Union can demonstrate unity, determination and resolve.

Over recent days a scenario has unfolded in Eastern Ukraine. It is familiar in its design
and execution.

Police stations and buildings in several Ukrainian cities have been occupied by pro-
Russian protesters, many of them armed.

According to reports, some of the men carry specialised Russian weapons and, as in
Crimea, some wore identical uniforms without insignia.

There is no evidence that Russian forces in a conventional sense have crossed the
border, but Nato believes that "Russian forces have been involved in seizure of some
of the buildings".

US officials in Washington believe it is an operation straight out of the Kremlin

playbook, describing "a concerted campaign by forces with Russian support to
undermine the authorities in Kiev".

The US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Powers, has said the events "bear the tell-
tale signs of Moscow's involvement".

Stepping up sanctions

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said he had no doubt the attacks in Sloviansk had
been orchestrated by Moscow, but generally the Europeans have been much more
cautious in pointing a finger at Russia.

The United States says it is prepared to intensify sanctions. Secretary of State John
Kerry has warned of "additional consequences". The Americans say that the energy,
banking and mining sectors could be on the table for sanctions.

If the EU agrees with the United States and Nato that Russia is involved in the seizure
of buildings in Eastern Ukraine then the question arises as to whether Europe moves to
what it calls Phase Three - implementing much more serious economic and trade
sanctions against Russia.

This is a hugely sensitive decision for the EU, which is likely to expose underlying
divisions.

In particular this will prove a test for Germany and its pivotal position within the EU.

The message coming out of Berlin is of a political class ambivalent about Moscow's
actions in Ukraine.
When the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt said that President Putin's
actions were "understandable" and that sanctions were "nonsense" he was not alone in
his views. Germany's business barons have been lining up to argue against meaningful
sanctions.

If the EU fails to take further action against Russia it leaves in place the fact that
Crimea's future was settled by force and that the political landscape of Eastern Ukraine
might well, too, be settled by the threat of Russian military action.

Only a few months ago the protesters in Independence Square in Kiev - the Maidan -
were encouraged and supported by EU officials. What that means now is far less clear.

The Russians are playing on Europe's vulnerabilities. Moscow has said it may be
forced to sever gas deliveries to Ukraine unless it settles outstanding debts and that, of
course, threatens Europe's gas supplies.

If the government in Kiev acts to end the occupation of buildings then Moscow may use
it as a pretext to intervene.

The pro-Russian forces have been told by the government in Kiev to disarm or face a
"full-scale anti-terrorist operation".

That of course could trigger a military intervention by Russia. Already Russia has put
the onus for preventing that on the West, by insisting that it gets its allies in Kiev to
back down.

The Russian plan seems to be to turn Ukraine into a federation with pro-Russian
governors in the east and south. It does not have to annexe those regions to effectively
control them.

It would leave Ukraine a broken state, unable to move closer to the EU or Nato, which
is precisely what Moscow wants. Russia would have an effective veto over the future of
the country.

Russia's vulnerability is its economy. Europe can squeeze the Russian economy, but
only if it is willing to take some economic damage itself and that seems very uncertain.
A Secret Fight over Russia in the Obama
Administration
By WILLIAM KRISTOL Weekly Standard | 9:49 PM, Apr 13, 2014

The Obama administration has scheduled a deputies committee meeting this week—
tentatively set for Tuesday—to resolve a bitter inter-agency dispute over a request from
Russia with respect to the Open Skies program. Informed sources believe the White
House is likely to side with the State Department, which wants to accommodate
Russia, over the objections of the Obama administration's Defense Department and
intelligence agencies.

The Open Skies treaty allows the United States and Russia to fly over each other's
territory with planes loaded with certain agreed-upon sensor packages, in order to
ensure compliance with arms control agreements and to provide assurance against
preparations for various military surprises. Russia has asked the U.S. to agree to an
upgrade in the sensor package their planes can carry. (Obviously, the exact nature of
these sensor packages and the proposed upgrades is highly classified.) The request
would apparently result in a significant increase in Russian spying capabilities; the first
response from Pentagon was, according to one government official close to the
situation, "You've got to be kidding." But the State Department has been making the
case for acceding to the Russians' demands, and the White House seems to be on
State's side. The White House has also stonewalled requests for information from the
congressional intelligence committees.

House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers is apparently so concerned that he

sent the president an unusual public letter Friday. Here's the press release:

HPSCI Chairman Mike Rogers Urges President Obama to Reject President Putin’s
Attempt to Get a Clearer Look into US and NATO Countries

House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Chairman Mike Rogers

today urged President Obama to reject a request by President Putin to upgrade
Russia’s technical capability for observational flights of US and NATO counties by
airplane.

The United States, NATO, and Russia in 1992 signed the Open Skies Treaty. The
Treaty allows the parties to conduct specific, numbered, and targeted observational
airplane flights over each other’s countries. Any changes to the very specific
guidelines in the Treaty must be certified by all parties before they can be used.

In a letter sent to President Obama today, Chairman Rogers wrote, “Given current
world events, President Putin appears to be more than willing to disregard
international norms of behavior in seeking geopolitical advantage. We should not now
naively believe he will unilaterally adhere to the limitations of the Open Skies Treaty.”

Rogers said, “Putin’s attempt to upgrade Russia’s sensing capabilities now is

particularly problematic. I have serious concerns about the technical advantages
Russia would gain.”

One source close to Rogers confirms that Rogers wouldn't have written such a letter
unless the intelligence community was "very alarmed" by what seemed to be the likely
White House decision.
Meanwhile, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained the text of a letter from a
bipartisan group of senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee—addressed,
interestingly, to Secretary of State Kerry, whose department has been pushing the
agreement.

The Honorable John F. Kerry Secretary of State Department of State Washington,

DC 20521

Dear Mr. Secretary,

In the past few years, the Russian Federation completed construction of two new
Open Skies aircraft that will support digital photograph equipment, sideways-looking
synthetic aperture radar, and infrared equipment. As you know, state parties to the
Open Skies Treaty must certify any new aircraft before it can be used for treaty
observation flights.

We understand that an upcoming Deputies Committee meeting will address the

question of Russian certification. We strongly urge you to carefully evaluate the
ramifications of certification on future Open Skies observation flights and consider the
equities of key U.S. Government stakeholders.

The invasion of Crimea and Moscow’s ongoing efforts to destabilize Ukraine using
subversive methods in sufficient enough to counsel further review, irrespective of any
technical concerns that may exist.

Thank you in advance for your attention to this important and timely manner.

Sincerely,

Dan Coats
Mark W. Warner
James E. Risch
Martin Heinrich

Will President Obama overrule his own defense and intelligence officials in order
to placate Vladimir Putin's Russia?
Russian Fiction the Sequel: 10 More False
Claims About Ukraine
US Dept of State | Office of the Spokesperson | Washington, DC
April 13, 2014

“No amount of propaganda can make right something that the world knows is wrong.”
– President Obama, March 26

Russia continues to spin a false and dangerous narrative to justify its illegal actions in
Ukraine. The Russian propaganda machine continues to promote hate speech and
incite violence by creating a false threat in Ukraine that does not exist. We would not
be seeing the violence and sad events that we've witnessed this weekend without this
relentless stream of disinformation and Russian provocateurs fostering unrest in
eastern Ukraine. Here are 10 more false claims Russia is using to justify intervention in
Ukraine, with the facts that these assertions ignore or distort.

1. Russia Claims: Russian agents are not active in Ukraine.

Fact: The Ukrainian Government has arrested more than a dozen suspected Russian
intelligence agents in recent weeks, many of whom were armed at the time of arrest. In
the first week of April 2014, the Government of Ukraine had information that Russian
GRU officers were providing individuals in Kharkiv and Donetsk with advice and
instructions on conducting protests, capturing and holding government buildings,
seizing weapons from the government buildings’ armories, and redeploying for other
violent actions. On April 12, armed pro-Russian militants seized government buildings
in a coordinated and professional operation conducted in six cities in eastern Ukraine.
Many were outfitted in bullet-proof vests, camouflage uniforms with insignia removed,
and carrying Russian-designed weapons like AK-74s and Dragunovs. These armed
units, some wearing black and orange St. George’s ribbons associated with Russian
Victory Day celebrations, raised Russian and separatist flags over seized buildings and
have called for referendums on secession and union with Russia. These operations are
strikingly similar to those used against Ukrainian facilities during Russia’s illegal military
intervention in Crimea in late February and its subsequent occupation.

2. Russia Claims: Pro-Russia demonstrations are comprised exclusively of

Ukrainian citizens acting of their own volition, like the Maidan movement in Kyiv.

Fact: This is not the grassroots Ukrainian civic activism of the EuroMaidan movement,
which grew from a handful of student protestors to hundreds of thousands of
Ukrainians from all parts of the country and all walks of life. Russian internet sites
openly are recruiting volunteers to travel from Russia to Ukraine and incite violence.
There is evidence that many of these so-called “protesters” are paid for their
participation in the violence and unrest. It is clear that these incidents are not
spontaneous events, but rather part of a well-orchestrated Russian campaign of
incitement, separatism, and sabotage of the Ukrainian state. Ukrainian authorities
continue to arrest highly trained and well-equipped Russian provocateurs operating
across the region.

3. Russia Claims: Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine enjoy broad popular

support.

Fact: The recent demonstrations in eastern Ukraine are not organic and lack wide
support in the region. A large majority of Donetsk residents (65.7 percent) want to live
in a united Ukraine and reject unification with Russia, according to public opinion polls
conducted at the end of March by the Donetsk-based Institute of Social Research and
Policy Analysis. Pro-Russian demonstrations in eastern Ukraine have been modest in
size, especially compared with Maidan protests in these same cities in December, and
they have gotten smaller as time has progressed.

4. Russia Claims: The situation in eastern Ukraine risks spiraling into civil war.

Fact: What is going on in eastern Ukraine would not be happening without Russian
disinformation and provocateurs fostering unrest. It would not be happening if a large
Russian military force were not massed on the border, destabilizing the situation
through their overtly threatening presence. There simply have not been large-scale
protests in the region. A small number of separatists have seized several government
buildings in eastern cities like Donetsk, Luhansk, and Slovyansk, but they have failed to
attract any significant popular support. Ukrainian authorities have shown remarkable
restraint in their efforts to resolve the situation and only acted when provoked by armed
militants and public safety was put at risk. Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) observers have reported that these incidents are very localized.

5. Russia Claims: Ukrainians in Donetsk rejected the illegitimate authorities in

Kyiv and established the independent “People’s Republic of Donetsk.”

Fact: A broad and representative collection of civil society and non-governmental

organizations in Donetsk categorically rejected the declaration of a “People’s Republic
of Donetsk” by the small number of separatists occupying the regional administration
building. These same organizations confirmed their support for the interim government
and for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

6. Russia Claims: Russia ordered a “partial drawdown” of troops from the

Ukrainian border.

Fact: No evidence shows significant movement of Russian forces away from the
Ukrainian border. One battalion is not enough. An estimated 35,000-40,000 Russian
troops remain massed along the border, in addition to approximately 25,000 troops
currently in Crimea.

7. Russia Claims: Ethnic Russians in Ukraine are under threat.

Fact: There are no credible reports of ethnic Russians facing threats in Ukraine. An
International Republican Institute poll released April 5 found that 74 percent of the
Russian-speaking population in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine said they
“were not under pressure or threat because of their language.” Meanwhile, in Crimea,
the OSCE has raised urgent concerns for the safety of minority populations, especially
ethnic Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars, and others. Sadly, the ethnic Russians most at risk
are those who live in Russia and who oppose the authoritarian Putin regime. These
Russians are harassed constantly and face years of imprisonment for speaking out
against Putin’s regular abuses of power.

8. Russia Claims: Ukraine’s new government is led by radical nationalists and

fascists.

Fact: The Ukrainian parliament (Rada) did not change in February. It is the same Rada
that was elected by all Ukrainians, comprising all of the parties that existed prior to
February’s events, including former president Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. The new
government, approved by an overwhelming majority in the parliament -- including many
members of Yanukovych’s former party -- is committed to protecting the rights of all
Ukrainians, including those in Crimea.
9. Russia Claims: Ethnic minorities face persecution in Ukraine from the
“fascist” government in Kyiv.

Fact: Leaders of Ukraine’s Jewish as well as German, Czech, and Hungarian

communities have all publicly expressed their sense of safety under the new authorities
in Kyiv. Moreover, many minority groups expressed fear of persecution in Russian-
occupied Crimea, a concern OSCE observers in Ukraine have substantiated.

10. Russia Claims: Russia is not using energy and trade as weapons against
Ukraine.

Fact: Following Russia’s illegal annexation and occupation of Crimea, Russia raised
the price Ukraine pays for natural gas by 80 percent in the past two weeks. In addition,
it is seeking more than $11 billion in back payments following its abrogation of the 2010
Kharkiv accords. Russia’s moves threaten to increase severely the economic pain
faced by Ukrainian citizens and businesses. Additionally, Russia continues to restrict
Ukrainian exports to Russia, which constitute a significant portion of Ukraine’s export
economy.

[ Note by interpretermag.com :

“The State Department is no longer operating as if they are afraid of alienating Russia.
And why should they? There aren't many observers of this situation who believe that
there is any more good will between the US government and the Russian one, and so
the US State Department can afford to be less-than-diplomatic because it has nothing
to lose.

But because it has nothing to lose, it's not clear how harsh rhetoric alone, or even a
careful debunking of Kremlin lies, will impact Russia's decisions. Earlier, the State
Department spokesperson said that there would be costs to Russia's actions. So far,
nobody is saying what those costs will be, or just how high a price Putin will have to
pay for his actions in eastern Ukraine.”

well, mr Barack was obviously playing golf in the w/e & had no time to think it over yet ]
Sofi Oksanen: don’t deceive us again
Postimees in English | 31.03.2014

About the Baltic States, the world knows precious little – as also about Ukraine.
Therefore, Russia’s agenda of questioning self-determination isn’t a task too
impossible, thinks writer Sofi Oksanen.

Every morning, I wake up wondering if this is the day that Eastern-Europe is sold,
again. Checking the telephone and seeing it contains no alarming messages – no good
ones, either – I start the computer and scan the news headlines, all the while thinking if
this will be the day, or perhaps tomorrow. The day the news of which I could only sense
by focussing my mind on my own reactions and these of the world, as it is a writer’s
obligation to remember the moments that the pages of history are turned. The new
times are already here. The interlude between the cold wars (1989–2014) is over.

By word and deed, Russia has assured us it wants to restore her imperial glory. The
interlude was just an anomaly, meaning a loss in the war. A defeat, the results of which
need to be fixed. The Brezhnev doctrine is updated into the Putin doctrine. Russia
thinks it justified to intervene in the matters of independent states, if these are too much
turning towards the West, and if Russia thinks these states belong to her sphere of
influence.

At this very moment, a law is being shaped in the Russian Duma which would make it
possible to annex lands formerly occupied by the Soviet Union to Russia. In Eastern-
Europe and the Baltics, people are wondering whether their hopes in the West have
been in vain. The West has not made good its promises to protect integrity of borders
of countries formerly under Russian power; turns out, Ukraine had no business
surrendering her nuclear weapons under the Budapest Treaty. Ukraine made a
mistake, hoping in the West – the West, which, over these past decades has not cared
for the Eastern-Europe except for its cheap labour and production costs.

The backlash by the broke empire had already started, as Putin proclaimed the
collapse of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe if the 20th century.
To fix that, among other things history is being taught correspondingly, its renewal
explained with geopolitical interests. The aim of the historic narrative is to revive in
Russians the national pride and to underline that the Russian Empire has had a
favourable meaning for its peoples.

Former colonies beg to differ, but in the new treatment of history, facts and feelings
play no role. There is no objective history, they say. All there is are ideological models,
to be used to erect a patriotic firewall of Russian attitudes.

During all these years, the West has, in a friendly way, clapped hands at speeches by
Putin on «development of Russian democracy». By Putin personally, the societal
model has been defined as a «managed (guided) democracy». That’s no democracy;
even so, the West took it as such, as the other euphemisms used by FSB aimed at
placating the West, while the Kremlin clique was preparing for a brave new Putin world.
The Soviet Union was rehabilitated. Becoming a journalist became a new type of
suicide. As early as in 2012, Putin’s bunch begun to repatriate assets from the West, to
ensure the heart of the power be independent. The West, meanwhile, was having a
nice siesta.
 The basis of European Union is trying to learn something from our histories. The
Eurasian Union, promoted by the Putin clique, is its antipode. It’s built on choice pieces
of Stalinism and National Socialism, the propaganda doctrine of which is still being
followed. That form of seizing power also has an inexhaustible budget. The English
language TV-channel Russia Today was set before the Kremlin propaganda cart in
2005, its annual budget exceeding $300m. As its programme looks like news, people
believe that’s what it is; all the while, RT’s chief aim is enhancing hatred towards the
West, as testified by the channel’s former employees. Only during the Ukrainian crisis
has the propaganda become so blatant that no attempts are made to make it more
palatable for the West as before. That’s one remarkable change.

Western journalists are used to articles striving to present views of opposing parties
being a drive towards the truth. That’s a wrong approach when one party is plainly
lying. By thus acting, sadly the Western media is ratifying the very messages produced
by the Moscow clique – hoping for these to be repeated by Western media.

Information war is the essence of the Kremlin power, being the cheapest means to
wage war and to conquer lands without opening fire from its tanks. Intimidation,
provocations, projection and propaganda – this is what Kremlin excels at. With these
weapons, occupation has always been justified. Justified to own citizens, and to
foreigners. As also today.

The illegal annexation of Crimean to Russia carries a grand symbolic meaning: this is
the first territory, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, grabbed from another
independent state and added to Russia. It is also a test, by which the Kremlin is finding
out about the West’s pain thresholds and morale – will the West dare to stand for its
promises, or will the West once again deceive its citizens.

Welding the Crimean peninsula, legally Ukraine’s, into Russia, went easy. The
invasion cost no victims for Russia; it brought no Mothers of soldiers to the streets.
And, for the West, a narrative was successfully created, according to which the
conquest of Crimea was actually understandable seeing a large part of the people
there spoke Russian. Most of them have come to Crimea as the result of deportations
by Stalin, the shifting about of nations in order to Russify the colonies. Such areas
abound in Eastern-Europe. Now, the Putin clique is using these people in its interests.
The native Tatars in Crimea, who experiences Stalin’s population policy culminating in
genocide, have actually already been forgotten. At the time of this writing, In Crimea
the home doors of Tatars are being marked. Sound familiar?

For quite a long time already, Russia is tried to ridicule the Baltic right to
independence. As early as in 2008, Putin called Ukraine an artificial state. The strategy
isn’t new – this is how Hitler looked at Austria, in the 1930ies. Russia has hoisted a
question mark over Ukraine’s right for integrity of its borders, by crafty lies they’ve
presented Ukraine as Russians’ state just as an image was created of Austria as a
Germans’ state i.e. a territory belonging to Germany.

The same kind of rhetoric, The Baltics have had to hear from Russia for a long time
now. About the Baltic States, the world knows precious little – as also about Ukraine.
Therefore, Russia’s agenda of questioning self-determination isn’t a task all that
impossible. Russia awakened her sleeping agents in time. Over the years, the Russian
so-called media has managed to write of concentration camps created in Estonia for
Russians (a lie dating 2007). In the mind of the Kremlin, Finland also historically
belongs to Russia. And: in a Finnish hotel, children are being stolen from Russian
tourists (a lie dating 2013).

With stuff like that blasted over the air, year in year out, now wonder that large masses
develop a suspicion towards the Western nations. And that’s exactly what it’s aimed at.
Thus, emotionally people are mobilised for war, and nationalities formerly on friendly
terms are turned against one another. To stay popular, Putin’s clique needs artificial
enemies. It is needed to hang on to riches amassed by unjust means; as, losing power
would minimally mean the uncovering of assets obtained by corruption. As happened
to the dethroned Ukrainian president Yanukovych.

Currently, management of Russia is concentrated in the hands of a small group, the

figurehead of which is Putin – the richest man in Europe and Russia. The clique’s
education differs from the background of European politicians. The training of Putin’s
clique comes straight from KGB and FSB. In the Russian hierarchy of power, there’s
no-one higher than they. During the Soviet Union, at least the party controlled the KGB.

Should anybody still believe that the compatriots’ policy pursued by Russia is indeed
motivated by a sincere concern for how Russians fare outside the motherland borders,
it’s time for a little reality check and remember how Hitler made use of ethnic Germans
for his own interests. Anybody that’s been to Russia knows how little Russians are
cared about in Russia.

In the Kremlin, they do not like colourful revolutions; rather, they sneak corrupt
Moscow-minded people into the governments of corrupt countries. While at power,
Yanukovych managed to arrest historians researching Soviet era crimes, and to
publish an approving view on Holodomor – genocide organised by Soviet power. The
programme included restrictions on freedom of speech and any-gay propaganda.
Yanukovych did the things a Moscow-minded leader was supposed to do. The people
told him «no» and spoiled Putin’s long-term plan for quiet annexation of Ukraine to
Russia.

Now, it’s West’s turn to say «no» to Russia’s goal to expand her power outside her
borders. This cannot be done by diplomatic dialogue. A state, lying purposefully and
continuously, can in no way be a partner in discussions. Russia has already shown that
by playing diplomacy, they are only buying time to transport the heavier weapons to the
borders.

In the West, they have tried to understand Kremlin’s actions; even so, why bother to
understand colonialism. Would we understand should Elisabeth II up and declare she
wants to restore the British colonial empire in its maximal historic borders?

Should we try to understand if Ms Merkel the chancellor should threaten to

restore Germany at its Hitler era heights? What if the German TV should air
programmes where soft toys are preparing for war? What if Germany were lead
by people educated at the Gestapo? How would it feel if, in the minds of the
Germans, Hitler would be a greatest hero in their history, like Stalin is in Russia?
What if Germany would claim that Europe (Gayrope, as they say in Russia) is
governed by a homosexual conspiracy, as is claimed in Russian propaganda?
Does anybody remember: who was it that said that Western decline was caused
by Jewish conspiracy?

Nobody would stand stuff like that. All would understand that tolerance of such
developments would be impossible indeed to explain to grand-children.
Perils Of Empire: Five Ways Putin Hurt
Russia By Grabbing Crimea
Loren Thompson, Contributor | Forbes | Washington | 4/11/2014

Russia shouldn’t be picking a fight with anybody. Its economy is less than a tenth the
size of the combined U.S. and European Union totals. Its population is smaller than
Nigeria’s or Bangladesh’s. It has one of the lowest birth-rates and highest death-rates
in the world (Russian men on average live only 64 years). Its political system, like its
military, is riddled with corruption.

And yet pick a fight it did, annexing the Ukrainian province of Crimea in what amounts
to the first forcible change of European borders in two generations. So now the
Russian people will have to pay the price for Vladimir Putin’s dreams of regional
hegemony. Although Putin’s land-grab in Crimea is winning rave notices at home,
evidence of damage to Russia’s global standing will become increasingly hard to
ignore. Here are five ways in which the Crimean adventure is hurting Russia.

1. A weak economy grows weaker. The International Monetary Fund this month
lowered its projection of Russian economic growth in the year ahead from 2% to 1.3%,
saying “the fallout from emerging market financial turbulence and geopolitical tensions
relating to Ukraine are headwinds on the back of already weak activity.” The IMF
warns that a cycle of sanctions and counter-sanctions arising out of the Crimea crisis
could spread economic “contagion” in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet
Union. Tim Fernholz points out at the Quartz web-site that Russia’s stock-market is
way down, the ruble is steadily depreciating against the dollar, and capital is flowing out
of the country at an accelerated pace.

2. Europe seeks alternatives to Russian gas. Since the manufacturing and service
sectors of the Russian economy are not competitive by global standards, Moscow is
heavily dependent on the export of commodities, especially gas and oil, to generate
hard currency. Europe gets 30% of its natural gas from Russia, but after seeing Putin
use the threat of supply cutoffs for political leverage in the past, Europeans now fear
they will be vulnerable unless they find other sources of energy. With vast untapped
gas reserves of their own, countries like Britain and Germany are taking a renewed
interest in fracking. Meanwhile, U.S. companies are moving to export more of
America’s gas to Europe. Eventually, Russia will either lose market share or have to
cut prices.

3. U.S. military planners rediscover Europe. When the Obama Administration

unveiled a new defense strategy in January of 2012 stating that America’s military
posture in Europe must “evolve,” it didn’t take a code-breaker to figure out what that
meant. U.S. forces on the continent, already reduced by three-quarters since the Cold
War ended, would be shrinking further as Washington’s security focus shifted to East
Asia. Putin’s Crimea incursion has forced a re-think of the assumptions underpinning
that plan, and now the likelihood is that the U.S. military presence in Europe will
increase — especially in the countries and bodies of water immediately adjacent to
Russia, where Washington thinks deterrence needs to be strengthened.

4. Modernization of U.S. nuclear forces becomes more likely. President Obama is

a long-time proponent of nuclear disarmament. His presidency has not seen a single
new nuclear warhead built, and funding for defense against nuclear attack has been
minimal — less than 5% of the Pentagon budget. But White House hopes that nuclear
arsenals could be pared to barely a thousand warheads on each side were dashed by
annexation of Crimea, because now policymakers have to worry about Moscow’s
intentions and how nuclear weapons might be used to blackmail the West. The threat
of escalating regional tensions also has bolstered the case for theater and strategic
missile defenses. Moscow now faces the prospect of a revitalized U.S. nuclear force
far more capable than its own.

5. NATO experiences a renewed sense of solidarity. My Lexington Institute

colleague Dan Goure wrote a clever essay this week about how “Dr.” Putin has
accomplished the medical miracle of breathing new life into a moribund North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. As Dan put it, “Vladimir Putin appears to have done more for
alliance solidarity than two decades of harangues by U.S. officials.” He’s right. The
main glue holding the Atlantic Alliance together since its formation in 1949 was always
the threat of Russian aggression, so when that danger receded so did the sense of
shared purpose among member states. The Crimea crisis has sparked a renewed
round of commitments to collective security, with the prospect of troops being deployed
to newer member-states right on Russia’s borders.

Chances are Putin didn’t think most of this through before kicking off his campaign in
Crimea. When you’re surrounded by sycophants and don’t use the Internet, it’s easy to
misjudge situations involving other countries. Putin probably thought Crimea was so
small, and so close to home, that the Western response would be relatively mild.
Instead, he has spawned a sea change in the perceptions of Western nations that
will harm Russia’s economy, security and global influence for many years to
come. Some observers may think that the Western response to date actually has
been mild, but there is more to come and Russians are beginning to grasp just how
vulnerable they are to the displeasure of other nations.
DOD Official: Russia’s Actions Could
Reshape Transatlantic Alliance
By Amaani Lyle, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 11, 2014 – A senior Defense Department official has told
Congress Russia’s annexation of Crimea will affect and perhaps even reshape the
NATO alliance.

Derek Chollet, assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs made
the comments during testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services
Committee.

“Given the Russian Federation’s illegal actions in Crimea, our focus has shifted to the
immediate question of how this crisis will reshape the transatlantic alliance, the
upcoming summit and, more broadly speaking, NATO as a whole,” he said.

He recalled that after Russia’s invasion, United States took prompt steps to provide
reassurance to NATO allies and partners in Central and Eastern Europe.

“We augmented NATO’s peacetime Baltic air policing mission by deploying six
additional F-15s,” he said, adding, “We deployed 12 F-16s and approximately 200
support personnel to Lask, Poland, to supplement the U.S.- Poland Aviation
Detachment training rotation.”

Chollet also noted the extension of the USS TRUXTUN’s stay in the Black Sea
through March 21 to conduct exercises with Romanian and Bulgarian naval forces, as
well as plans to launch the USS DONALD COOK from its new homeport in Rota,
Spain, to the Black Sea to further build interoperability with allies and partners in the
region.

“The United States wants to ensure a continuous, augmented presence along NATO’s
borders at least through the end of the year that draws on the different capabilities of
NATO in the air, on the ground, and at sea to reassure our allies and demonstrate our
commitment to European security,” Chollet said.

Chollet also noted the U.S. is taking action to reassure the Ukrainian government by
conducting an Open Skies observation mission over Ukrainian territory.

Senior defense officials recently traveled to Kiev for talks with their Ukrainian
counterparts. “Although part of the discussions addressed Crimea and the buildup of
Russian forces at the border, the majority of the discussion was spent on mid- and
long-term bilateral defense cooperation.”

Russia’s actions, he said, have also increased the direct threat to other non-allied
partners in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, particularly Moldova and Georgia.

“The administration is already exploring ways to support these important partners,” he

said. “The U.S. government has tools at its disposal to contribute to this support effort,
including security assistance resources, senior leader engagement, and defense
cooperation activities.”

Overall, Chollet maintained that Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge the idea of a
Europe whole, free, and at peace. “It changes Europe’s security landscape, and in
doing so reinforces the importance of our bilateral defense relationships with European
partners and within NATO.”
Russia Is Outmanned and Outgunned
NATO can easily field a military far superior to Russia's.
The U.S. can take comfort in its European military presence to deter Russia.
By David Shlapak | US News | April 9, 2014

Russia’s occupation of Crimea has created new interest in an issue that was once at
the heart of U.S. security policy but has been on hiatus for more than 20 years — the
military balance in Europe. The American military presence in Europe has declined
precipitously, and its NATO allies universally have slashed the sizes of their defense
establishments. This has led to some concerns that the West’s ability to deter Russia is
weaker, even far weaker, than it was during the Cold War.

The truth is actually quite the opposite: Despite the smaller number of U.S. troops in
Europe, the military balance there is far more favorable to NATO today than it was
when nearly 10 times as many American soldiers, sailors and airmen were stationed on
the continent. The reason for this is simple and obvious: the disastrous — from
Moscow’s point of view — revision of the overall European security environment that
began in the early 1990s.

With unrest continuing in Ukraine, the West can take some comfort in its modern day
military advantage over Russia in Europe. And though numbers alone may not deter
Russia from further adventurism, the shift in the balance of forces has been remarkable
over the past two decades.

According to the International Institute of Strategic Studies’ "Military Balance"

publication — a widely-used and well-respected unclassified compendium of
information about the world’s armed forces — in 1989, just before the collapse of the
Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union deployed a total of 64 divisions in what was then known
as its “Western Theater of Military Operations.” These are the Russian forces that
would have been hurled at NATO in an attack on Western Europe. They would have
been reinforced by another 700,000 troops from the USSR’s three frontline Warsaw
Pact allies, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In all, more than 100 divisions
would have been available for a drive into West Germany and beyond. The six
countries committed to defending NATO’s front lines — West Germany, the United
States, Great Britain, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands — meanwhile deployed
only 21 or so divisions in Germany. While NATO divisions were generally somewhat
larger than their Warsaw Pact counterparts and reinforcement would have been
forthcoming from the United States, the disparity along the East-West frontier was
nonetheless huge.

Consider the situation today. East Germany no longer exists, while Poland, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia and every one of Russia’s other erstwhile Warsaw Pact partners are
now members of NATO. So are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which in 1989 were
parts of the Soviet Union itself. In 1989, the Red Army had almost a half-million troops
and 27 maneuver divisions (plus enormous quantities of artillery and other units) on the
territory of its three main allies. Today, it has a total of seven divisions in its entire
Western Military District, all of which are based on its own territory. Indeed, the entire
Russian army today boasts about 25 divisions, fewer than it had forward deployed in its
Eastern European allies during the waning days of the Cold War.

Today, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Germany alone field more divisions
than Russia has in its Western Military District. These countries are backstopped by the
rest of NATO, including, of course, the United States. And this raw count doesn’t take
into account the general deterioration of Russian forces since 1991, a quarter-century
that saw little equipment modernization. By the late 1980s, NATO already enjoyed a
significant qualitative advantage over the Warsaw Pact, and that edge has only
increased since then.

There are questions about the future of NATO’s defense posture. Budget reductions
among the European militaries are reducing their ability to conduct high-intensity
armored combat. After 13 years of counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, the
U.S. military must relearn the art of conventional warfare, and spending cuts
improvidently executed could hamper America’s ability to respond rapidly and
effectively to a crisis along the alliance’s border with Russia. There are no guarantees
in international security. But whatever weaknesses NATO may possess must be
assessed in context with the severe limitations of Russian military power.

Yes, the United States has many fewer forces in Europe than it did in 1989. But
Russia has none, its allies have all switched sides, and its military is but a shadow of
what it was 25 years ago. Russia’s seizure of Crimea is deeply problematic; it marks a
new low in post-Cold War East-West relations and could erode the stability of the
contemporary European order. When he examines the European balance of power,
Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly sees that the Russian army is
outgunned. This should help deter him from further aggression in the region; whether
or not it will is another question.

David A. Shlapak is a senior international policy analyst at the nonprofit, nonpartisan

RAND Corporation.
How US, NATO can best counter Putin's
Russia
By Franklin Miller Kori Schake | April 11, 2014 | ·FoxNews.com

The collective trans-Atlantic hope that Russia would move forward to enshrine
individual liberties, develop a diversified economy, protect its public from
criminal depredation, abide by the rule of law and establish government
accountability has been proven unrealistic.

Since the end of the Cold War, security for Western Europe has been premised and
organized on the assumption of a Westernizing Russia.

As the recent Crimean crisis has demonstrated, however, Russia in the Putin years has
become more authoritarian and more aggressive in trying to intimidate its neighbors.

America and its NATO allies should reconsider their collective defense choices.
European security is a serious proposition once again.

The collective trans-Atlantic hope that Russia would move forward to enshrine
individual liberties, develop a diversified economy, protect its public from criminal
depredation, abide by the rule of law and establish government accountability has been
proven unrealistic. And Putin is adroitly explaining Russia’s failure as rejection of those
values. The Russian leadership is peddling a narrative of grievance: Russian grandeur
denigrated by the West, and Russia returning to strength on its own.

NATO labored to build a cooperative relationship with Russia even as it expanded the
alliance over Russian objections.

NATO restrained itself, agreeing not to build bases or permanently station military
forces on the territory of new members, reducing its nuclear arsenal by 90 percent,
limiting military exercises both in size and type so that Russia would not seem to be the
threat or feel threatened.

One could even argue that the dramatic reductions in defense spending by most NATO
members have been a confidence-building measure.

Russia has not responded in kind to any of these initiatives. In fact, it has rejected all of
NATO’s overtures. It has not repositioned its forces away from NATO countries. It has
not reduced its bloated tactical nuclear weapons.

It has simulated nuclear attacks on NATO countries in large-scale military exercises

along NATO borders.

It has never allowed the treaty limiting conventional military forces to go fully into effect.
It has been increasing defense spending by 10 percent per year, resulting in a highly
capable military force. And it has been, in President Obama’s words, “behaving like a
19th century power.”

If “a Europe whole and free” – the peaceful and prosperous European order sought
after the end of the Cold War – is to be sustained, NATO allies need to take actions
that will prevent Russia from concluding that military force will achieve its aims.

If the Russian government insists on behaving like a 19th or 20th century imperialist
power, we must show that NATO cannot be coerced or bullied. Not only will bringing
military force into the equation re-establish our strength, but preventing the success of
Russia’s approach will discourage it as a model elsewhere.

NATO foreign ministers have now agreed to sever all civilian and military cooperation
with Russia. They have also directed NATO’s supreme allied commander to propose
measures that will reassure NATO allies most exposed to Russian intimidation. This
“reassurance package” will be most effective if it avoids symbolic gestures and
concentrates on practical means of demonstrating the shared burdens that
characterize NATO’s political and military unity.

The Alliance should reconsider its decision not to station military forces on the territory
of members admitted after 1991. This policy was always contingent on there being no
need to protect member states from Russia.

But Russia’s behavior has now justified more emphasis on our common defense, and
the best way to demonstrate our solidarity and strengthen Alliance defenses against
the kind of land grab Russia undertook against Crimea – and threatens anyplace
Russians live – would be to rotate multinational NATO units in allied countries that
border Russia.

Integrated multinational forces make manifest NATO’s creed of sharing the risks and
responsibilities of a common defense.

NATO countries already participate in multinational units tasked with deploying

throughout and beyond the NATO area. Command and participation rotate among
nations. These forces could be increased and the basing structure built (NATO even
has an infrastructure account for jointly funding priority common defense projects)
where the force could be deployed in the event of Russian threats or military buildups.
Ground forces have a particular resonance and should be given priority.

The United States could underscore its solidarity by halting its scheduled reductions of
troops stationed in Europe, including combat forces in military exercises (in which we
have previously limited participation to combat service support units), and rotating
forces to Europe more regularly than current budget choices make preferable for the
Army. Scheduling exercises that demonstrate the speed with which U.S. forces not
stationed in Europe can flow in would also be a useful reminder of our strength.

We should not undertake gestures that sound tough in Washington but are of little
value militarily.

For example, revising missile defense proposals is a bad idea, because the system
isn’t operationally capable of defending NATO members against Russian missiles and
because we will look the hypocrites, having long argued the shield was not intended to
deal with Russian systems.

NATO is perennially concerned about adequacy of defense spending; every few years
a new program is conjured to encourage greater defense spending by allies –
notwithstanding that defense spending is an input measure, not a gauge of whether a
nation’s efforts are strengthening the common defense.

These typically have little effect, and, given economic pressures, they would unlikely be
adopted uniformly now. Moreover, while additional resources would be welcome,
NATO allies ought not forget that spending is a relative, not an absolute, measure –
and compared to Russia, the West has significant advantages in resourcing.
Another allied policy Russian behavior occasions reconsidering is nuclear burden
sharing. NATO has a robust consensus on the role of nuclear weapons in its defense
strategy: They exist to deter any attack on our territory.

Deterrence is strengthened by widespread participation in the nuclear mission. Until

now, members that joined NATO after 1991 have not been operationally involved;
several of them seek to be, and the current distribution of responsibility is not
sacrosanct. Much more creativity could and should be employed participation in
NATO’s nuclear forces. We do not propose basing nuclear weapons in the newer
members of the Alliance, but we do believe the time has come to examine how pilots
from those nations might be integrated into NATO composite nuclear-roled squadrons,
and into where and how the Alliance’s civilian leadership engages in nuclear planning
and exercises.

France should definitely not continue delivery of ships to the Russian military. Members
will be understandably concerned about setting a precedent (will German automakers,
British bankers and American realtors also be compensated?).

Jeff Lightfoot’s suggestion that NATO purchase the amphibious command ships has
great merit, although we would advocate using NATO’s current cost-sharing formula
rather than leaning on the U.S. for the majority of funding.

We would take the idea even further, manning the ships with multinational crews and
stationing one in the Baltic and one in the Mediterranean.

Other useful reminders of the military strength of the Western alliance would be
increased maritime surveillance and operations in the Baltic Sea and approaches to the
Atlantic Ocean, earlier engagement of Russian aircraft approaching allied airspace and
military exercises with non-NATO allies on Russia’s periphery that share our concern
about Russian military moves.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine necessitates NATO bolstering its defenses to protect

our allies and to signal our seriousness of purpose to the Putin government. NATO has
numerous practical military measures it can undertake to strengthen the West: building
basing in NATO’s east, deploying multinational units routinely, temporarily suspending
reductions of U.S. forces stationed in Europe, expanding NATO’s military exercises
and increasing U.S. involvement in them, opening participation in NATO’s nuclear
deterrence to all its members, jointly buying and manning ships for stationing in the
Baltic and Mediterranean.

The Alliance ought to focus on such practical ways of showing our common purpose.

Franklin Miller served as a senior official in the Defense Department and on the NSC
staff during a 31 year government career.. Kori Schake is a fellow at the Hoover
Institution.
Waking Up to the Russian Threat
The head of NATO says Europe has misread Vladimir Putin for years and now
must scramble to push back against the Kremlin's widening ambitions.
By Sohrab Ahmari | Wall Street Journal | April 11, 2014 Brussels

Until recently, members of the Russian delegation to NATO were free to roam at will
about the Western alliance's headquarters here on the outskirts of the Belgian capital.
The Russians had an awkward habit of listening intently to others' conversations at the
cafeteria, yet their presence was tolerated in the name of dialogue.

Not anymore. In response to Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea, NATO earlier this
month suspended all practical cooperation with Moscow. Now most of the 70 or so
Russian personnel enjoy about the same level of access to the alliance headquarters
as journalists. It's a small but significant sign of what NATO Secretary-General Anders
Fogh Rasmussen calls "the new security environment" in Europe.

With his salt-and-pepper hair, chiseled jaw and crisply pressed navy suit, Mr.
Rasmussen, 61, cuts a handsome figure. The former Danish prime minister is also one
of Europe's most serious thinkers on defense matters—a hawkish figure, by European
standards, who supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite considerable
opposition at home. His term as NATO secretary-general, which began in 2009, was
supposed to come to a close in December but was extended through September 2014
so he might oversee preparations for the alliance's September summit in Cardiff,
Wales.

Mr. Rasmussen sits down with me in a meeting room decorated with solemn portraits
of his predecessors—men who led NATO through the Cold War and helped usher in "a
Europe whole and free," as then-President George H.W. Bush put it in a 1989 speech
commemorating the alliance's triumphant 40th anniversary.

Now that vision of Europe is imperiled once more. "I see Ukraine and Crimea in a
bigger context," Mr. Rasmussen says. "I see this as an element in a pattern, and it's
driven by President Putin's strong desire to restore Russian greatness by re-
establishing a sphere of influence in the former Soviet space."

Destabilizing Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus is a pillar of the Kremlin's
strategy. "It's in Russia's interest to see frozen, protracted conflicts in the region, such
as in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia, Transnistria in Moldova, and Crimea,"
Mr. Rasmussen says of regions where Moscow has asserted control. "If you look at a
map, you will see why it's of strategic importance for Russia."

Moscow's interfering with states on the Continent's eastern periphery prevents them
from joining NATO, Mr. Rasmussen says, since the alliance is reluctant to accept new
members involved with border disputes. "At the same time," he says, "it plays a role in
energy security. The possibility to establish alternative pipelines circumventing
Russia—including through Azerbaijan and in the South Caucasus—is very much
dependent on peace and stability in that region. All this is part of President Putin's
geopolitical and strategic thinking."

The Kremlin needs modern weapons systems and well-trained forces to realize its
vision, and Mr. Rasmussen is alarmed by the improvements he has seen in the
Russian military during the past few years. Contrasting Russia's military action against
Georgia in 2008 with its invasion of Crimea this year, he says, "we have seen an
incredible development of the Russian ability to act determinedly and rapidly. We have
seen better preparation, better organization and more rapid action. They have also
invested in more modern capabilities. We shouldn't underestimate the strength of the
Russian armed forces." Now 40,000 of those troops are massed on the border of
eastern Ukraine.

Moscow boosted military spending by 79% in the past decade, according to a

Brookings Institution estimate, and military spending amounted to 4.5% of Russian
gross domestic product in 2012, according to the World Bank. Most Western European
states, by contrast, began cutting defense long before the recession and have kept
doing so even as their economies have stabilized. France spent 1.9% of its GDP on
defense in 2013; Denmark spent 1.4%; Germany, 1.3%; and Spain, 0.9%.

"We in Europe have disarmed too much, for too long," Mr. Rasmussen says. "We can't
continue to cut defense budgets deeply while Russia is increasing her defense budget.
. . . It has created a growing gap across the Atlantic between the U.S. and Europe.
Today the U.S. spends around 75% of the overall NATO defense investment. I'm
concerned that in the long run it will weaken the trans-Atlantic alliance if this trend
continues."

Then there is Europe's reliance on Russian oil and gas. Mr. Rasmussen thinks the
dependency risks interfering with Western self-defense: "There's no doubt that Europe
should reduce its dependency on imported energy from Russia," he says. So does the
NATO secretary-general endorse shale-gas fracking? The drilling technique that has
led to a U.S. energy boom has met much green resistance in Europe. He chuckles and
declines to make specific recommendations: "It's a question of a more diversified
energy supply, including the establishment of alternative pipelines."

Equally worrying is the West's drive to unilaterally disarm its nuclear arsenal just as the
Russian expansionist tide rises. The U.S. Defense Department on Tuesday announced
that it will disable 56 submarine-based nuclear-launch tubes, convert 30 B-52 bombers
to conventional use, and remove 50 missiles from America's underground silos—all
well ahead of the 2018 deadline set by the New Start Treaty with Russia and despite
the crisis in Ukraine.

Reductions to Western nuclear forces "must take place in a balanced manner, based
on more transparency" from Russia, Mr. Rasmussen says. "The fact is that since the
end of the Cold War, NATO nuclear powers have reduced the number of nuclear
weapons significantly, while you haven't seen the same on the Russian side."

The result is that "today you have a clear imbalance between the NATO powers and
Russia in that respect," Mr. Rasmussen says. "And in the light of ongoing events in
Ukraine, I don't think there is the right climate for moving forward when it comes to
nuclear disarmament or arms control. There's no sign whatsoever that Russia will
provide more transparency." (Following the interview, a NATO spokesman said Mr.
Rasmussen wanted to add this clarification: "Reductions in U.S. strategic forces under
the New Start Treaty do not affect the significant U.S. commitments to NATO or the
U.S. nuclear-force posture in Europe.")

Behind the NATO capability crisis lies a more fundamental problem of entrenched
worldviews. In the years after the Cold War, Western leaders came to believe that
European security depended not on confronting the Kremlin, but on engaging it. "We
were all very enthusiastic after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the removal of the Iron
Curtain, and the breakdown of communism and the Warsaw Pact," Mr. Rasmussen
says. "It seemed that we could develop a new vision of Europe whole, free and at
peace—in cooperation with Russia."

In 1997, the alliance and Russia adopted the Founding Act on Mutual Relations,
resolving to "build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on
the principles of democracy and cooperative security." The NATO-Russia Council was
formed five years later. The council opened NATO headquarters to Russian
diplomats—a step that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War.

The Kremlin seemed to respond positively at the time. "In my previous capacity as
prime minister of Denmark I have met President Putin on several occasions," Mr.
Rasmussen recalls. "I still remember when we established the NATO-Russia Council in
2002. I remember a Putin who delivered what I would call a very pro-Western speech. I
left with the impression that he felt strongly committed to delivering this relationship
between Russia and NATO."

So what changed? "I think he changed his worldview," Mr. Rasmussen says of the
Russian leader. "We still remember his famous speech at the Munich Security
Conference, at which he stated that the breakdown of the Soviet Union was the biggest
tragedy of the last century. That was the first indication that he had changed his
worldview, and now we have seen it implemented in practice, first in Georgia in 2008
and now reaffirmed in Crimea."

The Kremlin and its Western apologists attribute the shift in Russian behavior to NATO
expansion in the early 2000s. Mr. Rasmussen rejects this line of thinking. "I hope that
Mr. Putin doesn't believe his own words," he says. "He can't seriously consider NATO
as an enemy, as a threat. We have never had an intention to attack Russia."

States on Europe's periphery are eager to join NATO, Mr. Rasmussen says, "because
we represent basic values that people desire to see implemented in their countries,
such as individual liberty, democracy, the rule of law and on top of that economic
opportunities, because our community of nations also represents economic freedom. . .
. So while Putin tries to establish his Eurasian Union using pressure, not to say
oppression, people are queuing up to join our organization voluntarily."

NATO's outreach to Russia, meanwhile, didn't stop even after Mr. Putin bared his fangs
in the South Caucasus. "Despite the setback in 2008—the Georgia crisis—in 2010 at
the NATO-Russia Summit we decided to develop what we call a true strategic
partnership between NATO and Russia," he says. "We invited Russia to cooperate on
missile defense. You will see during these post-Cold War years we have done a lot to
promote NATO-Russia cooperation."

Has NATO's engagement and cooperation with Moscow paid any security dividends?
"Obviously not," Mr. Rasmussen replies without hesitation. "We have seen a revisionist
Russia trying to redraw the European map by force. That's a wake-up call. That's a
completely new security environment and of course we have to adapt to that." He adds:
"This goes far beyond Crimea."

Mr. Ahmari is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
US Response to Russia's Use of Force
Likely to Lead to 'More Crises and Conflict'
April 11, 2014 | By Robert Gates, Stars and Stripes

You were a Russia specialist early in your national security career. How
concerned should the U.S. and the West be about a potential Russian invasion of
Ukraine? What would the strategic consequences be?

Gates: I think an actual invasion would be a very critical matter and a source of great
concern. But I think — I think it’s a concern for the same reason that the invasion of
Crimea or the seizure of Crimea is a concern. And there are really two broad principles
that Putin has violated and that ought to worry the West a lot. One is that he is
upending the post-Cold War order which basically acknowledged that border changes
in Europe would only be done by negotiation, by consent of all the parties involved …
[which was] a huge step forward in preserving the peace. The second principle that’s
been violated is this settling of an old revanchist score by force … The idea that you
can settle these territorial disputes or old claims to territory by force is a huge problem
when you consider all of the kinds of disputes there are like that not only in Europe but
in Asia and elsewhere. So you have disputes between China and Japan over the
Senkaku Islands. What Putin has done basically is to give the go-ahead to the Chinese
and say, well, just take them by force if you think they belong to you. And I think that’s
a very bad message as well and is likely to lead to future crises and potentially armed
conflict … One of the reasons that I think we should have reacted more strongly [after
Russia took over Crimea] is because once you let those principles go by the wayside,
you’re probably in for more crises and conflict.

Excerpts from Jon Harper interview with former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
The Civilianization of War
Robert Haddick | The Nationalo Interest | April 11, 2014

On April 8, Ukrainian Interior Ministry troops recaptured a government administration

building in the eastern city of Kharkiv from pro-Russian demonstrators. Over the
previous weekend those demonstrators had stormed the building, along with
government buildings in the neighboring cities of Donetsk and Lugansk. After taking the
building, the protesters had called for intervention from the Russian army, which lurked
just over the border with some fifty thousand troops, presumably ready for action after
more than a month of training exercises.

Ukraine’s acting interior minister Arsen Avakov announced that the building in Kharkiv
had been retaken without violence. This news was no doubt a relief to the interim
Ukrainian government in Kiev, which undoubtedly wished to avoid creating a dramatic
pretext for an invasion by the Russian army poised next door. However, the pro-
Russian occupations in Donetsk and Lugansk continue, with the Ukrainian security
forces vowing to use force if the demonstrators don’t relent.

The simultaneous assaults over the weekend by seemingly well-drilled and hooded
young men are widely viewed to be a follow-on phase to Russia’s recent seizure of
Crimea, an operation that successfully employed similar tactics to capture Ukrainian
military bases and government offices there. From a wider perspective though,
Russia’s tactics in Ukraine demonstrate an expanded “civilianization” of combat
operations. We have long become used to civilian militias mounting insurgencies to
resist occupation armies. Now we can observe a nation-state’s employment of civilians
(or special-operations soldiers acting as civilians) in the vanguard of offensive military
operations designed to seize and hold territory.

Although perhaps a surprising development to many, this trend is a logical

consequence of both the current media-saturated age and the incredible lethality of
modern military technology. It is also a trend for which Western policymakers and
military planners seem largely unprepared. That will have to change if these leaders
are to avoid some damaging strategic setbacks at the hands of less scrupulous
adversaries.

Why civilians are now the best assault troops

Russian president Vladimir Putin and his advisers may be hoping that the pro-Russian
agitators in eastern Ukraine incite a violent clash with Ukraine’s security forces, thus
creating a casus belli for an intervention into eastern Ukraine by the Russian army.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry made this very accusation against Russia at a
Senate hearing on April 8th.

Under this scenario, Russian army “peacekeepers,” in the form of traditional tank and
mechanized infantry brigades, would assault across the border for the declared
purpose of protecting vulnerable ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. Although certainly
a possibility, Putin and his advisers likely realize that such an outmoded approach
would stimulate a global backlash against Russia, especially by critical players such as
Germany that have thus far largely accommodated Russia’s recent actions in Crimea.

Much more likely will be a steady and methodical civilian-led unconventional warfare
campaign in eastern Ukrainian cities, funded and organized by Moscow and led in the
field by Russia’s intelligence services and special-operations forces. The goal of this
campaign will be to organize pro-Russian resistance to Ukrainian government
institutions, gradually discredit the government in Kiev, intimidate neutral and pro-
Ukrainian populations in the area into passivity, and ultimately create legitimacy for the
idea of a pro-Russian region in eastern Ukraine under Russian sponsorship. This style
of political-military operation very likely stands a better chance of achieving Moscow’s
goals, compared to an old-style invasion by tanks, infantry and artillery. If successful, it
would also show that “civilianization” of modern offensive military operations has come
of age.

Ukraine is not the only example of this trend. In the South China Sea, it is China’s
civilian maritime services such as its coast guard, its maritime-surveillance agency, its
fisheries-enforcement service, and its civilian fishing fleet that is attempting to establish
the legitimacy of China’s territorial claims over Scarborough Reef, Second Thomas
Shoal, Woody Island, and other places in the Spratly Islands. The gray hulls of the
People’s Liberation Army-Navy may lurk over the horizon, just as the Russian army
provided overwatch to the militiamen who took over the Crimea. But it is the civilians
who in all these cases are leading the assault. And should Beijing decide to make a
play for the uninhabited but Japanese-administered Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the
East China Sea, it seems highly likely that the first wave to storm these beaches will
not be Chinese naval infantry but rather civilian nationalist activists—or at least soldiers
dressed as civilians portraying Chinese patriots—there to settle historic grievances.
The PLA would no doubt not be far behind. But the first wave will very likely be
civilians.

What explains the civilianization of modern warfare? We have long become used to
insurgent militias that have sprung up to defend populations and territory from enemy
armies attempting stabilization and pacification. Insurgent militias have used the local
population for protection from modern military firepower, to hide from occupation
forces, and for logistical support. The most advanced military hardware and well-
trained conventional soldiers have proven vulnerable to insurgent weapons and tactics.
When insurgent forces have enjoyed a sanctuary in which to organize and train and the
support of an outside sponsor, they have usually been able to outlast the political
patience of Western stabilization campaigns.

Such insurgencies are defensive responses to occupation and are a fixture throughout
history. The offensive use of civilianized assault forces by Russia, China and others is
an interesting new trend. Just as Western occupation armies have been
understandably reluctant to employ their massive firepower during stabilization
operations, the conventional military forces responsible for defending Ukrainian bases
in Crimea or outposts in the South and East China Seas are similarly flummoxed when
confronted by the sudden arrival of crowds of civilians, especially when armed with
cameras connected to global media-distribution networks. All it takes is a massacre to
squander legitimacy and political support, as former Ukraine president Viktor
Yanukovych can no doubt explain. Bold and unscrupulous leaders have now learned
how to employ civilians both as shields and swords. The modern media-saturated age
has only encourage the expanded use of civilianized defensive and offensive military
operations and even increased their effectiveness.

Ukraine has one choice

Ukraine’s only choice is to prepare for unconventional warfare, either to defend against
Russian subversion in the east, or to resist an occupation by conventional Russian
ground forces. Ukraine’s enfeebled army, which now relies on handouts from the
population to get by from day to day, would stand little chance against the Russian
army in an old-school air and mechanized battle. Nor for the reasons stated above is
this likely to be the scenario Russia prefers. With Russia having good reasons to prefer
a civilianized unconventional-warfare campaign in Ukraine’s east, Kiev needs to
prepare for this form of warfare to defend its territory and interests.
Ukraine’s government and security forces will have to organize for a counterinsurgency
campaign inside Ukraine’s eastern cities. This will require making an honest
assessment of popular support for Kiev in Ukraine’s east, unlocking how Russia’s
subversion effort is organized and sustained, and evaluating both non-kinetic and
kinetic methods of suppressing pro-Russian groups. Perhaps most important, Ukraine’s
government and security services will have to outperform their Russian counterparts at
global media and information operations. The success of these operations is will be
linked to the tactics the security forces ultimately employ against the pro-Russian
groups.

At the same time, Ukraine would be wise to prepare in advance for a hypothetical
Russian army occupation. Mounting a violent insurgency against an occupying army is
a very costly choice and one that Ukraine’s population would ultimately have to see
through. Should Ukraine’s people reach that threshold decision, conditions for a
successful insurgency in Ukraine seem good. There are many paths for assistance
from western Ukraine to reach insurgents in the east, along with an inability of Russian
forces to isolate the battlefield in the east from support. Ukraine’s insurgents would
benefit from sanctuaries in the west for training, an essential requirement for a
successful insurgency. Ukrainian insurgents would likely find support from abroad and
even inside Russia itself. There are large Ukrainian expatriate populations in the West,
along with a large military adviser base in the U.S. and West with deep experience in
irregular warfare. Should the U.S. and other governments opt to support an insurgency
in Ukraine, they could do so for a relatively trivial expense.

Actively preparing for an insurgency, in full view of Russia’s intelligence services, may
be the best method of deterring intervention by the Russian army. Preparing an
insurgency for eastern Ukraine would be Kiev’s version of escalation dominance, that
is, it would convince Moscow that escalation would be the road to its defeat.

Likewise in the East and South China Seas, China’s neighbors must devise
approaches to counter China’s offensive civilianized operations aimed at legitimizing
China’s territorial claims in the two seas. As with Ukraine, the best line of effort for the
countries resisting China should be media and information operations, with the goal of
portraying China as the large bully that is aggressively using its power to steal from its
weaker neighbors. A long multimedia story in New York Time Magazine in October
2013 (“A Game of Shark and Minnow”) described the unequal standoff between China
and the Philippines over possession of Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratlys, and was
a considerable information success for the Philippines. By contrast, Japan’s recent
media stumbles over its behavior in Asia during World War II has been very much an
“own goal” and will likely make repelling a Chinese civilian-activist assault on the
Senkakus a more challenging information operation.

The rules of civilianized warfare

The United States and other Western countries need to better prepare for civilianized
warfare. After over a decade of fighting large-scale insurgencies in Afghanistan and
Iraq, one would think they would be well-prepared by now. However, the lackluster
results from those two campaigns indicates that something is still missing from the
Western response to civilianized warfare. This is even more odd when one considers
how much the United States itself has recently civilianized its own military operations
For example, the civilian Central Intelligence Agency runs one of the larger and more
efficient air forces in the world, while the Pentagon and State Department have been
prodigious employers of active and heavily armed civilian security contractors.

Even so, the thought of civilianized military operations remains anathema to

policymakers in the West. One of the great virtues of having organized and uniformed
military services is to deliberately separate combatants from noncombatants in order to
spare the later as much as possible from the horrors of modern warfare. That system,
in place among Western combatants for several centuries, broke down as soon as
those resisting a Western occupation army found themselves searching for any kind of
competitive advantage.

The logic that drove defensive insurgencies to civilianize has now been taken up by
those looking for better offensive options against modern military firepower. The deadly
efficiency of military firepower has caused the role of civilians to come full circle.
Civilians needed to be protected against firepower. Then insurgents used civilians as a
shield against firepower. Now civilians are becoming a attacking sword, flummoxing the
use of firepower. These are the new rules. The United States and its allies in the West
will need to edit their rulebooks, or find themselves outwitted by the new rules.

Robert Haddick is an independent contractor at U.S. Special Operations Command. He

writes here in a personal capacity. In September 2014, U.S. Naval Institute Press will
publish “Fire on the Water: China, America, and the Future of the Pacific,” Haddick’s
book on the rise of China’s military power and U.S. strategy in East Asia.
There is no appeasing Russia's mad king
War is coming
By Mikheil Saakashvili, Foreign Policy | April 9, 2014

In early March, the Russian Federation, after staging a referendum under Kalashnikovs
in Crimea, proceeded to annex the region and laid the groundwork — according to
Moscow — for "new political-legal realities," that is to say, a new Russian paradigm for
a lawless world. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in her speech to the
Bundestag on March 13, Russia is bringing the law of the jungle to the table. For those
of us who have lived through Vladimir Putin's attempts to reverse the results of what he
calls "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century — the dissolution of the
Soviet Union — what is happening in Ukraine is not unexpected. Nor does it mark the
last act of the drama.

It should be abundantly clear now that Putin's initial plan of taking eastern Ukraine by
mobilizing the Russian population there has failed. But that doesn't mean he's giving
up. Russian strategists talked about a "weekend of rage" that could involve some kind
of armed siege of government buildings in southern and eastern Ukraine. It happened
— and if these local provocateurs and "self-defense forces" manage to hold these
buildings as they did in Crimea, it might serve as a basis for further military
intervention. Not that we should be surprised by this cynical playbook any more.

History can be a useful guide for politicians: first, to help prevent new disasters, and
second, to help react to disasters that inevitably happen anyway, despite the best laid
plans. And yet, plenty of politicians are making the same mistakes they should have
learned from decades ago. These days, I can't help but be reminded of Yogi Berra's
famous quote, "It's déjà vu, all over again."

In Chechnya, tens of thousands of people were killed just to make Putin president and
consolidate his power. Then, when the Colored Revolutions — and their successful
reforms — became a menace to his rule, he invaded Georgia in order to kill this
contagious model and again reconfirm his power. Now, as before, faced with eroding
popularity in Russia, a shale gas revolution in North America, and the need for
consistent port access to equip his allies in the Middle East, Putin attacked Ukraine and
seized Crimea.

And yet, even with these myriad examples, the West continues to misunderstand or
excuse Putin's aggression. These days, many pundits are busy with soul-searching,
with one of the constant refrains being how the West overreached with NATO and EU
expansion, and how it needlessly provoked the Russian bear. The conclusion they
come to is that part of the reason for Russia's behavior, however petulant, lies in
Western activism. It's a particular kind of intellectual self-flagellation and, for Putin, a
reflection of Western weakness that only emboldens him.

Neville Chamberlain, when presenting the case for the great European powers to
acquiesce to Hitler's occupation of the Sudetenland, argued that Europeans should not
care about a "quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."
I hear a lot of pundits now talking about the "asymmetry of interests," implying that
Russia is entitled to annex neighboring countries' lands for the simple reason that it
cares for these lands more than the West. Others opine that we should all get used to
the idea that the Crimea is gone, and that Russia will never give it back. This is exactly
what I was told in the summer of 2008 — that I should be resigned to the idea that a
part of Georgian territory, then occupied by Russia, was gone for good.
But this logic has its continuation. As we know from history, the cycles of appeasement
usually get shorter with geometric progression. Soon, the same pundits may declare —
with their best poker faces on — that now Moldova is "lost," or Latvia "lost," even some
province of Poland. And just because Russia is not in the mood to give it back.

The biggest casualty for the West will not be the countries which already are, or strive
to be, Western allies, but rather the principles on which the Western world is built. The
truth is that Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova are being punished by Russia for their
desire to live in a free and democratic society — one very different from the Putin
model.

Certainly, Moscow didn't seem to care much about the minority Russian populations in
its near abroad — so long as they were comfortably ruled by corrupt cronies of the
Kremlin. But over the ensuing decade, Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova have learned to
look to the West, not so much because of geopolitical priorities, but because people
there aspire to a Western way of life that respects human rights and universal values.
For this reason, the West must shelter these countries not just out of pragmatic
calculations, but for the very principles that turned the Western democracies into the
most successful societies in history.

The basic facts are very clear. Russia presents the greatest challenge to international
law and order since the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. And even though the West has
much greater superiority over Russia — both economically and militarily — than it ever
had over the Soviet Union, today's leaders are reluctant to take advantage of this
asymmetry.

The problem, perhaps, is due to the ambivalence of most regional experts that guide
Western leaders' thinking. Their fundamental misreading of Russia is based on the fact
that they don't understand the difference between the Soviet nomenclatura and modern
Russia's corrupt elite. They grossly underestimate the attachment of Russian elites to
their mansions and bank accounts in the West. Likewise, Moscow's key decision-
makers are way more dependent financially and psychologically on the West than the
bureaucrats of the Brezhnev era. Sanctions can successfully divide this group from
Putin's inside circle, but they have to go further and exact greater pain.

And yet, despite President Barack Obama's rhetoric, the West — particularly Europe —
appears reluctant to impose tougher sanctions. Unlike during the Cold War, Western
companies draw much more benefit from Russia today, and thus they too will have to
pay the price of sanctions. But after the first round of sanctions, stocks rebounded as
markets were relieved that the measures didn't seem far-reaching. So how does the
West expect to be taken seriously by Putin when even Wall Street isn't buying the
seriousness of the Western alliance's intentions? The dilemma is simple: Is the West
willing to pay this price now, or delay the decision and pay a much higher price in the
future?

The choice can best be described in medical terms. The cancer of Russian aggression
first showed up in Georgia, but the West decided to neglect the diagnosis and preferred
to treat the illness with aspirin. Crimea is the metastasis of what happened in Georgia,
and yet the West is still excluding the surgical option — that is to say military
intervention — as carrying too high a risk. But at least it should apply chemotherapy.
Yes, this means that the West will feel the effects of its own drugs, and particularly
European companies in the short term. But in the long term, this painful dose is the
only way to help kill the cancer that is Putin.

Winston Churchill once prophetically told Hitler's appeasers: "You were given the
choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war." Surely,
we cannot expect modern-day politicians obsessed with polls and midterm elections to
be Churchillian all the time. But at a minimum they should not want to go down in
history as the Neville Chamberlains of the 21st century. And misreading Putin for the
man that he is — and has always been — is at the heart of appeasement.

Mikheil Saakashvili was the president of Georgia from 2004 to 2013.

A Sober Look
It's Time To Stop Romanticizing Russia
A Commentary by Christian Neef | Der Spiegel | 04/10/2014

The view Germans have of Russia is skewed by romanticism and historical baggage.
Without taking a sober look at Moscow, we will never find an adequate strategy for
dealing with Vladimir Putin's conservative, anti-Western approach to power.

Since the start of the Crimea crisis, we've constantly heard that Germans somehow
understand Russians. Indeed, hardly any other view has been repeated as often. But
nothing could possibly be more misleading. The Germans don't understand Russians:
They understand less about the Russians than they do about the British, Spanish or
French.

It's true that Germany had a special relationship with the Russian Empire long ago.
Germans served as czars and czarinas, once as the Russian prime minister, and they
were officers, doctors and teachers in the royal court in St. Petersburg. German
engineers operated ore mines in the Ural Mountains, German farmers plowed land
along the Volga and Dnieper rivers. In turn, they were introduced to Russian writers.
Pushkin introduced Germans to the strange but likable Russian soul. And cities like
Moscow and St. Petersburg wouldn't be what they are today without Germans. That's
the romanticized side of German-Russian relations.

Then came the wars of the past century and the devastation the Germans unleashed
on the Soviet Union. Since then, the image Germans have of Russia is inaccurate.

The postwar generation grew up with a latent fear of the Russians. In the east of
Germany, people saw them as an occupying force, while in the west many believed
that an invasion was imminent. Then came Gorbachev. The Germans celebrated him
because he gave them the gift of reunification. In one blow, the aversion of the 1960s
and 1970s to everything that came out of the Kremlin seemed to be forgotten. It was a
time of enthusiasm and relief, especially in the West. Gorbachev became a much-
admired figure for Germans. They projected their fantasies for a new relationship
between Germans and Russians on him and the new Russia. The Germans believed
the Russians might somehow become just like them.

But Russia isn't Europe, and it never will be. Russia never went through any period of
enlightenment after the destruction wrought by Stalin on the country's soul. Germans
never seriously considered that fact, because it would have interfered with their image
of Russia.

They should have been warned. Not only because Mikhail Gorbachev in no way
represented the kind of hard-nosed leaders the Russians had become accustomed to
over hundreds of years. Nor did they listen to what Russian writer Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn had to say about perestroika's inventor. His said Gorbachev's leadership
style wasn't governance, but rather "a thoughtless renunciation of power." Gorbachev
ultimately became the most unpopular Kremlin leader in recent history.

The Soviet Union's implosion, which they blame on Gorbachev, didn't just rob them of
their homeland. It also plunged them headfirst into a kind of capitalism that was even
more reckless than Manchester capitalism. In no time at all, a handful of oligarchs
appropriated the country's most precious assets and a majority of the Russian people
fell into poverty.
Why Russians Can't Be Compared to the West

The Germans witnessed this drama as it happened, but they didn't understand what
was going through the minds of Russians.

In her book "Second-Hand Time," Russian novelist Svetlana Alexievich seeks to

explain why a citizen of the former Soviet Union cannot be compared with one from the
West. "All of us, the people who came from socialism, are different from other people,"
she writes. "We have our own ideas about good and evil, about heroes and victims. We
are full of hate and prejudice. We all come from the place that was once the home of
gulags and of collectivization, or Dekulakization, the forced resettlement of entire
populations. It was socialism, but it was also our lives." She then goes on to explain
what happened after 1991. "Many conceived the truth (about our Soviet past) to be the
enemy. The same applied to freedom. Russia changed, but also hated itself for this
change."

The Germans believed that the Russians would be excited about glasnost and the new
era. They hoped all Russians would be of the type that would be fans of groups like
Pussy Riot. Even politicians who regularly traveled to Moscow spent most of their time
speaking to members of the pro-Western minority who aren't really representative of
Russia. This also happened for practical reasons: They were often the ones who could
speak English.

Vladimir Putin sussed out very precisely the mindset of his compatriots. He himself
comes from a very simple background, having grown up in modest accomodations in
St. Petersburg. When he became president, he pacified Chechnya, deprived the
oligarchs of their power and also created a bit of prosperity for the average Russian.
Putin knew that the majority of Russians still longed for a strong leader and that they
detested anything that even had a whiff of liberalism. He knew that this majority
supports a firmer position against foreigners and anything "Un-Russian" as well as the
reintroduction of the death penalty.

Putin's Conservative, Anti-Western Ideology

Putin pushed for greater power and applied a conservative, anti-Western ideology to
justify it. "We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting
their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western
civilization," Putin said in a speech given in September. "They are denying moral
principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual." In a
speech given in December, Putin cited 20th century Russian religious and political
philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev, stating that "the point of conservatism is not that it
prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and
downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state." He believes Russia
must lead the way. That sentiment strikes a deep chord in a people who fear further
change after 80 years of experimentation that resulted in considerable bloodshed.

Those Germans who have friends in Moscow who occasionally come to see them also
register that their acquaintances' previous enthusiasm for the West has been
supplanted by a more critical view. Suddenly the German supermarkets have become
too small for them -- much smaller than the ones in Moscow, and the selection is too
limited, the people on the street are too reserved and the women dressed to shabbily.
In contrast to the past, the Russian friends are keen to go back home these days --
they may speak negatively about their cities, but they are also proud of them. And of
the greatness of their country. They are also pleased that Crimea once again belongs
to Russia. Not even the most reflective of my acquaintances in Moscow try to conceal
their belief that the return of Crimea is a completely natural course of events. In recent
years, Putin has taken this kind of sentiment and applied it directly to his politics. This
was evident even five or six years ago. We could have gotten used to it. Instead, it has
come as a terrible surprise.

A Gulf of Opinions

How should we respond to the annexation of Crimea? The range of opinions is wide.
Elderly statesman Helmut Schmidt represents one school of thought; Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schäuble the other. Schmidt considers Putin's actions in the Crimea to be
"understandable" and thinks the West is getting too worked up about it. He argues we
must keep the peace. The former chancellor is a representative of the war generation.
He served in the military under Hitler and one can certainly sympathize with his fears of
renewed tensions in Europe. What is not acceptable is the attitude with which he tries
to lecture fellow Germans that his view is the only one imaginable. Fellow Social
Democrat Egon Bahr, who drafted former German Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik
of détente with the Soviet Union, goes even further by questioning the "legal basis of
the current government in Kiev." But he ignores the fact that a majority of the
opposition parties as well as the old block aligned with Viktor Yanukovych had
accepted the correlating constitutional changes before the government changed.

Schmidt and Bahr both have an outmoded image of Russia that is based on 40-year-
old thinking from the 1970s. Much has happened in Russia since then, but that was
apparently lost on these two.

The fact that Schmidt's statement found such great resonance just goes to show that
our image of the Russians is still shaped by old feelings of guilt and by our desire to
clear ourselves of it. It also reveals our preference to try to find fault in ourselves
instead. This distorts the image we have of Russia even further.

Russophiles are fond of saying that the West badly slighted Russia during the 1990s
and that Moscow is now taking justified revenge for its defeat in the Cold War. But
those who say this are overlooking the fact that it was Western Europe that pushed that
hardest at the time for the IMF and the World Bank to provide $40 billion in loans to
Moscow. At the time, the oil price had fallen to $17 and Russia otherwise would have
slipped into an economic catastrophe.

They also like to claim that NATO continued its expanse into the East despite its own
pledges to the contrary, thus constricting Russia. However, the promise not to station
any additional foreign troops or nuclear weapons only applied to the former East
Germany. Of the 275,000 US soldiers that used to be stationed in Germany, only
around 43,000 remain today. Moscow cannot truly perceive NATO as a military threat.

Indifferent Leadership

Finally, they argue that we must understand the urge of Russians in Crimea for the
right to self-determination and the protection of a minority (in Ukraine). But the
experience of the Chechen war showed us that Russian leaders were indiferent when it
came to these lofty principles. The Chechens were denied their right to self-
determination and the rebellious republic was bombed. When I sat in the bomb shelters
of Grozny to cover the war, there weren't just Chechens there, but also Russians -- and
the Kremlin didn't care about their fate. Many Russians were killed, by Russian bombs.

There's little in the current debate in Germany over Russia's Ukraine policies to
suggest much in the way of expertise. People claim the new government in Kiev is
fascist and has fallen into the hands of right-wing extremists and anti-Semitic forces.
The far-left Left Party's claims are sheer nonsense. When were the party's intellectual
leaders -- Gregor Gysi and Sahra Wagenknecht -- last in Kiev? If we're going to
discuss developments in Ukraine, then we should also talk about right-wing extremists
in Russia and the anti-Semitism that is tolerated there.

It's also nonsense to claim that Crimea is "ancestral Russian territory". As of 1441,
Crimea belonged to the realm of the Tatary, a state that at one point stretched from
today's Romania across the Caspian Sea to an area a short distance from Moscow. It
wasn't until the 1700s that Potemkin used cunning and force to conquer the Tatars for
Catherine the Great.

Force Remains a Proven Means in Russia

The Germans' romantic image of the Russians is to be blamed for Berlin's misguided
policies toward the country and for the fact that the Kremlin is no longer inclined to take
us seriously. The oft cited line is that we should be more inclusive of Russia rather than
keep it at arm's length. That's what happened in 1996 when, in the midst of a war in
Chechnya that had been launched by Moscow, Russia applied for membership in the
Council of Europe, the continent's human rights watchdog. The appeasers prevailed
with the argument that it was a way of preventing Moscow from entering into further
acts of military force. The second Chechen war began three years later.

Force has remained a tried and true element of Russian policy since 1991. The kind of
political compromise that is standard in the West is seen as a sign of weakness. And
that thinking isn't just isolated to the Kremlin -- it's the mentality shared by most of
Russian society. That's why you don't even find dissent against Crimea's annexation
among Putin's opponents. This is fueled by a major Russian superiority complex. First
the Russians spoke disparagingly of people in the Caucasus, calling them "our blacks."
Despite the fact that they are in great demand in the labor market, the Tajiks and
Uzbeks have never been much liked either. The Jews are the constant subject of
discussion in Russia. Now the Russians are going on about the Ukrainians -- about
their "Khokhol," a play on the hairstyles of Dnieper Cossacks during the medieval
period, but also used today as a pejorative term in Russia for ethnic Ukrainians. The
idea being that the Ukrainians are somehow a backward people.

And that takes us back to Wolfgang Schäuble. Many found the comparison he made
last week of the occupation of Crimea with the Nazi occupation of the ethnic German
Sudetenland in the former Czechoslovakia offensive. Of course it is absurd to compare
Putin with Hitler. But astoundingly similar arguments were made in both the speech
given by Hitler on Sept. 26, 1938 in Berlin and in Putin's appearance at the Kremlin on
March 18 -- at least in the vocabulary about providing protection to compatriots located
outside the country. Why should we keep quiet about that? And why should we keep
quiet about the fact that the coverage on Russian television leading up to the
annexation of Crimea, with all its lies and agitation, was reminiscent of Joseph
Goebbels?

Germany is currently scratching its head over the best way to deal with Russia in the
future. If we don't finally take a sober look at Russia, one that is erased of all
romanticizing and historical baggage that distorts our view of Putin's world, then we will
never succeed in finding a reasonable strategy.

Christian Neef is an editor at DER SPIEGEL's foreign desk and the magazine's former
longtime Moscow correspondent.
Russia’s sluggish economy is not a function
of the Ukraine crisis or sanctions, but
reflects long term economic trends
Pekka Sutela - Lappeenranta University of Technology | London School of Economics |
April 2014

One of the underlying factors in the Ukraine crisis is the health of the Russian
economy, including the impact that EU and US sanctions could potentially have in
bringing about a change in policy. Pekka Sutela writes that while Russia is currently
experiencing sluggish economic growth, this has more to do with long-term structural
weaknesses than the direct effects of the Ukraine crisis. He notes that a side effect of
Russia’s economic decline is that Vladimir Putin’s popularity with Russian citizens is
now based largely on foreign affairs and social conservatism, rather than the economic
performance which underpinned his appeal during the 2000s.

The media seems to be unanimous: the near stoppage of Russian economic growth
during early 2014 is due to the Ukrainian conflict and the sanctions decided by the EU,
United States and other countries. True, the uncertainties created by the conflict have
surely chipped away perhaps a percentage point of Russian growth. Whether the
sanctions in force so far have had a discernable economic effect is debatable. The
whole picture is however much more interesting than widely-read front pages let us
understand. Today’s situation is largely determined by the character of Russia’s
political system. It also has long roots going all the way to the Second World War.

Russia’s sluggish growth

Putin’s Russia was extremely lucky in the 2000s. Partial and often misguided as the
Yeltsin economic reforms were, they created preconditions for catching up growth.
After the 1998 ruble crisis no alternative to macroeconomic stabilisation existed.
Monetisation and de-dollarisation followed, the steeply undervalued ruble attracted
consumers to domestic produce, and the unused capacities inherited from the 1990s
made growth on the cheap possible. Even a modest investment ratio was sufficient for
fast growth, as capacity utilisation ratios could be increased fast.

The unprecedented boom in the world economy helped. Astonishingly, oil prices grew
by ten times in as many years. Global finance was ample, and as the ruble appreciated
in real terms, Russians could borrow at a negative real interest rate. Russia was until
2006 a model of fiscal conservatism, and reserve funds ballooned.

This was too good to last, and it was understood in Moscow. Energy specialists were
the first ones to ring the alarm bell. At best a slow growth in primary energy production
was possible. The share of energy in the economy would decline. The narrower base
could no longer carry the rest of the economy. The economy had to be modernised to
be able to maintain energy export volumes.

Nobody believed in a further ten times boom in the oil price. A further revenue windfall
was not on the cards. One had to be worried about the competitiveness of non-energy
jobs in the open sector. The economy needed to diversify. Capacities were coming to
full use: further growth should be driven by investment, not only by consumption. And
finally, the scope for catching up growth was narrowing. Russia needed to develop
innovations of its own, albeit economists disagreed – and still do – on whether all of
this was possible without meaningful political liberalisation.
This diagnosis was written by Economy Ministry officials in 2006-2008. The prescribed
solution was and still is basically correct; however it was unclear how this solution
should be realised in practice. Anyway, the financial crisis intervened. The regime, ever
uncertain about its genuine popular support, concentrated on protecting existing jobs.
All reforms were postponed. In contrast, very large new expenditure commitments were
undertaken.

Stillborn reforms

Reformist intentions were given a new breath of life in early 2011. Academic
economists were tasked by Vladimir Putin with writing another treatise on the ills of the
Russian economy. It would be the basis for the economic policies of the new
government to be formed after the May 2012 presidential elections. The economists –
more than 1,100 of them participated – truly responded. Their tome has 864 pages –
though with a biggish font. The government passed it, drafting work plans in the
process.

Then, nothing. Or almost nothing. A budgetary rule was decided, tying state
expenditure to the average oil price of previous years. As the oil price has been stable
for a few years already, the rule basically dictates that federal expenditure should not
be increased. During the financial crisis expenditure was increased by up to a fifth
annually. In 2013 the increase was just four per cent. That has been one of the factors
driving economic growth down. Similarly meagre growth was planned for 2014,
although in early 2014 public expenditure has behaved erratically.

Putin’s options for jump-starting the economy

The temptation to pump up the economy by fuelling aggregate demand is great. The
regime could afford it. Public debt is just a tenth of GDP. Reserve funds are smaller
than in 2008, but still serviceable. The central bank can create money. Inflation is at
about six per cent, decidedly on the high side; however in the 2000s the economy was
able to monetise in spite of even higher inflation. This is the debate raging just now in
Moscow.

Probability is great that Vladimir the State-Builder will win over Vladimir the Fiscal
Conservative. That would be in line with his early thinking on well-functioning
hierarchies, power verticals and the guiding hand of the state. Private and semi-private
interests would be forced to foot part of the bill, as we have seen in Sochi and
elsewhere. Neither Europe nor the United States remains a credible role model: China
is where the focus really should lie. Might Russia really admit that China is the big
brother now?

We all doubt whether China will be able to deliver meaningful innovation on the wide
front where it would be needed. But at least China comes closer to having a functioning
party-state as a motor for the mobilisation of resources and generating growth than
Russia has ever had. And, Russia’s income level remains twice that of China. That
may make the difference.

Russia is a rogue state well able to perform a small and victorious annexation at the
cost of a poor neighbour that comes close to being a failed state. But the strength of a
state is measured differently, by its ability to set goals and to reach them. On this scale
Russia has become steadily weaker, as the discussion above shows. Vladimir Putin is
again hugely popular among the Russians, as he was ten years ago. In the 2000s
Putin’s popularity was based on economic performance. Now that the economy is
stagnating, his popularity is based on great power illusions and virulent conservatism.
In the 2000s Russia’s growth potential was estimated at about 4-5 per cent. Ever-
increasing oil prices pushed actual growth beyond that to seven per cent. Today, for all
of the reasons already discussed, the growth potential is generally estimated at two per
cent or less. Perhaps the biggest single reason was left without a mention. Russia’s
population has not declined for several years, but a shocking structural change is
now underway. The grandchildren of the extremely small cohorts born during the
Second World War are entering adulthood just now, with the number of 18 year olds
set to decline by half. This has dramatic consequences for labour markets, tertiary
education, the military and elsewhere. And there is next to nothing the regime can do
about it.

Pekka Sutela is a Professor at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. He is

a specialist in Russian and Soviet economic thought, policies and developments.
NATO Expansion Didn't Set Off the
Ukrainian Crisis
Russia hasn't been "encircled" by the West -- Vladimir Putin simply wants to be
able to invade his neighbors at will.
BY James Kirchick | Foreign Policy | APRIL 8, 2014

Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea has produced a great deal of

handwringing in the West, with much of the ire directed at NATO. The North Atlantic
Treaty Organization's slow, 15-year process of expansion into the former Warsaw Pact
nations, critics allege, sparked a tragic, three-stage process: It humiliated Russia, led to
the country's encirclement, and provoked its aggressive behavior toward neighbors.
NATO, they say, is a relic of the Cold War, serving no purpose other than to antagonize
America's potential partners in the Kremlin.

Blaming NATO's enlargement for Russian belligerence has been a feature of

European security debates since the end of the Cold War, and a reliable excuse for
explaining away every disagreement between Moscow and the West. "Wasn't
consolidating a democratic Russia more important than bringing the Czech Navy into
NATO?" New York Times columnist Tom Friedman scoffed after Russia invaded
Georgia in 2008, in a column aptly entitled, "What did we expect?" Returning to this
complaint after last month's invasion of Ukraine, Friedman declared that NATO
expansion "remains one of the dumbest things we've ever done and, of course, laid the
groundwork for Putin's rise." Fellow New York Times columnist Ross Douthat derided
NATO expansion as a "neoconservative" project (pursued, oddly enough, by Bill
Clinton) "to effectively encircle" Russia. And no less a figure than the late George F.
Kennan concluded that "expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American
policy in the post cold-war era."

Tempting as it may be to castigate NATO for the deterioration of relations with Russia,
nothing could be further from the truth: It was, and remains, the Russian regime's
ideology, rhetoric, and conduct that provided the impulse for NATO expansion, not the
other way around. Far from representing a historic error, the enlargement of NATO into
Central and Eastern Europe has been one of the few unmitigated success stories of
American foreign policy, as it consolidated democracy and security on a continent once
scarred by total war. Faulting NATO for Russia's bad behavior betrays a fundamental
misunderstanding of post-Cold War European politics, misrepresents the organization's
role as a defensive alliance, and confuses aggressor with victim.

First, a little history is in order. Russia's hostile actions towards neighbors hardly
ended with the collapse of Soviet communism. Russia's hostile actions towards
neighbors hardly ended with the collapse of Soviet communism. On the contrary,
Moscow continued to bully its former republics and satellites throughout the early and
mid 1990s, even before the first round of NATO enlargement (to the Czech Republic,
Hungary, and Poland in 1999). In 1992 and 1993 -- after Russia formally recognized
the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania -- Moscow cut off energy supplies
to these small, reborn democracies in an attempt to pressure them into keeping
Russian military forces and intelligence officers on their sovereign territory. From 1997
to 2000, according to former U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Keith C. Smith, Russia
halted oil shipments to the country no less than nine times after it refused to sell
refineries to a Russian state company. To this day, the Russian Foreign Ministry
maintains that the Baltic republics -- which Russia militarily conquered, occupied, and
subjugated for nearly five decades -- "voluntarily joined the Soviet Union in 1940." The
Balts didn't become part of NATO until 2004. Given this history, is it any wonder why
these countries -- or any other country victimized by Soviet-imposed tyranny -- would
want to join the alliance? Is it NATO's fault for saying OK?

Critics of NATO expansion like to point out that, in exchange for earning Soviet
acceptance of German unification, the United States and its allies promised not to
expand the Atlantic alliance. This is a myth, stemming from a selective Russian
interpretation of the diplomacy at the tail end of the Cold War. In February of 1990, with
hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops still stationed in East Germany, then-German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, traveled to
Moscow to meet with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. A day earlier, President
George H.W. Bush had sent Kohl a letter suggesting that East German territory be
given a "special military status" -- the specifics of which would be determined later --
within NATO, implying that the alliance would indeed continue to expand. Hoping to
earn speedy Soviet authorization for the removal of their troops and the unification of
Germany, however, Genscher told Gorbachev that, "NATO will not expand itself to the
East."

But the Germans were not speaking for Washington, never mind the NATO alliance.
Furthermore, as historian Mary Elise Sarotte has pointed out, Genscher's concession
was never made in writing, and nor did Gorbachev "criticize Mr. Kohl publicly when he
and Mr. Bush later agreed to offer only a special military status to the former East
Germany instead of a pledge that NATO wouldn't expand." Ultimately, a legally binding
agreement not to expand NATO beyond its pre-1990 borders never materialized, and
Russia's latter-day claim that it was deceived by the West has no basis in fact.

Russia's cries of Western betrayal are really just a smokescreen. Far from threatening
Russia, NATO has repeatedly gone out of its way to be conciliatory. A 1997 agreement
outlining relations between the two former adversaries stipulated that the NATO states
had "no intention, no plan, and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of
its new members. These "three no's" were intended as an expression of goodwill and a
reaffirmation of NATO's founding principle: that it is a defensive alliance with no
designs on Russian territory. In the spirit of transparency, the organization founded the
NATO-Russia Council in 2002 to facilitate cooperation between Moscow and member
states.

Not only did Western leaders repeatedly and explicitly make clear that NATO posed no
threat whatsoever to Russia's security, some even suggested that Russia ultimately
join the very military alliance that had been established to contain it during the Cold
War. "We need Russia for the resolution of European and global problems," Polish
Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said in 2009. "That is why I think it would be good for
Russia to join NATO." This hardly constitutes "cram[ming] NATO expansion down the
Russians' throats," as Friedman alleges. Regardless, Sikorski was rebuked
immediately by then-Russian envoy to NATO and now Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry
Rogozin, who retorted that "Great powers don't join coalitions, they create coalitions.
Russia considers itself a great power...For the moment, we don't see any real change
in the organization, we only see the organization getting ready for the wars of past
Europe."

With its invasion of Crimea, the first forcible annexation of European territory since
World War II, it is Russia, and not NATO, that has returned the continent to "the wars
of past Europe." More significant, however, was what this terse exchange revealed
about the debate over NATO expansion: It has never really been about the
enlargement of a defensive military alliance, but rather the nature of the Russian
regime itself. If Russia had followed a democratic path (like the former communist
states which joined NATO) and ceased posing a threat to its neighbors, there would
have been nothing preventing it from becoming a suitable candidate for membership.
After all, if the foreign minister of Poland, a nation historically terrorized by Russia and
which is once again rearming itself in light of Crimea, proposed that Russia join NATO,
who could possibly oppose it? As Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt aptly pointed out
on Twitter recently, it was the "historic failure of Russia that a quarter of a century after
fall of Soviet Union the new generations in its neighbors see it as an enemy," while, in
contrast, "A generation or two after 1945 Germany is surrounded by countries that,
after all the horrible pain and suffering, see it as a friend."

Russia's hostility to NATO enlargement stems from the same root as all of its conflicts
with the West: the zero-sum worldview and neo-imperialist agenda of President
Vladimir Putin. In 2005, he declared the breakup of the Soviet Union to be "a major
geopolitical disaster of the 20th century." And if there was any remaining doubt that he
intends to reconstitute the empire, Putin erased it with his furious March 18 speech to
Russia's Federation Council in which he essentially reserved the right to invade and
annex any territory where ethnic Russians claim to feel oppressed. To say that NATO
expansion "laid the groundwork for Putin's rise," as Friedman does, gets the situation
exactly backwards. Putin's ascent was almost entirely the product of domestic factors,
namely, the economic chaos of the 1990s and the popular desire for a firm response to
the insurgency in Chechnya. NATO expansion barely registered on the minds of
ordinary Russians.

With Russia amassing tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine's eastern border and
stoking ethnic conflict in the hopes of providing a pretext for gobbling up even more
territory, lending credence to Moscow's complaints about NATO expansion is
intellectually irresponsible and geopolitically dangerous. In the midst of negotiations to
deescalate the crisis, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has demanded that
Ukraine essentially dismember itself into autonomous regions (the easier for Russia to
meddle in the country's eastern provinces, which are heavily populated with ethnic
Russians) and "firm guarantees" forswearing NATO and EU membership. Given that
Russia has already invaded and annexed Ukrainian territory, and that it has shown no
sign of discontinuing its aggressive behavior on the country's borders, these
ultimatums constitute nothing less than a threat to use additional force if its demands
are not met. Rather than firmly rebut these outrageous attempts to violate the
sovereignty of an independent country, Secretary of State John Kerry has stated that
Russia has "legitimate concerns" in Ukraine. This despite the fact that according to a
new poll, 66 percent of ethnic Russian citizens there feel no pressure or threat from the
new government in Kiev, a direct refutation of Moscow's relentless propaganda to the
contrary.

The assertion by Russia (and its Western apologists) that NATO constitutes a threat
has always been a ruse. As was the case during the Cold War, it is Russia that
threatens its neighbors today, not vice-versa. Russia's real reason for opposing NATO
expansion, as one Ukrainian Foreign Ministry official told me in Kiev last month, is that
the alliance's collective security provision would prevent Moscow from invading its
neighbors, something that Russia has done twice in the last six years. It is for this
reason that NATO -- and its expansion -- remains vital for European security and
stability.

To appreciate the hypocrisy of faulting NATO enlargement for the present

predicament, one need only consider the claim that the military alliance has "encircled"
Russia. There is only one country in Europe being encircled right now -- and it isn't
Russia.

[ sharp & clear ]

Will Russia Invade Ukraine?
BY JULIA IOFFE | New Republic UKRAINE APRIL 9, 2014

Until about three weeks ago, Viktor Nikolaenko ran the politics division in the Donetsk
city government. When I went to see him in February, just days after deposed
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, the city in eastern Ukraine was
calm. There was a small scrum of guys in track suits and pensioners waving Soviet
flags guarding the statue of Lenin, and some special ops officers with shields guarding
city hall, but that was all. At the time, Nikolaenko, a member of Yanukovych's party,
was not happy with what had happened in Kiev. He called it a revolution that had
undone the results of a democratic election and the day before there had been rumors
that Ukrainian nationalist thugs were headed toward Donetsk with bats. But the threat
didn't materialize and life went on. "Donetsk is going about its daily life," he told me. "In
all 45 districts, the mayors are still in place. The region was and is stable."

But then the pro-Russian rioting started, with young men trying to take over city hall.
One of them even scaled the walls and planted a Russian flag on the roof. (He turned
out to be Russian, a notorious Kremlin activist.) It was nothing compared to what was
happening in Crimea, but it was worrying. Nikolaenko, who'd worked in this field of
years, tried to talk to the locals among the separatists. He knew them, after all. But
Kiev sent in oligarch Serhiy Taruta to rule the town—much as it was pressing other
oligarchs into service across the country—and Taruta brought in his own staff, people
Nikolaenko felt didn't know how to deal with the ebb and flow of separatist protests.
"They treat the symptoms not the disease," he told me by phone the other day.
Between the local government and the secessionists, "There was no mutual desire to
talk. But the question is who is responsible to open talks. Personally, I think it’s the
government. It's responsible for not escalating the conflict. People are just speaking
their minds, so you need to convince them."

Taruta's people didn't agree and the new government in Kiev seemed to be ignoring
the southeast so Nikolaenko turned in his resignation on March 21. Things were dying
down around then anyway.

Then, this weekend, violence flared again, in Donetsk, in Luhansk, in Kharkiv, all cities
in the allegedly Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. Protesters took over government
buildings and declared their cities to be republics whose independence they
demanded. Aside from the Soviet grannies, the protesters looked just like the
"extremists" that had toppled the government in Kiev: black leather jackets, masks,
bats. ("It's the same as the Maidan, but backwards," says Fyodr Lukyanov, editor of
Russia in Global Affairs. "It's strange to think that if an instrument is used one way that
it won’t be used in the other way.")

Nikolaenko believes this was not an accident. "The protests were peaceful before. I
don’t believe that in one day across the entire east and south of Ukraine, the same
protest breaks out," he says. "Since the revolution, the situation in Donbass did not
change for the worse. In fact, it got better." The government in Kiev said it would, for
example, reexamine the controversial repeal of a language law that would have made
Russian an official language in places where it was widely spoken—repealing the law
had been one major . "Then all of a sudden, an armed resistance rises. I’ve been in
politics too long to believe in such a coincidence. The synchronization is obvious."

Indeed, the protesters in Kharkiv were so local that they mistook the opera theater for
city hall.
Russian involvement is there," says Lukyanov. "It's moral, political, and maybe even
financial. It would be strange if it weren’t there." Why? What is Russia angling for here?
"Russia needs this to not get an anti-Russian Ukraine under its belly," Lukyanov
explains. "Because if it’s going to be consolidated, it’s going to be consolidated as an
anti-Russian Ukraine," in part because Russia took Crimea, in part because, he says,
this has been the animating philosophy of the successful post-Soviet states. Russia, in
other words, needs not just to destabilize the new government in Kiev, but to make
sure the country never joins the E.U. or NATO, and that it remains weak and pliable, if
not an outright vassal state.

There are many ways to get to this point. One way is to blackmail, by massing your
forces at the border. Another is by having them invade. Another is by making sure the
pro-Russian protests never die down, and even turn violent, making it difficult to hold
presidential elections smoothly (and legitimately) on May 26. Yet another is by pursuing
a diplomatic route, pushing the U.S., rather than Ukraine itself, to change Ukraine's
constitution and make Kiev turn political power over to the country's regions—
something that, ironically, Russia has long eschewed at home.

"It’s clear that it’s a rather obvious form of blackmail," says Masha Lipman, a political
analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. "Russia completely obviously provoked this
horror, then a couple of days pass and Lavrov calls Kerry and tells him what kind of
constitution Ukraine needs."

The upcoming talks—on which Russia is imposing some very specific and odd
conditions, like that the Orthodox Church be left alone and that Ukrainian presidential
candidates participate in the talks—Lukyanov says, are just another prong of the
blackmail strategy. "Either we discuss new conditions of existence: Ukraine continues
to exist but doesn’t join NATO, then okay, we’ll leave it alone," he says of the Kremlin's
mentality. "If you say don’t get involved, it’s a sovereign state, well, okay, we’ll show
you just how sovereign in it is and that it can’t control its own territory." And Russia has
shown over the last month that it doesn't need to fire a shot to show the world that
Ukraine is a failed state.

"It’s all openly cynical," Lukyanov says, "but what can you do? That’s just how it is."

Invasion, which is on everyone's mind right now, is but one tactic and it is clearly one
Putin, a man who likes to keep all options open for as long as possible, hasn't taken off
the table just yet. And, say some observers, there may still be more innovation down
the line. "The Russian government has barely dipped into its array of instruments that
might destabilize the government in Ukraine and aggravate the region," says Andrew
Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment and a Russia specialist in
the Clinton administration. "We’re just at the beginning of this drama, and it's going to
show just how much of a spoiler Russia can be."

The problem with invasion is not that it can't easily be done, but that the costs for Putin
would be huge. Crimea was isolated and largely Russian, and people in Russia as well
as in Crimea viewed the island's allocation to post-Soviet Ukraine was a historical
mistake. Ukraine is more complex. If you invade it, what do you do with it? And how do
you decide when to stop? Where does eastern Ukraine end and central Ukraine begin?
And how would Russians in Russia feel seeing their boys come home in coffins, killed
not by Muslim Chechens but by fellow Christian Slavs, fighting a country to whom one-
third of Russians have some familial connection?

But what if Ukraine makes good on its ultimatum, issued today, giving protesters 48
hours to clear out of government buildings? If they crack down and there are deaths
among the Russian speakers Putin claims he is protecting, says Lukyanov, "I can't
imagine how Russia won't get involved."
As I've pointed out, such rationale doesn't always work when predicting Putin's actions.
It works until Putin upends it, and then Western and Russian analysts alike are left
scrambling to marshal a logical framework for whatever action Putin has decided to
take. "Putin really doesn't like it when people know what he is going to do," Lipman
points out. He likes acting on his own terms, and he especially likes surprising people.
Invading Georgia, returning for a third term, freeing Mikhail Khodorkovsky, not cracking
down on the protests, then quashing them: take your pick. "Everything is possible,"
Lipman says. "That's what Putin is all about."

This knowledge of Putin's unpredictability has the Moscow chattering class tied up in
self-annhilating knots. Every night, they go to bed, expecting to wake up to news of
tanks in the streets of Donetsk, and yet every morning the news doesn't happen.
"There are more and more articles about how he won’t invade because of this feeling
that it still hasn’t happened yet," Lipman says. But then does that mean he will invade?
Will he then invade as soon we start writing long analyses about how he won't invade?

Political observers both in Russia and the West are once again reduced not to
analyzing data or strategy, but to reading the tea leaves and psychoanalyzing a man
whose psyche bends toward unpredictability. And this, says Lipman, is Putin's victory
over the West. It's not just that Crimea showed that Putin can do whatever he pleases
without the U.S. or Europe being able to do anything about it; it's that all they can do is
react. "Before, it was Russia reacting to Western policies: NATO expansion,
intervention in Syria," Lipman explains. "Now everyone else has to wait and watch to
see what Putin is going to do."

Putin's promise to Russians, the core, in his mind, of his mission is to restore the
geopolitical greatness Russia lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Now, 23 years
later, Russia is once again calling the shots. Putin delivered.

One strange by-product of Russia's tactics is the Kremlin's deftness in completely

reappropriating certain terms, of inverting and perverting them. Just look at the images
of the protests in Luhansk and Kharkiv, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you were
looking at images of Kiev's EuroMaidan. Yet the former were whipped up be Russia,
whereas the latter was a largely grassroots movement. As a result, because the hand
of Moscow is so obvious in east Ukraine's protests, the independence of the protesters
in Kiev comes under suspicion: were they too organized externally, perhaps in the
West? More simply, it gives the two movements equal moral weight, which Russian
journalist Oleg Kashin called a "mocking parody of the Maidan."

Or take, for example, the argument for federalizing Ukraine. Ukraine, like Russia, is at
least on paper a highly centralized state. There are no gubernatorial elections. Regions
like Donetsk send most of their tax revenue to Kiev and wait to get a small portion of it
back. This breeds discontent in these regions. There is a feeling in Donetsk, for
example, that it feeds the Western part of the country that so looks down on them.
(This isn't quite true because the coal industry here is heavily subsidized by Kiev.)

The idea of federalization—devolving power to local governments—is a controversial

one in Ukraine, but it was widely, hotly debated when the revolution forced Yanukovych
from power. And it's not a bad idea for a country with a palpable regional split. "There's
too much centralization," Kirill Cherkashin, a political scientist in Donetsk told me back
in February, pointing out that 80 percent of Donetsk taxes are sent to Kiev. "So you
have a situation in which either the west [of Ukraine] rules and the east is unhappy, or
the reverse. You have to hand over power to the regions."

Then, suddenly, you have Sergei Lavrov pushing the idea of federalizing Ukraine to
John Kerry, demanding that the Ukrainian constitution is rewritten as a federalist one
before any elections, and, suddenly, federalization is a hugely suspect scheme—both
to the West, and, more importantly, to Ukrainians. It's hard to imagine that Lavrov or
Putin really care about local government or the unique needs of Ukrainian regions—
just look at the tight grip Russia has on its own regions—so what is it really about?
Taking power away from the government in Kiev, and making one half of Ukraine (and
all its industry) highly susceptible to Moscow's influence. Perhaps it's even a way to set
these regions on a path to secession, and eventually integration into Russia.

It's Soviet tactics at their best, as when Lavrov, in an op-ed in the Guardian, accused
the West of whipping up regional tensions in Ukraine and bringing the country to the
brink of civil war. Really, though, it's a flourish that goes back to Gogol, of making
language and ideas disintegrate before your disbelieving eyes.

As events in Donetsk rush on, Nikolaenko, the former Donetsk political officer, watches
from afar and wishes things were being done differently. Though he notes that the pro-
Russia protests in Donetsk have topped out at 4,000 people, "there’s a real fear in the
south and east, a real distrust of Kiev," he says, and Kiev only seems to be making the
situation worse. The same people who are cracking down on Donetsk separatists are
the ones trying to negotiate with them. Since Yanukovych fled, on February 22, no one
from the new government in Kiev came to visit Donetsk or Luhansk or Kharkiv, or any
of the places where we're now seeing protests. The only people who came, Nikolaenko
notes, are people from the security apparatus. "It's a real question," he says. "Why
didn't they find time for eastern Ukraine?"

In recent days, Yulia Tymoshenko as well as other officials of the provisional

government began a feverish tour of the east, but it's not enough. "It needs to be
intensive, detail-oriented work, day in and day out," he says. Now that he's in Kiev
consulting several clients running for the city parliament, though, he can see why the
provisional government isn't doing more to listen and bring in the east. "There's so
much work to be done here," he says. "You have to deal with the security organs, with
the elections, with figuring out what to do with all the weapons in the streets. There are
still miles to go."

He still says regional tensions are greatly overstated. He drives around town with
Donetsk plates and no one seems to care. The city is nice, the work is good. "The
Maidan is still there, but it doesn't affect the daily life of Kievans much," Nikolaenko
says. "They've vowed to stay there until the elections." That's his horizon, too, and his
country's. "The situation won’t calm down until May 25," he told me. "If the presidential
elections happen legitimately, if all regions have precincts, if lists of voters are okay, if
the Central Election Commission can ensure a calm election process that is then
ratified by the international community, everything will be fine. If not, it's hard to tell
what will happen."

[ "Now everyone else has to wait and watch to see what Putin is going to do."
It looks like she’s talking about a penalty in a football game… ]

“Putin delivered.” Did he? For the time being, he is fighting against former Soviet
states & on former Soviet territories. With the Donbass miners saying ‘No thanks’ to
Mother Russia. ]
Russia will respond only to increased
sanctions over Ukraine
Washington Post By Editorial Board, Wednesday, April 9, 2:54 AM

FOR NEARLY three weeks after announcing the annexation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin
held off on further dismemberment of Ukraine. No doubt he was measuring the West’s
reaction to the first forcible change of borders in Europe since 1945. Apparently, he
wasn’t impressed — and given U.S. and European inertia, why would he have been?

The vague warnings from President Obama and the limited sanctions imposed by the
United States and European Union in late March were followed by more than two
weeks of inactivity — apart from U.S.-Russian discussions from which Ukrainians were
excluded. So on Sunday, another Russian-backed operation that looked a lot like the
beginning of the Crimea invasion got underway in three eastern Ukrainian cities.

In Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk, rent-a-mobs seized government buildings, declared

independence or plans for referendums and appealed for Moscow’s protection.
Ukrainian forces managed to clear the regional administration building in Kharkiv early
Tuesday, but standoffs continued in the other two cities. At a congressional hearing,
Secretary of State John F. Kerry accused Russia of an “illegal and illegitimate effort to
destabilize a sovereign state and create a contrived crisis with paid operatives.”

Mr. Kerry threatened further sanctions, which administration officials said may be
announced in the coming days. If so, they will be welcome but overdue. It’s worth
asking whether Mr. Putin would have launched his latest provocation if the United
States had continued to raise the pressure on the Russian economy in the weeks since
the last measures were unveiled on March 20.

It’s not too late to prevent Russia from destroying Ukraine, but this time the West must
act quickly. A presidential election scheduled for May 25 is vital to stabilizing the
country, by creating a new government with a clear mandate. Predictably, Russia has
been demanding that the election be called off. The provocations in eastern Ukraine, if
they do not presage an invasion by the Russian troops still massed on the border, are
likely the beginning of an effort to disrupt the vote and make the country ungovernable.

The United States and European Union can counter the Russian strategy in the short
term by fully backing the Ukrainian government in taking the necessary measures to
restore order. Only a few hundred militants are involved in the occupations, and they
appear to have little or no public support. But some are heavily armed, and they hope
to provoke bloodshed. Ukrainian authorities are responding with admirable restraint,
but they cannot be expected to allow small groups of Moscow-sponsored provocateurs
to hold local governments hostage.

The next step is to apply meaningful new sanctions, not just against individual
Russians but also against sectors of the economy. Mr. Kerry noted Tuesday that Mr.
Obama has already approved such actions, adding that “energy, banking, mining —
they’re all on the table.” But Mr. Kerry also spoke optimistically about a “four-party”
meeting Russia had agreed to attend next week with the United States, Ukraine and
the European Union. There’s nothing wrong with more talks, if the Ukrainians are at the
table. But the chances they will lead to a genuine de-escalation of the crisis will be
greater if, in the meantime, Russia is subjected to significant economic punishment.
A Russian Requiem
Chatham House | Tuesday 8 April 2014
by Sir Andrew Wood, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme

President Putin’s rule was running into trouble before his Crimean adventure.
His seizure of that territory has put it even more firmly on a path that leads to
destruction.

The Economic Blind Alley

Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy may for some look impressive in the short term. But it
does nothing to improve Russia’s troubling economic prospects. Running Crimea will
be a cost to a Russian budget already under strain. Western sanctions may so far
seem quite mild but have played into pre-existing Russian fears for the country’s future.
Hence the increased capital flight and the shocks to investment that have happened
over the past weeks.

The way that Putin has tried to force Ukraine to his will has rammed home the lesson –
already implicit in the policies he pursued after his return to the Kremlin in 2012 – that
he favours autarchy over fruitful interaction with the developed world. The hold that he
and his closest collaborators have over the country and its economy has been
tightened. That way lies impoverishment.

It is right to say ‘Putin’, not for instance ‘the Kremlin’ or ‘the Russian government’,
because it is Putin who has driven Russian policy, seemingly, so far as Ukraine has
been concerned, in part, out of personal anger. By doing so, as well as by rejecting
economic reform and master-minding the repression of dissent, Putin has further
entrenched a long-standing and damaging process whereby what should be
autonomous constitutional bodies have been drained of independent meaning.

That has very much included the government headed – if that is now the right word –
by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. The unanimous vote of the Council of the
Federation giving Putin carte blanche for the use of force against Ukraine was a clear
and servile abdication of responsibility.

Putin is not all powerful. He is not a dictator. But nothing of any weight can now be
pursued without his clear approval in advance. That is a recipe for flattery from his
courtiers, the avoidance of difficult choices and over-insurance in executing his
presumed wishes by those answerable to him. Fear of getting it wrong and ambition
are poor bedfellows. The effect on Putin over the past many years can only be
dangerous.

There were those who hoped that the gestures made by the Kremlin to lighten the pre-
Olympic atmosphere, and the success of the Games themselves, might signal a wider
movement towards more flexible policies and governance. The non-systemic
opposition had after all been cowed.

Russia’s fury at the collapse of its hopes for Ukraine made it obvious that these hopes
were delusory. It was instantly clear that internal control would be reinforced, not
relaxed, that domestic critics would be vilified and that ‘the West’ would more than ever
be Putin’s favourite, and despised, enemy. It is legitimate to speculate what
combination of fear, in-grown beliefs and hasty calculation led to Putin choosing this
path, and not the path of watchful accommodation, but it is clear that in choosing it, he
has now made retreat impossible.
It follows that Putin has nowhere safe to go if he leaves the Kremlin. So he won’t, if he
can prevent it, in 2018 or even 2024.

Putin and the Russian People

Crimea was for years a fringe cause for the great majority of the Russian people.
Putin’s focus was on Ukraine as a whole, that country being essential to his overall
ambition of restoring, as he would see it, Russia’s right to be a great power. Few
Russians beyond the foreign policy establishment in Moscow cared much about that
either. Nor would many have felt as insulted or threatened as Putin and his immediate
circle seemed to be by the 2004 Orange Revolution or, at first at least, by the Maidan
protests in the closing weeks of 2013. On the contrary, what some of the ruling group
feared was that groups of Russians might become infected by the example of
protestors in Ukraine acting with such determination against Yanukovich − given the
uncomfortable parallels between his rule and theirs − and between Maidan and the
unrest in Russia of 2011–12.

It was clear enough what drove Putin, but what made the major part of the Russian
people cheer his assault on Ukraine? The sheer weight of Russian propaganda had its
effect. So too did the swift and painless conquest of Crimea, and the helplessness of
the West in responding – a West that the Russians have been increasingly persuaded
over the years is their cheating enemy, a West whose relative success has somehow
to be denied, including by a Russian claim to superior if undefined values.

Here was Russia off her knees, triumphant. Here too was a Russia recovering her
Soviet inheritance, strengthened in celebrating the justice of that by decades of willed
refusal to examine the realities of what Lenin and Stalin did to their subjects. Such
factors fed patriotic fervour in the population, leaving those with doubts in a minority
once the unbelievable happened, and Yanukovich fled. But there was more to it than
that. There was also temporary release from the doubt and fear that had begun to
plague Russia as to its future.

The trouble with this nationalist drug is that it cannot last without repeated doses. And
even if Moscow treats Ukraine with more brutality, the Kremlin will never now rule
Ukraine in ease or comfort. Attempts to enforce the principal Kremlin objective of
fraternal unity across the former Soviet space are futile. The effect of trying has already
been to inject a lasting poison into Russia’s relationship with all other countries sharing
that Soviet background.

Requiem

No one would suggest that the countries of the West have always acted wisely or for
the best in their relationships with Russia over the past three decades. But in the end it
is Russian actors who have restored much of the Soviet past that so many, Russians
as well as others, had hoped they would rise above. And it is Russians who will have to
find a new way towards just, answerable government instead.

That will be all the more challenging as the glasnost which was a foundation stone of
the Gorbachev liberation has been attacked, indeed almost destroyed. If the rulers of
Russia choose to hole themselves up in the Kremlin there can never be a constructive
dialogue with those they govern.

Suppressing dissent within a society that has grown alienated from its ruling group
cannot for long be balanced by an ever more determined search for enemies, internal
or external. Putin will be called to account. How and when is beyond present knowing.
Change from within the ruling group becomes all the more difficult as the threat or use
of force against perceived enemies at home as well as abroad takes hold. On the
contrary, it imprisons the leadership, the ‘national leader’ not least.

It is already right to mourn what Russia might have become, to grieve for its present
trajectory and to fear for its future.
If Putin keeps going
The West should be ready to respond. And Obama ought to remind Americans
why Russia could take us to war.
Chicago Tribune | April 8, 2014

Vladimir Putin's invasion and annexation of Crimea was highly objectionable by itself,
but it raised even worse possibilities. What if it was merely the opening move in a
sustained effort to bring areas that were part of the Soviet Union back under Moscow's
control?

Eastern Ukraine could be next, or Moldova. Even the Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia
and Estonia, could be in his sights.

The danger gained new urgency over the weekend as protesters waving Russian flags
occupied government buildings in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk, Kharkiv and
Luhansk, demanding a referendum on joining Russia and asking Putin to send troops.
Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov said the takeovers were a Russian operation
to "topple Ukrainian authorities, disrupt the elections and to tear our country apart."

If Putin intends to grab another chunk of Ukraine, it would be hard to stop him. NATO
commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said last week that the Russian forces massed next
door could move in on short notice and carry out that mission in a matter of days. The
brutal fact of life is that neither NATO nor the United States has made a commitment to
respond militarily to an attack on Ukraine, and they probably won't make one now.

But if Putin assumes he can act with impunity against a neighbor in the name of
protecting Russian speakers, he should keep a couple of equally stark realities in mind.
The first is that Washington has ways of making him regret such actions even without
dispatching ground or air forces for combat. The second is that the line excluding
Ukraine from NATO's protection emphatically includes those Baltic states.

Some people in the Kremlin may recall that when the Red Army rolled into Afghanistan
in 1979, Washington didn't send in the Marines. Instead, the CIA provided help in the
form of weapons, communications gear, medicine and money to the insurgents —
which helped turn Moscow's easy conquest into a nasty war that eventually drove the
Soviets out.

What the U.S. did for those insurgents, it can also do for the rebels who would
doubtless resist the Russian invaders in Ukraine. Putin should be under no illusions
that he would be allowed to enjoy his victory or tailor the ensuing fight to suit his
convenience. How do you say "roadside bomb" in Russian?

As for the Baltic states, he might want to reread Article 5 of NATO's founding
document, which declares: "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or
more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them
all."

In other words, Russia is no more free to invade Estonia than it is to invade Poland or
Spain or the United States. A robust military response would be the only appropriate
answer.

It doesn't matter that the Baltics used to be part of the Soviet Union. It doesn't matter
that significant numbers of their residents speak Russian. All that matters is that these
nations are now full members of the Western military alliance. Putin would be making a
gross mistake if he thinks NATO's failure to protect a non-member means it would
decline to protect a member.

This is also a point that the Obama administration needs to make clear to the American
people. When Bill Clinton and George W. Bush welcomed former communist states
into the alliance, a lot of people didn't give much thought to the profound obligation we
were assuming. The president should look for a chance to remind them why we made
that commitment — and why we must be prepared to keep it, come what may.

We're confident that Americans as well as Europeans would have no trouble

understanding the vital importance of being prepared to fight aggression against our
allies. We suspect the effort would not be lost on the Kremlin, either.

The security and sovereignty of NATO members are not negotiable. The clearer
Western publics and their leaders are on that point, the less likely Putin will be to test it.
Putin's Attack On East Ukraine Began
Today: What This Means For Europe And
The US
Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor| Forbes | Op/Ed | 4/07/2014

Vladimir Putin had to act before the Ukrainian presidential election of May 25, at which
time his narrative of neo-Nazis and nationalist extremists in charge of Ukraine would
vanish into thin air. Even Putin’s genius spin meisters could not portray a President
Poroshenko from ex-boxer Klitschko’s UDAR party as a wild eyed extremist, nor could
they whitewash the trivial vote for rightist candidates, although they would try.

Putin’s anti-Ukraine propaganda juggernaut rests squarely on the single fiction of a

neo-Nazi, Jew-hating, extreme nationalist government in Kiev. If Putin waits out the
election, his anti-Ukraine disinformation campaign directed to his Russian,
southeastern Ukrainian, and Western audiences loses its credibility, even in receptive
leftist quarters in the West.

True to expectations, Putin began today a coordinated attack on Eastern Ukraine and
parts of Moldavia.

The Russian assault’s first covert phase aims for the utter and complete destabilization
of key cities that lie near the eastern border. As I write, mobs, directed by Russian
special ops forces, FSB operatives, and local thugs are directing rent-a-crowds in
Lugansk, Donetsk, and Kharkiv to storm public buildings, rough-up unarmed security
forces, and demand referendums to join Mother Russia. As a slight variation, Donetsk
demonstrators demand a “free republic.” The propaganda machine is at work full force.
Babushkas are brought before the cameras to plead that all they want is peace and to
be together with their brothers and sisters in Russia. They are sincere, but they serve
the interests of their masked puppet masters lurking in the background.

Russia’s economic destabilization program began weeks or even months ago. Russian
businesses cancelled their contracts with companies in Donetsk and Kharkiv.
Desperate employees are going without pay. Russian propaganda is wafting a siren
song about the prosperity that awaits them if they join Russia.

Putin’s destabilization campaign will take a week or so to complete. The covert phase
will culminate with the deaths of demonstrators, supposedly at the hands of Ukrainian
security forces, but actually by Russian snipers. (With luck increasingly violent
demonstrations may yield fatalities without the help of rifles with telescopic lenses).
Russian TV cameras will show scores of bandaged civilians sporting bloody wounds.
The beleaguered “local” secessionists will issue prepared pleas to Putin to save them
from the crazed Ukrainian extremists.

Remember, Putin already has authority from his rubber-stamp parliament to deploy
Russian armed forces into East Ukraine. Russian troops amassed along the border can
reach their targets in matters of hours. This is not rocket science, and it has already
been perfected in Crimea. Assuming the role of true humanitarian, Putin will lament
that he has no choice but to save Ukraine. Someone has to restore order before the
whole place goes up in flames. He will not allow such atrocities in his back yard. That’s
the kind of macho man he is.

In the campaign’s second overt phase, Russian troops, amassed on the border, will
heed the call of their endangered brethren. The incoming Russian troops will be met
with staged jubilation, the waving of Russian flags, brass bands blaring, and the
referendums will be held, as in Crimea, under the watchful eye of Russian
Kalashnikovs. International observers will either be banned or Russian forces will
carefully monitor their every move. The new puppet “leaders” of East Ukraine regions
will have the honor of sitting next to Putin himself in the Grand Kremlin hall as they sign
annexation agreements. Putin may even bring in the discredited Yanukovich as the
“legitimate” president of all Ukraine. On May 25, Ukraine may have two presidents.

Ukraine and the West will be confronted with this tragic fait accomplis in the next
couple of weeks. It will be too late for the West to do anything other than to babble
about enhanced sanctions and warn of further isolation of Russia. The transitional
government of Ukraine will have to proceed with a presidential election that excludes
its annexed Eastern portions. Putin knows that possession is 99 percent of the law. He
has achieved part of his dream. The metallurgical heart of the former Soviet Union has
been restored to its rightful place. Now it’s time to turn to Belarus, Moldavia, Georgia,
Armenia, and even Kazakhstan.

The West may not understand what is going on. The die-hards will continue to argue to
their last breath that Putin really only wanted Crimea and why not let him have it.

Putin apologists will contend that these coordinated demonstrations are really
spontaneous, that the Kremlin has nothing to do with them, and express gratitude for
Putin’s armed intervention. After all, someone had to save Ukraine from disaster.

Kiev understands all too well. The acting prime minister has informed the people of
Ukraine that they face the deepest crisis of their lives. He has warned them that the
Russian plan “is an attempt to destroy Ukrainian statehood, a script which has been
written in the Russian Federation, the aim of which is to divide and destroy Ukraine and
turn part of Ukraine into a slave territory under the dictatorship of Russia.”

Those under the attack of jackals better understand what is about to happen to them
than spectators to the event. Kazakhstan is already moving native Kazakhs to the
North to dilute the Russian population’s share. Unlikely allies – Ukraine, Belarus,
Moldova, and Kazakhstan – have begun consultations. They know the jackals are
circling.

If Europe and the United States truly understand what Putin has planned, will they
continue to refrain from meaningful preventative action, in the little time before they are
presented with a fait accomplis?

Annexing Crimea, the West decided, did not threaten vital interests. Russia annexing
half of Ukraine is a different matter. Will such a threat stir Europe and the United States
to action? That, to quote Shakespeare, is the question.

In effect, Europe and the West are being confronted with two visions of the world.

In one, Russia remains, using Obama’s term, a regional power. With its nuclear
arsenal, energy production, and security council veto, it can continue to play a spoiler
role throughout the world as the United States’ number one geopolitical enemy, to use
Mitt Romney’s words. Russia will be our nemesis in Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, and
any other trouble spots it can stir up. If the West and the United States limit Putin to
annexation of Crimea, we get this first version of the world.

In the second, Putin succeeds in taking southeastern Ukraine, leaving a mortally

wounded West Ukraine, whose sole interest is survival. The Baltic states might be
spared because of the NATO shield. But the other states of the former Soviet Union
understand that they are completely at the mercy of Putin’s Russia. They will either be
annexed (Moldavia, Georgia, Belarus, and perhaps Kazakhstan), or they become
vassals of Russia, clearing their every move with Putin. Russia now controls the energy
resources not only of Russia but of all Central Asia. The emboldened Putin is free to
explore new areas for trouble making and intervention, knowing that no one is prepared
to face up to a powerful bully.

We have a choice of the two scenarios right now. We will not have a choice in a very
short while. What is our answer?

A bold answer would consist of the following measures:

First, immediate joint NATO exercises in Ukraine itself and in the Baltic States.

Second, flood East and South Ukraine with a thousand international observers to
provide detailed reports on demonstrations, civil right abuses, and interference with the
presidential elections campaign.

Third, immediate delivery of vital weapons (not lunch boxes) by the United States.

Fourth, Europe and the United States vastly expand sanctions of individuals in Putin’s
internal circle including Mr. Putin himself.

Fifth, financial guarantees by Europe and the United States to Ukraine in the
magnitude of $40 billion, half of which is Marshall-Plan-like grants that recognize that
Ukraine is at war.

Sixth, a flood of advisors from the European Union to accelerate Ukraine’s accession to
the European Union.

Sixth, increase aid and assistance to Georgia, Moldova, and even Belarus to protect
them from Russian armed intervention.

Seventh and most important, understand that Putin interprets concessions as

weakness and action as strength. Playing nice with Mr. Putin gets you nowhere.

If the West does not learn this lesson, it has lost the game.

Note on Sources:

My article contends that Russia is using professional diversionaries to destabilize major

cities in East Ukraine with an eye to an eventual Russian takeover. Insofar as these are
covert operations, Russian operatives will make every effort to conceal their operations
and to dispute claims that they are taking place. We do have the authoritative account
of Time Magazine on the stealth methods used to take over the Crimean government
by Russian special forces. We would expect Russian operatives to use the same
proven procedures in their infiltration of other parts of Ukraine. In addition, we have
three published accounts of arrests of Russian diversionaries in the Lugansk and Kiev
(and another Kiev case), tasked with subversion of municipal buildings and harm to
authorities that provide some detail about Russian destabilization tactics. Another
valuable source is a Facebook account (withheld to protect the writer) provided by an
acquaintance of a large number of eye witness accounts of Russian operatives and
their tactics in East Ukraine. Another colleague shared with me a thousand word first
hand account of the April 6 brutality of Russian provocateurs in Kharkiv. Another
valuable source is ARD German television’s coverage of the declaration of Donetsk
independence with shots of the auditorium full of young men identifiable to those in the
know as Russian “protest tourists.” German ARD coverage also provides the Ukrainian
prime minister’s charge that the demonstrations are being directed by Russian
operatives. The New York Times provides a good general account of the
demonstrations in East Ukraine. The author has first hand knowledge of the economic
sabotage of Donetsk industry by Russia through e mails and telephone conversations
with local officials and residents. I also receive first hand accounts from reliable
acquaintances who speak regularly with relatives in two Ukrainian cities and describe
the activities of the neighborhood watch groups that capture so-called tituski (paid
agents of Russia) engaged in nightly car burnings and other types of vandalism.

The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of
Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school.
Empathizing With The Devil: How Germany's
Putin-Verstehers Shield Russia
Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor | Forbes | Op/Ed | 4/05/2014

In the days of the cold war, the Soviet Union and East Germany infiltrated their spies
into the Bundestag, the federal bureaucracy, and even the chancellor’s (Willy Brandt’s)
inner circle. The Federal Republic of Germany was Russia’s most spectacular
espionage success, made possible by the common lineage of German communists
and the Social Democrats (SPD), who alternated in power with rival Christian
Democrats throughout the postwar era.

A quarter century after the end of the cold war, the German social democrats are still
providing ideological cover for the Russian Bear along with their cast-out brethren – the
ex-communists of Die Linke party. These prominent German Putin-Empathizers (from
Versteher or, literally “understander” in German) serve as Putin’s first line of defense
against meaningful European sanctions for the Anschluss of Crimea.

In the post cold-war era, the kleptocrats of the Kremlin have largely dispensed with
spies and turned to lobbyists to do their dirty work. After all, the Kremlin says, we
Russians are now businessmen like everyone else, and we can hire or attract leading
figures from German politics, culture, and academe to represent our interests in
Germany. We can dangle lucrative contracts before Germany’s largest companies to
overlook “temporary difficulties” caused by our civil liberties abuses at home or our
aggression in places like Georgia or Ukraine. As people of business, we must all focus
on the big picture and not be distracted by petty politics.

Russia Inc. employs two types of economic levers against Germany:

First, Germany, with its aggressive EnergieWende, AtomStopp, and environmentalist

opposition to fracking, has become more rather than less dependent on Russian
energy during the Putin years. Although the windmill turbines are spinning (and spoiling
the German countryside) and the solar panels are straining to capture rare sunlight, the
Germans understand that they are out in the cold without “GazPutin,” as he is called in
some circles. It is either Putin’s gas or the sky-high electricity prices, which threaten
Germany Inc.’s fabled manufacturing competitiveness.

Second, although Germany’s overall trade with Russia is only eight percent of the total,
Germany Inc’s biggest players (Siemens, Eon, RWE, and the like) have taken big
stakes in Russia. If Putin grabs their investments like he devoured Ukraine’s Crimea,
they are in trouble. Germany Inc.’s simply keeps quiet and avoids alienating GazPutin,
and hopes everything will turn out OK.

The most egregious Putin-Versteher is Gerhard (Gerd) Schroeder (Chancellor 1995 to

2005), who chairs the board of Nord Stream, the northern-route natural gas pipeline
from Russia to Europe. Nord Stream’s majority owner is the Russian state gas
company, Gazprom. Nicknamed “Gas-Gerd” – a word play on “gas oven” –
Schroeder’s official one million dollar honorarium makes him an obedient employee of
Mr. Putin. As a member of Gazprom’s own board, Schroeder cannot plead ignorance of
Putin’s use of Russian gas as a weapon of foreign policy, as he ups the pressure on
Ukraine through higher gas prices.

“Gas-Gerd” has proven well worth his remuneration as the spokesperson for Russian
moral equivalence. Although he admits that Putin’s annexation of Crimea violates
international law, he, while chancellor, ordered German jets into Serbian-Kosovo skies
without United Nations’ approval (What a sin!). No difference at all between the two
events, claims the former chancellor. We must accept our own guilt, if we deign to
condemn Putin’s takeover of Crimea.

Schroeder also complains that the West has not sufficiently respected Russian
“sensitivities.” Putin’s troubled psyche must be understood against NATO encirclement
and the historical backdrop of Ukraine as the birthplace of the Russian state, says
Schroeder. The annexation of Crimea by Russia is no different from our own support of
Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia.

Per Schroder, we should equate the documented mass killing of Kosovo Albanians with
possible concerns of Crimean Russians, enflamed by nonstop Russian propaganda,
that the Kiev Nazis do not like them and will ban Russian in their daily intercourse,
although Crimea’s constitution made it an official second language. Again no real
difference between Kosovo and Crimea! Let’s move on. Nothing to see here, says
“Gas-Gerd.”

No wonder Chancellor Angela Merkel is furious with Schroeder. What better way to pull
the rug from under her negotiations for meaningful sanctions with her coalition partners
from Schroeder’s own SPD party. Merkel’s threats to tighten sanctions ring hollow with
Putin-Verstehers like Gas-Gerd around. Schroeder’s antics would be the equivalent of
Barack Obama trying to negotiate Iranian sanctions with a U.S. former president as a
board member of the Iranian National Oil Company, pleading that we must understand
the Ayatollahs need a bomb to use against the Western infidel!

Schroeder represents the political wing of the pro-Russian lobby. There is no dearth of
business counterparts. The head of Siemens just paid a visit to Moscow where he
demonstratively held meetings with a Russian official placed on the United States’
sanctions list, declaring that “temporary turbulence (should not) inordinately influence
our long-run planning.” The president of the Union of German Industry warned that
“economic sanctions will harm both sides” (What an insight!)

Prominent Germans from other walks of life join the Putin-Versteher chorus. A notable
German feminist complained that “in these days and weeks we have seen an
unprecedented distortion of the facts (against Putin).” The German vice-president of
the EU Commission echoed Putin’s fable of a neo-Nazi government in Kiev by labeling
the new Ukrainian government as “real fascists.” The list goes on and on.

The Putin Versteher have also assumed the role of “language police,” under the adage
that he who controls the language of discourse ultimately wins the debate. Although the
parallels between Putin’s annexation of Crimea and Hitler’s Anschluss of Sudetenland
are obvious, German politicians, who dare to compare Putin and Hitler, risk their
careers, as Merkel’s invaluable finance minister, Wolfgang Schaueble, learned, after he
told a class of school children:

“We know this all from history. Hitler took over the Sudetenland with such methods –
and much more. Therefore we must tell the Russians that we are not comparing you
with anyone, but you must know that such things cannot be allowed.”

Merkel had to call Schaueble on the carpet for such “irresponsible talk,” after the violent
eruption of the indignant opposition and the press. The Russian foreign ministry
summoned the German ambassador to complain, and Schaueble had to make the talk
show rounds to apologize for his loose talk.
Schauble spoke the truth and he paid the price.

Remember the advice given to a young lawyer: “If you have the evidence, argue the
evidence; if you have the law, argue the law; if you have neither facts nor evidence,
pound the table.” Putin propaganda machine (which monopolizes all of Russia and east
and southern Ukraine) is “pounding the table” by denying, among other things, that:

 Russia’s Crimean invasion violates, among other treaties, the 1994 Budapest
Memorandum, in which the U.S., U.K., and Russia agreed to “respect the
independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain
from the threat or use of force against Ukraine” in return for Ukraine giving up
its nuclear arsenal.

 Unidentified Russian troops carried out the Crimean invasion, despite Putin’s
claim that they were “self-defense” forces of local citizens, who purchased their
uniforms and weapons in local stores. (To tell that story with a straight face
requires Chutzpah).

 Russian special forces stormed the Crimean parliament before dawn, locked
the doors, allowed in only pro-Russian deputies to install a local mob boss
(whose party commanded 4 percent in the last regional election) as the puppet
head of Crimea and to call for a hurried annexation referendum, all of this
without a quorum. So much for the legality of the Crimean referendum that the
Putin-Versteher take for granted.

 The Crimean referendum, carried out under the watchful eyes of Russian
Kalashnikovs with international observers excluded, gained a Soviet-era 97
percent vote, despite the fact that intimidated Crimean Tartars, ethnic
Ukrainians and Belarusians make up 36 percent of the population. Surveys,
taken as late as the Euro-Maidan demonstrations, showed less than 40 percent
support in Crimea for joining Russia. Less than 40 percent to almost 100
percent! Seems rather unlikely to be true.

 Russian forces used civilian human shields to take Ukrainian garrisons without
a shot being fired. The use of human shields is a war crime. (I wonder when
Putin’s Crimean commanders will face justice in den Haag?)

Putin’s propagandists have yet to present evidence that Crimean Russians were at risk
of harm from ethnic violence – the alleged reason for the invasion. Only the
disappearances and murders of presumed anti-Russian activists have been recorded
to date.

Despite these facts, serious thinkers, such as Helmut Schmidt (Chancellor 1974-1982),
are among the Putin-Verstehers. Schmidt declared in a recent interview that “If you
placed yourself in Putin’s shoes, you would likely react in the case of Crimea as he
did.” Why would a Helmut Schmidt say such things?

The 95-year old Schmidt reflects something deep in the German psyche, beyond the
natural pacifism engendered by the World War II tragedy. Social democrats, like
Schmidt, instinctively come to the defense of their landmark achievement — Ostpolitik
– the notion of finding common ground with enemies in place of confrontation. The
SPD party fears that Ostpolitik could be called into question by a firm response to
Putin’s aggression. Like Barack Obama, the Ostpolitikers believe that bending over
backwards to treat your enemy “fairly” will be reciprocated. Not so with Mr. Putin,
Obama has learned. “Fair play” is simply a sign of weakness to the likes of Putin and
his KGB cronies.
Anti-Americanism is another staple of the Putin-Versteher. Shouts of “no weapons of
mass destruction, Guantanamo, and NSA bugging of Angie’s Handy (cell phone)” are
enough to convince half of all Germans to favor a middle ground between Russia and
America. Anti-Americanism provides fertile ground for the German moral equivalence
crowd with their Kosovo=Crimea blather.

Putin’s propagandists understand the truth of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They
know that there is no substantive Ukrainian-on-Russian ethnic violence. They know
that Ukraine’s provisional government is not overrun with Nazis. They know the dirty
tricks used to take control of Crimea’s government and to wring a 97 percent Soviet-era
vote under the watchful eyes of Russian troops. They are just doing their job as they
explain that black is white and red is blue.

The German Putin-Versteher either make no effort to learn the truth, or they know the
truth but validate the Russian Crimean fairy tale anyway as paid hacks or for business
gain, or they use the ideological blinders of Ostpolitik ueber alles, pacifism, or anti-
Americanism to look the other way.

German pundits, who have long preached that American foreign policy is dictated by
(neocon) ideology and by big business, should look closer to home. It appears as if
Germany’s Russian policy is not driven by democratic norms and adherence to
international law, but by what brings profits for German business or fits the ideological
template of German leftist politics.

The German operating principle seems to be — to paraphrase the former head of

General Motors: “What is good for Siemens is good for Germany.” Such a policy may
eventually validate Lenin’s quip that the capitalists (substitute Germans) will eagerly
sell you the rope we later use to hang them.

The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of
Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school.

[ Россия может снять мораторий на смертную казнь, если ее исключат из

Парламентской ассамблеи стран Европы (ПАСЕ), заявил "Эху Москвы" член
комитета Совета Федерации по международным делам Игорь Морозов.
= Russia can withdraw its suspension of death penalty, if we are expelled from the
Parliamentary Assembly of European Countries, said to Moscow Echo Igor Morozov,
member of the Federation Council Committee on international Affairs.
Source: http://newsru.com/russia/05apr2014/greenline.html

i.e. “If you throw Russia out, we shall start killing our people again”.

This is Putin’s logic. And they think they “understand” him…. ]

Wake Up, Central Europe
Dariusz Kałan | April 4, 2014

Several years ago, we Central Europeans started to undertake various programs in the
post-Soviet and Western Balkan countries, teaching them democracy and market
economics and, in a well-meaning manner, persuading them to follow the paths of
transformation that had brought us, as we believed, nothing but material fulfillment,
self-satisfaction and a sense of mission. Being so besotted with our post-1989 success,
we thought that history had forgotten about us, that we had somehow escaped the
guillotine that had been hanging over us for so many centuries.

We were wrong, though. Georgia should have opened our eyes. But in 2008, Central
European countries were more divided than ever before. Heady from our recent
accessions to the European Union, we were marking the last days of our welfare states
with the music that we believed would never stop. At that very moment, we were not
able to speak with one voice on Russian aggression in Georgia, and pretended that
South Caucasus was somewhere on another planet—in a different universe, even—
somewhere that had not been blessed by a post–Cold War awakening (and what a
shame we thought that was). But, quite symbolically, neither was there any common
position in the region on such issues as the U.S. missile-defense system. We thought
we could play with the big boys all by ourselves.

So in the following years, we played with Russia as if it were a reasonable player. The
first shock came in 2009, after the gas dispute with Ukraine, when our Russian
partners brought their unpredictability and restlessness home to us directly. But still,
this was only a small bump on the long road to good, pragmatic cooperation, we told
ourselves. We thus continued inviting Russian state companies to our countries,
foolishly believing in the popular sayings about capital having no nationality and
economics being different from politics. We were shaking hands with Putin, who
praised us for our smart bilateralism with Moscow.

On these foundations, we quite hastily built in ourselves the belief that we were finally
being treated as partners, not as spheres of influence. Indeed, it gave us pleasure to
see how gracefully we danced between East and West, being part of the big European
family, doing business with Russia and educating the poor devils from post-Soviet
countries. It was a level of self-satisfaction that we had never achieved before.

At the same time, our media kept telling us that all we had to do was have fun and
enjoy our leisure, which, along with our new iPods and shopping centers, showed how
gracious Western life could be in comparison with the puritanism of communism. We
were led to believe that there was no time for “serious things.” When the world rocked,
in Georgia, Libya, or Syria, we watched it like an exciting action movie, and, just to feel
better, we sometimes gave our feverish support to the victims via Facebook or Twitter.
This was, as we learned, the only thing we could do. Afterwards, we always shook off
the crumbs of popcorn and returned to our replete lives. Geopolitics no longer
mattered, we claimed. And nor did history. In that sense, Fukuyama was right; the post-
1989 period was a time of end of history. We simply forgot about it.

But now is the time to wake up, Central Europe. For so many years, we watched calmly
as Russia played a game of divide and rule in our region, which was only able to speak
with one voice in a few cases. We were sure that, along with our accession to the
Western structures, our place in the world, between Germany and Russia, had
somehow changed. It has not. We may be wealthier, better educated and better
connected than earlier generations, but we are just as exposed to the unpredictability
of our eastern neighbor as they were a hundred years ago. Now, we are all members
of NATO, a fact that should surely be some consolation, but if history teaches us
anything, it is that such alliances should not be overrated, especially at a time of U.S.
retrenchment, but should be treated rather as a supplement to national defense
capabilities.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which, unlike Georgia, is not on another planet, but
right next door, should remind us not only of where we are on the map, but also of how
fragile the heritage of the past twenty-five years can turn out to be. In Warsaw,
Budapest, Bratislava, Prague, Bucharest and Sofia, one must realize that there will be
no hesitation to reconstruct nineteenth-century methods of doing politics in this region,
if the right excuse appears. This excuse may be anything, maybe the protection of
minorities or economic interests. Edward R. Murrow once said that our history will be
what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take revenge, and retribution
will not limp in catching up with us. Despite having different cultures or religions, we
share similar memories, and that is why it is here, not in Washington or Berlin, that the
new discourse about Europe and Russia should be born.

Dariusz Kałan is a research fellow and Central Europe analyst at PISM (the Polish
Institute of International Affairs) in Warsaw.
The New Putin Doctrine
By Vladimir Ryzhkov | Moscow Times | Apr. 03 2014

The annexation of Crimea highlights not only a sharp change in Russian foreign policy,
but also the emergence of a new Putin Doctrine. President Vladimir Putin's successful
Crimean land grab might signal the start of a broader trend in which Moscow will annex
other regions.

In his historic speech in the Kremlin on March 18, Putin formulated the seven main
points of his new doctrine.

Under Putin, Russia has become a powerful country once again and now has the right
to flaunt its own double standards, just like the U.S.

1. Russia no longer views the West as a credible partner. He believes that the West
dismissed his legitimate complaints against U.S. unilateralism and double standards
that he articulated in his 2007 Munich speech. Despite claims that the Cold War has
ended, the West continues to pursue a Cold War-like containment policy against
Russia, Putin says.

In reality, the West's policy has been to lie to Russia, make decisions behind its back
and to try to weaken the country's influence on the global arena. "Russia feels that it
has been not just robbed, but plundered," Putin said in his March 18 speech. From now
on, Russia will be forced to base its actions on this harsh reality.

2. Russia no longer considers itself part of European — much less Euro-Atlantic —

civilization. Russia is a democracy, but of a special type. The country has rejected
communist and "pseudo--democratic" dogmas. If more than 90 percent of Russians
support the annexation of Crimea, it means the move had a strong backing and
legitimacy based on the fundamental democratic principal of vox populi.

At the same time, however, Russia does not believe in the universal value of Western-
style democracy and human rights, although it will remain — at least for time being — a
member of the Council of Europe.

3. International law is no longer a system of rules or set of reference points. Putin

argues that international law has been reduced to a menu of options from which every
powerful state is free to choose whatever suits its interests. To put down the uprising in
Chechnya, for example, Moscow cited the international principle of upholding territorial
integrity. But in annexing Crimea, it cited the fundamental right to self-determination.

This is a classical double standard, something Russia has always loved criticizing the
U.S. for. But under Putin, Russia is now a powerful country and thus has the right to
flaunt its own double standards, just like the U.S., and create its own "sovereign
democracy." Meanwhile, a weak Ukraine does not have these rights and privileges.

4. The new Putin Doctrine applies to the entire territory of the former Soviet Union.
Putin justifies the right to oversee this expanse by relying on a vague notion of
"Russia's historical heritage" and the need to ensure the country's security in its rightful
sphere of influence. As it turns out, from now on the sovereignty of the former Soviet
republics will depend on how the Kremlin views its strategic interests. The only
exceptions are the three former Baltic republics, which are NATO members.

Moscow has drawn its own red line: Russia will take action if any of the former Soviet
republics attempt to join NATO or the European Union or agree to host Western
military bases on their territory. The Kremlin has a couple of tools to undermine any
country that shifts too far to the West. It reserves the right to send in troops, install a
government loyal to Moscow and hold a referendum, as it did in Crimea.

The new Putin Doctrine tacitly invites all of the world's powerful states to revise the
rules of the game. In his 2012 article titled "Russia Focuses," Putin wrote that Russia
would not just follow, but also shape the rules of the game in the world. We are now
seeing that strategy applied in practice.

5. The main Westphalian principle upholding state sovereignty and territorial integrity
now applies only to the strongest countries that protect their borders with their own
armies or the armies of military blocs such as NATO or the Collective Security Treaty
Organization. The sovereignty and integrity of weak and especially failed states
becomes open game for powerful states and their blocs. States now fall into two
categories: the big leagues, with security and other guarantees for its members, and
the little leagues, with far fewer guarantees.

According to this logic, if any powerful and strong-willed country believes that its
military, strategic, economic or political interests are at risk, it is free to intervene in the
internal affairs of weaker countries — and even seize parts of their territory.

6. International organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe now play a greatly diminished
role. It is only necessary to adhere to their rules and frameworks as long as they do not
compromise a powerful country's ability to defend its national interests. If they do,
strong states should simply ignore these organizations. This is how the U.S. and its
allies behaved when they bypassed the UN Security Council to conduct several military
operations over the past 20 years.

The new Putin Doctrine is based on a fundamentally new balance of power in the
world. The West's combined military and economic influence has fallen dramatically
and continues to decline. At the same time, Asia, South America and Africa are gaining
in influence, and the major non-Western member states of BRICS, the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization and others would like to see new rules of the game devised
so that they can also advance their interests.

This new playing field for international affairs will make the world dangerously volatile
and increase the risks for more military conflicts. But the problem is that each country
believes it will come out the winner in this global wrestling match, while there are few
rules, regulations or umpires to help limit the losses and number of innocent victims.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, is a political analyst.
No War with Russia? Don't Be So Sure
Paul J. Saunders | The National Interest | April 3, 2014

Though Moscow now appears willing to talk about Ukraine, it is far from clear that
Russia’s terms will be acceptable to the United States—or, more important, to Kiev.
Meanwhile, according to NATO’s commanding General Philip Breedlove, Russia’s
troops could seize southern and eastern Ukraine within three to five days. With such
high stakes, it’s time to reexamine some of our fundamental assumptions about war.

Nineteenth-century American humorist Josh Billings—a contemporary and rival of Mark

Twain—is credited as the originator of the often-cited warning that “it ain’t what you
don’t know that gets you into trouble, it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Unfortunately, after two decades of sole-superpowerdom, our president, politicians and
pundits seem to know a great deal that ain’t so about wars. Thus as Washington
debates its response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, all sides agree on only one
thing: America will not go to war with Russia. Unfortunately, their certainty may rest
upon a series of dangerously false assumptions.

Most assume that as the world’s preeminent military power, the United States gets to
choose whether it goes to war or not. After two major wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
plus interventions in the Balkans and Libya and a decision to skip Syria, Americans
have become accustomed to the idea that we can comfortably discuss our military
options while others wait because none would dare challenge us. Though Leon Trotsky
was wrong about everything else, policymakers should remember his statement that
“you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.”

Would Russia directly attack U.S. forces or other targets? This is unlikely, as America’s
military is far more powerful than Moscow’s—something Russian officials admit.
Nevertheless, the fact that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has correctly calculated
that the United States would not respond militarily to his actions so far does not mean
that he will continue to be correct indefinitely in judging how far he can go. He knows
more than a little that isn’t so himself.

This connects directly to a second assumption: that we, Putin, the European Union,
Ukraine’s new government and Crimean leaders can collectively control or manage
events. The collapse of the February 21 agreement between ousted Ukrainian
president Viktor Yanukovych and his opponents-turned-successors demonstrates
unmistakably that this is untrue—the deal fell apart because protestors on the Maidan
demanded Yanukovych’s immediate removal when the U.S., the EU and the leaders of
the Ukrainian opposition were all on board with the agreement and when Putin and
Crimea’s leaders would have reluctantly accepted it. Yanukovych fled Kiev and Ukraine
because he feared the mob, not establishment opposition leaders.

The relative absence of violence in Crimea has been remarkable. Conditions in eastern
and southern Ukraine have been more troubling, and could get worse. How long can
the current relative calm last? If demonstrations and counterdemonstrations devolve
into violence, might Russia intervene elsewhere in Ukraine? What would NATO do if
Ukraine’s weak army and paramilitary groups resisted? Where is the border between
eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine? Would Russia’s general staff knowingly create a
Pakistan-style haven for irregular fighters in western Ukraine by stopping their advance
at that arbitrary point? Might Moscow attack the arms shipments some advocate or
escalate in other ways? Carl von Clausewitz noted that once a war starts, it has its own
logic of relentless escalation to extremes. We forget this at our peril.
Many prefer “crippling” sanctions, arguing that draconian economic measures could
force Moscow to change course, or just inflict a devastating cost, while avoiding armed
conflict. This popular view rests on a third assumption: that sanctions are an alternative
to war rather than a prelude to it. Iran, Iraq, North Korea and some others have been
prepared to absorb sanctions without attempting armed retaliation—but none is a major
power. The last time the United States imposed crippling sanctions on another major
power was in 1940–41, when Washington ratcheted up restrictions on trade with
Imperial Japan, culminating in a de facto oil embargo and including bans on exports of
iron, steel, copper and other metals as well as aviation fuel. Though President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt was concerned about provoking Japan, U.S. officials thought that it
would be irrational for Tokyo to attack the United States. Japanese leaders saw giving
in to Washington as a greater danger. How would Putin respond to similar pressures?

Some take comfort in a critical difference between 1941 and 2014—the United States
and Russia are nuclear superpowers. They assume that since nuclear deterrence
succeeded in preventing U.S.-Soviet conflict during the Cold War it will do so again.
But are Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin prepared to use nuclear weapons? More
important, does each believe that the other could use nuclear weapons in an escalating
conventional conflict over Ukraine? If either leader believes that the other will flinch,
nuclear deterrence of conventional war could suddenly fail. Nuclear deterrence of
conventional escalation could also fail. Moscow has already been waving its nuclear
card.

Avoiding a war while resolutely defending U.S. national interests—and deterring

Russia’s further intervention in Ukraine—requires a policy starkly different from the
Obama administration’s. Greater resolve is essential, but there is also a fine balance
between deterrence and provocation. President Barack Obama’s statement in Europe
that Russia cannot be “deterred from further escalation by military force” is especially
dangerous because it abandons a central foundation of post-World War II American
strategy—the idea that U.S. dominance at each stage in a potential escalation chain
deters conflict. From this perspective, Mr. Obama may be our first true post-Cold War
president. Too bad that neither America nor the rest of the world may be quite ready for
him.

Paul J. Saunders is Executive Director of the Center for the National Interest. He was a
State Department Senior Advisor in the George W. Bush Administration. Follow him on
Twitter: @psaunderscftni.
Russia’s sacred land
To understand Crimea, we need an evolutionary theory of national honour. It’s
irrational and deadly – but it works
by Peter Turchin | Aeon.com | April 3, 2014

When Russia annexed Crimea in March, American policymakers were taken by

surprise. They shouldn’t have been, argued the political theorist John J Mearsheimer in
a New York Times op-ed. After all: ‘Mr Putin’s behaviour is motivated by the same
geopolitical considerations that influence all great powers, including the United States.’

Mearsheimer is one of the leading exponents of offensive realism, the theory that
international politics has always been, and will presumably remain, ‘a ruthless and
dangerous business’. In the absence of a world government that could protect the
weak from the strong, all states seek as much power as possible: there is no better
way to ensure their own survival. So says the offensive realist.

There are, of course, other ideas in the marketplace of international relations theory
(which might itself explain the general confusion over Russia’s recent activity). Liberal
theories, for example, tend to downplay the quest for strategic advantage, focusing
instead on such internal characteristics of states as their form of government. But,
strange as it might seem, such distinctions do not make much difference on the
international stage. Democracies and dictatorships appear similarly jealous of power

So offensive realism enjoys better empirical support than other theories of international
relations. At the same time, it is clear that more is at stake in international politics than
naked geopolitical calculus. One limitation common to most realist theories is their
assumption that states act as purely rational agents, coldly calculating the course of
action that would yield the highest material advantage. In fact, state policy is often
influenced by seemingly irrational considerations. No truly rational utility-maximiser
could take something such as ‘national honour’ seriously, yet states frequently do.

An injection of evolutionary thinking might help to explain why. Imagine a livestock

herder – a traditional Kazakh nomad or an American cattleman on the Western frontier
– who lives in a stateless, anarchic society. His wealth is movable and therefore
vulnerable to theft. Since there are no police and no courts, he must rely on his own
efforts to protect himself, just as states must rely on themselves to ensure continued
survival. In such a situation, one strategy is to maintain a reputation for extreme
toughness: ‘If you mess with me, you’ll regret it.’ Potential rustlers are deterred
because they know that the owner will go all-out to punish them for any transgression.

Now, on a realist view such as Mearsheimer’s, such retribution would seem irrational. It
yields no immediate gain and entails significant costs. If one does it oneself, there is
the risk of injury or death. If one outsources the work, a bounty must be paid. But in
spite of these liabilities, the punishment strategy turns out to be the one that wins in the
long run. Herdsmen who do not cultivate a tough reputation become ‘men without
honour’. Eventually they lose all their herds and become extinct (indeed, that possibility
is what makes this genuinely an evolutionary process, although the relevant adaptation
is probably more cultural than genetic). ‘Honour’ means that your commitment to
punish a thief is credible. You cannot be dissuaded by danger and you cannot be
bought off. If you succumb to either temptation, you lose your credibility, and with it, the
capacity to deter robbers.

The problem is that rustlers are also under pressure to cultivate tough reputations: they
have to intimidate the herders and deter punishment. So we end up in a coevolutionary
arms race in which everybody becomes increasingly tough. The end result is a spiral of
violence in which all parties run a high risk of extermination. An apparently sensible
strategy leads, in short order, to suicidal madness. This is hard to understand within the
rationalist framework of offensive realism. From an evolutionary point of view, on the
other hand, it seems inevitable.

When they want to investigate conflict, game theorists have long turned to the classic
‘hawk-dove’ game. ‘Doves’ are individuals who never fight. If attacked, they run away.
‘Hawks’, on the other hand, are always ready for violence and will attack anybody who
has something that they want. In a country populated by meek doves, the hawk
strategy does very well. But as hawks become more numerous at the expense of
doves, they spend more and more time fighting and killing each other.

There is, however, a simple modification of the hawk strategy that is superior to both
hawks and doves: playing ‘bourgeois’. First, you declare a resource item – a herd, a
piece of cropland – as your private property (hence the ‘bourgeois’ designation). Then
you signal that you are willing to defend it no matter what it takes. Again, this is not
rational in the narrow sense. You must be willing to escalate conflicts to the point
where your life is at stake, even though your life is worth incomparably more than the
disputed property. But again, in evolutionary terms, the strategy is a winner. While the
hawks overreach, getting embroiled in self-destructive conflict, the bourgeois steadily
divide the spoils among themselves, fighting only to defend their property against
hawks. In the long run, the bourgeois always replace the hawks.

What does this mean for the seeming irrationality of states? Well, typically, they fight
over territory. Land supports a population, which provides the state with taxes and
army recruits. It can also have strategic value, if it allows the state to project power or
control a choke point. And, of course, states are essentially territorial entities: without
land, they are nothing.

States often behave in an opportunistic manner, grabbing real estate when they can
and giving it up when the cost of holding it becomes too great. In 1732, Russia returned
a large chunk of Persian territory that Peter the Great had conquered in the previous
decade. In return, the Persians entered an alliance with the Russians against the
Ottoman Empire. This kind of behaviour is well-described by realism. However, most
states, historical and modern, also put some territory into a special category, one that is
not subject to rational geopolitical calculation. Such land is ‘sacred’. It must be held at
all costs.

Here we find an obvious manifestation of the bourgeois strategy in the hawk-dove

game. States and populations that are willing to escalate conflict as far as necessary in
defence of their sacred lands are more likely to persist in the international arena. Those
that treat their core territory in a rational manner – forfeiting it in accordance with
strategic imperatives, as, for example, several Germanic tribes did repeatedly during
the Migration Period – get wiped out. As a result, we observe the coevolution of
geopolitics and what the anthropologist Scott Atran has identified as ‘sacred values’.
Geopolitical assets acquire an aura of sanctity.

We can trace this coevolution in specific historical examples. Consider the Crimean city
of Sevastopol, home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Initially this port was just a
convenient naval base that allowed Russia to project power into the surrounding
region. Because of this geopolitical value, the city played a key role during the Crimean
War of 1853-1856, when Russia fought Britain and France for the right to expand into
the waning Ottoman Empire. This first ‘heroic defence’ of Sevastopol left a significant
imprint on Russia’s collective psyche; not least Leo Tolstoy’s important early work,
Sevastopol Sketches (1855).
The second ‘heroic defence’ of the port came in 1941-42, during the war against Nazi
Germany. Indeed, the siege of Sevastopol remains only slightly less resonant for
Russians than the more famous Siege of Leningrad. But it is climbing the rankings. In
the midst of the present conflict, Russia designated Sevastopol a city of federal
significance, a status it shares only with Moscow and St Petersburg, the city formerly
known as Leningrad. As we watch, Sevastopol is being woven ever more tightly into
Russia’s national mythology.

If Crimea is so precious, one might wonder why Russia ever let it go. The simple
answer is that it didn’t mean to. In 1954, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev
transferred it to Ukraine as an essentially symbolic gesture. Ukraine was then a Soviet
imperial possession, so this seemed an innocuous arrangement. Then, when the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia itself started fragmenting. Chechnya achieved
de facto independence. In a more peaceful fashion, Tatarstan was acquiring greater
autonomy. There was talk of the Far East seceding. Crimea, in short, was not the
priority.

Such periods of disintegration generally end in one of two ways. Russia rallied. During
the 1990s and 2000s, it gradually squeezed out its pro-Western liberal elite, though not
before they had almost halved GDP, created extreme differentials of wealth, and lost
Russia its Great Power status. With the liberals in disgrace, a new, nationalistic cadre
seized the moment. Under Vladimir Putin’s leadership, Russia began to claw back its
lost lands, beginning, in 1999, with the reconquest of Chechnya. And now here we are.

Politicians and the general public have a tendency to overestimate the role of
individuals in history. Presumably that’s why, when Russia annexed Crimea, much of
the debate in the US press revolved around the personal motivations of Putin. In
reality, however, individual statesmen have a limited ability to affect international
relations, which are primarily driven by geopolitical and sociocultural forces. Putin is an
important player, no doubt, but only insofar as he reflects the values and goals of his
support groups in Russia: his inner circle, a broader coalition of the elites that back
him, and, no less importantly, the general population.

All parties represented in the Duma (Russian Parliament) are solidly behind Putin. In
the Duma vote, 445 votes were for the annexation with only one against. It was hardly
surprising that Putin’s party, United Russia, supported him. But the other three parties,
Just Russia, the Liberal Democrats and even the Communists, were also solidly behind
him. That is less usual.

Even more importantly, the general population overwhelmingly supports Putin on this
issue. In a large sociological study that polled almost 50,000 Russians, more than 90
per cent said that they wanted Crimea to become part of Russia. Only 5 per cent were
opposed. Putin’s policy of ‘reunification with Crimea’ is extremely popular. His approval
ratings soared from an already high 60 per cent to 76 per cent. Sociologists such as
Alexander Oslon, of the Public Opinion Foundation, and Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who
studies Russian elites, say they have never before seen such a degree of unity on any
issue in Russia.

I grew up in Russia, and I was very struck – in a way that no US commentator appears
to have been – at how insistently Putin’s annexation speech of March 18 drew upon
Russia’s systems of shared meaning. Early in his speech, Putin reminded his audience
that Crimea was where Saint Vladimir was baptised in the 10th century. It was he, as
Grand Prince Vladimir, who converted Russia to Christianity, thus laying the
foundations of the Russian civilisation. Putin also referred to the bones of Russian
soldiers, buried all across the peninsula. ‘All these places are sacred to us,’ he said.
the thought of NATO boots on Sevastopol’s hallowed soil is intolerable to many
Russians

In another little-noticed part of his address, Putin evoked the image of NATO
establishing a naval base in Sevastopol should Crimea slip out of Russian control.
There is a suspicion among Russian policymakers that the real motive of the US in
detaching Ukraine from Russia is to expel the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol and
replace it with a NATO military base. It doesn’t matter whether this is really the US
goal; what matters is that the thought of NATO boots on Sevastopol’s hallowed soil is
intolerable to many Russians. As Putin remarked: ‘I simply cannot imagine that we
would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors.’

Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel is said to have claimed that Putin ‘lives in another
world’. She is right. Putin’s world is the Russian cultural space, which is quite different
from the western Europe in which Merkel now operates. ‘Putin has done what our
hearts were longing for,’ a Crimean pensioner told the news agency Reuters. ‘This
finally brings things back to what they should be after all those years. For me, for my
family, there can be no bigger joy, for us this is sacred.’

What – or who – gives a nation its sacred values? I have spoken about their ‘evolution’
as if these values were the product of an entirely blind process, almost like biological
adaptations. A moment’s reflection should tell us that, in fact, they emerge from political
discussions within each nation. It is natural to wonder, then, whether powerful interests
cannot steer those discussions towards certain desired ends. If they can, aren’t these
so-called ‘sacred’ values really just the inventions of manipulative elites?

In a sense, that’s exactly what they are. Yet the process as a whole remains a matter
of blind evolution, in which no party can be certain of the outcome. Suppose a
particular interest group – a band of ideological entrepreneurs – were to introduce an
ideological ‘meme’ into the public discourse (think of Cato the Elder’s catchphrase,
‘Carthage must be destroyed’). These memes compete against others. Some become
popular and are internalised by a majority of the population; others remain niche
preoccupations or fall by the wayside altogether. In time, popular memes come to exert
an influence over the behaviour of the state. Then natural selection, acting through
international conflict, eliminates those states that have internalised ‘bad’ memes.

This is a long-term dynamic involving multiple generations. In the short term, it’s true
that ruling elites can whip up nationalistic fervour. External events (an attack, for
example) can trigger it. But it still depends on the existence of certain bedrock attitudes
that have evolved over many years. That means it isn’t always the elites who
manipulate the wider population; popular attitudes also constrain elite choices and
actions. And this suggests a further corollary: states in which the elites and the general
population share the same bedrock values will tend to be much more effective in the
international arena, committing to their course without demur.

Judging by the polls, Putin and his people are of one mind over Crimea. As I write this
essay, it seems that little short of an all-out war, risking the use of nuclear weapons,
could dislodge Russia’s grip from the peninsula. Not even the most punitive economic
sanctions would do the job: by their nature, sacred values trump material
considerations, which is what makes conflicts over sacred values so intractable.
Consider the case of Jerusalem: the Temple Mount is sacred both to Jews and to
Muslims, and neither is willing to give it up. Luckily, the Crimean case is different.
Crimea is not sacred for the Americans or western Europeans. It is scarcely more so
for the Ukrainians.

There are broader implications to this evolutionary theory of international relations.

Realist political scientists such as Mearsheimer are surely correct that the US should
recognise the natural geopolitical concerns of other nations. But we also need to go
beyond realism. States are not moved by hard geopolitical facts alone: they are also
swayed by less tangible considerations of national honour and sacred values.
Sometimes they fight. Sometimes they back down. If we are to choose our battles
wisely, we must understand what such decisions rest upon.

[ good point about the cultural divide between civilizations ]

What do we know about Russia's troop
buildup on Ukraine's border?
By Laura Smith-Spark, Barbara Starr and Karl Penhaul , CNN April 2,

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- Both Kiev and Washington say that Russian forces are massing
in large numbers near Ukraine's eastern border -- and that they represent a threat to
Ukraine and potentially to other former Soviet states.

It's hard to pin down an exact figure, amid a welter of different views, but the U.S. and
Ukraine agree the number of Russian soldiers present has risen fast in recent weeks.

Russia, meanwhile, says it is simply conducting exercises in its southern and western
military regions. It said one battalion was pulled back from a border area Monday after
completing those drills, but NATO says it cannot confirm any withdrawal.

Here's what the different parties are saying about the apparent Russian troop buildup:

United States:

Russia may have as many as 40,000 troops near its western border with Ukraine, two
U.S. officials said last week.

But the officials stressed this was only an estimate, largely based on satellite imagery,
saying that it is difficult to come to a firm assessment because the Russians are
continuing to move units around. Early last week, U.S. officials put the number at more
than 30,000, up by 10,000 from what it was a week to 10 days before.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Monday that if reports about
Russia removing some troops from the border were accurate, "it would be a welcome
preliminary step."

Last Wednesday, a classified U.S. intelligence assessment concluded it was more

likely than previously thought that Russian forces would enter eastern Ukraine, CNN
learned. The buildup was seen to be reminiscent of Moscow's military moves before it
went into Chechnya and Georgia in both numbers of units and their capabilities, U.S.
officials said.

The assessment's points included:

• The 30,000-plus troops on the border are "significantly more" than what is needed for
the "exercises" Russia says it has been conducting, and there is no sign they are
making any move to return to their home bases.

• The troops on the border with Ukraine include large numbers of "motorized" units that
can quickly move, as well as air defense artillery.

• Additional special forces, airborne troops, air transport and other units that would be
needed appear to be at a higher state of mobilization in other locations in Russia.

• Additional intelligence indicates that even more Russian forces are "reinforcing" the
border region, according to U.S. administration officials, and all of the troops are
positioned for potential military action.
• The United States believes Russia may move toward three eastern Ukrainian cities --
Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk -- to establish a land bridge into Crimea.

• Russian forces are currently positioned in and around Rostov, Kursk and Belgorod,
according to U.S. intelligence information.

In a Pentagon briefing Thursday, Rear Adm. John Kirby said the United States has
seen "no specific indications" that Russian troops are in fact conducting military
exercises along the border with Ukraine and that, whether they do or not, their
presence does nothing to de-escalate the situation.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was told by his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu,
that the troops did not intend to cross the border but were there only to conduct military
exercises.

President Barack Obama on Friday urged Russia to pull back its troops.

"You've seen a range of troops massing along that border under the guise of military
exercises, but these are not what Russia would normally be doing," he said in an
interview aired by CBS News. "It may simply be an effort to intimidate Ukraine, or it
may be that they've got additional plans.

"And, in either case, what we need right now to resolve and de-escalate the situation
would be for Russia to move back those troops and to begin negotiations directly with
the Ukrainian government as well as the international community."

Ukraine:

Ukraine's estimate of the number of Russian troops at the border is 88,000, a

spokesman for the Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council, Yarema Dukh,
told CNN on Thursday.

Earlier in the week, National Security Council sources put the number at up to 100,000,
including units not immediately on the border that could be rapidly deployed from other
nearby areas in the event of a Russian incursion into Ukraine.

Also, according to Ukraine's Foreign Ministry:

• There's "a concentration of military equipment" in Russia's Bryansk region -- which

borders northeastern Ukraine and Belarus -- near the town of Churovichi and
Klimovskiy district, about 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the border.

• On March 25, two trains up to 60 cars long arrived at Klimovo train station, about 16
miles northeast of Churovichi, carrying troops and equipment.

• According to intelligence reports, camps, communication systems, medical facilities

and military field facilities have been set up in the area.

• Russia is using intelligence activities from the air in border areas; 40 drone flights
were reported in two days this week in Ukraine's eastern border control area.

Russia:

Russia's Defense Ministry says it is carrying out snap military exercises in its southern
and western districts. The numbers it says are involved in the drills -- due to run until
the end of March -- are much smaller than those cited by Washington or Kiev.
• One Russian infantry battalion is being withdrawn from Russia's southern Rostov
region, having finished military exercises, state news agency ITAR-Tass reported
Monday. It is returning to its base in the Samara region, hundreds of miles from the
border, the outlet said, citing Russia's Defense Ministry. It's not clear how many
soldiers are concerned, but a battalion would typically number in the hundreds.

• On March 13, Russia said that about 8,500 members of artillery units were training in
the southern military district, using weaponry including multiple rocket launchers,
howitzers and anti-tank cannons.

• These artillery exercises are taking place in the Rostov, Belgorod, Kursk and Tambov
regions, all near the border with Ukraine.

• On March 11, the Defense Ministry said about 4,000 paratroopers were taking part in
airborne exercises in Russia's western military district, including the Kursk region,
which borders Ukraine.

• Russia also had about 22,000 troops in Crimea as of last week, according to
President Vladimir Putin. Up to 25,000 were allowed in Crimea under the terms of
Russia's lease of the Sevastopol naval base there.

NATO:

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday that NATO "cannot confirm
that Russia is withdrawing its troops" from Ukraine's border.

"This is not what we're seeing. And this massive military buildup can in no way
contribute to a de-escalation of the situation," he said.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, head of the U.S. European Command and military chief of
NATO, previously said the Russian force is "very sizable."

In remarks on March 23, he described Russia's snap military exercises as "worrisome,"

suggesting they had been used as a tool to bring Russian forces into a high state of
readiness without prompting a NATO response.

"A snap exercise puts an incredible force at a border. The force that is at the Ukrainian
border now to the east is very, very sizable and very, very ready," he said.

"You cannot defend against that if you are not there to defend against it. So I think we
need to think about our allies, the positioning of our forces in the alliance and the
readiness of those forces in the alliance, such that we can be there to defend against it,
if required, especially in the Baltics and other places."

Breedlove also voiced worries that Russian troops could roll into Ukraine's
southwestern city of Odessa and Moldova's separatist region of Transnistria, on the
opposite side of Ukraine.

"There is absolutely sufficient force postured on the eastern border of Ukraine to run to
Transnistria if the decision was made to do that," he said.

Analysis from Igor Sutyagin, of UK-based defense think tank RUSI:

Sutyagin, an expert on Russian military matters whose assessment is based on

Russian, Ukrainian and Eastern sources, rather than Western, puts the number of
Russian combat troops at 30,000 to 40,000 in total.
Including the support troops also present, for example in transport and communications
units, gives a significantly higher number and explains the disparity in estimates given
by Ukraine and others, he added.

There are four groups of these Russian forces dispersed along the borders of
Ukrainian territory, he said.

One group is in Crimea, the southeastern peninsula now annexed to Russia, while the
three other groups are positioned in a kind of triangle oriented toward three eastern
Ukrainian cites: Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk. There are also reserve forces deeper
in Russian territory.

The forces grouped in southern Russia, near the cities of Taganrog and Rostov on
Don, number several thousand, he said.

Sutyagin says he does not believe that forces in Russia's western and southern military
districts are on the snap exercises claimed by the Ministry of Defense.

One indication is that they are in nontraditional training areas, he said. Other signs are
that the troops are carrying out only low-level activities, that the supposed drills are
lasting for longer than usual, and that the forces are dispersed over a wider area than
might be expected.

"If that is the exercise, it's an exercise to invade Ukraine," said Sutyagin. This doesn't
mean Russia will invade tomorrow, but it does show clearly what Russia's military
planners may have in mind if they do go into the eastern region of Ukraine with the
intention of severing it from the rest of the country, he said.
Russia, the Big Picture
Peggy Noonan | Wall Street Journal Apr 2, 2014

People sometimes ask “What would Reagan think?” and “What would Reagan do?” I
don’t understand this and tend not to play. How would I know, how would you? He was
a man of his time and place who responded to the great questions of his day. He could
be surprising—actually he was both constant and surprising. The famous cold warrior
who spiked defense spending worried fairly constantly about nuclear weapons and was
willing to gamble all to get rid of them at Reykjavik.

Also he was human, and you can never calculate with complete certainty what a
human would do.

Mostly I steer clear because the question is both frivolous and, around the edges, sad.
“What would FDR do?” “What would JFK do?” “Only Lincoln’s wisdom will suffice.” Boo
hoo. This is nostalgia as an evasive tool. You’re alive, what would you do?

But the past few weeks I’ve been witness to many discussions of Russia at gatherings
of American diplomats, journalists and historians, and taken part in interviews with
experts and foreign-policy thinkers. I am coming to conclude that almost everyone is
missing the headline and focusing instead on a factoid in the seventh or tenth graf.
Journalists pound diplomats with questions about U.S. sanctions, as if they believe the
right one will do the trick and solve the problem. Diplomats dilate on the last Kerry-
Lavrov meeting, or the next, or the credibility and potential impact of the Kiev
government’s most recent accusation.

One sophisticated observer will muse aloud about the Russian government for the first
time really starting to clamp down on the Internet, while another will mention
offhandedly the high state of Russian nationalist feeling—and anti-U.S. feeling—among
politicians and the press in Moscow. But they don’t seem to understand the
implications of their observations.

The American leadership class has taken on a certain ship-of-fools aspect when it
comes to Russia. They are missing the essential story.

So the other night I was walking from a gathering when a writer and academic, a
smart, nice man, turned to me and said, softly, “How do you think Reagan would view
what is going on? How do you think he’d see all this?” And I surprised myself by
answering.

***

I said that what people don’t understand about Reagan is that his self-
conceptualization in the first 40 years of his life, meaning the years in which you really
become yourself, was as an artist. Not a political leader or an economist, not a geo-
strategist, but an artist. I saw this when I went through his papers at the Reagan
Library. As a boy and young man he was a short story writer, a drawer of pictures, then
an actor. He acted in college, went into broadcasting and then went on to act
professionally. He paid close attention to script, character, the shape of the story. He
came to maturity and middle age in Hollywood, which was full of craftsmen and artists,
and he respected them and was one of them.

He cared about politics and came to see himself as a leader when he was immersed in
Screen Actors Guild politics, and later led that union.
But he, to himself, was an artist.

And the thing about artists is they try to see the thing whole. They try to get the big
shape of things. They’re creative, intuitive. Someone once said a great leader has
more in common with an artist than an economist, and it’s true. An artist has
imagination, tries to apprehend the full sweep of what’s happening. An actor
understands what moment you’re in in the drama.

And so with that as context this, I said, this is how I think Reagan would view the
moment we’re in:

The Soviet Union fell almost a quarter-century ago. It was great news, a victory for
civilization. That fall was followed by something: a series of governments trying to
maintain stability and pick up the pieces, turning toward democracy, toward modernity,
really going for a non-state-dominated economy. Russian leaders were to some
significant degree accommodating to the West, which had vanquished them. They
engaged in reconstruction on many fronts, reinvention too. They moved in varying
degrees toward Western values.

Again, it lasted almost a quarter century.

Now it is over.

That history has ended and something new has begun. Now we are in an era so new
we don’t even have a name for it. Maybe we’ll call it “Putinism,” maybe “Cold War II,”
who knows—but it’s brand new and it’s different from the past not only in tone but in
nature, character and, presumably, intent.

Vladimir Putin is in control. The state is increasingly entwined with him. We don’t know
how much autonomy he has, as Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations
noted the other day. But we have to assume it is significant. We know he is not only in
charge but popular, and the tougher he is, the more popular he appears to be. (A real
question: Will Russian democracy itself survive this new era? We will find out in the
next few years.) A spirit of nationalism is rising, and that nationalism may contribute in
time to a feeling of blood in the air. The Russian government is clamping down on the
press, on free speech.

The Russian government isn’t trying to please us or work with us anymore. Mr Putin
has formally set himself as our antagonist. Something big got broken here. It will have
world-wide implications, and be a major foreign-policy challenge for the United States
in the coming years

But we are in a new time and will have to plan anew and think anew.

That is how I think the artist formerly known as Reagan would judge what’s happening.
He’d see it clear and figure it from there. He wouldn’t think it was about sanctions and
tweeted insults.

***

I would add that to create a new strategy we will not only have to see Mr. Putin clearly.
We will have to consider—honestly—what steps and missteps, what assumptions and
attitudes, led to this moment not only there, but here. We will have to figure out how the
new moment can be nonviolently countered. This in turn will require being honest about
ourselves—who we are, what we need and what we want—and our allies, and their
particular character and imperatives. It would be good to remember it is not 1950. That,
truly, was another world.

It is my opinion that Reagan wouldn’t be alarmist because there’s no use in alarm. At

the same time he’d be serious as a heart attack about what has happened and what it
implies. Being serious would not involve putting down Russia as a merely regional
power, as President Obama recently did. No nuclear power is merely regional. If Putin
were merely regional, he wouldn’t have been able to save Obama’s bacon in Syria.

I do think Reagan would be startled—that isn’t quite the word, because it doesn’t
encompass a sense of horror—that it clearly won’t be the American president leading
the West through the start of the new era, but a German chancellor.

That, actually, would have taken him aback.

Russia's Plans to Partition Ukraine
The Kremlin's leaders have set their sights
beyond Crimea. How should the West react?
David Frum | The Atlantic | Apr 2 2014, 7:36 AM ET

One NATO government minister had to repeat the word to me three times to
convey his disgust with the G-7’s policy toward Russia: “Weak. Weak! Weak!”

In the weeks since Russian forces seized Crimea, Vladimir Putin’s plan for mainland
Ukraine has become increasingly clear: partition.

Putin’s ambassadors and ministers don’t use that word, of course. In talks with their
U.S. and NATO counterparts, they prefer the word “federalism.” They want to organize
manipulated referendums to create Russian-aligned governments in the eastern
regions of Ukraine. These governments would be endowed with broad powers,
including authority over trade, investment, and security. Russia would then reach deals
with these governments in an arrangement that would amount to annexation in all but
name.

Russia, of course, is itself one of the most centralized nations on earth. The president
appoints regional governors, who in turn handpick the Federation Council, Russia’s
Senate. The central government controls most state revenue, the police— really,
almost everything.

But what Putin practices, he does not preach. Or rather, he always preaches a
separate message: that he favors whatever enhances his power. In Russia, he
maintains that power by crushing local governments. In Ukraine, he can preserve his
power by smashing the central government.

In the context of Ukraine and its already-dysfunctional institutions, “federalism” is code

for rule by local oligarchs in tandem with their Moscow overlords. Such an approach
would dash any hope of Ukraine developing transparent and responsive institutions,
honest policing, and an economy that offers something like opportunity to more than a
well-connected few.

To date, however, the Kremlin’s federalist scheme has elicited only a weak response
from the United States and other Western countries, which haven’t supported the
approach but haven’t opposed it, either. “Weak” is not actually a forceful enough
description. One NATO government minister had to repeat the word to me three times,
with increasing volume, to convey the extent of his disgust with the G-7’s policy toward
Russia’s intervention in Ukraine: “Weak. Weak! Weak!”

The proposed Russian carve-up of Ukraine, mind you, is not intended to protect
Russian speakers outside Russia. After all, Putin cares little about the health and
welfare of Russian speakers inside Russia, where the life expectancy of a 15-year-old
boy is three years lower than that of a 15-year-old boy in Haiti, according to the World
Health Organization. The very concept of a “Russian speaker,” in fact, has little
meaning in Ukraine. Russia suppressed the Ukrainian language in all the Ukrainian
lands it ruled since 1875, with one short interval in the 1920s. Ukrainians can speak
Russian without feeling Russian, in much the same way that Irish people can speak
English without wishing to be re-annexed by England.
In advocating for a federalist Ukraine, the Russians are not acting out of humanitarian
concern or responding to spontaneous pleas from the oppressed people of eastern
Ukraine. Their moves are the product of strategy and pride:

1. The Soviet Union put much of its armaments industry in eastern Ukraine.
Independent Ukraine ranks as one of the top 10 arms exporters on earth, and Russia is
its biggest customer. Antonov military-transport aircraft are built in eastern Ukraine, as
are the motors for Russia’s helicopters and the anti-aircraft missiles carried by its
fighter planes.

2. Newly annexed Crimea draws its electricity and other crucial services from eastern
Ukraine. If Ukraine closes its border with Crimea, Russia’s grip on the peninsula will
rapidly become untenable. If adjoining Ukrainian territory can be detached from Kiev
and Western Ukraine, the annexation will proceed much more smoothly.

3. As Putin said in his speech justifying the annexation of Crimea, he cannot accept
Ukraine as a distinct nationality. In tsarist times, the preferred Russian term for Ukraine
was “Little Russia,” with all the condescension that phrase implies. The New Yorker’s
David Remnick reports that Putin told President George W. Bush that Ukraine is “not
even a country.” Putin, it seems, views Ukrainian independence as fundamentally
absurd, as well as wrongheaded and dangerous.

4. Twice in the past decade, protest movements have driven corrupt, authoritarian
presidents out of office in Ukraine: first the Orange Revolution, in 2005, and then the
Euromaidan uprising, in 2014. If Ukrainians can chase out such leaders and get away
with it, Russians might someday wonder why they can’t do the same. For Putin, self-
rule in Ukraine represents a direct challenge to his own power, and must be squelched
by any means necessary.

For these reasons, Putin is promoting Ukrainian federalism, backed by the threat of
Russian invasion. It will only go forward, however, if Ukraine can be bullied into
submitting to it—and Western countries agree to be fooled into accepting it—as
a “democratic” solution. Will we?
History Strikes Back
Shlomo Ben-Ami | Project-Syndicate | APR 1, 2014 2

MADRID – When the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed, the victors were
beyond complacent, for they were certain that their triumph had been inevitable all
along. Many in the West assumed that liberal capitalism’s victory over totalitarian
socialism would necessarily bring an end to wars and sanguinary revolutions. Today,
two powerful leaders – Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi
Jinping – are demonstrating just how farfetched this view was.

The predominant Western view was exemplified in Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The
End of History and the Last Man, which presumed that Western liberal democracy was
the endpoint of humanity’s sociocultural evolution. In other words, Christian
eschatology was transformed into a secular historical postulate.

That transformation was not new. Hegel and Marx embraced it. In 1842, the historian
Thomas Arnold stated, with typical Victorian complacency, that Queen Victoria’s reign
contained “clear indications of the fullness of time.” All of these historical prophets –
whether heralding the realization of the Absolute Idea or the dictatorship of the
proletariat – proved to be miserably wrong.

Not long after the West’s Cold War victory, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the
return of national tribalism, even in the heart of “post-historical” Europe, challenged the
concept of “the end of history.” The Balkan wars of the 1990’s, America’s wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, the bloody Arab revolts, and the exposure of Western
capitalism’s ethical and systemic flaws in the global economic crisis undercut the idea
further.

But perhaps the most salient reminders that history is still very much alive come from
China and Russia. After all, neither China’s one-party state-capitalist system nor
Russia’s plutocratic political economy is particularly liberal, and neither country is
especially averse to asserting its (self-identified) rights by military means.

For China, this means “defending” its territorial claims in the East and South China
Seas with an increasingly assertive foreign policy, conspicuously backed by growing
military muscle. This behavior is amplifying long-festering regional tensions, while
fueling competition between China and the United States/Japan alliance – a situation
that recalls the pre-World War I struggle for maritime dominance between the United
Kingdom and Germany.

For its part, Russia has ruthlessly strived to recover its lost continental empire, be it
through the brutal repression of Chechnya, the 2008 war in Georgia, or the current
assault on Ukraine. In fact, Russia’s recent actions in Crimea share many disturbing
features with Adolf Hitler’s 1938 seizure of Czechoslovakia’s German-speaking
Sudetenland – an important catalyst of World War II.

The fact is that Putin’s actions are not just about Crimea, or even about Ukraine. Just
as Hitler was driven by the desire to reverse the humiliating terms of the Treaty of
Versailles, which ended WWI, Putin is focused on reversing the Soviet Union’s
dismemberment, which he has called “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the twentieth
century.”

Putin is thus challenging one of America’s greatest foreign-policy achievements: the

end of the division of Europe and the establishment of free countries that could be
drawn into the Western sphere of influence. And, unlike US President Barack Obama
in Syria and Iran, Putin respects his own red lines: the former Soviet republics are not
for the West to grab, and NATO will not be allowed to expand eastward.

Moreover, Putin has made ethnic nationalism a defining element of his foreign policy,
using Crimea’s Russian-speaking majority to justify his adventure there. Likewise,
ethnic nationalism drove Hitler’s assault on the European order: the Sudetenland was
mostly German, and the Austrian Anschluss was aimed at merging the two vital parts
of the German nation.

In his controversial 1961 study of WWII’s origins, the historian A.J.P. Taylor vindicated
Hitler’s decision to take over the small successor states that were created at Versailles
to check Germany’s power – a strategy by the victors that Taylor called “an open
invitation for German expansionism.” The same could presumably be said today of
Russia’s fatal attraction to the former Soviet republics.

Of course, no one wants a new European war. But Putin’s provocations and the legacy
of Obama’s foreign-policy failures could spur him to cut his political losses by taking
unexpected action. After all, Obama’s entire foreign-policy agenda – a nuclear deal
with Iran, an Israel-Palestine peace agreement, reconciliation with estranged allies in
the Middle East, and America’s strategic pivot toward Asia – now hinges on his
capacity to tame Putin.

China’s role is complicating the situation further. By acquiescing in Russia’s actions in

Crimea, Xi is joining Putin in challenging the world order that emerged from America’s
Cold War victory. In doing so, China has allowed power calculations to outweigh its
own long-held principles, particularly non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs
– a change that its leaders would defend by asserting that the US has repeatedly
demonstrated that power ultimately determines principles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – whose East German upbringing should have
given her especially acute insight into Putin’s authoritarian mindset – has described the
Russian leader as detached from reality, guided by nineteenth-century Machtpolitik.
But it is Europe that has been living in a fantasy: a “post-historical” world where military
power does not matter, subsidies can tame nationalist forces, and leaders are law-
abiding, well-mannered gentlemen and women.

Europeans truly believed that the Great Game between Russia and the West was
settled in 1991. Putin’s message is that the last quarter-century was merely an
intermission.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as Vice President of
the Toledo International Center for Peace, is the author of Scars of War, Wounds of
Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy.

[ 100% right ]
NATO Military Chief Weighs Options as
Russian Forces Stay
By James G. Neuger and Gopal Ratnam – BBC News - Apr 1, 2014

NATO’s top military commander is exploring ways to strengthen collective security in

Europe, as the alliance vowed to boost support for eastern nations unnerved by
Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Options being considered by U.S. Air Force General Philip Breedlove include putting a
U.S. warship in the Black Sea, beefing up previously scheduled NATO exercises and
improving the readiness of the alliance’s 13,000-member rapid-response force,
according to an American defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to
discuss military planning.

“We directed our military commanders to develop additional measures to enhance our
collective defense and deterrence against any threat of aggression,” Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, said
yesterday after NATO foreign ministers met in Brussels.

Rasmussen said allied intelligence had seen no sign that Russia was scaling back its
“massive military buildup” along Ukraine’s eastern borders. As many as the 40,000
Russian troops have taken positions along the frontier, stirring concerns that they’re
poised to invade on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russian inhabitants of eastern and
southern Ukraine.

Yesterday’s meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s foreign ministers was
the first since Russia rocked the post-Cold War order by wresting Crimea, a region with
a majority of Russian speakers with historic ties to Moscow, away from Ukraine.
Shrugging off U.S. and European sanctions, Putin has justified the move as righting a
historical wrong that split off Crimea from Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.
Russian Markets

Russian stocks rose to the highest in a month on the prospect that the crisis in Ukraine
won’t escalate. The Micex Index (INDEXCF) added 0.5 percent to 1,375.73 by the
close yesterday in Moscow after falling as much as 0.7 percent earlier. The nation’s 10-
year bond rose for a third day before the government holds its first debt sale in five
weeks today.

Rasmussen said “unfortunately” there are no signs of a pullback. A day earlier, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and said that he
had ordered a partial withdrawal, and the Interfax news service had cited Russia’s
Defense Ministry as announcing that a motorized battalion was being pulled out.

Although the U.S. and its European allies are “still pursuing the path of de-escalation of
this crisis,” NATO remains “flexible and as the Secretary General noted, we’re looking
at stronger measures,” U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters on a U.S.
military aircraft as he headed to Hawaii for two-days of meetings with Asian
counterparts.

‘Visible Assurance’

As part of its measures, NATO has decided to halt “all practical cooperation” with
Russia, Rasmussen told reporters.
In a statement, the foreign ministers pledged to provide “appropriate reinforcement and
visible assurance of NATO’s cohesion and commitment to deterrence and collective
defense against any threat of aggression to the alliance.”

The statement left open whether NATO will set up permanent bases near Russia’s
border. The alliance limited its troop presence in eastern Europe when it started
expanding there, partly to avoid antagonizing Russia.

Asked if the options NATO is considering include moving alliance ground forces
permanently to eastern Europe, Hagel said, “We’ve to be prepared to deal with any
contingency and all options.”

At least eight countries -- the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, Poland, Turkey,
Denmark and Portugal -- pledged to provide equipment to bolster the alliance’s eastern
flank, an official told reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss internal
deliberations. Defense ministers will review the force posture in early June.

Air-Policing Mission

In the meantime, NATO has stepped up an air-policing mission over the Baltic states
and dispatched AWACS surveillance planes over Poland and Romania. The U.S. sent
more F-16 fighter jets to Poland and joined Romania and Bulgaria in naval exercises in
the Black Sea.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said his government will act to increase the
presence of NATO forces “step by step” and that the speed of NATO’s force buildup in
Poland “could have been greater.”

“Poland’s eastern border is a key part of NATO’s borders and it requires special
attention,” Tusk told reporters in Warsaw yesterday.

The annexation of Crimea refocused the U.S.-led alliance on its Cold War-era mission
of protecting its home territory, which since 1999 includes eastern European countries
such as Poland. Four NATO members -- Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania --
border Ukraine. Four also border Russia -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
International Exercise

Ukraine plans to host U.S., Polish, Romanian and Moldovan troops in an international
exercise running from May to November, according to a law passed by parliament in
Kiev yesterday. Ukraine has asked NATO allies for military equipment, though it
doesn’t want weapons and isn’t planning to relaunch a bid for NATO membership,
Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsya said yesterday in Brussels.

NATO offered help in modernizing Ukraine’s military, starting with a visit next week by
experts from allied capitals to assess the state of its armed forces. The alliance already
has coached Kiev’s military over 17 years of formal ties, including Ukrainian
deployments in Afghanistan.

The strategy for regaining sovereignty over Crimea involves filing legal cases at the
International Court of Justice, Deshchytsya said. “We believe that with the international
support, we will be able to return Crimea to Ukraine,” he said, adding that the court
cases will take time.

NATO foreign ministers also gave a political blessing to an earlier decision to halt day-
to-day civilian and military contacts with Russia.
Rasmussen said that suspension of “business as usual” won’t include stopping joint
projects in Afghanistan. The alliance works with Russia on counter-narcotics and
helicopter maintenance in Afghanistan, and uses Russian supply routes.
Viewpoint: Russia's Ukraine strategy ends
Europe's dream
BBC News 2 April 2014 Last updated at 02:00 GMT

Russia has its eyes set on bigger goals than Ukraine - it wants to tear apart the
territorial status quo created in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union, says
Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute.

The most immediate topic of discussion at Tuesday's meeting of Nato foreign ministers
- the first since Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula - was whether
Russian troops currently massed on Ukraine's borders were likely to launch a new
invasion deep into Ukraine's ethnically mixed eastern provinces.

The chances are that such an invasion will be averted. But Russia's security threat to
the European continent remains both substantial and systemic, and is likely to endure
for years to come.

There are a number of very concrete reasons why Russian President Vladimir Putin is
unlikely to send his troops into eastern Ukraine.

The first is that, although the region has many ethnic Russians, it also has many
Ukrainians who are likely to resist a Russian occupation. So, unlike the swift and
bloodless takeover of Crimea, an occupation of eastern Ukraine is almost certain to
embroil Russian troops in serious fighting.

Eastern Ukraine is also a much larger territory, requiring a substantial force to pin
down. And unlike Crimea, there is no obvious geographic limit to this territory: the
Russians therefore risk becoming involved in a major military adventure with no
immediate "exit strategy".

But the most important reason why Mr Putin will not send his troops into Ukraine now is
that he has other ways of achieving his objectives.

He knows that Crimea is his to keep, and that no Western government is likely to
challenge this newly acquired Russian province. At Sunday's meeting in Paris between
US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Crimea
was not even mentioned in the communique released to the public.

Ukrainian 'federalisation'

Russia's most immediate task is to prevent Ukraine from joining Western economic and
security structures such as the European Union or Nato, to keep the country in
suspended animation as a buffer zone, belonging to neither East nor West.

And that can be accomplished by persuading the West to accept what Moscow likes to
call the "federalisation" of Ukraine.

Russia's demands for the creation of a federal Ukraine are very sweeping. They
include a proposal that Ukraine's regions will have a say not only over local affairs, but
also over "Ukraine's foreign policy direction" - a more polite Russian way of saying that
the ethnic Russians inside Ukraine will be able to block the country's pro-Western
orientation.
And, if this strategy does not work, Moscow can resort to the simple expedient of
encouraging ethnic Russians in Ukraine to declare their separation and even secession
from the Ukrainian state. As President Putin sees it, he now has in his hands the
instruments to undermine Ukraine without actually firing a single shot.

Moscow has also signalled a determination to apply the same approach to other parts
of Europe where ethnic Russians may reside, particularly the Trans-Dniester region in
the former Soviet republic of Moldova, and in the Baltic states.

Most of the Russians there have already been issued with Russian passports or
identity documents, precisely in order to strengthen Moscow's claim to speak on their
behalf.

The purpose of this grand strategy is clear: to tear apart the territorial status quo
created in Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a status quo which, as
President Putin has repeatedly observed, Russia considers both unjust and
unsustainable.

That does not need to be achieved by occupying and reabsorbing former Soviet
republics. It could just as easily be accomplished by undermining key countries from
within.

Nato's tough feat

As a military alliance trained to repel external aggression, Nato is ill-equipped to deal

with such internal challenges.

But in the days to come, the alliance will have to show its mettle by staging various
military exercises particularly in the small and vulnerable Baltic states, in order to
reassure them and other Nato members that the alliance's security guarantee remains
valid and relevant.

Russia must be left under no illusion that, should it try to interfere with a Nato member-
state, the response will be swift, and include a military component.

A truncated Ukraine may yet succeed in preserving its independence.

But the events of the last few weeks are not just a blip in East-West relations. They
mark the end of an era, the end of the hope that Russia could be incorporated into a
united and peaceful European continent.

Historians may have the luxury of arguing over who should be blamed for this sad
development.

Today's Western politicians, however, have no choice but to deal with the new reality
outlined by Mr Putin: the future belongs to more, rather than less, east-west
confrontation.

[ “grand strategy”? – destabilizing Ukraine is not the best way to the infamous
“Eurasian Union”… ]
Analysis: Can Nato face up to Russia task?
1 April 2014 Last updated at 01:00 GMT
By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent

"Let's be clear from the outset. The Cold War is not back. Russia for all its
military power and posturing is not the Soviet Union of old. This is not going to
be a re-run of the ideological battle that divided the world for most of the last
century."

That in a nutshell was the view of one senior Nato diplomat who I spoke to recently.

But something has changed in the wake of Russia's seizure of the Crimea and its
continuing military threat to eastern Ukraine.

Moscow has broken with a pattern of behaviour that has characterised diplomacy in
Europe since the end of the Cold War and arguably one that has held sway in western
Europe since the collapse of Nazi Germany.

The idea that disputes will be settled by diplomacy rather than force; that the currency
of power is increasingly economic might rather than military.

Worse still, Mr Putin's Kremlin speech some 10 days ago signalled that this might not
end here. Russian spokesmen may say they have no desire to move troops into
Ukraine but their deployments signal otherwise - and that is precisely what they are
intended to do.

How far will Putin go?

Mr Putin's speech was significant not least because he looked to mean what he said.
The French have a word for it - "revanchisme" - a term incorporating the concept of
revenge or restitution after a humbling defeat; something France experienced at the
hands of Prussia in 1870, and something that many Russians - certainly those in Mr
Putin's circle - believe they suffered at the hands of the West with the collapse of the
Soviet Union.

Mr Putin signalled that Russia was back and that it intended to impose itself in its own
back-yard and for many in Russia, Ukraine is the biggest back-yard of all.

Quite how far Mr Putin is prepared to go is unclear. But the threat is evident - to
Ukraine; to Moldova (where there is the possibility of Russia seeking to formalise the
take-over of the break-away enclave of Trans-Dniester). And if to Moldova where else?

That is why countries like the three Baltic Republics are so relieved that they joined
Nato 10 years ago. And that is why all of a sudden the protection and reassurance of
its own members is so high on Nato's agenda.

Nato is expected to offer much more support to Ukraine's moribund military

The Atlantic Alliance cannot know the Kremlin's intentions. It can only look at
capabilities and extrapolate from the signals and actions so far.

So what can Nato do? Its first step is to reassure its uneasy allies in northern Europe.

Support for Ukraine

In the first instance there could be a whole host of small military deployments to beef
up the presence of Alliance units in the Baltic Republics and in Poland. Small-scale
exercises could give an almost permanent Nato military presence in these countries for
the immediate future if that is what Alliance leaders decide.

There is also going to be more support for Ukraine. Not to bring it into Nato's fold - the
current Ukrainian government seems to have no desire to join the Alliance.

But Ukraine is a Nato partner. It has already had help with improving civil control over
its military; with defence planning and so on. Expect more of this kind of help with
potentially also non-lethal assistance to help make its largely moribund military more
effective.

Nato is also signalling that its direction of travel will not change. Some critics have
suggested that Nato expansion since the ending of the Cold War has in some sense
prompted Russia to act in Ukraine; that it has provoked a sense of encirclement in
Moscow.

Nato diplomats reject this out of hand. Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in
an article published on Tuesday in newspapers in all 12 of the countries who have
joined Nato since the end of the Cold War, insists that enlargement has been good for
Europe, for Nato, and for the new members themselves. He insists this process will
continue and it is up to individual countries to determine their own alliances.

Both President Obama and Mr Rasmussen (L) have insisted that Nato is a force for
peace

By coincidence this week's Nato meeting will mark a triple anniversary: 15 years since
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined the Alliance; 10 years since the
accession of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia
joined; and five years since Albania and Croatia acceded. It's an anniversary that Nato
ministers will mark with a brief ceremony and its symbolism will not be lost on Moscow.

Above all, Nato ministers need to plan for the future.

Just how should the Alliance respond to the new wind blowing from Moscow?

Work will be commissioned this week that will feed in to the next Nato summit to be
held in Wales in September.

The rules of the game

This will give direction and guidance to a series of studies. Just what will the future
relationship between Nato and Russia be like? Is this a temporary cooling? Or as one
Nato diplomat put it to me: Is the whole effort to build a partnership with Moscow in
jeopardy?

If the security rules of the game have changed in Europe, what will be the military
implications? Cash-strapped European countries may have to look again at defence
budgets or, at the very least, take the pooling of capabilities more seriously.

The US will have to underscore its continuing commitment to European security in

some tangible ways. There may need to be a different pattern of exercises. The force
structure may need to be looked at too.
It simply will not be a case of business as usual, not because the Cold War is back, but
because Nato's core purpose - the territorial defence of its own members - has
suddenly become rather more important than it was a few weeks ago.
The Russians Are Coming
10 very good reasons not to believe Vladimir Putin when he says he's totally not
going to invade eastern Ukraine.
BY Michael Weiss | Foreign Policy | MARCH 28, 2014

Late on Friday afternoon, news broke that Russian President Vladimir Putin had called
President Barack Obama at the White House to discuss the possibility of a diplomatic
resolution to the crisis in Crimea. The two agreed to dispatch their chief emissaries to
talk details about how to diffuse the situation. But while a settlement might now be a
possibility, United States and NATO intelligence assessments agree that the likelihood
of Russian troops crossing the border into eastern (and possibly northern and
southern) Ukraine grows by the hour. So, is this another Putin psych-out? It may well
be.

Here are 10 facts on the ground that add up to a very real chance that Russia might
still invade Ukraine:

1. The size of troop movements, and the field hospitals.

As of this writing, Russia has amassed as many as 50,000 troops at various points
along the Ukrainian border, including in Russian-occupied Crimea. Videos uploaded to
the Internet show armored vehicles being taken off flatbed freight trains in Voronezh, a
city northeast of Ukraine's Kharkiv, and in Novozybkov, which is 50 miles north of Kiev.
(Tanks there are already rolling on the ground, in fact.) The Russians have also moved
food, medicine, and spare parts into position, which would not be needed for any short-
term military "springtime exercises," as the Defense Ministry now claims is all they're
up to. A field hospital has been erected in the Bryansk region, as Voice of America
reported: that's just 12 miles away from Ukraine's eastern border, which is now heavily
monitored by Russian drones. Furthermore, Moscow has resorted to subterfuge to hide
its activities -- not a terribly good sign of its sincerity. U.S. signals intelligence has been
hindered by old-school tactics, including the use of couriers who deliver messaging
from the army's High Command to commanders in the field. A senior U.S. military
official told the Wall Street Journal: "They have moved into concealed positions,"
almost certainly to evade American spy satellites. If Russia wanted to reassure
Washington that it was only staging drills, it would broadcast its movements and
activities, not conceal them. "We've seen no specific indications that exercises are
taking place," said the Pentagon press secretary, Rear Adm. John Kirby, on Thursday.
Russia has enough men and firepower to reach the separatist region of Transnistria in
Moldova, according to NATO's supreme allied commander Europe, Gen. Philip
Breedlove. Meanwhile, Moldova Prime Minister Iurie Leanca sees "provocations" by
the illegal statelet-within-a-state as likely. Let's not forget that the last time Russia held
an impromptu military "exercise," it invaded and lopped off Crimea.

2. Putin enjoys embarrassing the United States, and especially its current commander-
in-chief.

On Feb. 28, Obama warned that "there will be costs for any military intervention in
Ukraine" -- before high-tailing it to a Democratic National Committee cocktail party at
the Washington Hilton. The next day, the world awoke to a Russian invasion of Crimea.
"Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly -- and
comprehensively -- as Obama's warning on Friday night," the Washington Post's Scott
Wilson reported. And let's look at the laundry list of American desires and warnings the
Kremlin has brushed aside: Russia has dramatically increased its arms transfers to
Syria since the chemical disarmament deal was struck last fall. It continues to host
fugitive NSA spy Edward Snowden. And during the midst of the Maidan protests,
Russia's own spies intercepted a phone call between a top U.S. State Department
official and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, then leaked the contents of it to Kremlin-
controlled media. Moreover, neither Putin nor his inner circle seem terribly aggravated
by the current suite of U.S. or EU sanctions or the blockbuster admission by the
Treasury Department that Putin -- now a staunch patriotic proponent of the "de-
offshoreization" of the Russian economy -- personally controls assets in Swiss oil
commodities giant Gunvor.

3. The IMF bailout.

The International Monetary Fund's assistance package to Ukraine was announced

yesterday. It amounts to $18 billion to be dispensed over two years, and to which can
be added the $14 billion already promised to Ukraine by other international
contributors, such as the United States and European Union. That's a serious amount
of money to help fish a floundering country out of a deep financial soup, and it well
exceeds the bribe Putin offered Viktor Yanukovych to scrap the association agreement
with the EU, which led to the revolution in Kiev. Yes, the IMF loan comes with
conditions, particularly in Ukraine's energy sector. State gas company Naftohaz will
have to be restructured and consumers will have to pay higher energy prices, which
might not go down so well in the Maidan. But even so, Putin has been written out of his
decade-long role as the dark lord of Ukraine's volatile and expensive gas industry. I
wonder how that makes him feel. Clearly, he would now prefer the total collapse of
Ukrainian state institutions and its market economy to an IMF-facilitated stability. And
who better to guarantee a reconstruction effort than conveniently located Russian
troops?

4. Putin has seen how reliably the U.S. policy establishment has done his work for him
already.

How he must love it when the former director of Policy Planning at the State
Department Anne-Marie Slaughter publishes an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing,
inter alia, that the annexation of Crimea was legally and morally equivalent to NATO's
intervention in Kosovo (conveniently forgetting that the latter stopped a genocide
waged by a former Communist apparatchik turned pan-Slavic nationalist). This
equivalence is exactly what Kremlin propaganda has maintained. The Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace's vice president for studies, Andrew Weiss, told the
New York Times two days ago that Brussels is to blame for precipitating Russia's
aggression by pursuing an association agreement with Ukraine in the first place. Putin
couldn't agree more. All of the Beltway's best and brightest, who now profess to be in a
state of total shock at the erosion of the post-Cold War order, nevertheless agree that
the priority for the United States is to mollify rather than antagonize an angry bear. This
is not a message lost on its subject. Putin must reckon that if his tanks roll into Kiev
next Wednesday, those advising Obama will say, "Well, we mustn't upset him more
because then he might invade Warsaw." (And judging from American rhetoric, Putin
might be right about that.)

5. Well, seriously, what are we going to do about it?

As Russian armored personnel carriers and paratroopers move into position, John
Kerry's spokesperson, Jennifer Psaki, tweeted this: "Watching huge Russian military
buildup on #Ukraine's borders: dangerous intimidation #RussiaIsolated." That'll teach
‘em. Does the administration not see the futility in accusing Putin of playing by 19th-
century rules using 21st-century media he's looking to censor, disrupt, or eventually
shut down? How many divisions has the hashtag? Indeed, no one at any senior level in
the U.S. government or NATO is contemplating a military response to an invasion of
the Ukrainian mainland and the dismemberment of a European country. And Putin
knows it. There's not even a bluff he has to call.
6. Listen to what the Kremlin functionaries are saying.

Yesterday, as the United Nations General Assembly voted to reaffirm Ukraine's

territorial integrity and sovereignty, Russia's ambassador to that body, Vitaly Churkin,
accused the U.S. embassy in Kiev of hosting the real shooters of Maidan
demonstrators. Last week, Russia's insane propagandist-in-chief Dmitry Kiselyov took
to the airwaves of his brand-new disinformation clearinghouse, Rossiya Segodnya, to
remind viewers: "Russia is the only country in the world which is really capable of
turning the USA into radioactive ash." Does this sound like a government looking for an
"off-ramp" to an imminent confrontation with the West?

7. Russia's military and arms trade relies on Ukraine.

A little-noticed item in Sovershenno Sekretno, a Moscow-based magazine, authored

by Vladimir Voronov, appeared in late February making the case for why Russia would
indeed mount incursions into Ukraine. The most salient reason given was that, contrary
to conventional wisdom that Ukraine's military depends on Russia, the situation is
actually the other way around: Russia's military-industrial complex needs Ukraine's
manufacturing resources. "It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Motor Sich
for our aviation at least because its engines are used in all our helicopters, including
the combat ones," Voronov wrote, referring to Ukraine's aircraft engine company. "It
also remains the supplier of engines for aircraft used by the Russian Air Force and
civilian airlines." The Ukrainian city of Mykolayiv alone hosts three different shipbuilding
facilities, without which, Voronov says, "Russian shipbuilders cannot handle the
ambitious program of rearming their own fleet." And the Ukrainian state-owned design
bureaus Pivdenne and Pivdenmash are also necessary for Moscow's nuclear missile
upgrades.

In September 2013, the Washington-based arms watchdog c4ads published a brilliant

report called "The Odessa Network," which showed how a serious portion of the global
arms trade was being conducted out of Odessa and Oktyabirsk, two Ukrainian port
cities that now sandwich Crimea. Oktyabirsk is where the Soviets sent nuclear missiles
to Cuba from in 1963, and, as of last year, was "functionally owned by Russia -- the
port manager is a former Russian a navy captain, and the port owner is a Kremlin-
linked oligarch," as authors report Tom Wallace and Farley Mesko wrote. Odessa is
home to the shipping companies that handle the logistics for weapons transfers,
particularly by Russia's state-owned arms dealer Rosoboronexport which controls 80
percent of the country's arms exports. In the last several years, Rosoboronexport has
dispatched Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran, Pechora-2 SAMs to Eritrea, T-72 tanks to
Venezuela and -- very likely -- other forms of hardware to Bashar al-Assad's Syria from
this southeastern city on the Black Sea. Rosoboronexport had $34 billion in weapons
contracts as of June 1, 2013, with sales inked with 66 countries.

The company has two other maritime ports through which it likes to ship its materiel to
paying customers: St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad. But look at a map and weigh for
yourself the differential cost in time, money, and insurance in transporting cargos from
those ports to, say, countries stationed along the Mediterranean or the Horn of Africa
versus from the Black Sea. With a new pro-American, pro-European government now
convened in Kiev, do you really think Putin will allow his Odessa network to be
disrupted or cancelled?

8. The Kremlin lies shamefully and farcically.

Putin insists to this day that Assad didn't unleash poison gas in Syria's capital city last
August -- despite the Kremlin's brokering of a diplomatic accord to dismantle and
destroy Assad's poison gas stocks. Putin also insists that there is no Russian military
presence in Crimea. Rather, pro-Russian "self-defense" militias -- "little green men," as
Ukrainians call them* -- have somehow assumed total strategic control over a
European peninsula the size of Wales, equipped with toys such as the VSS Vintorez
sniper rifle, which is only given to elite units in the Russian military. So measure this
track record of bare-faced mendacity against assurances given by Russian Defense
Minister Sergei Shoigu to U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that Russia has no
plans for an invasion of east Ukraine. Some 80,000 Russian soldiers could march into
Donetsk and Kharkiv tomorrow, and we'd no doubt hear for the first 24 hours that news
of such belligerence was a sinister U.S. conspiracy designed to distract attention from
Detroit's bankruptcy.

9. Kombinatsiya is very much in evidence now.

This under-employed but still extremely relevant concept was defined by Vasili
Mitrokhin, the former senior archivist in the Foreign Intelligence Directorate of the KGB,
in his KGB Lexicon: The Soviet Intelligence Officers Handbook thus: "Operational
combinations to create the right conditions for carrying out overt measures to disrupt
enemy subversive activity (by catching the enemy red-handed, by the ‘chance'
discovery by people who can be questioned as witnesses of material evidence of
subversive activity..." Kombinatsiya also means disseminating "disinformation of the
enemy, recruiting agents, planting them on the enemy, creating conditions required for
the effective use of technical operations equipment, etc." Saying that homosexual neo-
Nazis financed by the State Department are in charge of Ukraine is one interlocking
maneuver. So is releasing compromising or embarrassing phone conversations
between European foreign ministers, American diplomats, and Ukrainian opposition
figures; embedding FSB and GRU agents in the now-disbanded Ukrainian riot police
Berkut or in the still-active Ukrainian security service SBU; egging on pro-Russian
mobs to provoke pro-European Ukrainians into acts of violence in Kharkiv and Donetsk
is yet another. And turning the lights off on Russia's independent media in the very
same week you invade its neighbor is part of the domestic operation.

Putin doesn't want the truth to penetrate his national Potemkin village because the lie
needs to be sold complete: the narod (similar to the German volk) must understand
that its ethnic kin is under systematic assault from Tallinn to Sevastopol and that, if
anything, it's the Americans who are the ones invading another country -- Russia. One
also sees a bit of kombinatsiya in the incredibly successful boost to Putin's popularity
(itself a function of a carefully scripted and acted-out propaganda narrative), which
jumped 20 points since the Crimean adventure got underway and now hovers at
around 80 percent. If Russia invades eastern or southern Ukraine, that figure will go up
even higher because the excuse for protecting the Fatherland and its far-flung and
imperiled diaspora has been cultivated in advance.

10. Modernizatsiya isn't just for show.

Russia's Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has only been in the job for little over a year
and already he's polled as the "most efficient" minister in Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet.
His portfolio was also the most scandalized, as Shoigu's immediate predecessor,
Anatoly Serdyukov, was sacked in 2013 owing to corruption charges involving
Oboronservis, a Defense Ministry-owned real estate firm that appears to have been
largely managed by Serdyukov's 33-year-old mistress, who allegedly [source]
embezzled hundreds of millions of dollars out of it. (It didn't help Serdyukov's case that
his wronged wife is the daughter of Viktor Zubkov, a former prime minister and close
confidante of Putin's.) But Shoigu wasted no time in establishing himself as a national
hero. He has overseen the largest and most ambitious re-armament and modernization
program of the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union. As my colleague
Andrew Bowen has noted, Moscow plans to spend $773 billion by 2020 equipping the
majority of its armed forces with the state-of-the-art weapons such as T-50 fighter jets,
Borei-class ballistic missile submarines, and RS-26 inter-continental ballistic missiles.
Shoigu is also responsible for expanding the ranks of contract soldiers (kontraktniki)
who are seen to be more reliable than conscripts. By 2017, the goal is to have 425,000
kontraktniki trained and ready to deploy (Russia currently has less than half that
number).

Plenty of military analysts are skeptical that these blue-sky reforms can ever be
realized, but consider the exhibitionism that Shoigu's army and air force have resorted
to in the last year. Zapad-2013, another military exercise -- this one waged jointly with
Belarus -- last September, featured as many as 70,000 troops including paratroopers,
Spetsnaz (Special Forces), and paramilitary servicemen from the Interior Ministry. It's
had "counterterrorism" exercises with India, and a large-scale naval exercise with
China. Russia also conducted its own much-vaunted war game in the Far East, with
what it claimed was 160,000 troops, 70 ships, 130 aircraft, and 14 separate army
brigades, although, as deputy editor of the newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnal Alexander
Golts pointed out at the time, these advertised numbers simply didn't add up. But they
really didn't have to: it's the plumage of the fledging modernizatsiya that matters most
of all. "The objectives have been achieved, and the exercises have been more than
satisfactory so far," Putin declared upon the completion of the Far East exercise. More
ominous have been the serial violations of Swedish, Norwegian, Estonian, Japanese,
Colombian, American, and Ukrainian airspaces by aircraft that include long-range
strategic bombers -- the kinds that would, say, reduce a country to radioactive ash.

The Russian armed forces aren't being revamped and expanded and better equipped
for showroom purposes; they were being taken out for a test drive. Recall, too, that
Putin, who was appalled at the bumbling and bungled 2008 war with Georgia for which
he exclusively blames his former marionette, President Medvedev, has yet to have his
own uniquely personalized war in well over a decade. It's been a long time since the
scorched-earth campaigns in Chechnya. And the timing couldn't be more right. The
U.S. Department of Defense is mired in sequestration blues; the White House is
catering to a war-weary and isolationist electorate (which may resent being given what
it's asked for), and John Kerry is racking up air miles pursuing phantom "peace" deals
around the globe. (He even met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a
Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague on March 24.) Meanwhile, Russia's spending a
mint on its own war-making capability, scoring diplomatic victories over Kerry whenever
it can, cleverly exploiting the deterioration of traditional U.S. alliances in the Middle
East (whether Egypt or Israel), and now looking to ensure that Ukraine -- which Putin
considers "not even a state" -- of the former Soviet "near abroad" doesn't stand a
chance of existing without a little help from old friends.

It doesn't bode well, either, that the Kremlin's read-out of Putin's phone call with
Obama emphasized the "rampage of extremists" in Kiev and beyond, or the "blockade"
of Transnistria. Both are clearly pretexts just waiting for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[ and here comes the “reply” :

The Forgotten Principles of Deterrence

Paul Pillar | The National Interest | March 28, 2014

An irony of how the events in Ukraine and the associated altercation with Russia have
thrown many commentators and policy critics into a Cold War mode is that those same
commentators and critics seem to have forgotten (or never learned) much relevant
doctrine that was developed and honed during the real Cold War. The doctrine in
question embraces many principles involving any attempt to exert power and to
exercise influence over other states. The most relevant aspects of doctrine involve
deterrence—using threats to dissuade someone from doing something we do not want
done—as well as some related concepts also involving coercive methods of trying to
influence an adversary's behavior.
[…]
I have commented previously on the fallacious nature of the notion that for the United
States not to take up a gauntlet in one conflict makes it more likely that some adversary
in an unrelated conflict elsewhere on the globe would do aggressive things that it would
not otherwise have done. Yet that notion persists, most recently in the assertion that
Vladimir Putin would not have seized Crimea if the United States had only shown more
toughness elsewhere. For many, of course, such an assertion is just one more
disingenuous way for Barack Obama's political opponents to bash him. But the notion
gets repeated so often that many who hear it, and at least some who say it, probably
believe it.
This mistaken belief is related to another erroneous notion about deterrence, which is
that taking coercive action against an adversary provides deterrence, rather than
making such action conditional on the adversary doing certain carefully defined things
we do not want him to do. Senator John McCain exhibited this mistake when he
bemoaned how the modest steps the Europeans have taken in response to the
situation in Ukraine would not deter Putin. He's right about that, but not because, as he
further comments, commercial interests of the Europeans keep them from
implementing harsher measures now. From exactly what are we trying to deter Putin?
He says he has no intention of seizing any more of Ukraine after Crimea. We may have
good reason to worry about the possibility that he might do so anyway, but he has not
done so yet. Unconditionally imposing costs when he has not yet done so may satisfy
political and other urges on our side, but it lacks deterrence value.

[ so everything is clear, isn’t it ? “HE SAYS he has no intention … he HAS NOT DONE
SO YET” – we can all go home & sleep. Thanks Mr Pillar ]
America's Secret Weapon to Stop Russia
Robert Spalding III | The National Interest | March 31, 2014

Today Ukraine is threatened by a large Russian force on its border. The Crimea has
been annexed by Russia, and Russian forces are consolidating their hold on the
province. Despite assurances by the Russians that they have no interest in invading
Ukraine, it is easy to be dubious of their claims. Capability doesn’t lie, and intent can
change in a heartbeat.

Many have already said that there are no military options in the Ukraine crisis. While
Western Europe and the United States do not desire conflict with Russia, the lack of
action supporting Ukraine is actually a provocative gesture that invites escalation by
the Russians. Fritz Kraemer, a little-known but highly influential strategist in the
Pentagon best known for his many years as advisor to numerous secretaries of
defense, believed that there were two ways to be provocative. One way was to be
threatening, and in so doing provoke an enemy to action. The other way was to appear
weak, and thus to provoke an adversary into a similar risky misadventure.

Before the United States Air Force began pounding Saddam’s forces in what would be
a prelude to a one-hundred-hour ground campaign, it provided a much more subtle
service to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. When considering the first Iraq war, most
people think about the offensive campaign that pushed Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait.
Few remember the deterrence provided by airpower before allied aircraft began the
offensive that would be known as “Desert Storm.”

On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Almost immediately the threat to Saudi Arabia
was recognized in the United States. On August 7, the first contingent of F-15s were
deployed to Saudi Arabia. These aircraft provided a stopgap to prevent Iraqi aircraft
from supporting a ground invasion of Saudi Arabia. It also bought time to work
diplomatic initiatives, and sought to quell the Saudi’s fear of an impending invasion.

This was just one of many examples where the United States has used military
deployments to deter an adversary. During the Kennedy administration, the Soviet
Union issued an ultimatum to the Western powers calling for the withdrawal of all
military forces from Western Berlin. Then on August 13, 1961 the East Germans began
constructing the Berlin Wall. Kennedy went to Congress and asked for an increase in
the defense budget and authorization to boost the end strength of the Army to one
million men. In October and November of 1961, the United States began the largest
deployment of Air National Guard interceptors to Europe in an operation dubbed “Stair
Step.” This served to dissuade further Soviet aggression, and though the Wall
remained it would ultimately be torn down.

These examples highlight the importance of the military lever of national power in
support of diplomatic efforts when faced with an adversary determined to use military
force. Unless backed by a credible use of force, negotiations will often fail. Foreign-
policy practitioners frequently dismiss the military as an option, because they prefer
“soft power.” These same practitioners consider “hard power” to be inherently
provocative. Yet, deployments of military forces need not be escalatory, especially
when they are intended to be defensive in nature.

Crimea is most likely permanently lost until there is a change in government in Russia.
To buy time for Ukraine and to allow time for diplomatic measures to be effective, a
military solution is called for. A purely defensive deployment of F-22 fighters (along with
supporting aircraft) is just one possible solution. To be diplomatically effective these
forces would have to come with an American promise to defend Ukrainian skies from
attack.

Without firing a shot, such a deployment would immediately change Putin’s invasion
calculus. Faced with F-22s, Russian aircraft would not survive, and thus could not
support a Russian ground invasion. Ukrainians would feel more confident about their
ability to defend their country, since any Russian invasion would be subject to attack by
Ukrainian aircraft protected by F-22s.

The resulting pause and collective exhale would allow all sides to consider a future
where an aggressive Russia will be met with firm American resolve. Furthermore it puts
some teeth into what everyone believes is the “strong message that needs to be sent
to Putin,” rather than just sending the Ukrainians some groceries.

To those that wonder about the outcomes from what they would surely term a severe
provocation without a clear understanding of United States’ interests, I propose three.
First, Putin and others would be put on notice that unilateral attempts to militarily
change the post-World War II global order will be forcefully countered. Second,
countries that rely on American power as an alternative to developing their own
nuclear-arms program would feel confident that the United States will honor its
commitment to extended deterrence. Finally, the countries that have heretofore been
prevented from joining NATO by a belligerent Russia can comfortably enter the global
commons without fear of coercion.

Robert Spalding III is a Military Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr.
Spalding was most recently vice commander of the 509th Bomb Wing based at
Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, where he was responsible for preparing and
maintaining United States' only B-2 wing. He also commanded the 509th Operations
Group, where he launched B-2s to protect civilians during Operation Odyssey Dawn.

[ good to see that the guys at the CFR have not lost their senses. But will the message
ever reach the Man from Kenya ? ]
Obama Must Show He’ll Use Military Means
to Deter Russia in Ukraine
World News |TheDailyBeast | 03.30.14
To deter Putin and other aggressors, diplomatic and economic slaps are not enough;
the U.S. needs a military dimension.

Don’t pop the champagne corks just yet because Vladimir Putin phoned Barack Obama
to pursue diplomacy on Ukraine and environs. It may be just a ploy, like Moscow’s
proposal to denude Syria of chemical weapons to head off a potent U.S. air strike
against President Assad’s forces. It may just be a gambit to tamp down the West’s
drive toward greater sanctions against Russia. And all sinister explanations of the call
gain weight by the fact that some 25,000 Russian troops still threaten Ukraine’s
borders.

Even if Putin is serious about diplomacy for the moment, there is a deeper problem
afoot for Obama. It is one that the White House rejects outright, but one that officials
outside the White House and experts outside the administration are certainly fretting
about. It is that Obama’s idea of combating aggression essentially by means of
economic sanctions and “diplomacy” is not nearly enough, that the costs of aggression
have to be raised, and that there has to be a stronger and more credible military
dimension to U.S. national security policy. Whether the White House admits it or not,
foes the world over seem to have concluded that Obama has taken the U.S. military
force option off the table and made aggression easier.

In that vein, take a second look at what Obama said last Wednesday about a Russian
attack on Ukraine: “Of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, in part because of its
close and complex history with Russia. Nor will Russia be dislodged from Crimea or
deterred from further escalation by military force.” That sounds awfully close to telling
Putin that if he wants to grab more of Ukraine or all of it he need not worry about a U.S.
military response. In effect, the U.S. president is saying that the only cost to Russia for
totally violating the basic rules of international behavior is the threat of tougher
sanctions (and this only if the Europeans and others can get their act together). Why on
earth would Obama give Putin this virtual free ride?

Did the White House fear that unless the Ukrainians felt totally abandoned they might
be foolhardy enough to actually precipitate a war with Russia? If this was the White
House’s worry, Obama could have warned Ukrainian leaders publicly and privately that
their only chance of help from the West was to make it absolutely clear that Moscow
was the guilty party.

When Obama said that the United States would do nothing militarily to protect Ukraine
against an attack, he was in effect walking away from the Budapest Memorandum of
1994 signed by Ukraine, Russia, Britain and America. By this paper, Ukraine gave back
its nuclear weapons to Russia on a pledge by all parties not to violate Ukraine’s
security and sovereignty. To be sure, neither London nor Washington was legally
obliged to defend Ukraine if attacked. But it is perfectly obvious that Kiev never would
have given up its nukes unless it believed the U.S. would come to its defense in some
meaningful fashion.

The Budapest document makes sense historically only as a quid pro quo agreement
resting upon American credibility to act. The United States cannot simply walk away
from the plain meaning of the Budapest Memorandum and leave Ukraine in the lurch.
And how would this complete washing of U.S. hands affect U.S. efforts to prevent the
spread of nuclear weapons, supposedly a top national priority? Why should any nation
forego nukes or give them away like Ukraine, if other nations, and especially the U.S.,
feel zero responsibility for their defense? It’s not that Washington has to send ground
troops or start using its nuclear weapons; it’s just that potential aggressors have to see
some potential military cost.

It’s bad enough that Obama thinks of the U.S. response to Russia in Ukraine almost
exclusively in terms of diplomatic isolation of the bad guy, plus economic sanctions
such as they are or might be, and a touch of military aid. But the real worry is that this
has become his pattern worldwide.

If potential aggressors come to think that their power grabs will be met solely by
diplomatic harassment and some economic squeezing, they will be tempted
increasingly to snatch whatever they want first and worry later. Greedy lawbreakers
have been emboldened by Obama’s unenforced “red lines” in Syria. Same goes for
North Korean rockets landing on South Korean lands without serious penalty. And the
same holds for China’s new pattern of muscle flexing to establish its interests in the
East and South China Seas. Ukraine only reinforces the pattern.

Economic sanctions are a good tool, but not a substitute for a credible military option.
Even potent economic sanctions over decades have not brought Cuba, Iran, and North
Korea to their knees. Russia will be even more difficult to break with economic
sanctions because it is the eighth largest economy in the world.

How can the U.S. add muscle in the present Ukraine crisis?

The boldest and riskiest course would be to dispatch 50 or 60 of the incredibly potent
F-22s to Poland plus Patriot batteries and appropriate ground support and protection.
Russian generals and even Putin surely know that the F-22s could smash the far
inferior Russian air force and then punish Russian armies invading eastern Ukraine or
elsewhere in the region.

There’s no sense at all in making this move unless Obama unambiguously resolves to
use the F-22s. The worst thing to do is bluff. Nor would the dangers end there even if
Obama were not bluffing; Putin might think he was bluffing anyway and start a war.
With all these complications and risks, the Obama team still should give this option a
serious look—and let Russia and our NATO partners know this tough course is under
serious consideration. Obama has sent a few F-15’s and F-16’s to Eastern Europe,
some military aid to Ukraine and other states. But everyone knows this is tokenism.

Another plausible and perhaps less risky measure: help prepare Ukrainians for guerrilla
war against an invading Russian force. Pound for pound in conventional war, the
Ukrainian forces are no match whatsoever for the Russians. But irregular Ukrainian
troops armed with first-class rifles, mortars, and explosive devices would do Russian
troops great damage. Russians know this. They have surely not forgotten the horrors
fighting guerrillas in Afghanistan.

These steps would be plausible, purely defensive, and a deterrent for starters. They
would demonstrate to Moscow that further aggression against Ukraine would result in
much more than economic and diplomatic slaps. Credible force has been the missing
ingredient in U.S. policy. Support for what might be the Ukrainian Resistance,
combined with an F-22 deployment to Poland “to protect U.S./NATO security interests
in the region,” should give Putin pause. And this approach would make the dictators in
Pyongyang, Damascus, and Beijing think twice now as well.

Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is
author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy
(HarperCollins, 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st
century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Putin’s Western Allies : Why Europe’s Far
Right Is on the Kremlin’s Side
By Mitchell A. Orenstein – Foreig Affairs – March 25, 2014

Given that one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated reasons for invading
Crimea was to prevent “Nazis” from coming to power in Ukraine, it is perhaps
surprising that his regime is growing closer by the month to extreme right-wing parties
across Europe. But, in both cases, Putin’s motives are not primarily ideological. In
Ukraine, he simply wants to grab territory that he believes rightly belongs to him. In the
European Union, he hopes that his backing of fringe parties will destabilize his foes and
install in Brussels politicians who will be focused on dismantling the EU rather than
enlarging it.

In Hungary, for example, Putin has taken the Jobbik party under his wing. The third-
largest party in the country, Jobbik has supporters who dress in Nazi-type uniforms,
spout anti-Semitic rhetoric, and express concern about Israeli “colonization” of
Hungary. The party has capitalized on rising support for nationalist economic policies,
which are seen as an antidote for unpopular austerity policies and for Hungary’s
economic liberalization in recent years. Russia is bent on tapping into that sentiment. In
May 2013, Kremlin-connected right-wing Russian nationalists at the prestigious
Moscow State University invited Jobbik party president Gabor Vona to speak. Vona
also met with Russia Duma leaders including Ivan Grachev, chairman of the State
Duma Committee for Energy and Vasily Tarasyuk, deputy chairman of the Committee
on Natural Resources and Utilization, among others. On the Jobbik website, the visit is
characterized as “a major breakthrough” which made “clear that Russian leaders
consider Jobbik as a partner.” In fact, there have been persistent rumors that Jobbik’s
enthusiasm is paid for with Russian rubles. The party has also repeatedly criticized
Hungary’s “Euro-Atlantic connections” and the European Union. And, more recently, it
called the referendum in Crimea “exemplary,” a dangerous word in a country with
extensive co-ethnic populations in Romania and Slovakia. It seems that the party sees
Putin’s new ethnic politics as being aligned with its own revisionist nationalism.

The Kremlin’s ties to France’s extreme-right National Front have also been growing
stronger. Marine Le Pen, the party leader, visited Moscow in June 2013 at the invitation
of State Duma leader Sergei Naryshkin, a close associate of Putin’s. She also met with
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and discussed issues of common concern, such
as Syria, EU enlargement, and gay marriage. France’s ProRussia TV, which is funded
by the Kremlin, is staffed by editors with close ties to the National Front who use the
station to espouse views close to National Front’s own perspective on domestic and
international politics. The National Front wishes to replace the EU and NATO with a
pan-European partnership of independent nations, which, incidentally, includes Russia
and would be driven by a trilateral Paris-Berlin-Moscow alliance. Le Pen’s spokesman,
Ludovic De Danne, recently recognized the results of the Crimea referendum and
stated in an interview with Voice of Russia radio that, “historically, Crimea is part of
Mother Russia.” In the same interview, he mentioned that he had visited Crimea
several times in the past year. Marine Le Pen also visited Crimea in June 2013.

The list of parties goes on. Remember Golden Dawn, the Greek fascist party that won
18 seats in Greece’s parliament in 2012? Members use Nazi symbols at rallies,
emphasize street fighting, and sing the Greek version of the Nazi Party anthem. The
Greek government imprisoned Nikos Michaloliakos, its leader, and stripped
parliamentary deputies of their political immunity before slapping them with charges of
organized violence. But the party continues to take to the streets. Golden Dawn has
never hidden its close connections to Russia’s extreme right, and is thought to receive
funds from Russia. One Golden Dawn–linked website reports that Michaloliakos even
received a letter in prison from Moscow State University professor and former Kremlin
adviser Alexander Dugin, one of the authors of Putin’s “Eurasian” ideology. It was also
Dugin who hosted Jobbik leader Vona when he visited Moscow. In his letter, Dugin
expressed support for Golden Dawn’s geopolitical positions and requested to open a
line of communication between Golden Dawn and his think tank in Moscow. Golden
Dawn’s New York website reports that Michaloliakos “has spoken out clearly in favor of
an alliance and cooperation with Russia, and away from the ‘naval forces’ of the
‘Atlantic.’”

Finally, a cable made public by WikiLeaks shows that Bulgaria’s far right Ataka party
has close links to the Russian embassy. Reports that Russia funds Ataka have swirled
for years, but have never been verified. But evidence of enthusiasm for Russia’s
foreign policy goals is open for all to see. Radio Bulgaria reported on March 17 that
Ataka’s parliamentary group “has insisted that Bulgaria should recognize the results
from the referendum for Crimea’s joining to the Russian Federation.” Meanwhile, party
leader Volen Siderov has called repeatedly for Bulgaria to veto EU economic sanctions
for Russia.

In addition to their very vocal support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea within the EU,
Jobbik, National Front, and Ataka all sent election observers to validate the Crimea
referendum (as did the Austrian Freedom Party, the Belgian Vlaams Belang party,
Italy’s Forza Italia and Lega Nord, and Poland’s Self-Defense, in addition to a few far-
left parties, conspicuously Germany’s Die Linke). Their showing was organized by the
Russia-based Eurasian Observatory For Democracy & Elections, a far-right NGO
“opposed to Western ideology.” The EODE specializes in monitoring elections in “self-
proclaimed republics” (Abkhazia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh) allied with Moscow,
according to its website.

The Putin government’s cordial relations with Europe’s far right sit oddly, to say the
least, with his opposition to “Nazis” in the Ukrainian government. Yet Putin’s dislike for
Ukrainian “fascists” has nothing to do with ideology. It has to do with the fact that they
are Ukrainian nationalists. The country’s Svoboda and Right Sector parties, which
might do well in the post–Viktor Yanukovych Ukraine, stand for independence in a
country that Putin does not believe should exist separate from Russia.

Similarly, Russian support of the far right in Europe has less to do with ideology than
with his desire to destabilize European governments, prevent EU expansion, and help
bring to power European governments that are friendly to Russia. In that sense,
several European countries may only be one bad election away from disaster. In fact,
some would say that Hungary has already met it. As support for Jobbik increases, the
anti-democratic, center-right government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has tacked
heavily to the right and recently signed a major nuclear deal with Russia. Russia plans
to lend Hungary ten billion euro to construct two new reactors at its Paks nuclear plant,
making Hungary even more dependent for energy on Russia. Jobbik’s Vona wants to
go even further, taking Hungary out of the EU and joining Russia’s proposed Eurasian
Union.

European parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for the end of May, are
expected to result in a strong showing for the far right. A weak economy, which was
weakened further by the European Central Bank’s austerity policies, has caused the
extreme right vote to surge. Current polls show the far-right parties in France and
Holland winning the largest share of seats in their national delegations. Brussels
strategists worry that 20 percent of members of the new European parliament could be
affiliated with parties that wish to abolish the EU, double the current number. That
could cause an EU government shutdown to rival the dysfunction of Washington and
deal a major blow to efforts to enlarge the Union and oppose Russian expansionism.
It is strange to think that Putin’s strategy of using right-wing extremist political parties to
foment disruption and then take advantage — as he did in Crimea — could work in
southern and western Europe as well. Or that some of the extreme right parties in the
European parliament, who work every day to delegitimize the European Union and
whose numbers are growing, may be funded by Russia. Yet these possibilities cannot
be dismissed. Russia might soon be able to disrupt the EU from within.

To counter Russia, European leaders should start launching public investigations into
external funding of extreme-right political parties. If extensive Russia connections are
found, it would be important to publicize that fact and then impose sanctions on Russia
that would make it more difficult for it to provide such support. Pro-European parties
must find a way to mobilize voters who are notoriously unwilling to vote in European
parliament elections. Europe will also have to rethink the austerity policies that have
worsened the grievances of many Europeans and pushed them to support the anti-
system, anti-European right. Although Germany has banned extreme right parties from
representation, other countries have not. Germany may have therefore underestimated
the extent of damage austerity policies could do to the European project and should
rethink how its excessive budget cutting, monetary prudence, and export surpluses are
affecting politics in the rest of Europe.

Putin’s challenge to Europe must be taken seriously. Rather than making another land
grab in his back yard, he might watch patiently from the sidelines at the end of May as
pro-Russia far-right parties win a dramatic election victory in European parliamentary
elections. These elections could weaken the European Union and bring Russia’s
friends on the far right closer to power.

[ another alarm bell ringing too late ]

[ ADDENDUM :

Russia in Crimea? It's Europe's fault, say Eurosceptics | Reuters, Mar. 21 2014
Italy's Eurosceptical anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, which burst to prominence in
last year's general election, said Europe had set a dangerous precedent in Ukraine.
"In Ukraine, for whatever reasons, we have seen the principle affirmed that a
government elected in free elections can be unseated not by new elections, as would
be normal in a democracy, but by the armed streets," party leader Beppe Grillo, a
former stand-up comic, said on his blog.
"Today it's Ukraine but tomorrow? What other streets? What other springs?" ]
The West and Russia: Why Obama's Legacy
Hinges on Europe
An Analysis by Sebastian Fischer REUTERS March 26, 2014

Barack Obama has labeled Russia a "regional power" that is acting out of
weakness rather than strength. That may be so. But the US president's own
foreign policy legacy depends heavily on Vladimir Putin -- and Europe.

Barack Obama is has a reputation for extreme rationality -- or for being coldly
calculating, depending on the viewpoint. Self-control is paramount, and he rarely loses
it. One can assume, then, that Obama's barbed comments on Russia, delivered at a
Tuesday press conference in The Hague, were designed to provoke. They also show
just how vexed the US president is by Russian President Vladimir Putin's exploits in
Crimea.

Russia, Obama said following the Nuclear Security Summit in the Netherlands, is a
"regional power" that is threatening its neighbors "not out of strength, but out of
weakness."

It is a comment that is sure to ruffle Putin's feathers; the Russian president, after all,
has shown a penchant for consulting the czarist playbook it his attempt to boost his
country's role on the global stage. But Obama wasn't done yet. The US too exerts
influence over its neighbors, the president said. However: "We generally don't need to
invade them in order to have a strong cooperative relationship with them." And:
"Russian actions are a problem. They don't pose the number one security threat to the
United States."

It would be difficult to prove the US president wrong. Russian power is certainly not
what it used to be and its expansionary tendencies are largely a reaction to the weak
geopolitical position in which it finds itself. And it certainly does not represent a direct
threat to the US: An invasion of Alaska seems unlikely and a nuclear attack is out of
the question.

But indirectly, Russia does present a grave danger -- to Obama himself. Putin is
threatening Obama's credibility as the leader and guarantor of the West.

More help

From the very beginning of his presidency, Obama has been more focused on
consolidating US forces rather than embarking on new international adventures. He
has significantly reduced America's military footprint overseas, vocally demanded more
help from US allies, emphasized the need for multilateral conflict solutions and
preferred to focus on domestic issues as much as possible. Obama's retrenchment
largely reflects the desires of the American electorate after eight years of George W.
Bush.

What does it mean for the current crisis, though? Does his cautious approach to foreign
policy automatically mean he is a weak president? And was it a factor in Putin's
decision to act in Crimea?

No matter how Obama views Russia, the Ukraine crisis and how he chooses to
confront Putin will be decisive for his foreign policy legacy. That he ended the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan is certainly worthy of praise. But a triumph of his own making
remains to be seen.
"For any president engaged in retrenchment, policy success is not measured simply by
how well the United States extricates itself from old involvements," Stephen
Sestanovich, the renowned Russia expert and former advisor to US Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, writes in his new book "Maximalist: America in the World from
Truman to Obama." The decisive question, he writes, is: "How well are new challenges
handled?"

There are plenty of them: the conflict with Iran over its nuclear program, the civil war in
Syria, a budding military dictatorship in Egypt, China's more aggressive stance toward
US allies in Asia -- and now Putin's Russia. The limits to Obama's power are being
tested across the globe. And almost all autocrats present America as the enemy as a
way of stabilizing their own power.

Mission Failed

Republican hawks have long since begun joking about Obama's allegedly naïve
attempt to "reset" US relations with Russia. His predecessor George W. Bush, a man
who was driven by obsessions in much the same way that Putin is, is now being
celebrated as a strong president, although he wasn't even able to apply sanctions
comparable to the current ones in response to Russia's conflict with Georgia in 2008.
But Obama's mistake is that he underestimated the revanchist nature of Putin's foreign
policy. The Russian president is much less interested in cooperation with the West than
he is in constructing an alternative to the West. Putin is a man of the past -- one whom
Obama had sought to drag into the 21st century. Mission failed.

It is telling how Obama, on his current European tour, has relied on emphasizing the
self-evident to guard against misleading perceptions. As he did on Tuesday, when he
ensured Eastern European allies that NATO's Article 5, which treats an attack on one
member as an attack on the entire alliance, remains in force. "Every one of our NATO
allies has assurances that we will act in their defense against any threats," he intoned.
That sounds good. But it is akin to the local fire department calling every day to ensure
home owners that it would respond to a fire should the need arise. On the other hand, if
Obama had refrained from uttering such a reassurance, how would it have been
interpreted?

The situation is a challenging one. But it is a fateful one for both Obama and the future
of US foreign policy. How he navigates it will determine whether he, the retrenchment
president, will go down in history as a strong or a weak president, and will inform the
policies of those that come after him.

Much is dependent upon Chancellor Angela Merkel and other EU leaders; such
appears to be the consensus in Washington. Will the EU and US show unity and a
willingness to accept potential economic burdens that may result from their response to
Russia? Or will the trans-Atlantic relationship suffer anew?

In short, Europe's path will have a decisive impact on the future foreign policy course
charted by the world's last remaining superpower. Obama's legacy hangs in the
balance.
Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the
anti-Western world
By Masha Gessen, Washington Post Monday, March 31, 2:43 AM

“This is not another Cold War that we’re entering into,” President Obama said
Wednesday in Brussels, presenting the post-Crimea world order as he sees it after
consultations with other NATO leaders. “After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads
no bloc of nations, no global ideology.”

President Vladimir Putin would surely beg to differ. Over the past two years, a new
ideology has taken shape at the Kremlin. Insistently pushed out over the airwaves of
state-controlled television, it has taken hold as Russia’s national idea — and is the
driving force behind its newly aggressive international posture. Russia is remaking itself
as the leader of the anti-Western world.

During his annual state-of-the-federation address to parliament in December, Putin

articulated this ideology. This in itself was novel: For his preceding 13 years at the
helm, Putin had stuck to the pragmatic in his speeches. Now he was putting forth a
vision for which many Russians had longed in the nearly quarter-century since the
Soviet Union collapsed, leaving a giant hole where its citizens’ identities used to be.

In his December speech, Putin said that Russia had no superpower ambitions in the
sense of “a claim to global or regional hegemony.” Yet, he said, “We will strive to be
leaders.” In explaining Russia’s new identity with relationship to the West and its claim
on leadership, he said:

“This is absolutely objective and understandable for a state like Russia, with its great
history and culture, with many centuries of experience not of so-called tolerance,
neutered and barren, but of the real organic life of different peoples existing together
within the framework of a single state.” Putin was placing Russia’s very approach to life
in opposition to the Western one. The “so-called tolerance” he mentioned as the key
feature of Western civilization is, from this perspective, nothing but a slide into
immorality. More likely than not, that includes homosexuality, which is why tolerance is
described as “barren and neutered.”

“Today many nations are revising their moral values and ethical norms, eroding ethnic
traditions and differences between peoples and cultures,” he continued. “Society is now
required not only to recognize everyone’s right to the freedom of consciousness,
political views and privacy, but also to accept without question the equality of good and
evil, strange as it seems, concepts that are opposite in meaning.”

Finally, said Putin, it was time to resist this scourge of tolerance and diversity creeping
in from the West. “We know that there are more and more people in the world who
support our position on defending traditional values,” he asserted. Russia’s role is to
“prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a
primitive state.”

In short, Putin intends to save the world from the West. He has started with Crimea.
When he says he is protecting ethnic Russians in Ukraine, he means he is protecting
them from the many terrible things that come from the West. A few days after the
December address, Alexei Pushkov, head of the Duma committee on foreign relations,
defined that threat on the floor of the chamber: “European Union advisers in practically
every ministry of any significance, control over the flow of finances and over national
programs, and a broadening of the sphere of gay culture, which has become the
European Union’s official policy.”

Three months later, this is exactly how Russians see the events in Ukraine: The West
is literally taking over, and only Russian troops can stand between the Slavic country’s
unsuspecting citizens and the homosexuals marching in from Brussels.

Now, Russia is not leading a bloc of nations in this new anti-Western crusade — at
least, not yet. But it is certainly not alone in its longing for “traditional values.” Russia
has been assembling an informal “traditional values” bloc in the United Nations, where
the Human Rights Council has passed a series of Russian-sponsored resolutions
opposing gay rights over the past three years. Russia’s allies in passing these
resolutions include not only its post-Soviet neighbors but also China, Ecuador,
Malaysia and more than a dozen other states.

The anti-gay agenda may seem like a thin basis for forming a militant international
alliance of state-actors, but it has great unifying potential when framed in terms of a
broader anti-Western effort and, indeed, a civilizational mission.

That mission, rather than the mere desire to bite off a piece of a neighboring country, is
the driving force behind Putin’s new war — and the reason the Russian public supports
it so strongly. This war, they hope, will make Russia not only bigger but also make it
great again.

Masha Gessen is a Russian American journalist and the author of “The Man Without a
Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.”
Analysis
Bridget Kendall
Diplomatic correspondent, BBC News

Mr Kerry's description of what should be up for discussion covered quite a lot on

Russia's wish list: rights for national minorities, language rights, the disarmament of
irregular forces and inclusive constitutional reform, including - most importantly - the
idea of federalising Ukraine.

No wonder Sergei Lavrov looked satisfied and called the talks "very very constructive",
while John Kerry just looked tired. It's true the Americans are insisting that all
negotiations must be subject to the approval of the government in Kiev - which has
already dismissed the idea of federalism as unacceptable. But if the issue is on the
table, from Russia's point of view, that is the first step.

In other ways, too, Mr Kerry seemed less than forceful: Russian troops massed on
Ukraine's border were "intimidating" and "inappropriate" but he admitted they were on
Russian soil so legally there could be no demand they were moved. And he made no
American call for Russian troops to be pulled back in Crimea, or for the annexed
territory to be returned to Ukraine. The impression left was that Washington is bending
over backwards in its search for a diplomatic solution to stop this crisis getting worse.
What Kerry Didn’t Tell Us: Russia Makes
Fresh Demands For Pieces Of Ukraine As It
Masses Thousands Of Troops On Border
Mar 30, 2014

So Kerry met with Lavrov, and came out talking about everything except what really
happened in the meeting. Far from backing down, Russia held a gun to his head (40 to
100 thousand troops on the border) and demanded more, calling for parts of Ukraine to
have “autonomous powers”, which is really a demand for parts of Ukraine to be under
Russian control.

Excerpted from The Guardian:

Russia on Sunday night repeated its demand that the US and its European partners
accept its proposal that ethnic Russian regions of eastern and southern Ukraine be
given extensive autonomous powers independent of Kiev as a condition for agreeing a
diplomatic solution to the crisis over its annexation of Crimea.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, told reporters Ukraine could not function as a
“unified state” and should become a loose federation. He made the remarks after an
inconclusive meeting with John Kerry, the US secretary of state, at the Russian
ambassador’s residence in Paris following a day in which tensions over Ukraine
deepened appreciably. Lavrov called the talks “very, very constructive”.

Kerry told reporters the US and Russia agreed on the need for a diplomatic solution but
made clear there had been no breakthrough, saying the Russian troop build-up along
the border was creating a climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine and was not
helpful.

He called for Russia to pull back its forces and said talks on the country’s future must
include Kiev’s leaders. “We will not accept a path forward where the legitimate
government of Ukraine is not at the table. This principle is clear. No decisions about
Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Despite the distance between the two sides, Kerry said Washington would “consider
the ideas and the suggestions that we developed tonight”.

The meeting took place against an ominous backdrop of the gathering of an estimated
40,000 Russian troops on Ukraine’s eastern border, and warnings from Nato and the
Pentagon that the Russian military activity, ostensibly relating to routine exercises, was
abnormal and could be a prelude to an invasion.

General Philip Breedlove, Nato supreme allied commander Europe and the head of the
US military’s European command, was ordered back to his post in Brussels during a
visit to Washington after Chuck Hagel, the US defence secretary, pointed to “a lack of
transparency” from Russia about the troop movements. Unlike Moscow, Washington
has said it will not resort to force to resolve the crisis.

The US has called on Russia to disarm irregular forces in Crimea, admit international
observers and pull its troops back from the eastern border. But speaking to Russian
state television before the talks, Lavrov laid out Moscow’s quite different terms.
Primarily, he said, Russia was seeking a federal solution for Ukraine as part of “deep
constitutional reform”.
“Frankly speaking, we don’t see any other way for the steady development of the
Ukrainian state apart from as a federation,” he added. Under the Russian plan, which
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin reportedly discussed in a phone call initiated by
Moscow on Friday, each region would have control of its economy, taxes, culture,
language, education and “external economic and cultural connections with
neighbouring countries or regions”, Lavrov said.

“Given the proportion of native Russians [in Ukraine], we propose this and we are sure
there is no other way.”

The Russian proposal to radically alter the way Ukraine is governed and administered
is certain to arouse strong opposition in Kiev, where it will be viewed by critics of
Moscow’s intervention in Crimea as a roundabout way of breaking up or partitioning the
country.

In an apparent attempt to assuage concerns in Kiev and western capitals about

Russian intentions, Lavrov said there were no plans to invade eastern Ukraine.

Latest US intelligence estimates based on satellite data indicate that Russia’s troops
on the Ukrainian border include a wide range of special units, elite forces and
equipment.

http://patdollard.com/2014/03/what-kerry-didnt-tell-us-russia-makes-fresh-demands-for-
pieces-of-ukraine-as-it-masses-thousands-of-troops-on-border/
Kerry, Russia’s Lavrov fail to reach deal
over Ukraine, say they will keep talking
By Anne Gearan, Washington Post March 30

PARIS — The United States and Russia reached no agreement Sunday on how to
defuse the crisis over Russia’s annexation of a Ukrainian territory and its massing of
troops for possible further moves against the neighboring country, but they agreed to
continue talking.

Tens of thousands of Russian forces poised near eastern Ukraine are “creating a
climate of fear and intimidation in Ukraine” and raising questions about Russia’s next
move and its commitment to diplomacy, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said after
several hours of talks with Russia’s top diplomat.

“We have some ideas. We have proposals that both sides made,” Kerry said, but he
acknowledged that the United States cannot force Russia to pull back its forces.

“The troops are in Russia. They are on Russian soil,” Kerry told reporters. “The
question is not one of right or legality; the question is one of strategic appropriateness
and whether it is smart at this moment in time to have that number of troops massed on
the border when you’re trying to send a message that you want to de-escalate.”

It was clear that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had made no promises about
pulling troops back from the border and that Russia has no intention of withdrawing
from Crimea, the strategic Black Sea territory it annexed two weeks ago.

But both nations support diplomatic solutions and “meeting the needs of the Ukrainian
population,” Kerry said.

Lavrov said at a separate briefing that the discussion was “very, very constructive” and
that he and Kerry agreed to work with the Ukrainian government to improve rights for
Russian-speaking Ukrainians and disarm “irregular forces and provocateurs.”

The United States and Russia were seeking to calm a bitter confrontation that has
included the toughest U.S. economic penalties on Russia since the end of the Cold
War.

At stake is the rising war of words between the West and Russia over the military
incursion and annexation of Crimea. The United States does not recognize the
annexation, which is unlikely to be reversed soon, if at all.

Kerry and Lavrov’s talks were focused less on Crimea and more on preventing further
confrontation. For the United States, that means stopping Russian military moves
where they are.

The Obama administration believes that the sanctions are biting and that Russia is
trying to prevent further economic penalties. The United States and the European
Union have threatened further measures if Russia invades eastern Ukraine.

Also Sunday, the Pentagon said the top U.S. general in Europe has been sent back
early from a trip to Washington because of Russia’s “lack of transparency” about troop
movements along the Ukraine border.
Gen. Philip Breedlove, who is both NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe and
the head of the U.S. military’s European Command, arrived in Europe on Saturday
evening. He had been due to testify before Congress this week.

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel “made the decision Friday evening amidst
growing uncertainty in Ukraine,” said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman.

“While it does not foreshadow imminent military action in Ukraine, the general’s return
will allow him more time” and flexibility, Kirby said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had proposed the Kerry-Lavrov meeting Friday in a
surprise phone call to President Obama. Wary U.S. officials said that the diplomatic
outreach was welcome but that there has been no sign that Russia is taking steps to
pull back forces from locations along the Russia-Ukraine border, as the West has
demanded.

The Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, said Sunday that
Russia has no intention of withdrawing from Crimea.

“Crimea is a part of [the] Russian Federation,” Kislyak said in an interview on ABC’s

“This Week.”

Kerry went into the meeting with low expectations. U.S. officials said they did not
expect quick agreement on the main issues dividing Washington and Moscow, but
Kerry clearly hoped to ease tensions ahead of a meeting of NATO nations this week.
The gathering of foreign ministers is not expected to include Russia and will be
dominated by the Ukraine crisis.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said Sunday that troop
movements show that Putin is “absolutely not looking for a way out” of the tensions.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Rogers said Russia has moved some of its most
advanced equipment into South Ossetia, a disputed region near the border of Georgia
and Russia.

Russia says the troops are part of normal exercises and a safeguard against what it
calls extremism in Ukraine that might threaten ethnic Russians and Russian speakers
in the country’s east.

Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula, has a majority Russian-speaking population and was
long oriented toward Moscow. Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia in
a March 16 referendum that the United States called a sham. The Russian move
followed months of political upheaval in Ukraine, a former Soviet Republic, sparked by
tension over whether its government would form an economic association with Moscow
or the European Union. Russian forces moved into Crimea after Ukraine’s moderately
pro-Russian government in Kiev fell and was replaced by a temporary coalition that
pledged to create a modern economy, root out corruption and look toward the West.

Ahead of the session Sunday at the home of Russia’s ambassador to France, Lavrov
told Russian state television that there were no plans for further military moves.

“We have absolutely no intention of, or interest in, crossing Ukraine’s borders,” Lavrov
said Saturday. Referring to the unfolding diplomacy, he added, “We are getting closer
in our positions.”
The talks in Paris do not suggest a change in the Russian position, said Samuel
Charap, a Russia specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in
Washington.

“They would like to achieve their objectives at the negotiating table rather than on the
battlefield, but the buildup on the border both strengthens their hand and leaves them a
ready military option to turn to if the talks don’t get them what they want,” Charap said
Sunday.

The White House said Obama had asked for a written Russian response to diplomatic
proposals on Ukraine that Kerry had presented to Lavrov at their meeting last week. It
was not clear whether Lavrov was carrying that response to Paris or whether he had
new latitude to negotiate.

Kerry was not making new proposals, U.S. officials said, but the contents of his written
offer to Lavrov have not been made public.

In general, the United States wants the Russian troops pulled back, pro-Russian and
pro-Ukrainian militias disarmed, a dialogue between Moscow and the new government
in Kiev, joint efforts to support that government economically and diplomatically, and
wider international monitoring inside Ukraine and Crimea.

Kerry and Lavrov were also discussing ways their countries could agree on new
political measures in Ukraine that could decentralize some decision-making and
perhaps give greater autonomy to Russian-speaking areas in the east.

Washington also wants Russian assurances that it will respect the Kiev government
and not interfere in upcoming elections. Moscow wants the voting postponed; the
United States wants it to go ahead in May as scheduled.

The United States and Europe have approved two rounds of sanctions on Russia,
including travel bans and asset freezes on senior Russian officials as punishment for
the seizure of Crimea.

The West has threatened tougher sanctions if Moscow invades eastern Ukraine.

On “This Week,” Kislyak said Ukraine needs to change its constitution to better respect
regional differences within the nation.

“It’s a country that certainly needs a revision of the constitution that would include a
mechanism where the regions would be heard and their views would be taken on
board,” he said.

Kislyak echoed Lavrov, who said in the state television interview that Moscow wants
federalism for Ukraine as a way to protect the rights of Russian-speakers and ethnic
Russians.

“Frankly speaking, we don’t see any other way for the steady development of the
Ukrainian state apart from as a federation,” Lavrov said.

Putin aired the Russian plan during Friday’s hour-long phone call with Obama. It would
allow individual regions of Ukraine to separately control taxes, economic decisions,
language, education and other matters.

The new leadership in Kiev sees that as a backdoor means of breaking up the country.
Russia wants U.S. and European economic sanctions lifted, but it was not clear
whether the two diplomats would address that. The penalties were imposed to protest
the annexation, and U.S. officials have said they will not be lifted unless Russia
withdraws.

Lavrov played down the effect of sanctions ahead of his meeting with Kerry. Western
leaders are considering broader sanctions targeting the vital energy sector. Oil and gas
are Russia’s main export.

“I don’t want to say that sanctions are ridiculous and that we couldn’t care less. These
are not pleasant things,” Lavrov told Russia’s Channel One. “We find little joy in that,
but there are no painful sensations. We have lived through tougher times.”

In the ABC interview, Kislyak responded to Obama’s comment last week that Russia is
a “regional power” acting out of weakness.

“If you consider Russia a regional power, look at the region that we are in — it’s from
Europe to Asia,” the ambassador said. “It’s quite a significant region, in the first place.
Secondly, I think that those categorizations are very artificial. We are a country with a
lot of interests and a lot of things we can contribute throughout the world, but we are
certainly not going to overstretch any way.”
US and Russia
. ‘Closer’ to Resolving
Ukraine Crisis
ABC news Mar 29, 2014 4:10pm

MOSCOW — A day after Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised President Obama
with a phone call to discuss a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Ukraine, there are
signs that a deal might be on the horizon. Both sides publicly laid out positions, though
they remain far apart on some issues.

“We are bringing our approaches closer together,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said in a Russian television interview. He added that “a possible joint initiative
that could be offered to our Ukrainian partners is taking shape.”

He also reiterated Moscow’s claim that it has “absolutely no intention of and interest in
crossing Ukraine’s borders.”

In a dramatic sign that at least a week of quiet talks between the United States and
Russia might finally be coming to a head, Secretary of State John Kerry turned his
plane around today on his way home from Saudi Arabia and will meet Lavrov in Paris
on Sunday. The two spoke on the phone today.

A senior Obama administration official said the talks are focusing on the role of
international monitors in Ukraine, Russia pulling back its forces from the border, and
direct talks between Russia and Ukraine “supported by the international community.”
The official stressed that “we have been coordinating closely with the Ukrainians,
including on this diplomatic proposal.”

Foreign Minister Lavrov, however, said Russia had rejected a Western proposal to set
up an international “contact group” that would, in his words, supervise the talks
between Russia and Ukraine.

“This would be an absolutely unacceptable format, and we are not talking about this,”
he said in the interview.

Lavrov said Russia wants Ukraine’s regions to have more autonomy, presumably
because that would allow pro-Russian regions in the east to distance themselves from
the new pro-Western government in Kiev. He suggested that the U.S. and its allies
were now open to the idea as well.

“I can say that ‘federation’ is no longer a taboo word in our negotiations,” he said.

Russia also wants guarantees written into Ukraine’s new constitution, which will be
drafted in the coming months, that it will never join NATO or any other alliance.

“We are convinced that a new [Ukrainian] constitution should unambiguously stipulate
Ukraine’s non-aligned status,” Lavrov said in his television interview, according to
Russia’s Interfax news agency.

Taken together, Lavrov’s remarks made clear that the Kremlin wants to ensure it will be
able to influence events in Ukraine in the future, as well as prevent Kiev from drifting
further into the West’s arms.
The U.S., meanwhile, appears to have given up on Crimea and is more concerned
about halting the immediate threat of Russian troops, tens of thousands of which have
are said to have amassed along the border with Ukraine in recent weeks.

A White House statement on Friday’s call between Obama and Putin spoke only about
the need to protect Ukraine’s “territorial integrity,” but made no mention of Crimea,
which Russia annexed from Ukraine earlier in the month.

If a deal is struck, both sides will have to overcome deep-seated mistrust.

In recent weeks, American officials have complained that Putin’s words have not
matched his actions, like an earlier promise not to send troops into Crimea. That
unpredictability has caused anxiety about what Putin might do next. U.S. officials have
indicated they’ll want mechanisms to prevent Russian meddling in Ukraine in the
future.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, is clearly unconvinced by Western promises that NATO will
not expand into Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, areas that Russia still
considers within its sphere of influence. After all, as the Soviet Union fell, NATO
promised not to expand into eastern Europe, then did exactly that a few years later.

Earlier this week, Obama tried to reassure the Kremlin, telling reporters that “neither
Ukraine or Georgia are currently on a path to NATO membership and there has not
been any immediate plans for expansion of NATO’s membership.”

Yet those assurances have not swayed Russia’s leaders.

“There should be no ambiguity here. There are too many ‘so fars’ and ‘no intentions.’
Intentions change, while facts are created on the ground,” Lavrov said today.

Putin seems intent on maintaining the threat of military action as negotiations progress.
In its statement on his call to Obama, the Kremlin noted the situation in the region of
Transnistria, which, like Crimea, is home to many ethnic Russians and has long sought
to break away from Moldova.

[ looks like the US are ‘closer’ to capitulation….. well thanks again mr Obama ]
Russia’s anti-Western ideology has global
consequences
By Anne Applebaum | Washington Post | Saturday, March 29, 2:37 AM E-mail the
writer

TBILISI, Georgia

Halfway through an otherwise coherent conversation with a Georgian lawyer here —

the topics included judges, the court system, the police — I was startled by a comment
he made about his country’s former government, led by then-president Mikheil
Saakashvili. “They were LGBT,” he said, conspiratorially.What did that mean, I asked,
surprised. Were they for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights? For gay
marriage? Were they actually gay? He couldn’t really define it, though the conversation
meandered in that direction for a few more minutes, also touching on the subject of the
former president’s alleged marital infidelity, his promotion of female politicians, his lack
of respect for the church.

Afterward, I worked it out. The lawyer meant to say that Saakashvili — who drove his
country hard in the direction of Europe, pulled Georgia as close to NATO as possible
and used rough tactics to fight the post-Soviet mafia that dominated his country — was
“too Western.” Not conservative enough. Not traditional enough. Too much of a
modernizer, a reformer, a European. In the past, such a critic might have called
Saakashvili a “rootless cosmopolitan.” But today the insulting code word for that sort of
person in the former Soviet space — regardless of what he or she thinks about
homosexuals — is LGBT.

It was an eye-opening moment. Like Ukraine, Georgia is a post-Soviet republic that has
tried to pull itself out of the Russian sphere of influence. Unlike Ukraine, Georgia does
not have a sizable Russian-speaking population, and Georgians even have cause to
fear Russia. Since their 2008 invasion, Russian troops have occupied the Georgian
regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, about one-fifth of the country. Russian tanks
are parked a few hours’ drive from Georgia’s capital.

Yet despite the absence of Russian speakers, a form of Russia’s anti-Western ideology
can be felt in Georgia, too. It’s a minority view that drifts in through religious leaders —
part of the Georgian Orthodox Church retains ties to Moscow — through some pro-
Kremlin political parties and Russian-backed media. But it finds indigenous support,
taking the form of xenophobic, anti-European and, nowadays, anti-homosexual
rhetoric. Sometimes it becomes an argument in favor of local oligarchs or economic
clans and against foreign investment or rules that would create an even playing field. It
always focuses on Western decadence, economic or sexual, and welcomes any sign of
Western hesitancy. When President Obama told the world this week that Georgia —
which has for a decade been striving with active U.S. encouragement to meet NATO
partnership standards — is “not on a path to NATO membership,” he immediately
strengthened that set of arguments in Tbilisi.

Whether we like it or not, foreign policy choices increasingly have domestic

consequences in the post-Soviet world. An alignment with Russia can bring Russian-
style corruption and can inspire the rise of Russian-style xenophobia and homophobia,
too. An alignment with Europe and NATO has different consequences. With Russian
financial and political support, for example, Ukraine’s ousted president, Viktor
Yanukovych, was able to rob his country’s coffers and destroy its army and its
bureaucracy. If the new Ukrainian government stays on its current path and makes a
different set of alliances — with the European Union, the International Monetary Fund,
even NATO — it will end up with different domestic economic policies, too.
There are implications further afield as well. During his Brussels speech this week,
Obama also declared that Russia leads “no bloc of nations, no global ideology.” This is
true, up to a point: Russia’s “ideology” isn’t well-defined or clear. But the U.S. president
was wrong to imply that the Russian president’s rhetoric, and his annexation of Crimea,
has no wider echo. Of course there were the predictable supporters of Russia in the
United Nations: Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, North Korea. More interesting are his
new European friends. Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independence
Party (UKIP) — an anti-European and anti-immigrant party that is gaining momentum
in Britain — declared last week that the European Union has “blood on its hands” for
negotiating a free-trade agreement in Ukraine. Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-
right National Front, has also said she prefers France to “lean toward Russia” rather
than “submit to the United States.” Jobbik, Hungary’s far-right party, sent a
representative to the Crimean referendum and declared it “exemplary.” These are all
minority parties, but they are all poised to make gains in European elections this spring.

Russia’s ideology may be mishmash: the old Soviet critique of hypocritical “bourgeois
democracy,” plus some anti-Europeanism, some anti-globalism and a homophobic
twist for contemporary appeal. But let’s not assume that competition between ideas is
absurd and old-fashioned. And let’s not pretend that ideologies don’t matter, because
even if we’d prefer otherwise, they do.

[ if being against change may be called an ideology.. A self-defeating one, anyway, as

history proves ]
The NATO Panic
The alarmist claims that the alliance can’t defend
Europe from Russia are preposterous
By Fred Kaplan | Slate | Military analysis | March 28 2014 4:38 PM

Granted, the crisis in Ukraine is worrisome, Vladimir Putin’s behavior is unpredictable,

and the 30,000 Russian troops amassed on the Ukrainian border arouse a sense of
dread and danger unfelt since the Cold War. That said, the alarmism is getting out of
hand. Legitimate concerns are spiraling into war chants and trembling, a weird mix of
paranoia and nostalgia, needlessly inflating tensions and severely distorting the true
picture.

A bizarre example of this is a March 26 New York Times story headlined “Military Cuts
Render NATO Less Formidable as Deterrent to Russia.” The normally seasoned
reporters, Helene Cooper and Steven Erlanger, note that the United States “has
drastically cut back its European forces from a decade ago.” For instance, during “the
height of the Cold War” (which was actually three decades ago, but let that pass), we
had about 400,000 combat-ready forces defending Western Europe—whereas now we
have about 67,000. In terms of manpower, weapons, and other military equipment,
they write, “the American military presence” in Europe is “85 percent smaller than it
was in 1989.”

Yet the article contains not one word about the decline of Russia’s “military presence”
in Europe since that time. It only takes one word to sum up that topic: disappeared. The
once-mighty Warsaw Pact—the Russian-led alliance that faced NATO troops along the
East-West German border—is no more. And its erstwhile frontline nations—East
Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland—have been absorbed into the West, indeed
into NATO. This is hardly an esoteric fact, yet its omission makes the Times’ trend lines
seem much scarier than they really are.

Nor, even with its own borders, is the Russian army the formidable force it once.
According to data gathered by GlobalSecurity.org, Russian troop levels have declined
since 1990 from 1.5 million to 321,000. Over the same period, tank divisions have been
slashed from 46 to five, artillery divisions from 19 to five, motorized rifle divisions from
142 to 19, and so it goes across the ranks.

In short, the United States “drastically cut back its European forces” because there’s no
longer a threat to justify those forces. Nor does Putin’s seizure of Crimea augur a
resumption of that threat—not to any degree that warrants anything like a restoration of
NATO circa ’89.

Putin’s moves have rattled the nerves of the newest, most eastern NATO members,
especially Poland and the Baltic nations. They once belonged to the Warsaw Pact;
their adult populations remember Russian occupation; and, lacking the long-standing
ties that bind the alliance’s western members, they naturally wonder whether we’d
really honor the treaty’s Article 5 commitments (i.e., an attack on one is an attack on
all). President Obama has tried to allay these fears by sending more troops and
advanced fighter jets to those nations. His speech in Brussels—one of his more
rousing—was meant to signal a commitment as well.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO. President George W. Bush thought about putting
Ukraine on a fast track for inclusion in 2008, after Russia’s invasion of Georgia, but
pulled back for good reasons. First, polls revealed that few Ukrainians wanted to join
NATO. Second, high-level discussions revealed that few allies were keen on going to
war to defend Ukraine. Third, Bush’s father and President Clinton had assured Russian
leaders that NATO’s eastward expansion wouldn’t extend right up against the
motherland’s borders, and even George W. recognized the wisdom of that restraint.

Still, a Russian invasion of Ukraine—or an incursion into the southern and eastern
parts of the country, where pro-Russia sentiment can easily be mustered—would rouse
enormous fear and tension across Europe—not just for the fate of Ukraine, but for what
Putin might do next. This is the real reason for the West’s countermoves (the
sanctions, the deployments, the speeches, the meetings): not to regain Crimea (it’s
gone, and everyone knows it), but to deter Putin from going further. Putin has dreams
of restoring Great Russia (he once, famously, lamented the Soviet Union’s breakup as
“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”), but his actions are those of
an opportunistic tactician. He will go as far as he can, but—so far—no farther. Crimea
was easy: He already had troops there, as well as the headquarters for a large naval
fleet. Most Russians regarded the peninsula as theirs already. He exploited the turmoil
in Kiev to grab it for good. The task now, as Obama and other Western leaders see it,
is to convince Putin that grabbing more land will mean real trouble.

Here’s where the sorts of numbers cited in the Times article have no meaning, one way
or the other. According to Western officers and several private specialists, the forces
gathered in Russia’s Western Military District are capable of invading Ukraine’s
easternmost cities, like Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. They would probably start off by
sending in special forces to recruit local allies, then mount a wave of cyber-attacks to
degrade or spoof the Ukraine military’s warning and communication networks, followed
by a blitzkrieg attack by tanks, paratroopers, and so forth.

But occupying those towns for any length of time is another matter. Logistics—
refurbishing troops with a line of supplies—were always the Russian army’s weak
point, even in the Cold War heyday; that’s still the case. Then there’s the army itself.
The special forces and paratroopers are professional, but the rest of the army consists
of draftees, serving one-year terms that many of them spend drunk and disorderly. If
they face any resistance, whether from the Ukrainian army (a ragtag force itself) or
“irregulars” (homegrown insurgents) or outside agents (a squad or two of Delta Force
troops), the Russian soldiers could find themselves seriously bogged down.

Politically, Putin would find himself on very shaky ground. Already, he mustered only 10
other countries—the likes of Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, and
Syria—to oppose a U.N. resolution condemning the annexation of Crimea. If he
invades Ukraine, a sovereign nation with a United Nations seat, his isolation will widen
and deepen politically, diplomatically, and economically.

If he crosses that line, he will also do more than anyone ever has to rouse the
European nations out of their post-Cold War stupor. He can count on Britain, Germany,
and France to boost their defense budgets, and in a way that confronts Russia. He can
also count on the United States to station more troops, fighter jets, maybe even
armored weapons in Poland and the Baltics—to hell with concerns about provocation.
And he must know the lesson that other nation-states have learned in recent years:
that if he prompts a conventional conflict with the United States military, he will lose
badly.

This is one reason why Putin probably won’t take the next step. Pavel Felgenhauer, the
most astute Russian military analyst, also notes in Foreign Policy that the Russian
army’s conscripts are scheduled to rotate in April. The troops with a year of training
under their belts (such as it is, and it isn’t much) will be replaced by new grunts, who
aren’t likely to be thrilled by their thrust into combat or competent at carrying out the
mission. If Putin wanted to invade eastern Ukraine, the best time to do so would have
been last week.
Then again, and this is another source of nervousness, Putin has shown himself to be
an irrational actor. He already possessed Crimea, really, and probably could have
hardened de facto into de jure through more peaceful methods, over time. He operated
many levers of influence in Ukraine, and could have maneuvered the upcoming
elections in his favor, whether through bribing key candidates or any number of other
time-honored techniques.

Putin didn’t have to take the route he took. Few predicted that he would, if only
because it would do him no good and he had other ways to accomplish his goals. This
is another reason to be nervous now. He doesn’t have to make incursions into
mainland Ukraine either: It would really do him no good, and there are other ways to
continue Russian influence in that country.

He seized Crimea anyway. Will he dive into Donetsk, too? Nobody knows, and this is
cause for concern. But it’s not cause for panic, the NATO nations aren’t in mortal
danger, and to claim otherwise by citing comparisons with the state of NATO in 1990 is
profoundly misleading and, in any case, irrelevant.

Fred Kaplan is the author of The Insurgents and the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at
the Council on Foreign Relations.

[ at last some reality ! “ He already possessed Crimea”

There is more to it. From a broader geopolitical perspective, post-1989 Russia has
been and still is engaged in fighting ON ITS OWN TERRITORY i.e. the former USSR.
Chechnya, Georgia, Dagestan (low intensity conflict still going on), now Crimea.

No cause of panic, indeed. And some good reasons to wake up on both sides of the
Atlantic ]
The United States and Europe need a new
rulebook for Russia
By Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Published: March 28

Toomas Hendrik Ilves is president of Estonia.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine marks a paradigm shift, the end of trust in the post-
Cold War order. This order, based on respect for territorial sovereignty, the integrity
and inviolability of borders and a belief that relations can be built on common values,
has collapsed. International treaties no longer hold, and the use of raw force is again
legitimate. In its annexation of Crimea, Russia has thrown the rulebook out the window.
The world is back in a zero-sum paradigm. This is not about only Crimea or relations
between Ukraine and Russia. The shift has changed the assumptions underlying
European security and dealings between democratic states and Russia.

Ongoing events in Kiev, Donetsk and Crimea put the international community’s
relationship with Russia on a new standing. Justification of a military invasion by a
fabricated need to protect ethnic “compatriots” resuscitates the arguments used to
annex Sudetenland in 1938. For U.S. and European Union leaders, a Churchillian
moment has come. We need to rise to the occasion with strength, clarity and speed.

Short- and long-term steps must be taken. In the aftermath of the 2008 war in Georgia,
the world assumed that conflict was an ambiguous one-off, and we quickly returned to
business as usual. Now, however, we know that we are witnessing a principle and a
policy of restoration, announced at the highest levels of the Kremlin.

This is a time not for panic but for a calculated response to an explicit revision of the
post-Cold War order. There is, after all, a toolbox for dealing with such challenges.

First, we must act decisively within NATO. Sen. Richard Lugar’s erstwhile dictum that
NATO had to go out of its area or would go out of business no longer applies. Clearly
we are back in area. We need to get back in business. NATO’s raison d’être is to
defend its members and their territory. Steps must be taken immediately to ensure a
NATO presence across the alliance’s territory. A 1930s-style war hysteria has taken
hold in Moscow’s official media (Russia is the only country able to reduce the United
States to “radioactive ashes,” the head of Russian state TV announced recently); in this
environment, only a calm but firm commitment to deterrence can be the immediate
response.

Recognizing that this challenge will remain for the medium to long term, a refocus on
NATO’s core responsibility should be the aim of the September NATO summit in
Wales. This must go hand in hand with greater investments in defense by European
allies. Maintaining 2 percent of gross domestic product for defense must become a
major benchmark of allies’ commitment. Allies in Europe need to wake up and realize
that meeting that target is vital to giving credibility to deterrence and for revitalizing the
transatlantic relationship.

Second, neither the aggression in Ukraine nor the illegal annexation of Crimea can
become cost-free successes. I am appalled that, for several weeks already, some have
been discussing where in Ukraine Russia may hit next. In addition to military pressure,
Russia continues to try to undermine Ukraine politically and economically. Political
support, economic assistance and practical know-how must be extended to the
Ukrainian government as much as possible. Doing so is in Europe’s interest. There
must be no question about our commitment and clarity of purposes in this regard.
Ukraine requires our strong support. We must remain committed to helping as much as
we can. Moldova and Georgia must also be assisted and reassured.

The Russian Federation’s practice of instant citizenship, whereby Russian passports

are distributed willy-nilly to ethnic Russians abroad so they can be “protected” in their
current homeland, is unacceptable. Passports are travel documents, not a tool to justify
aggression. What has been practiced recently in Ukraine, and in 2008 in Georgia,
could be repeated in Prague, London or Brooklyn.

Third, Russia has to pay a price for its aggression. This is a matter of credibility of the
international order, an order that, if it disintegrates into the “anything goes” model, will
wreak havoc on international relations and peace and stability. Policies of positive
engagement with Russia must be reconsidered in a number of international
organizations, including at the United Nations, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, the Council of Europe, NATO and the European Union. Our
response to Russia should not be about the price of gas; it must be about respect for
common values. Any economic sanction is cheaper than military intervention. Nothing
costs more than the loss of freedom.

In years past, the transatlantic alliance has withstood some difficult challenges. Today,
we face the most difficult one in generations. The lights of liberty are being
extinguished in parts of Europe. We must take decisive and united steps to ensure that
future generations do not question why nothing was done and why we didn’t act when
so much was at stake.
The West Can Ally Against Russia But It
Needs Global Cooperation
Bruce Jones | Brookings Inst. |Opinion | March 26, 2014

The U.S. has convinced its Western allies to Boot Russia out of the G8, but it needs
the cooperation of emerging nations to avoid a new cold-war stalemate.

The shadow of history hung heavily yesterday as the geopolitical ramifications of the
Ukraine crisis widened.

War between the great powers was the dominant fear of the Cold War, but that fear
recessed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of bloc versus bloc rivalry.
But did The Hague just witness the emergence of a new bloc to bloc rivalry, triggered
by events in the Ukraine?

Taking center stage in The Hague was the recreation of the G7 as a unified western
bloc. Since 1998, the G7 had been widened to include Russia—part of a broader effort
to embed Russia in a stable international order. For a time, this seemed a wise
approach: give Russia a seat at the table in exchange for constructive behavior in the
international system—and to a degree, it worked. Yesterday, as part of the West’s
reaction to the Crimea, Russia was expelled. “It’s no great tragedy” shrugged Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Perhaps, but Russia had worked hard to be seen as a
credible actor within the G8. Other Russian officials were more defensive, arguing that
the G8 had no mechanism to expel a member, and that they would continue
preparations for the G8 summit. It would be a lonely summit if so, for the G7 heads of
state have agreed to meet on their own, without Russia, in June.

If the West was reconsolidating in the form of the G7, Russia tried a different tack to
shore up its international defenses. From the earliest days of the Crimea crisis, Russia
has talked up its relationship with China and with India, and looked to them to support
its position on the Crimea. The Hague provided another opportunity. The presence of
world leaders from all regions meant that there was an opportunity for a summit
meeting of the BRICS, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—a
grouping of rising powers that has sometimes sought to position itself as a rival, or an
alternative, to the West. Russia didn’t quite achieve its objective, but there was a
warning light for Washington in the BRICS’s meeting in The Hague. Russia sought
strong BRICS language endorsing its actions in the Ukraine, and failed to get it; the
BRICS statement was mealy-mouthed and diplomatic in the worst tradition of that
word. (A rather disappointing stance from India and Brazil, who did not hesitate to
criticize American intervention in Iraq a decade earlier, but not what Russia was looking
for either.) But Russia did get stronger support on one key point. The BRICS clearly
rejected sanctions as a response to instability in the Ukraine. No surprise: the West
readily forgets that India, South Africa and China have each been under western
sanctions at some recent point in history, which makes them deeply uncomfortable
about the tool.

The events illustrate key themes in international affairs. The U.S. can drive a western
coalition to respond to Russia, but it’s not enough. The actions and reactions of China
and India and the rest of the emerging powers will matter, too. So far, they’re torn:
they’re not at all happy with Russia’s adventurism in Crimea (witness China’s
unwillingness to join Russia in vetoing the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning
the action). But nor are they comfortable with the reassertion of western leadership in
international affairs. Their discomfort arises from this fact, too: for all that we hear about
the rise of the rest, the rise of the BRICS, the shift of power away from the West, the
fact is that the West—the U.S., the E.U., key western allies like Japan—still control
roughly 70 percent of the global economy.

So are we watching the emergence of a G7 versus BRICS world? Many have warned
that we’re already in that world, or that it’s fast approaching. That conclusion is over-
drawn, though. The West sometimes risks, by its actions, pushing the BRICS closer
together, but there are underlying divides there. India and Brazil have both explored
closer relations with the West of late, though the Snowden affair set that process back
somewhat. And what’s more, the most important of the BRICS, China, shows signs of
seeking a bloc relationship.

Indeed, The Hague also witnessed another development, the latest meeting between
President Obama and President Xi of China. There are lots of sources of tension in that
relationship, notably in the South China Sea. But there are a lot of positives in the
relationship, too, and both presidents were at pains to stress them. President Xi, no
stranger to “19th century” geopolitics, went out of his way to stress the value of “win-
win cooperation with regard to the United States.” Too early to say whether the U.S.
and China will succeed in crafting win-win cooperation to balance ongoing tensions, but
there is lots of scope to do so. And if they do, that will serve as a further bulwark
against a return to bloc-to-bloc dynamics.

Still, there was a sad irony in that the site of these developments was The Hague. The
Dutch have spent much of the last year celebrating The Hague as a “the seat of
international law,” and celebrating a milestone in the history of its famous Peace
Palace—an ornate building paid for by Andrew Carnegie as a fitting home to what’s
known as the Permanent Court of Arbitration. The Court was imagined as a body that
would hold the powers to the standards of international law, and thus help avoid war. It
was established in 1913. A year later, of course, Europe was engulfed in a brutal war
between the great powers.
Analysis: Crimea intervention –
The increasing sophistication of Russia's
military resurgence
Tim Ripley, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly 26 March 2014

Late on 25 March, the last Ukrainian warship blockaded in its port on Crimea's west
coast surrendered to Russian forces, completing just over three weeks of operations to
wrest the strategic peninsula from Kiev's control.

This whirlwind campaign seems to herald a new sophistication in how Russian

commanders conduct military operations. The most distinctive feature of the Russian
operation was its emphasis on economy of effort. Unlike previous interventions in
Afghanistan in the Soviet era, or Chechnya and Georgia more recently, where Russian
commanders relied on mass employment of tanks and artillery, the Crimea intervention
featured fewer than 10,000 assault troops lined up against 16,000 Ukrainian military
personnel. The heaviest fighting vehicle employed by the Russians against the
Ukrainians was the wheeled BTR-80 armoured personnel carrier (APC).

Once Russian troops had moved to blockade Ukrainian military personnel in their
bases, psychological warfare, internet/media propaganda, intimidation, and bribery
were their main weapons to undermine their opponents' will to resist, rather than
overwhelming firepower. Russian troops also displayed considerably discipline and
patience during this phase. In addition, they appeared well equipped, boasting new
personnel equipment, body armour, and light wheeled armoured vehicles.

This novel approach was necessitated by Russian President Vladimir Putin's need for
the operation to be launched within a tight timeframe after the fall of the pro-Moscow
regime in Kiev on 27 February.

Although the operation may have been planned for many months, there was insufficient
time to mobilise a larger force. Russian commanders had to make do with naval
infantry from the Black Sea Fleet already based in Crimea, backed up by a couple of
battalions of airborne troops and Spetsnaz commandos flown onto the peninsula.
Economy of force also fitted the campaign's political narrative: that this was a mission
to protect Crimea's Russian-speaking population rather than an invasion.

In just over three weeks, the will of the Ukrainian forces in Crimea was broken and all
190 of their bases had surrendered with barely a shot being fired by their defenders.
However, even if some Ukrainian heavy armour was present in Crimea, many of the
Ukrainian forces were naval and administrative personnel rather than combat troops.
Organised military resistance was never a serious prospect. Instead of achieving a
simple military triumph on the battlefield, the Russian armed forces facilitated a political
and psychological victory.

What now?

In the wake of his success, there has been intense speculation about President Putin's
future intentions. In his 18 March victory speech after the fall of Crimea, he laid out his
underlying worldview. Russia's loss of power and status at the end of the Cold War in
1989 was a deliberate, generational humiliation at the hands of the West - and a
reason for hatred and apprehension.

For the Russian president, Ukraine's strategic importance to Russia is the key issue. In
Putin's view, Ukraine is the pivotal connector between East and West. Control of
Ukraine means control of the Black Sea and unobstructed access to potentially
sympathetic populations in central Europe and the Balkans - in nations such as
Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Serbia - and the exercise of time honoured 'pan-slavism' with a
view to greater integration. These strategic perspectives appear to have been largely
lost to Western leaders.

Ukraine is sufficiently important that in 2004, the last time a split from Russian control
seemed likely, Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western opposition and Orange Revolution
leader and later president, was nearly fatally poisoned and permanently disfigured by
the use of dioxin. In any case, the Kremlin sees a 'colour revolution', heralding liberal
democracy amongst Slavonic people, as threatening and utterly unacceptable.

A significant effect of the Crimea campaign has been to further test NATO and EU
resolve. Russian leaders tend to think in larger pictures than their Western
counterparts. 'Atlanticists' are likely to consider individual nations or small groups of
countries, threats to them, and their specific importance, without interconnecting them.

Russian analysts evaluate - and have whole branches of study devoted to - the Black
Sea-Baltic region as a strategic territory and subject in itself. Russia has generally
controlled these areas between Russia proper and foreign countries, referred to in a
wider context as the 'near abroad'.

Speculation has shifted to Moldova - and its adjacent, unrecognised Russian-speaking

enclave of Transnistria or the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic (PMR) - as the next
test of Western resolve in the face of possible intervention by Putin. A potential
justification or pretext for a Russian incursion here is the small self-declared republic's
wish to become part of Russia and the disputed presence of a battalion of 400 Russian
peace-keeping troops.

On 25 March, Russia announced the start of territorial defence exercises in

Transnistria, which Moldovan sources described to IHS Jane's on the same day as of
concern even if anticipated.

Although part of NATO and the EU, the Baltic States are the northern end of the Black
Sea-Baltic space and are vulnerable. The disapproving tone of some Russian rhetoric
suggests they exist under sufferance.

From the Russian Air Assault Division base at Pskov near the Latvian-Estonian border,
forces could - from a near standing start - cut off Estonia from the rest of the EU in less
than 40 minutes, according to a former Russian air assault division commander.

The same could be done along the 80 km Polish-Lithuanian border, which runs
between Belarus and the Russian Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad. In both cases, one or
all the Baltic States could be enclosed, controlled, and separated from the rest of
Europe. In the Baltic, eastern Ukraine, and Moldova-Transnistria Russian military units
are in place, available for further exploitation if President Putin so desires.

[ “sophistication… economy of effort…” - does not even mention that “real” Russian
troops were already on the ground. Wake up Jane, you can do better ]
How scary is Putin’s Russia compared to
the Soviet Union? This chart has some
answers
By Adam Taylor | the Washington Post Foreign Staff | March 27 at 4:01 pm

“Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors — not
out of strength but out of weakness,” President Obama said Tuesday. The comments
seemed designed to hit his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, where it hurt. It was a
bold statement, however, for someone who the very next day would call out his
European NATO allies for not spending enough on the military in a speech that
reminded many of the Cold War.

Obama's comments, however, reflect the conflicting messages we send out about
Russia. These messages irk some Russians, who argue that the U.S. still treats it as if
the Cold War was ongoing, despite the shifting reality of Russia.

It's true that Russia was once the West's greatest geopolitical foe, and it's still seen that
way by many (including some presidential candidates). But no matter what we think of
the recent actions of Putin's Russia, should we really treat it with the same fear we
once reserved for the Soviet Union? Here's what the numbers say:
Fanciful-Thinking Obama Vs. 'Weak' Putin Is
A Mismatch
By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER | InvestorsBusinessDaily | 27-03-14

"The United States does not view Europe as a battleground between East and West,
nor do we see the situation in Ukraine as a zero-sum game. That's the kind of thinking
that should have ended with the Cold War." Barack Obama, March 24

Should. Lovely sentiment. As lovely as what Obama said five years ago to the United
Nations: "No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation."

That's the kind of sentiment you expect from a Miss America contestant asked to name
her fondest wish, not from the leader of the free world explaining his foreign policy.

The East Europeans know they inhabit the battleground between the West and a
Russia that wants to return them to its sphere of influence. Ukrainians see tens of
thousands of Russian troops across their border and know they are looking down the
barrel of quite a zero-sum game.

Obama thinks otherwise. He says that Vladimir Putin's kind of neo-imperialist thinking
is a relic of the past — and advises Putin to transcend the Cold War. Good God. Putin
hasn't transcended the Russian revolution.

Did no one give Obama a copy of Putin's speech last week upon the annexation of
Crimea? Putin railed not only at Russia's loss of empire in the 1990s. He went back to
the 1920s: "After the revolution, the Bolsheviks ... may God judge them, added large
sections of the historical South of Russia to the Republic of Ukraine."

Putin was referring not to Crimea (which came two sentences later) but to his next
potential target: Kharkiv and Donetsk and the rest of southeastern Ukraine.

Putin's irredentist grievances go very deep. Obama seems unable to fathom them.
Asked whether he'd misjudged Russia, whether it really is our greatest geopolitical foe,
he disdainfully replied that Russia is nothing but "a regional power" acting "out of
weakness."

Where does one begin? Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan were also regional powers,
yet managed to leave behind at least 50 million dead. And yes, Russia should be no
match for the American superpower.

Yet under this president, Russia has run rings around America, from the attempted
ingratiation of the "reset" to America's empty threats of "consequences" were Russia to
annex Crimea.

Annex Crimea it did. For which the "consequences" have been risible. Numberless
19th- and 20th-century European soldiers died for Crimea. Putin conquered it in a swift
and stealthy campaign that took three weeks and cost his forces not a sprained ankle.
That's "weakness"?
Ukraine crisis: Stalin's joke sums up
Obama's dilemma
Mark Mardell, North America editor | BBC News 27 March

During his visit to the Vatican today, US President Barack Obama won't be tempted to
ask Stalin's sneering question: "How many divisions has the Pope?"

But the Soviet dictator's joke lies at the heart of Mr Obama's Eastern dilemma.

Stalin's point was of course that the greatest moral authority in the world is still
impotent in the face of the sort of power that comes from the barrel of a gun.

Mr Obama's view, expressed in his Brussels speech, is the diametric opposite.

His case is that the United States and Europe stand four square behind a universal
longing for "elections that are free and fair; and independent judiciaries and opposition
parties; civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own
choices".

He said that brute force could not extinguish this longing, that "there is no going back".

The 'moral arc'

All this is very typical of this president - exhorting a young audience to a moral stance,
taking the long view rather than a rush to action.

One of Mr Obama's favourite quotes is a Martin Luther King adaptation of a 19th

Century preacher - "the moral arc of history is long but it bends towards justice".

Some political leaders see it as their duty to bring in the heavy lifting equipment, put
their back into heaving and tugging until that that arc shifts in the direction they desire.

Mr Obama often seems more like the chorus than the actor.

But this moment may be more about the limits on the power of the West rather than a
particular president, who is simply acknowledging that truth.

It is a neat irony that the speech came after a summit aimed at reducing nuclear
weapons in the world. For this crisis makes it quite clear why that is a strategic, as well
as moral, imperative.

The rule of thumb is nuclear powers don't fight other nuclear powers - potential regional
enemies mustn't get their hands on nukes.

Mr Obama made it clear that he believes the West is on the right side of history - but it
is not going to war over Ukraine.

China watching

Another nuclear power, mightier than Russia, will be watching - China is very interested
in how far the US will go in defence of its friends.

However, this speech also contained a stern warning to Mr Putin - "hands off the
Baltics!"
Mr Obama made it clear that if a Nato country was attacked, article five - pledging a
common military response - would be invoked.

That having been said, Mr Obama is asking Stalin's question of Nato - how many
divisions do they have?

Both in terms of political will and fighting forces.

The US has long wanted Europe to spend more and do more as it is doing less and
spending less. Next week the US will announce it is sending more troops and naval
forces to Europe - but it wants its allies to match that.

They won't.

After the European Union's display of unity of the lowest common denominator over
sanctions, none of this is very encouraging for those who believe this is a key moment
for the US and the West.

But while sanctions and military hardware are dramatic, and make good headlines,
solid economic help to Ukraine could be more important in the long run.

Obama may be proved right in time - if Mr Putin gives him time.

The trouble with the idea that the West is on the right side of history - risible to some
critics on the left - is that the moments that make up history do not always allow for a
long game.

And Mr Obama has few answers to, say, a challenge in Moldova, bar patience and a
Whig view of history.
UN General Assembly votes 'yes' on Ukraine
unit
AP | By EDITH M. LEDERER — Mar. 27, 2014 2:13 PM EDT

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution

Thursday affirming Ukraine's territorial integrity and calling the referendum that led to
Russia's annexation of its Crimean Peninsula illegal, sending a message to Moscow of
surprisingly strong international opposition to its military takeover of the strategic Black
Sea region.

The vote on the Ukraine-sponsored resolution was 100 countries in favor, 11 opposed
and 58 abstentions.

While Ukraine has a lot of sympathy among the 193 U.N. member states, Russia has a
lot of clout. Both sides lobbied hard ahead of the vote, and diplomats had predicted a
significant number of abstentions and a maximum 80 to 90 countries supporting the
resolution.

So the high number of "yes" votes, representing more than half the 193 U.N. member
states, was a sign of international anger at Moscow's slow-motion military invasion of
Crimea.

"This support has come from all corners of the world which shows that this (is) not only
a regional matter but a global one," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia told
reporters after the vote.

Russia was only able to muster 10 other "no" votes — Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia,
Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Unlike the more powerful Security Council, resolutions in the General Assembly cannot
be vetoed but are not legally binding.

Russia has blocked action in the Security Council where they have veto power as one
its five permanent members. Even so, the 15-member council has held eight meetings
on Ukraine, as Western powers strive to keep up the pressure on Moscow.

Before the vote, Ukraine's Deshchytsia told the assembly that his country's territorial
integrity and unity had been "ruthlessly trampled" by Russia, a permanent member of
the Security Council entrusted to maintain international peace and security, and in
direct violation of the U.N. Charter.

"This text is all about respect for territorial integrity and non-use of force to settle
disputes," he said.

Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin urged a "no" vote, saying a historic injustice
in Crimea has been corrected and its people had expressed their right to self-
determination in wanting to join Russia.

He called the resolution "confrontational in nature" and said it would be

"counterproductive" to challenge the results of the referendum.

Over the past week, Churkin mounted a campaign against the resolution, claiming the
dispute is an East-West issue. Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Yuriy Sergeyev countered
in meetings with regional groups that Russia violated the U.N. Charter and stressed
that the country is not a member of any bloc.

"The international community has sent a strong message through the passing of this
resolution that Russia cannot simply trample over international law," British Foreign
Secretary William Hague said in a statement after the vote.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, in urging a "yes" vote, stressed its call for a
diplomatic, not a military solution, to the crisis and the need to de-escalate tensions
and an electoral process that allows all Ukrainians to choose their leaders freely and
without coercion.

"We have always said that Russia has legitimate interests in Ukraine," Power said. "It
has been disheartening in the extreme to see Russia carry on as if Ukrainians have no
legitimate interests in Crimea."

Crimea has been at the center of Europe's greatest geopolitical crisis since the end of
the Cold War. Russian troops took over the Ukrainian peninsula, where Russia's Black
Sea fleet is based, and Moscow officially annexed Crimea following a referendum last
week.

The upheaval in Crimea is the fallout of months of anti-government protests and

outbursts of violence that led to the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russia president, Viktor
Yanukovych, who fled last month.

The resolution adopted Thursday says the referendum on Crimea has "no validity" and
calls on all countries and organizations not to recognize Russia's annexation.

It also calls on all parties to immediately pursue a peaceful resolution of the situation in
Ukraine "through direct political dialogue" and to refrain from "inflammatory rhetoric that
may increase tensions."

Associated Press writer Cara Anna contributed to this report from the United Nations.

[ so it’s Armenia, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria,
Venezuela and Zimbabwe…. well, Mr Putin, quite a nice company you got ]

EXCLUSIVE-Russia threatened countries ahead of UN vote on Ukraine-envoys

Source: Reuters - Fri, 28 Mar 2014 10:13 PMUNITED NATIONS, March 28 (Reuters) –

Russia threatened several Eastern European and Central Asian states with retaliation if
they voted in favor of a United Nations General Assembly resolution this week
declaring invalid Crimea's referendum on seceding from Ukraine, U.N. diplomats said.
… According to interviews with U.N. diplomats, most of whom preferred to speak on
condition of anonymity for fear of angering Moscow, the targets of Russian threats
included Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as well as a number of African countries.
[  Americans deserve a better President ]
Did the U.S. provoke the Russian bear?
Powerline | Posted on March 17, 2014 by Paul Mirengoff in Obama Foreign Policy,
Russia, Ukraine

Jack Matlock, Jr., a former ambassador to the Soviet Union and a long-time foreign
service officer, blames U.S. policy for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Matlock is a
bipartisan blamer. He indicts President Clinton, President (George W.) Bush, and
Congress. Only President Obama is spared.

What were our sins? They fall largely into two categories. First, we took military action
in Serbia and Iraq without U.N. Security Council approval. Second, we expanded
NATO to include former Warsaw Pact nations and talked of including certain former
Soviet Republics in that alliance. To compound the second sin, we backed the “color
revolutions” in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.

One can understand why Russia would like to hold a veto, via the U.N., over America’s
right to use military force. But its disappointment that Presidents Clinton and Bush
declined to give Russia that veto can hardly explain Russia’s aggression against its
neighbors.

The expansion of NATO and our support of “color revolutions” certainly upset Russia.
But these moves were founded on the understanding, based on centuries of history,
that Russia’s abstention from conquest and domination would not last long. The U.S.
wisely seized on an exceptional historic moment to institutionalize, as best we could,
Russia’s temporary willingness to let Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, etc. be
Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, etc.

That, at least, is my interpretation. Matlock’s interpretation is that Russia felt

threatened.

But what was its fear — that NATO would invade Russia? That the U.S. would
colonialize Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, etc? Or did Putin fear that we were
foreclosing Russia’s future ability to conquer or dominate these nations?

Matlock doesn’t say. But he gives the answer away in the opening of his article. There,
he recalls that he knew the Cold War was over when the Soviet foreign minister
accepted U.S. criticism of its human rights abuses and agreed to correct them because
doing so was in the interest of his country. Now, however, Matlock criticizes the U.S.
Congress for condemning Russian human rights abuses — action that he says
infuriated Russia’s rulers.

Putin’s treatment of Russians who defy his authority is of a piece with his treatment of
neighboring nations that assert their independence from his influence. The U.S. is no
more responsible for Putin’s aggression towards his neighbors than for his oppression
of domestic opponents.

Unless you believed that history “ended” in the late 1980s, the eventual emergence of
a Putin in Russia was always likely, regardless of U.S. policy. Presidents Clinton and
Bush were wise to act accordingly. President Obama was incredibly foolish to act as if
a Putin would not emerge even after he clearly had.
Topics: Barack Obama
Examiner Editorial: Vladimir Putin's Russia
is a 'regional power' with global reach
Washington Examiner • | MARCH 26, 2014 AT 4:57 PM

That President Obama is ill-suited to lead on the world stage has become painfully
obvious as Vladimir Putin consolidates his Crimean aggression and lays the
groundwork for new adventures elsewhere in eastern Ukraine and the Baltic states.
Whether due to a lack of basic historical knowledge or the blinding influence of left-
wing ideology, Obama's stumbling is inflicting immense and perhaps irreparable
damage to the ability of the U.S. to protect its legitimate national security, political and
commercial interests around the globe.

He certainly didn't intend to do so, but ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl brought a
brutally clear focus to these worries on March 25 when he put this question to Obama
in the Netherlands: “In China, in Syria, in Egypt, and now in Russia, we've seen you
make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored. Are you concerned
that America's influence in the world -- our influence in the world -- is on the decline?
And in light of recent developments, do you think Mitt Romney had a point when he
said that Russia is America's greatest geopolitical foe? If not Russia, who?”

One passage in particular from Obama's response to Karl stands out: “Russia is a
regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors -- not out of
strength, but out of weakness. ... The fact that Russia felt compelled to go in militarily
and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more.”
Putin's Russia clearly is not the global colossus that was the Soviet Union, but
Obama's reference to Russia as merely a “regional power” is frighteningly ill-informed.

“They're on the march,” Gen. James Kelly, commander of U.S. Southern Command,
told a March 13 Senate hearing, according to The Hill. “They're working the scenes
where we can't work. And they're doing a pretty good job.” He also said there has been
a “noticeable uptick in Russian power projection and security force personnel” in Latin
America, and he added, “It has been over three decades since we last saw this type of
high-profile Russian military presence.” In other words, today's Russia is acting very
much like yesterday's Soviet Union.

A merely regional Russia wouldn't be capable of dispatching its navy to patrol waters
anywhere around the world. That navy includes nuclear-armed submarines, as well as
aircraft carriers, missile-laden heavy cruisers, anti-submarine vessels and spy ships.
Just this week, Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov said 40 new combat ships,
including submarines and surface vessels, will be added to the Russian navy in 2014.
The new ships will make the navy “combat effective in any parts of oceans in the
world,” he told the ITAR-TASS News Agency.

Regional powers also don’t have a massive nuclear ballistic missile force capable, as a
Russian journalist recently reminded the world, of reducing America to a pile of
“radioactive ash.” Obama must deal with the real world, not the one of his
imagining.
On Iraq and Russia, Obama channels Bill
Buckley
The Week | Foreign affairs | March 26, 2014 2:39pm ET

Speaking in Brussels today, President Obama dismissed the notion that America's
intervention in Iraq was morally equivalent to Russia's invasion of Crimea. As the
Washington Post's Aaron Blake reports, after noting he opposed the intervention,
Obama added:

[E]ven in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system. We did not claim
or annex Iraq's territory, nor did we grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we
ended our war and left Iraq to its people and a fully sovereign Iraqi state could make
decisions about its own future.

Good for Obama. It's about time he pushed back against this sophistry.

And speaking of pushing, this reminds me of something William F. Buckley said to

Johnny Carson:

To say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying
that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be
distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on
the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.
All these years later, and it's almost like déjà vu. - - Matt K. Lewis
Three myths about Putin’s Russia
By Nicholas Burns | Globe Columnist March 26, 2014

One week later, Vladimir Putin’s extraordinarily powerful, provocative, acerbic, and self-
pitying speech justifying the annexation of Crimea still resonates.

That speech exposed three myths about Putin’s rule and ambitions.

Myth One: Russians as victims of history. In Putin’s eyes, the Russian people were
“robbed” and “plundered” as victims of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian
nation, he said in his speech, may be “the biggest ethnic group in the world to be
divided by borders.”

Here is the reality he did not mention — the Russian Federation inherited the bulk of
the USSR’s assets when it collapsed on Dec. 25, 1991. Of the 15 new countries that
emerged, Russia became in legal terms the “continuation state.” It thus secured the
powerful UN Security Council seat, eventually all the nuclear weapons and major
military assets, nearly all of the Soviet Embassy properties, the space program, and
significant gold reserves. The White House, where I worked on Soviet affairs at the
time, supported a strong Russia as the best guarantor of future stability.

But Russia did not get the right to “protect” ethnic Russians in Ukraine, Kazakhstan,
Moldova, Belarus, Estonia, and Latvia. This is the most troubling aspect of Putin’s
policy — the irredentist claim to defend Russians throughout the territory of the former
USSR. It is dangerous and incendiary, threatening to upend the historic peace in
Europe since the Cold War’s end.

Myth Two: Misguided US policies forced Putin to react. Putin warned the United
States in his speech, “If you compress a spring all the way to its limit, it will snap back
hard.” Even some prominent Americans have contended that NATO expansion and the
Kosovo War contributed to Putin’s supposed humiliation and aggressive, anti-US
behavior.

Here is the reality. Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton went overboard to
help Boris Yeltsin and then Putin to succeed. The United States delivered billions in
support of Yeltsin’s reforms, inspired a substantial IMF/World Bank package, and
brought Russia into the G-8 in 1994. But Yeltsin’s government failed and he left Russia
in a perilous state. After 9/11 when Putin said he wanted greater cooperation with the
West, George W. Bush helped to create the NATO-Russia Council. I served on that
council as US ambassador to NATO. But a cynical, suspicious Putin did little to meet
us halfway on major issues.

We were right to expand NATO and the European Union as they were critical in
sustaining permanent democracies in Eastern Europe. Without NATO’s security
umbrella, Putin would undoubtedly be threatening Estonia and Latvia right now after
digesting Crimea. Poor Russian leadership, not American policy, is the reason for
Russia’s slide as a declining global power.

Myth Three: Putin’s on a roll, and we can’t stop him. President Obama is playing an
admittedly weak hand against Putin early in their high stakes poker match. Obama
made the right decision not to respond militarily. He is working with Europe to support
Ukraine, sanction Putin’s cronies, and threaten more debilitating measures should
Putin invade Eastern Ukraine.
But, curiously, Obama declined to meet NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh
Rasmussen in Washington last week and has not called a NATO heads of government
summit in Brussels this week. These are missed opportunities. Obama is the leader of
the NATO alliance and needs to demonstrate publicly to Putin the line he cannot cross
in Europe. That is the surest path to peace.

Obama’s ultimate test will be on the most important principle at stake — does Ukraine
have a right to choose its future? Some US opinion leaders advocate that Ukraine
agree to become a neutral state to resolve the crisis. But this gives away far too much
to Putin, rewarding him for his aggression.

As in the Cold War, the more effective strategy is for the United States to stick to its
defense of freedom and wait out Putin. NATO and the EU are stronger than the
Russian dictator in right and might as well as spirit.

Nicholas Burns is a professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics at

Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Follow him on Twitter @rnicholasburns.
Putin’s Reality Check for Europe
Joschka Fischer | Project Syndicate | MAR 24, 2014 5

BERLIN – For far too long, the West has harbored illusions about Vladimir Putin’s
Russia – illusions that have now been shattered on the Crimean peninsula. The West
could (and should) have known better: Ever since his first term in office as Russian
president, Putin’s strategic objective has been to rebuild Russia’s status as a global
power.

To this end, Putin used Russia’s energy exports to recover gradually the territories lost
when the Soviet Union collapsed a generation ago. Ukraine has been at the heart of
this strategy, because, without it, the aim of a revived Russia is unachievable. So
Crimea was just the first target; the next will be eastern Ukraine and persistent
destabilization of the country as a whole.

Before our eyes, the post-Soviet international system in Eastern Europe, the
Caucasus, and Central Asia is being overthrown. Nineteenth-century concepts of
international order, based on zero-sum balance-of-power considerations and spheres
of interest, are threatening to supersede modern norms of national self-determination,
the inviolability of borders, the rule of law, and the fundamental principles of
democracy.

As a result, this upheaval will have a massive impact on Europe and its relations with
Russia, for it will determine whether Europeans live by twenty-first-century rules. Those
who believe that the West can adapt to Russian behavior, as Putin’s Western
apologists suggest, risk contributing to further strategic escalation, because a soft
approach will merely embolden the Kremlin.

Indeed, whether or not its leaders acknowledge it, the European Union is now in direct
conflict with Russia over its enlargement policy since the end of the Cold War. That is
because Russia’s re-emergence as a global power requires not just the reintegration of
lost Soviet territories, but also direct access to Europe and a dominant role there,
especially in Eastern Europe. So a fundamental strategic struggle is now a given.

From a Western perspective, willful confrontation makes little sense, because the EU
and Russia are and will continue to be neighbors. Looking ahead, Russia will need the
EU even more than vice versa, because in its Far East and in Central Asia, China is
emerging as a rival of entirely different dimensions. Moreover, Russia’s rapid
demographic decline and enormous modernization deficit imply the need for a joint
future with Europe. But seizing this opportunity is possible only on the basis of the rule
of law, not of force, and must be guided by the principles of democracy and national
self-determination, not great-power politics.

Instead, Putin has now triggered a lasting crisis. The West’s response will be a new
containment policy, mainly taking the form of economic and diplomatic measures.
Europe will reduce its energy dependence on Russia, review its strategic alignment
and priorities, and scale back investment and bilateral cooperation.

In the short term, Putin seems to have greater leverage, but the weakness of his
position will soon become apparent. Russia is completely dependent, economically and
politically, on its commodity and energy exports, which go primarily to Europe. Lower
European demand and an oil price that no longer suffices to sustain Russia’s budget
stand to hobble the Kremlin very quickly.
Indeed, there is reason to believe that Putin may have overplayed his hand. The
collapse of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1990’s was caused not by the
West, but by a wave of secession, as nationalities and minorities, seeing the party-
state weakened, seized the opportunity to break free. Today’s Russia has neither the
economic nor the political strength to regain and integrate the lost Soviet territories,
and any attempt by Putin to press on with his plan would impoverish its people and
lead to further disintegration – a bleak prospect.

Europeans have reason to be worried, and they now have to face the fact that the EU
is not just a common market – a mere economic community – but a global player, a
cohesive political unit with shared values and common security interests. Europe’s
strategic and normative interests have thus re-emerged with a vengeance; in fact, Putin
has managed, almost singlehandedly, to invigorate NATO with a new sense of
purpose.

The EU will have to understand that it is not acting in a vacuum in its eastern and
southern neighborhood, and that, for the sake of its own security interests, the
conflicting interests of other powers there cannot simply be ignored or, worse,
accepted. The EU’s enlargement policy is not merely some expensive, expendable
annoyance; it is a vital component of the EU’s security and outward projection of
power. Safety comes with a price tag.

Perhaps now there will be a reassessment in the United Kingdom of the costs of an EU
exit. And maybe there will be a realization on the Continent that European unification
must move forward more quickly, because the world – and Europe’s neighborhood in
particular – has turned out to be not as peaceful as many, above all the Germans,
perceived it to be.

The EU peace project – the original impetus for European integration – may have
worked too well; after more than six decades of success, it had come to be considered
hopelessly outdated. Putin has provided a reality check. The question of peace in
Europe has returned, and it must be answered by a strong and united EU.

Joschka Fischer was German Foreign Minister and Vice Chancellor from 1998-2005, a
term marked by Germany's strong support for NATO’s intervention in Kosovo in 1999,
followed by its opposition to the war in Iraq.
A Real Response to Russia
This is how the U.S. and Europe should move forward.
By Franklin D. Kramer | World Report | March 24, 2014

The longstanding goal of the United States and its European allies has been to create
a Europe whole and free, yet Russia’s actions in Crimea are a direct threat to that
objective. There is little reason to believe Putin’s statement about having no desire to
further divide Ukraine. Not only is Ukraine at risk, but potentially so are Georgia and
Moldova, and, possibly, though less likely, the Baltics. Comprehensive, quick and
coordinated action by the United States and its allies is needed.

In light of the Russian action, the objective should be the maintenance of a free
Europe in as integrated a whole as can be accomplished. The focus should not be on
Crimea. Rather, Russia’s actions in Crimea should provide a strong incentive to assure
full freedom to the rest of Europe, a result that would redound to the benefit of the
countries at issue as well as to the United States and its transatlantic allies and
partners.

To accomplish this result, the United States should lead a combined military,
diplomatic and economic strategy in combination with its allies and partners to draw the
line against further Russian military actions, integrate Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova
into the transatlantic community, and strengthen the security of allies and partners.

Militarily, the United States, through NATO, should enhance planned exercises in
Ukraine and, equally importantly, expand military training and education. Enhanced
exercises could be accomplished via the NATO Response Force led by the United
States or on a more ad hoc basis. NATO (including U.S.) forces should at the same
time undertake expanded training and education that would create a more capable
force better able to conduct self-defense and to integrate with NATO forces.

On a longer term basis, the NATO "framework nation" concept should have as one of
its key elements a focus on collective defense, ideally led by Germany and Poland, and
which would undertake the requisite planning, exercises and logistics that would allow
an alliance of 28 to respond to any future Russian actions. Among many other
requirements, such a framework would include organizing host-nation support,
establishing prepositioned capabilities and acquiring deterrent capacities such as cost-
effective air defense.

Diplomatically, NATO and the European Union should be ready to offer membership to
Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia conditional on meeting governance, economic and
military criteria. The association agreement just signed between Ukraine and the
European Union is a strong first step, and agreements with Georgia and Moldova, as
well as further elements of the Ukraine agreement, are expected to be accomplished
by the summer. Ultimately, however, the goal should be greater integration, including
with NATO. In that regard, focus on conditionality is essential since all have long ways
to go — and it will be important to focus all political elements in each country on a
common way forward as well as for the citizenry to understand what is required to
accomplish the end goals of membership.

Economically, the United States and Europe need to first provide emergency backup
for gas now coming from Russia, and then, a more diversified gas supply. Liquefied
natural gas from the United States can be part of that plan, but the effort needs to be
more comprehensive.
 Sanctions have already been put in place by the United States, the European Union
and Canada, but they cannot be expected to cause the Crimea situation to be rolled
back. While unlikely to change the situation on the ground, sanctions against
individuals serve as a very useful signal as to the transatlantic community’s common
purpose, and expanding their coverage would be valuable. In this regard, it is important
for Europe, which is the most threatened, to be willing to step forward with the United
States.

There are additional sanctions that would hurt Russian interests, including freezing and
seizure of assets. Certainly, the sale of military equipment should be halted. Freezing
assets in financial centers such as London and New York would have punitive impact.
Other sectors such as energy could be targeted. If such expanded sanctions are
undertaken, it should be expected that Russia would undertake responding measures,
perhaps affecting gas flows or perhaps seizing U.S. or European assets in Russia. The
key will be determining how sanctions fit into a strategy for what will be a long and
contentious period with Russia.

Finally, apart from Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, Russia may seek to further expand
its influence in the former Soviet Union. Generally, those countries have no desire to
integrate back into Russia. The United States and Europe should develop a geopolitical
strategy that will help maintain their independence. For a variety of reasons, especially
surrounding energy and counterterrorism, China will play a role in such efforts in
Central Asia, less as an explicit partner than as a parallel actor with somewhat
common interests.

The Crimea is, illegitimately, now part of Russia. But Russia’s actions lay the
groundwork for a significant expansion of “free Europe” so long as the United States
and its transatlantic allies and partners are ready to respond decisively.

Franklin D. Kramer is a distinguished fellow and board director at the Atlantic Council
and a former assistant secretary of defense.
A Method, Yet a Madness: Understanding
Russian Democracy
By Anna Pivovarchuk | Foreign Policy Association | on March 24th, 2014

As Western media focuses on the Crimean crisis, Russia intensifies its assault on civil
society.

When Nikolai Gogol wrote about the winged troika in his 19th century masterpiece on
provincial corruption, The Dead Souls, little did he know that he was creating a
perennial image that would come to represent Russia for centuries to come. Three
powerful animals, a fury of motion, never to be overtaken, like a lightning bolt crashing
from the skies. Where was it going? To that, alas, there was no answer.

What Gogol was referring to was the “mysterious Russian soul.” A strong-willed,
passionate people, we are never quite understood, because we are unpredictable. It is
indicative of how we view ourselves: unique, unbeatable, great.

At the close of the Sochi Olympics in February, President Vladimir Putin said the
games had been more than an open door to Russia — it was the opening of the
Russian soul to the world. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore, Putin told
journalists, we are ready for cooperation.

What the Olympics revealed, however, was a very dark side of that inner sanctum — a
darkness that appears to have been eclipsed by the smooth success of the games.
The thousands of migrant workers who have not been paid, the forced evictions in
Sochi to make way for construction, rampant corruption, environmental damage and
anti-gay vigilantism, all created a picture of Dorian Grey all over again: a presentable
façade with a sinister collection of skeletons, not in the attic, but instead spilling from
behind the front door.

Despite initial scrutiny by the world press before the Olympics, the release of Pussy
Riot members and Mikhail Khodorkosvky from prison in February, the euphoria of
Russia’s Olympic performance and later the crisis in Ukraine have taken the spotlight
off Russia’s slow but steady crawl toward a humanist abyss. As controversy over
Crimea was raging in the press, and while the world became absorbed in trying to
predict Putin’s next move, a number of remarkable violations received less attention
than they deserved.

As We Know It

At the end of January, TV Rain (Dozhd), Russia’s independent news channel, was
taken off air. General Director Natalia Sindeeva was told by officials that the channel’s
coverage of the ongoing protests in Ukraine was “upsetting.” The reason cited for
refusing to support the channel by TV providers, however, was the online poll that
sought to find out whether the epic siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by Nazi
Germany during World War II was Joseph Stalin’s mistake; should he have capitulated
the city and saved countless thousands of lives?

Russian media law states that journalists are obliged to respect the rights and interests
of citizens, and the media regulator claimed the poll violated this by offending the
sentiments of veterans, much like Pussy Riot’s mock-prayer legally offended religious
believers. This was enough to disable the network across most of Russia, leading to an
80 percent loss of its profits.
On Feb. 24, over 200 people were detained for protesting the verdict in the Bolotnaya
case that saw seven antigovernment demonstrators sentenced for assault. Among
them was Boris Nemstov, a prominent opposition leader, and Alexei Navalny, an
anticorruption campaigner who recently received a suspended sentence in a
questionable corruption case himself. Navalny’s popular blog, which publishes
investigations of money laundering and theft by government officials, was recently
blocked, following the prosecutor general’s office allegation that its authors had been
involved in inciting mass protests.

Echo Moscow, Russia’s liberal radio station, had its site suspended until it agreed to
take Navalny’s blog off its homepage. Navalny currently remains under house arrest,
forbidden to leave his apartment, use the phone, mail or the Internet until April 28.

The second week of March saw the firing of Galina Timchenko, the editor-in-chief of
Lenta.ru. Russia’s most popular independent news site received a warning following a
hyperlink to an interview with Ukraine’s Right Sector leader Dmitri Yarosh. Timchenko
was replaced by a pro-Kremlin candidate, prompting the exodus of its editorial staff.

Such measures are made possible by the passing of an Internet law that came into
effect on Feb. 1, which allows the media regulator, Roskomnadzor, to suspend any site
that advocates extremism or calls for mass disturbances. On Feb. 27, another law was
passed literally overnight that requires all Internet providers to register as well as
compile information on its users for a period of six months that will be available to
regulators.

In a country where young mothers can get two years in prison for an anti-Putin song,
“extremism” is a vague concept. If you remember the controversial law concerning
“foreign agents” from 2012, a proposal to apply it to media outlets has made a
reappearance at the Duma again. According to grani.ru, a draft proposed in 2012 was
condemned by the Kremlin as damaging to the ruling party. But there is nothing to
suggest the mood has not changed.

And last, but not least, The Moscow Times reported that a bill was introduced to the
Duma that will abolish mayoral and city council elections. Gubernatorial elections were
already suspended in 2004, with Putin appointing governors across the country. With
corruption eating away around 17 percent of Russian GDP, the circle of power is
shrinking to a criminal cabal, and information about the workings of power is becoming
increasingly controlled. As the open letter of resignation of Lenta.ru editors poignantly
highlighted: “It’s not that we have nowhere to work. It’s that you have nothing more to
read.”

The Cold War Chessboard

Interestingly enough, Putin’s approval ratings have exceeded their three-year high and
are currently over 70 percent, reflecting on his firm stance on Crimea. While the world
watched in shock as Russia’s brief war with Georgia unfolded in 2008, the Russian
president’s approval ratings were nearing 90 percent.

The notion that Russia can only be tamed by a despot seems eradicable, and a show
of a strong, masculine hand helps explain the president’s popular support base. Nikolai
Karamzin, a famous Russian historian, wrote: “Autocracy has founded and resuscitated
Russia. Any change in its political constitution has led in the past and must lead in the
future to its perdition.” This is exactly why many Russians still view Mikhail Gorbachev
— hailed widely across the world as an iconic figure who helped end the Cold War —
as a weakling, a loser, and a mumbling idiot.
Putin has made a profession of cultivating not only his own image as a strongman, but
also of reinvigorating Russia’s lost grandeur. The fear after the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Boris Yeltsin’s turbulent years in power that Russia might slide into
international insignificance was often expressed by Putin. Russia had felt, often with
good reason, as being circumvented on the international arena, its interests and
worldview ignored.

President Bill Clinton’s bombing of Serbia without a United Nations resolution was
viewed with alarm, as was the invasion of Iraq and, more recently, the Libyan
campaign. (Given the highly volatile situation on the ground in Muammar Qaddafi’s
former dominion, Russia has every right to say, “I told you so.”)

The unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, and
the consequent plans to position the ballistic missile defense shield in Eastern Europe
created tensions, still ongoing. And there is the point, a sore one to this day, of the
alleged promise made to Gorbachev by then-Secretary of State James Baker that
NATO would “not expand one inch to the east.” The Baltic States NATO accession of
2004, and the subsequent discussions of Ukraine and Georgia’s membership, brought
America too close for comfort.

President Putin has done his fair share to contribute to antagonizing the West from his
side. The Dima Yakovlev Law, designed as a response to the U.S. Magnitsky Bill, lists
a number of measures against those committing human rights offenses against
Russian citizens, including a controversial prohibition of adoption of Russian orphans
by U.S. parents. The ludicrous suggestion that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was
somehow behind the 2011 antigovernment protests was laughable, but indicative of the
narrative weaved by the Kremlin of foreign agents out to undermine Russia’s bid for
greatness.

Putin’s 2013 editorial in The New York Times is a case in point. He writes:

“It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has
become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I
doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of
democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the
slogan ‘you’re either with us or against us.’”

His is a clear stance vis-à-vis America and its power. Yet with the Crimean government
ready to nationalize Ukrainian assets — as we have seen in recent days, by force —
and to change the clocks to Moscow time, Putin could do well by listening to his own
rhetoric, or at least his speech and ghostwriters.

Under Pressure

Fireworks crowned the breaking-speed formalization of Crimea’s return to Russia in a

fait accompli. As an MP suggested to Echo Moscow in a recent interview: “Crimea will
be remembered as a place where Russia stood up to Washington and ended American
dreams of creating a ‘unipolar world.’”

Vladislav Sukrov, Putin’s aide whose name appears on the U.S. sanctions list, told TV
Rain: “I think that this list is like an Oscar nomination, a type of confirmation that we are
doing the right thing. I would call it a prize and a direct recognition of the rightfulness of
our actions.”

The media uproar that spun the Second Cold War scenario was sensationalist and
revealed a simplistic mentality and a compartmentalized perception of international
politics, wired by atavistic ideas. Yet the Russian government’s positioning itself as a
counterweight to U.S. influence — in response to U.S. influence — is a new reality that
needs to be addressed.

It is difficult to assess whether Putin is playing on the public anti-Western sentiments or

whether the Kremlin’s rhetoric is fuelling it. The answer is probably a symbiosis of the
two. But what it reveals is that the more Russia feels under pressure from the West, the
more defiant its stance.

To use Putin’s own metaphor: “If you press a spring hard enough, it will eventually
unravel.” No one could predict just what that might mean. Otto von Bismarck once said
the secret of politics is to have a good treaty with Russia. Had he been alive today, he
would have added America to the formula. Creating a better personal relationship with
Putin, and a space for dialogue between the two powers, seems wiser than further
alienating him and thereby entrenching Russia’s antagonism.

The Mysterious Russian Soul

As the Kremlin tightens its grip on Russia’s civil society, with the recent display of
military jingoism that, had the Ukrainian troops not showed such restraint, might have
seen a much less happy ending, the majority of the Russian people are silent. A distant
echo of the 2011 protests, the weekend of the referendum saw the “March of Peace”
against the Crimean incursion, which saw over 50,000 protestors gather in Moscow.
But a simultaneous rally in support of Crimea and against “fascism in Ukraine” drew a
much smaller, but much more worrying crowd.

What is baffling in all this is the apparent willingness of the population to surrender their
basic rights and freedom for concepts that have no bearing on their daily lives. You
can’t butter your bread with international prestige, although you could probably keep
quite warm under a propaganda blanket.

But when it is clear the “power vertical” is absolute, the judiciary is not independent, the
police force, along with every other budget sector, is riddled with corruption, and that
independent journalists are not safe, then one questions the moral compass of such a
society.

Russia had spent centuries dormant under Tsarist rule, and over seven decades
submissive to the Communist Party. Its 1917 and 1991 revolutions were elite affairs,
more like coup d’états than popular uprisings. Unfortunately, it appears that again the
majority of the Russian people are content to surrender themselves to the mercy of an
autocrat in return for an inflated sense of national pride, economic crumbs that fall off
the Kremlin banquet table, and a good spectacle.

Greatness is not measured by military capability, land mass, or geopolitical advantage

alone. Russian people have to decide what kind of society they want to live in. Right
now, their subservience to the Kremlin seems to be taking them further away from the
idea of democracy they fought to establish as the Soviet Union collapsed. And the
current trend of Western antagonism toward Russia, and her continued isolation from
its liberal norms, will only aggravate this negative progression.

*This article was published in partnership with Fair Observer.

Anna Pivovarchuk is the Deputy Managing Editor & Culture Editor at Fair Observer,
having previously held the position of Europe Editor. She holds an MA in International
Relations from King’s College London and a BA in English Literature and History from
the University of Edinburgh.
She has also worked as a freelance writer and editor for various organizations such as
the BBC and the United Nations and writes a blog on Russian current affairs.
[ the alleged promise made to Gorbachev by then-Secretary of State James Baker that
NATO would “not expand one inch to the east.”

Sorry Ms. Pivovarchuk , this is false.

“The year 1990 was one of major negotiations. Washington, Moscow, London, Bonn,
Paris, Warsaw, East Berlin and many others were at odds over German unity,
comprehensive European disarmament and a new charter of the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe. The Soviets insisted that everything be
documented in writing, even when all that was at issue was the fate of Soviet military
cemeteries in East Germany. However, the numerous agreements and treaties of the
day contained not a single word about NATO expansion in Eastern Europe.
“
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-
break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html

See also Mark Kramer, The Myth of a No-NATO-Enlargement Pledge to Russia :

“Gorbachev did receive numerous assurances during the ‘‘24’’ process that
helped to sweeten the deal for him, but none of these had anything to do with
the enlargement of NATO beyond Germany.”
http://dialogueeurope.org/uploads/File/resources/TWQ%20article%20on%20Germany
%20and%20NATO.pdf ]
Kremlin’s Anti-Western Mythology
Dangerously Self-Destructive, Milov Says
Paul Goble | Window On Eurasia | Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Staunton, March 25 – The Kremlin’s anti-Western mythology is now so

widespread that many in Moscow and some in the West accept it as a given and fail to
understand how it reflects a specific political program and how dangerous and self-
destructive it is for those who are putting it about, according to Vladimir Milov.

In an extended blog post on Ekho Moskvy today, Milov, a former deputy energy
minister and now president of the Moscow Institute for Energy Policy, argues that there
are two reasons for that conclusion (echo.msk.ru/blog/milov/1286428-echo/).

The first reason is that this mythology is “based on serious exaggerations and
often on open lies which disorient Russia in its foreign policy actions and open the way
to incorrect steps.” Using it is like attempting to fly with a map not based on reality but
on one’s own imagination. That can lead to crashes.

And the second, Milov says is that Russia will only suffer if it turns away from
the West as a strategic partner and transforms itself into the enemy of the rest of the
world. “When our problems with our real and natural competitors, China and the
Islamic world, intensify, the gap between Russia and the West can play a very evil joke
on [Russia].”

Consequently, “it is time to begin a serious de-mythologization” of the West and

its relations with Russia. Among the myths that need to be dispelled is that the West
“terribly insulted and injured Russia in the 1990s” and now is the time for Russia to take
“its ‘just’ revenge.’”

Consider the facts, Milov says. The West provided credits to Gorbachev to help
him “preserve the Soviet system.” It forced three former Soviet republics to return
nuclear weapons to Russia. And it provided direct aid and credits which prevented an
even greater economic and humanitarian debacle.

Many in Russia now complain that the West didn’t write off the Soviet debt, but
they forget that Russia “assumed them in exchange” for agreements by the other
former Soviet republics not to make claims on Soviet property abroad and that as a
result of oil and gas price rises, Moscow was easily able to carry them.

A second myth put about by the Kremlin with its anti-Western rhetoric is that
“the West and NATO bombed and dismembered Yugoslavia and want to do the same
thing with Russia.” People should remember that the West intervened in Yugoslavia
only three years after the bloodletting began.

One can disagree with NATO’s strategy – according to Milov, its involvement in
Kosovo in 1999 was more questionable than its earlier actions elsewhere in the former
Yugoslavia, but one fact is clear, Milov says: NATO “did not unleash the Yugoslav
wars: it intervened in order to end them.”

A third myth in the Kremlin’s propaganda campaign is that the expansion of NATO
“threatens Russia.” There is no evidence for this, he argues, although he does suggest
that US President George W. Bush made a “colossal” mistake in 2002 when he
unilaterally withdrew from the ABM treaty. That gave Putin some winning “propaganda
cards.”

Focusing on an imaginary Western threat, the Moscow analyst argues, is creating a

situation in which the Russian authorities and the Russian people are ignoring very real
threats and driving away those who could and may in many cases even want to be
Moscow’s allies in countering them.

The most obvious is China whose leaders talk about the “injustices” of the 1858 and
1860 treaties and sometimes suggest that it will at some point be necessary to “take
Siberia and the Far East” away from Russia. “Just now China is taking a moderate line
toward Russia, but who knows who will be in power [in Beijing] in the years to come?”

Because of his occupation of Crimea and his antagonism to the West, Vladimir Putin
has made Russia more dependent on Chinese good will, Milov suggests, and it is
virtually certain that China will make use of that dependence “against us.” But no one is
talking about that risk, the result of being blinded by the Kremlin’s anti-Western
mythology.

Meanwhile, there is another “potential source of threat” that the anti-Western rhetoric
obscures: the Islamic world. Moscow was terrified by the rise of the Taliban in
Afghanistan, but interestingly enough, “the Americans have done the dirty work” for
Russia by overthrowing that Islamist regime. What happens when they leave
Afghanistan, especially if the US is viewed as an enemy in Moscow?

Iran is another problem for Russia in the Islamic world, Milov continues. Moscow tries
to be friends with Tehran, ignoring the reality that “Iran is our largest prospective
competitor for supplying gas to Europe and Asia,” the only country with more natural
gas reserves than Russia. And what has Moscow been doing? Helping Iran with its
nuclear program.

A fourth myth on which the Kremlin’s anti-Western mythology rests is that the West
attacks everybody: Iraq, Libya and Yugoslavia and now plans to “attack” Russia. There
is no question that many of these earlier Western decisions were not wise or carried
out. But there is no evidence that the West is about to “attack Russia.”

How can anyone believe that the West will do so when he or she sees how difficult it
has been for the West even to agree on targeted sanctions in the wake of Crimea? It is
absurd to think that is has any intention to take a more radical step.

And there is yet another fifth myth in the Kremlin’s arsenal: the myth that the West is
using NGOs as “a ‘fifth column’” to subvert Russia and the other post-Soviet states in
order to install governments loyal to itself.

It is true that “the democratic model of organizing society as the most successful the
world has known open threatens the future of the most varied dictatorships, including
the Russian one,” but it does not threaten “the future of the countries of peoples,” only
that of those who want to control them in an authoritarian way.

Of course, Milov says, the West has its own interests and it is “stupid to count on
altruism toward Russia on the part of Western countries.” But if one compares Western
policies toward Moscow with those of other centers of power, like China and the Islamic
world, the former are far better and more suitable for Russians if not the Kremlin than
the latter.

The West has helped Russia, perhaps not as much as it could have, but it has helped.
“The others? Not so much.” China hasn’t done much. And the help of the Islamists was
limited to “only part of its residents, those who declared themselves ‘Ichkeria’” as
Chechens called their country before and during the Russian attacks against it.

If one thinks about this, the mythology offered by the Kremlin about the West dispels
itself, the Moscow analyst concludes; but if one doesn’t – and in Moscow today, that is
the case of far too many people -- then that very mythology carries with it the risk that
the Russian leadership may make some “fatal strategic errors.”
No, American Weakness Didn't Encourage
Putin to Invade Ukraine
Peter Beinart | The Atlantic | Mar 3 2014, 8:41 AM ET

In fact, we've pushed U.S. power further east than anyone could have imagined
when the Soviet Union collapsed.

If you’ve listened to President Obama’s critics in recent days, you’ve almost certainly
heard two claims. First, that under Obama, America is in retreat around the world.
Second, that America’s retreat emboldened Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

Let’s take the second claim first. Obama’s critics differ as to which moment of White
House fecklessness spurred Putin to act. “Ever since the [Obama] administration threw
themselves in [Putin’s] arms in Syria … I think he’s seen weakness. These are the
consequences,” insists Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. House Intelligence Committee
Chairman Mike Rogers, by contrast, suggests, “The big one that started this was the
absolute retreat on our missile defense system in Poland and Czechoslovakia.” Either
way, there’s a causation problem. If it was Obama’s weakness—in the Middle East or
Eastern Europe—that encouraged the Russian president to invade Ukraine, then how
do Corker and Rogers explain Putin’s decision to do something similar in Georgia in
2008, back when George W. Bush was president?

Which brings us to assertion number one. It’s true that the Obama administration has
withdrawn troops from Iraq and is withdrawing them from Afghanistan. But from where
Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat. From his perspective, in fact, the
reverse is likely much closer to the truth.

From where Putin sits, American power hardly seems in retreat.

To understand why, it’s worth casting one’s gaze back a couple of decades. Under
Ronald Reagan, the frontier of American power in Europe was Berlin. Then, in
February 1990, as East Germany began wobbling, Secretary of State James Baker
journeyed to Moscow to discuss German unification. According to James Goldgeier,
author of Not Whether But When, the definitive history of NATO expansion, Baker
promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if the Soviets allowed Germany to
reunify, NATO—the U.S.-led Western military alliance that took form after World War
II—would not expand “one inch” further east, not even into the former East Germany
itself. But as the year progressed, the White House developed different ideas, and by
the fall it was clear that a unified Germany would enter NATO, no matter what the
Russians thought.

The idea of admitting other Eastern European countries into NATO, however, was still
considered recklessly provocative toward Russia. The New York Times editorial board
and its star foreign-affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman, strongly opposed the idea.
The eminent Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis wrote that, “[H]istorians—normally
so contentious—are in uncharacteristic agreement: with remarkably few exceptions,
they see NATO enlargement as ill conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the
realities of the post-Cold War world.” George H.W. Bush’s national security advisor,
Brent Scowcroft, was skeptical of the idea, as was Bill Clinton’s defense secretary,
William Perry.

For his part, Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned that extending NATO violated the
“spirit of conversations” between Baker and Gorbachev, and would produce a “cold
peace” between Russia and the West. It didn’t matter. In 1995, NATO went to war
against Serbia, and then sent peacekeepers to Bosnia to enforce the peace agreement
that followed. This new, Eastern-European mission paved the way for further
expansion. By 1997, it was clear Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic would
enter the alliance. In 2004, NATO admitted another seven former Soviet bloc countries,
three of which—Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—had been part of the USSR. In 2009,
Croatia and Albania joined the club. Six former Soviet republics—Ukraine, Georgia,
Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan—now link their militaries to NATO’s via
the “Partnership for Peace” program. All five former Soviet republics in Central Asia—
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan—provide NATO
countries with some basing, transit, refueling, or overflight rights for use in the Afghan
war.

From Putin’s perspective, in other words, the United States hardly looks in retreat. To
the contrary, the post-Cold War period has brought one long march by America and its
allies closer and closer to the border of Russia itself. But there was no reason to
believe that Russia—which under Putin has been regaining its confidence on the world
stage—would go on contracting forever. And by 2008, when Russia sent troops into
parts of Georgia, it was already clear that NATO’s expansion onto former Soviet soil
had come to a halt.

It had stopped for the same reason that General Dwight Eisenhower, determined at the
end of World War II to keep the American death toll as low as possible, refused to push
into Eastern Europe to prevent the USSR from dominating the region after the war. And
for the same reason that President Eisenhower watched Soviet troops crush protests in
Budapest in 1956, and President Johnson watched Soviet troops crush the Prague
Spring in 1968. The frontiers of American power in Eastern Europe have long
been set by Moscow’s willingness to send troops into countries where, by virtue
of their geography, Russia is prepared to take casualties and the United States is
not. (Just as the limits of Soviet power in the Americas were set in 1962 when John F.
Kennedy proved more willing to risk war over Soviet missiles in Cuba than did Nikita
Khrushchev.)

To say that the border of Western power has stopped expanding is not to say it has
begun to contract. To the contrary, it’s still almost impossible to imagine any of the
countries recently admitted into NATO falling back under Russia’s sway.

Geopolitically and ideologically, the West’s frontier has moved further east than almost
anyone could have imagined a couple of decades ago. The bad news is that it has left
the countries just beyond that frontier, the ones most eager to be connected to the
West, terribly vulnerable. During the Cold War, Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia
shared that tragic fate. Today, Georgia and Ukraine do.

None of this remotely justifies Moscow’s crude and lawless invasion of Ukraine. The
U.S. and its European allies should do everything possible to strengthen the
government in Kiev politically, economically, and maybe even—clandestinely—
militarily. And they should think creatively about what kinds of economic and diplomatic
measures might hit the Russian elite where it hurts, with the hope of at least stopping a
Russian conquest of all of eastern Ukraine. That such efforts may undermine Russian
cooperation on other issues, like Iran and Syria, is a risk the West will have to take.

But the Obama administration will also have to tell Kiev’s revolutionaries that while it
supports a unified, democratic Ukraine, it does not support an anti-Russian Ukraine.
Russia will not permit it, and at the end of the day, the United States cannot protect
Ukraine from Russia’s wrath. It’s a bit like Finland’s dilemma during the Cold War or
Taiwan’s now. Even if Ukraine regains control over its domestic affairs, it will never
enjoy complete control over its foreign policy. The U.S. has a moral obligation to
support democracy and self-determination. But it also has a moral obligation not to
make promises it can’t keep.

That was true before Obama, and it will be true after he’s gone. And it has nothing to
do with America being in retreat.
The Battle Of Londongrad -- How Exposed Is
The City To Sanctions On Russia?
Raoul Ruparel, Contributor to Forbes | 3/24/2014 @ 3:26PM

Over the past couple of weeks there has been a lot of hype around the role London is
playing in the UK’s approach to sanctions on Russia following its annexation of Crimea
from Ukraine.

The theory goes that, because so much Russian wealth and business flows through or
is held in the City of London, the UK government has been sheepish on pushing
sanctions onto Russia – see the NYT, the FT and the Economist for examples.

However, looking at the data, this theory is clearly wrong on both counts. Not only are
the links between London and Russia far from substantial but the UK has generally
found itself close to those in favour of deeper sanctions in this debate.

All the articles written on this topic provide some anecdotal evidence to support their
position, usually related to the number of oligarchs located and doing business in
London. While it’s true there are a disproportionate number of them in the City, this is
far from sufficient evidence. The vital point is that any discussion must be in the context
of London as a global city and in the context of other EU countries having significant
trade and energy links to Russia.

Looking deeper at the data, we see that, while Russian business does generate fees
for the City, they are not significant as a share of the total. As the graph below shows,
UK exports of financial services, other business services and insurance are large but
Russia, at £1.2bn, accounted for only 1% of the total in 2012. This suggests, for all the
services the lawyers, accountants and financial firms in the City provide to Russian
interests, they are only a fraction of their overall international business.

Similarly, the amount of Russian capital invested in London is also much less than is
often thought. While the stock of Russian international investments in London totals
around £27bn, this is only 0.5% of the total European stock of assets invested.
Surprisingly, the UK actually has more invested in Russia at £46bn.
Add on top of this data the fact that very little Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) actually
flows from Russia to the UK (see graph below) and it becomes clear that the links
between the City and Russia are grossly overblown. Some may of course be cycled
through offshore centres, but this is impossible to track and there is little evidence to
prove it has any impact on London’s role as a financial centre.

Furthermore, the links between other countries and Russia are more sizeable.
Surprisingly, France, Italy and Germany all have larger banking sector exposures to
Russia than the UK – both in absolute terms and as a share of total bank assets. Many
European countries also have much deeper trading links with Russia as the table
below shows.
If further sanctions were needed, it is clear that other countries may have much more to
lose than the UK, especially if they are targeted at trade and/or energy. General
financial sanctions would hit London but they would also hit many European banks, as
well as the trade and energy sectors which rely on these banks for financing.

Such sanctions are some way from where the discussion is now however, not least
because of the different links and different interests in play throughout the 28 EU
member states. This must also be kept in mind – sanctions are not simply going to hit
all Russians and stop all financial trade with Russia, at least not in the foreseeable
future. Targeted sanctions on individuals, firms and maybe sectors seem the most
likely course of action, making a sizeable impact on the City even less likely.

One final point to consider. There seems to have been some reluctance to take the UK
government at its word when it comes to its position on sanctions. By all accounts, the
UK has publicly and privately made it clear that it is willing to pursue further sanctions if
Russia escalates the situation, for example by pushing further into eastern Ukraine.
This has put it between the more hawkish countries – such as Poland and the Baltics –
and the more dovish such as Germany, Bulgaria and Slovakia. There was of course
the unfortunate incident where a government advisor was snapped holding documents
expressing hesitation over sanctions, but insistence on following a single line of a
single advisors document over the continued position of the UK government seems
illogical.

Unfortunately, this narrative of the City blocking sanctions has taken hold somehow. At
best it is based on anecdotal evidence and at worst it is completely unfounded. The
majority of data do not support it and reality of the negotiations and the UK’s role in
them does not fit it. It is time to put it to bed.
U.S. Scurries to Shore Up Spying on Russia
In Crimea, Russia May Have Gotten a Jump on West by Evading U.S.
Eavesdropping
By Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Siobhan Gorman | WS Journal | March 24,
2014 1:48 a.m. ET

U.S. military satellites spied Russian troops amassing within striking distance of Crimea
last month. But intelligence analysts were surprised because they hadn't intercepted
any telltale communications where Russian leaders, military commanders or soldiers
discussed plans to invade.

America's vaunted global surveillance is a vital tool for U.S. intelligence services,
especially as an early-warning system and as a way to corroborate other evidence. In
Crimea, though, U.S. intelligence officials are concluding that Russian planners might
have gotten a jump on the West by evading U.S. eavesdropping. (Follow the latest
developments on the crisis in Ukraine.)

"Even though there was a warning, we didn't have the information to be able to say
exactly what was going to happen," a senior U.S. official says.

To close the information gap, U.S. spy agencies and the military are rushing to expand
satellite coverage and communications-interception efforts across Russia, Ukraine and
the Baltic states. U.S. officials hope the "surge" in assets and analysts will improve
tracking of the Russian military and tip off the U.S. to any possible intentions of
Russian President Vladimir Putin before he acts on them.

The U.S. moves will happen quickly. "We have gone into crisis-response mode," a
senior official says.

Still, as Russia brings additional forces to areas near the border with eastern Ukraine,
America's spy chiefs are worried that Russian leaders might be able to cloak their next
move by shielding more communications from the U.S., according to officials familiar
with the matter. "That is the question we're all asking ourselves," one top U.S. official
says.

The Obama administration is "very nervous," says a person close to the discussions.
"This is uncharted territory."

It all comes amid the backdrop of a worried government in Kiev. Ukraine's foreign
minister said Sunday that the troop buildup is increasing the possibility of war with
Russia.

Months before the takeover, U.S. spy agencies told White House policy makers that
Mr. Putin could make a play for Crimea, home to strategically important Russian naval
installations. That led to an unsuccessful diplomatic push by the Obama administration.

When the moment arrived, U.S. attention was focused on the troops on Russian soil.
Instead, forces already inside Crimea were spearheading the takeover of the
peninsula, before U.S. spy agencies fully realized what was happening.

Citing conflicting assessments from intelligence agencies, Rep. Michael Rogers,

Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has launched a review of
whether spy agencies misjudged Mr. Putin's intentions. Agency officials say the
differences were relatively small and reflected the competing analysis that policy
makers expect intelligence agencies to conduct.
Some Obama administration, military and intelligence officials say they doubt the U.S.
could have done much differently. Even with a clearer understanding of Mr. Putin's
plans, the Obama administration thought it had few options to stop him. U.S. spy chiefs
told President Barack Obama three days before the Crimea operation that Russia
could take over the peninsula so fast that Washington might find out only when it was
done.

Some U.S. military and intelligence officials say Russia's war planners might have used
knowledge about the U.S.'s usual surveillance techniques to change communication
methods about the looming invasion. U.S. officials haven't determined how Russia hid
its military plans from U.S. eavesdropping equipment that picks up digital and
electronic communications.

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. spy satellites and other intelligence-gathering
assets have been focused less on Russia and more on counterterrorism, the Middle
East and Asia, reflecting shifting U.S. priorities.

"This is the kind of thing young military officers are going to be reading about in their
history books," says one senior U.S. official.

As early as December, U.S. intelligence analysts and diplomats got indications that Mr.
Putin had his eye on Crimea. Widespread protests in Kiev against then-Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych concerned the Kremlin. The analysts and diplomats
warned that Moscow could take unspecified measures to protect Russian interests in
Crimea if the situation worsened.

The U.S. military's European Command asked the Pentagon to increase intelligence-
collection efforts in the region, including satellite coverage. Images showed what U.S.
officials described as typical military movements at Russian bases in Crimea.

Looking back, some U.S. officials now suspect Russia might have been trickling more
highly trained units into Crimea in small numbers. But U.S. intelligence analysts didn't
pick up any such indications before the takeover, officials briefed on the intelligence-
gathering effort say.

In early February, Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, dispatched a team
of embassy officers to Crimea. The details they brought back were sketchy but raised
concerns in diplomatic circles.

Human-rights activists, members of the Tatar community and other local contacts told
the American team that new political groups were being formed in Crimea with a clear
anti-Kiev agenda. Yet nothing in the internal reports written about the visit made Mr.
Pyatt and other diplomats think Russia was planning to invade, according to officials.

A turning point came after violence started to grow on Feb. 18, a U.S. intelligence
official says. Officials began to examine whether a "rapid change in government" in
Kiev would draw Moscow into the conflict militarily.

U.S. suspicions peaked on Feb. 25, four days before the Russians seized Crimea.
Russia's Defense Ministry invited the U.S. military attaché in Moscow to a briefing,
where officials spelled out plans for a massive military exercise near Ukraine and
Crimea.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say they worried the exercise was cover for a
move on Ukraine, a tactic Moscow used in 2008 before its intervention in Georgia.
Intelligence assessments delivered to policy makers after the briefing put the word
"exercises" in quotation marks, reflecting skepticism among analysts. Satellite images
showed a clear troop buildup near Ukraine.

European Command officials again asked for more intelligence-collection resources.

The military increased satellite coverage of Ukraine and Russia but couldn't steer too
many resources away from Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran and other hot spots, U.S.
officials say.

In Feb. 26 briefings to Mr. Obama and other policy makers, James Clapper, the
director of national intelligence, and other spy chiefs singled out Crimea as a flash
point. The assessment said the Russian military was likely making preparations for
possible operations in Crimea. Mr. Obama was told the operations could be launched
with little warning.

But U.S. intelligence agencies didn't have corroborating evidence. Mr. Putin and other
Russian leaders gave little away in internal communications picked up by the U.S. "We
didn't have someone saying: 'Let's do this,' " one U.S. official recalls.

It isn't clear if Russian leaders deliberately avoided communicating about the invasion
or simply found a way to do so without detection by the U.S. Another possibility: Mr.
Putin made a last-minute decision to seize Crimea—and told almost no one other than
those responsible for carrying out the invasion. Some U.S. and U.K. officials believe
that Russia's takeover plan was drawn up in advance and ready to go, reducing the
need to discuss it.

Inside Crimea, Russian troops exercised what U.S. officials describe as extraordinary
discipline in their radio and cellphone communications. Remarks that were intercepted
by U.S. spy agencies revealed no hint of the plans.

On Feb. 27, Mr. Pyatt sent an urgent note to Washington. A picture attached to his note
showed Russian flags flying at Crimea's parliament building. U.S. officials didn't know if
the forces that seized the building were Russian or a rogue unit of the Ukrainian police
force involved in the crackdown on protesters in Kiev.

There were no Americans on the ground in Crimea to check reports of Russian military
movements, U.S. officials say. The U.S. also didn't have drones overhead to gather
real-time intelligence, officials say. That increased the U.S.'s reliance on satellite
imagery and information gleaned from an analysis of social media, which was muddled
by Russian disinformation. State Department officials declined to discuss any technical-
intelligence activities.

If Mr. Putin decided to launch a takeover, many U.S. intelligence analysts thought he
would use troops participating in the military exercises. Officials now say they
underestimated the quality of Russian forces inside Crimea.

One intelligence official says the U.S. had "definitive information that Russia was using
its military to take control of the peninsula" by the night of Feb. 27, declining to be more
specific. The next morning, as armed gunmen in unmarked uniforms seized strategic
points in Crimea, U.S. intelligence agencies told policy makers that the gunmen likely
were Russian troops.

Still, the consensus assessment from Mr. Clapper's office to Mr. Obama couldn't assign
"high confidence" to reports that Russia was seizing Crimea by force because of a lack
of corroborating information.
Later on Feb. 28, Mr. Obama issued his final public warning to Mr. Putin about violating
Ukraine's sovereignty. By then, though, the Crimean peninsula was under Russian
military control, U.S. intelligence officials said later.

Pentagon officials say much of their real-time intelligence came from local reports filed
through the embassy in Kiev. The defense attache and other embassy officials worked
the phones, calling Ukrainian border patrol and navy contacts. Some of those contacts
told the Americans they were burning sensitive documents and reported details of
Russian movements.

U.S. military officials also made urgent calls to their counterparts in Russia. Not
surprisingly, Russian military officials offered little information. Some of them claimed to
be surprised. "It was classic maskirovka," says a senior U.S. official, using the Russian
word for camouflage. Spies use the word to describe Moscow's tradition of
sophisticated deception tactics.
World Leaders Will Exclude Putin From
Summit Meeting
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR, ALISON SMALE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
NY Timers MARCH 24, 2014

THE HAGUE — President Obama and the leaders of the biggest Western economies
agreed on Monday to exclude President Vladimir V. Putin from the Group of 8,
suspending his government’s 15-year participation in the diplomatic forum and further
isolating his country.

In a joint statement after a two-hour, closed-door meeting of the four largest economies
in Europe, along with Japan and Canada, the leaders of the seven nations announced
that a summit meeting planned for Sochi, Russia, in June will now be held in Brussels
— without Russia’s participation.

“This group came together because of shared beliefs and shared responsibilities.
Russia’s actions in recent weeks are not consistent with them,” the statement said.
“Under these circumstances, we will not participate in the planned Sochi Summit. We
will suspend our participation in the G-8 until Russia changes course.”

The move by the group —its first face-to-face gathering since Russia’s lightning-quick
annexation of the Crimea a month ago — was intended as another signal of the West’s
condemnation of Russia’s actions. Leaders said it represented only part of a series of
punishments that might still escalate if Russia refuses to turn back its aggressions, the
statement said.

In particular, the countries agreed to consider broader sanctions against large sectors
of the Russian economy. Mr. Obama had signaled last week that the United States was
prepared to take such a move, and officials said his decision to call a meeting of the G-
8 countries was in part intended to persuade them to do the same.

“We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will
have an increasingly significant impact on the Russian economy, if Russia continues to
escalate this situation,” the leaders’ statement said. Such sanctions could have an
outsized impact on European economies that have close trade and investment ties to
Russia.

Before the meeting, other leaders also indicated that Russia’s actions had now left the
country on the outside of the group. British Prime Minister David Cameron told
reporters that “we should be clear there’s not going to be a G-8 summit this year in
Russia. That’s absolutely clear.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a similar clue that the group might shed Russia in a
speech to the German parliament last week, saying that “so long as the political
context” is absent, “then the G-8 no longer exists, either as a summit or as a format.”

The G-8 is a forum long-prized by the Germans. But Ms. Merkel has sounded
increasingly firm — and frustrated — with Mr. Putin.

Last week, she stressed that “we are ready at any time to introduce phase-3 measures
if there is a worsening of the situation,” referring to the so-called third stage of
sanctions — tough economic measures that would likely hurt German business as well
as Russia.
Early Monday, Mr. Obama expressed solidarity with Ukraine. “Europe and America are
united in our support of the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people,” he said
after touring the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam with Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister.

Mr. Obama made his remarks while standing in front of “The Night Watch,”
Rembrandt’s depiction of a group of 17th-century militiamen, calling it “easily the most
impressive backdrop I’ve had for a news conference.”

“We’re united in imposing a cost on Russia for its actions so far,” Mr. Obama said,
adding that “the growing sanctions would bring significant consequences to the

For now, the costs were being felt more by Ukraine. Even as Mr. Obama and other
world leaders gathered, Russian forces seized another Ukrainian military base in
Crimea, which Russia has declared as annexed.

Ukraine’s acting president, Oleksander Turchinov, told the parliament in Kiev that the
Defense Ministry had ordered military personnel and their families out of Crimea
following threats by Russian forces, according to Reuters.

At a news conference, Vladyslav Seleznyov, spokesman for the Defense Ministry,

declined to say what order the forces had been given. He also said he did not know
how many Ukrainians had gone over to Russia’s side.

The Ukrainian military’s humiliating retreat has delivered a damaging blow to the
country’s fragile interim government in Kiev, piling further pressure on a leadership
already struggling to assert its authority and find money to pay salaries and pensions
and keep the country running.

“The situation is very complicated,” Oleksandr Sych, vice prime minister, told a news
conference in Kiev, as Mr. Obama and other leaders met in The Netherlands. “We are
just thinking about how to survive for the next few months. The treasury is empty but
we have to somehow survive.”

The Ukraine crisis overshadowed Mr. Obama’s scheduled four-day trip, a centerpiece
of which was a summit meeting on Monday on nuclear security with 52 other world
leaders.

The two-day talks are the third such meeting since Mr. Obama took office and a central
part of his promise in 2009 to seek a future unthreatened by nuclear weapons. The
discussions this week were aimed at how to secure or destroy dangerous stockpiles of
nuclear material that could be used to build bombs if they are stolen by terrorists.

Beforehand, Mr. Obama met with President Xi Jinping of China. Mr. Obama told
reporters that the two would discuss climate change, the situation in Ukraine and
efforts to stop North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. He also said that he planned to raise
with Mr. Xi issues that have added to tensions between China and the United States in
recent years.

Mr. Obama said the two leaders would use the meeting to “work through frictions that
exist in our relations around issues like human rights, in dealing with maritime issues in
the South China Sea and the Pacific region, in a way that is constructive and hopefully
will lead to resolutions.”

He added that he intended to talk about economic issues and trade in the hopes of
making sure that “we are both abiding by the rules that allow for us to create jobs and
prosperity in both of our countries.”
Speaking with an English translator, Mr. Xi told Mr. Obama that there was “greater
space where China and the United States are cooperating” and thanked Mr. Obama for
expressing sympathy over the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, which had 154 passengers
from China or Taiwan on board, and for American help in the search for the plane.

He also said that he wants to pursue what he called a “major power relationship” with
the United States, something that Mr. Obama had suggested in a recent letter to Mr. Xi.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama will leave the Netherlands for a daylong summit meeting
with European Union leaders in Brussels and to discuss the situation in Russia with the
Secretary General of NATO. While in Brussels, Mr. Obama will deliver a speech that
aides said would be heavily influenced by Mr. Putin’s recent actions and the threat they
pose to Europe.

Mr. Obama will fly to Rome on Thursday for a meeting with Pope Francis at the
Vatican. Aides said the president was eager to discuss the pope’s “commitment to
address issues like income inequality,” a subject that Mr. Obama has sought to
highlight as an election-year issue at home. But veteran observers of the Vatican said
the pope might use the opportunity to discuss other issues as well, including abortion,
religious liberty and contraception.

The final scheduled stop on Mr. Obama’s trip is a visit to Saudi Arabia.

Michael D. Shear and Alison Smale reported from The Hague, and David M.
Herszenhorn from Simferopol, Crimea. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Berlin.
3 Presidents and a Riddle Named Putin
By PETER BAKERMARCH | NY Times | March 23, 2014

Putin, in the Words of U.S. Officials :

President Bill Clinton

"I called to congratulate him and hung up the phone thinking he was tough enough to hold
Russia together and hoping he was wise enough to find an honorable way out of the Chechnya
problem and committed enough to democracy to preserve it."
— Writing in “My Life” about Vladimir Putin’s election in March 2000

Vice President Dick Cheney

"I think K.G.B., K.G.B., K.G.B."
— On his impression of Mr. Putin, in private conversations in 2001

President George W. Bush

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a
very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul."
— After first meeting with Mr. Putin in June 2001
"He’s not well-informed. It’s like arguing with an eighth-grader with his facts wrong."
— Mr. Bush, to the visiting prime minister of Denmark in June 2006.

Robert M. Gates
"I had looked into Putin’s eyes and, just as I expected, had seen a stone-cold killer."
— The defense secretary for Mr. Bush and President Obama, writing in “Duty” about his
meeting with Mr. Putin in February 2007

President Obama
"I don’t have a bad personal relationship with Putin. When we have conversations, they’re
candid, they’re blunt, oftentimes they’re constructive. I know the press likes to focus on body
language and he’s got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the
classroom."
— In a news conference in August 2013

WASHINGTON — Bill Clinton found him to be cold and worrisome, but predicted he
would be a tough and able leader. George W. Bush wanted to make him a friend and
partner in the war on terror, but grew disillusioned over time.

Barack Obama tried working around him by building up his protégé in the Kremlin, an
approach that worked for a time but steadily deteriorated to the point that relations
between Russia and the United States are now at their worst point since the end of the
Cold War.

For 15 years, Vladimir V. Putin has confounded American presidents as they tried to
figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. He has defied their assumptions
and rebuffed their efforts at friendship. He has argued with them, lectured them, misled
them, accused them, kept them waiting, kept them guessing, betrayed them and felt
betrayed by them.

Each of the three presidents tried in his own way to forge a historic if elusive new
relationship with Russia, only to find their efforts torpedoed by the wiry martial arts
master and former K.G.B. colonel. They imagined him to be something he was not or
assumed they could manage a man who refuses to be managed. They saw him
through their own lens, believing he viewed Russia’s interests as they thought he
should. And they underestimated his deep sense of grievance.
To the extent that there were any illusions left in Washington, and it is hard to imagine
there were by this point, they were finally and irrevocably shattered by Mr. Putin’s
takeover of Crimea and the exchange of sanctions that has followed. As Russian
forces now mass on the Ukrainian border, the debate has now shifted from how to work
with Mr. Putin to how to counter him.

“He’s declared himself,” said Tom Donilon, President Obama’s former national security
adviser. “That’s who you have to deal with. Trying to wish it away is not a policy.”

Looking back now, aides to all three presidents offer roughly similar takes: Their man
was hardly naïve about Mr. Putin and saw him for what he was, but felt there was little
choice other than to try to establish a better relationship. It may be that some of their
policies hurt the chances of that by fueling Mr. Putin’s discontent, whether it was NATO
expansion, the Iraq war or the Libya war, but in the end, they said, they were dealing
with a Russian leader fundamentally at odds with the West.

“I know there’s been some criticism on, was the reset ill advised?” said Mr. Donilon,
using the Obama administration’s term for its policy. “No, the reset wasn’t ill advised.
The reset resulted in direct accomplishments that were in the interests of the United
States.”

Some specialists said Mr. Obama and his two predecessors saw what they wanted to
see. “The West has focused on the notion that Putin is a pragmatic realist who will
cooperate with us whenever there are sufficient common interests,” said James M.
Goldgeier, dean of international studies at American University. “We let that belief
overshadow his stated goal of revising a post-Cold War settlement in which Moscow
lost control over significant territory and watched as the West expanded its domain.”

Presidents tend to think of autocrats like Mr. Putin as fellow statesmen, said Dennis
Blair, Mr. Obama’s first director of national intelligence. “They should think of dictators
like they think of domestic politicians of the other party,” he said, “opponents who smile
on occasion when it suits their purposes, and cooperate when it is to their advantage,
but who are at heart trying to push the U.S. out of power, will kneecap the United
States if they get the chance and will only go along if the U.S. has more power than
they.”

Eric S. Edelman, who was undersecretary of defense under Mr. Bush, said American
leaders overestimated their ability to assuage Mr. Putin’s anger about the West. “There
has been a persistent tendency on the part of U.S. presidents and Western leaders
more broadly to see the sense of grievance as a background condition that could be
modulated by consideration of Russian national interests,” he said. “In fact, those
efforts have been invariably taken as weakness.”

After 15 years, no one in Washington still thinks of Mr. Putin as a partner. “He goes to
bed at night thinking of Peter the Great and he wakes up thinking of Stalin,”
Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence
committee, said on “Meet the Press” on NBC on Sunday. “We need to understand who
he is and what he wants. It may not fit with what we believe of the 21st century.”

Bush’s Disillusionment

Mr. Clinton was the first president to encounter Mr. Putin, although they did not overlap
for long. He had spent much of his presidency building a strong relationship with
President Boris N. Yeltsin, Mr. Putin’s predecessor, and gave the benefit of the doubt
to the handpicked successor who became Russia’s prime minister in 1999 and
president on New Year’s Eve.
“I came away from the meeting believing Yeltsin had picked a successor who had the
skills and capacity for hard work necessary to manage Russia’s turbulent political and
economic life better than Yeltsin now could, given his health problems,” Mr. Clinton
wrote in his memoir. When Mr. Putin’s selection was ratified in a March 2000 election,
Mr. Clinton called to congratulate him and, as he later wrote, “hung up the phone
thinking he was tough enough to hold Russia together.”

Mr. Clinton had his worries, though, particularly as Mr. Putin waged a brutal war in the
separatist republic of Chechnya and cracked down on independent media. He privately
urged Mr. Yeltsin to watch over his successor. Mr. Clinton also felt brushed off by Mr.
Putin, who seemed uninterested in doing business with a departing American
president.

But the prevailing attitude at the time was that Mr. Putin was a modernizer who could
consolidate the raw form of democracy and capitalism that Mr. Yeltsin had introduced
to Russia. He moved early to overhaul the country’s tax, land and judicial codes. As
Strobe Talbott, Mr. Clinton’s deputy secretary of state, put it in his book on that period,
George F. Kennan, the noted Kremlinologist, thought that Mr. Putin “was young
enough, adroit enough and realistic enough to understand that Russia’s ongoing
transition required that he not just co-opt the power structure, but to transform it.”

Mr. Bush came to office skeptical of Mr. Putin, privately calling him “one cold dude,” but
bonded with him during their first meeting in Slovenia in June 2001, after which he
made his now-famous comment about looking into the Russian’s soul. Mr. Putin had
made a connection with the religious Mr. Bush by telling him a story about a cross that
his mother had given him and how it was the only thing that survived a fire at his
country house.

Not everyone was convinced. Mr. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney, privately told
people at the time that when he saw Mr. Putin, “I think K.G.B., K.G.B., K.G.B.” But Mr.
Bush was determined to erase the historical divide and courted Mr. Putin during the
Russian leader’s visits to Camp David and Mr. Bush’s Texas ranch.

Mr. Putin liked to brag that he was the first foreign leader to call Mr. Bush after the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and he permitted American troops into Central Asia as a
base of operations against Afghanistan.

But Mr. Putin never felt Mr. Bush delivered in return and the relationship strained over
the Iraq War and the Kremlin’s accelerating crackdown on dissent at home. By Mr.
Bush’s second term, the two were quarreling over Russian democracy, reaching a
peak during a testy meeting in Slovakia in 2005.

“It was like junior high debating,” Mr. Bush complained later to Britain’s Prime Minister
Tony Blair, according to notes of the conversation. Mr. Putin kept throwing Mr. Bush’s
arguments back at him. “I sat there for an hour and 45 minutes and it went on and on,”
Mr. Bush said. “At one point, the interpreter made me so mad that I nearly reached
over the table and slapped the hell out of the guy. He had a mocking tone, making
accusations about America.”

He was even more frustrated by Mr. Putin a year later. “He’s not well-informed,” Bush
told the visiting prime minister of Denmark in 2006. “It’s like arguing with an eighth-
grader with his facts wrong.”

He told another visiting leader a few weeks later that he was losing hope of bringing
Mr. Putin around. “I think Putin is not a democrat anymore,” he said. “He’s a czar. I
think we’ve lost him.”
‘A Stone-Cold Killer’

But Mr. Bush was reluctant to give up, even if those around him no longer saw the
opportunity he saw. His new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, came back from his
first meeting with Mr. Putin and told colleagues that unlike Mr. Bush, he had “looked
into Putin’s eyes and, just as I expected, had seen a stone-cold killer.”

In the spring of 2008, Mr. Bush put Ukraine and Georgia on the road to NATO
membership, which divided the alliance and infuriated Mr. Putin. By August of that
year, the two leaders were in Beijing for the Summer Olympics when word arrived that
Russian troops were marching into Georgia.

Mr. Bush in his memoir recalled confronting Mr. Putin, scolding him for being provoked
by Mikheil Saakashvili, then Georgia’s anti-Moscow president.

“I’ve been warning you Saakashvili is hot-blooded,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Putin.

“I’m hot-blooded too,” Mr. Putin said.

“No, Vladimir,” Mr. Bush responded. “You’re coldblooded.”

Mr. Bush responded to the Georgia war by sending humanitarian aid to Georgia,
transporting its troops home from Iraq, sending an American warship to the region and
shelving a civilian nuclear agreement with Russia.

Worried that Crimea might be next, Mr. Bush succeeded in stopping Russia from
swallowing up Georgia altogether. But on the eve of the collapse of Lehman Brothers
and the global financial meltdown, he did not impose the sort of sanctions that Mr.
Obama is now applying.

“We and the Europeans threw the relationship into the toilet at the end of 2008,”
Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, recalled last week. “We
wanted to send the message that strategically this was not acceptable. Now in
retrospect, we probably should have done more like economic sanctions.”

If Mr. Bush did not take the strongest punitive actions possible, his successor soon
made the point moot. Taking office just months later, Mr. Obama decided to end any
isolation of Russia because of Georgia in favor of rebuilding relations. Unlike his
predecessors, he would try to forge a relationship not by befriending Mr. Putin but by
bypassing him.

Ostensibly complying with Russia’s two-term constitutional limit, Mr. Putin had stepped
down as president and installed his aide, Dmitri A. Medvedev, in his place, while taking
over as prime minister himself. So Mr. Obama decided to treat Mr. Medvedev as if he
really were the leader.

A diplomatic cable obtained by WikiLeaks later captured the strategy in summing up

similar French priorities: “Cultivating relations with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev,
in the hope that he can become a leader independent of Vladimir Putin.”

Before his first trip to Moscow, Mr. Obama publicly dismissed Mr. Putin as having “one
foot in the old ways of doing business” and pumped up Mr. Medvedev as a new-
generation leader. Mr. Obama’s inaugural meeting with Mr. Putin a few days later
featured a classic tirade by the Russian about all the ways that the United States had
mistreated Moscow.
Among those skeptical of Mr. Obama’s strategy were Mr. Gates, who stayed on as
defense secretary, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the new secretary of state. Like Mr.
Gates, Mrs. Clinton was deeply suspicious of Mr. Putin. In private, she mockingly
imitated his man’s-man, legs-spread-wide posture during their meetings. But even if
they did not assign it much chance of success, she and Mr. Gates both agreed the
policy was worth trying and she gamely presented her Russian counterpart with a
“reset” button, remembered largely for its mistaken Russian translation.

Obama’s ‘Reset’ Gambit

For a time, Mr. Obama’s gamble on Mr. Medvedev seemed to be working. They
revived Mr. Bush’s civilian nuclear agreement, signed a nuclear arms treaty, sealed an
agreement allowing American troops to fly through Russian airspace en route to
Afghanistan and collaborated on sanctions against Iran. But Mr. Putin was not to be
ignored and by 2012 returned to the presidency, sidelining Mr. Medvedev and making
clear that he would not let Mr. Obama roll over him.

Mr. Putin ignored Mr. Obama’s efforts to start new nuclear arms talks and gave asylum
to Edward J. Snowden, the national security leaker. Mr. Obama canceled a trip to
Moscow, making clear that he had no personal connection with Mr. Putin. The Russian
leader has a “kind of slouch” that made him look “like that bored schoolboy in the back
of the classroom,” Mr. Obama noted.

In the end, Mr. Obama did not see how the pro-Western revolution in Ukraine that
toppled a Moscow ally last month would look through Mr. Putin’s eyes, said several
Russia specialists. “With no meaningful rapport or trust between Obama and Putin, it’s
nearly impossible to use high-level phone calls for actual problem solving,” said
Andrew Weiss, a former Russia adviser to Mr. Clinton and now a vice president at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Instead, it looks like we’re mostly
posturing and talking past each other.”

As Mr. Obama has tried to figure out what to do to end the crisis over Ukraine, he has
reached out to other leaders who still have a relationship with Mr. Putin, including
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. She privately told Mr. Obama that after
speaking with Mr. Putin she thought he was “in another world.” Secretary of State John
Kerry later said publicly that Mr. Putin’s speech on Crimea did not “jibe with reality.”

That has sparked a debate in Washington: Has Mr. Putin changed over the last 15
years and become unhinged in some way, or does he simply see the world in starkly
different terms than the West does, terms that make it hard if not impossible to find
common ground?

“He’s not delusional, but he’s inhabiting a Russia of the past — a version of the past
that he has created,” said Fiona Hill, the top intelligence officer on Russia during Mr.
Bush’s presidency and co-author of “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin.” “His present
is defined by it and there is no coherent vision of the future. Where exactly does he go
from here beyond reasserting and regaining influence over territories and people?
Then what?”

That is the question this president, and likely the next one, will be asking for some time
to come.
Free trade as a weapon against Putin
Antje Passenheim | Deutsche Welle | 23.03.2014

There has been one clear beneficiary of the Ukraine crisis: the transatlantic
partnership. The EU and US now see eye-to-eye on foreign policy - and the annexation
has boosted a proposed EU-US free trade pact.

After the Crimea crisis, minds in Brussels have re-focused on making the largest free
trade agreement in the world a top priority for the European Union. The Transatlantic
Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) pact between the 28-member bloc and the
United States is more important than ever, Republican Congressman Charlie Dent told
DW.

"I think we should seize this moment to move aggressively to enact the TTIP
agreement to better align the US and the EU," the Pennsylvania Congressman said.

"I think that's important to strengthen that economic alliance at this critical time, to the
extent that better economic ties can only add to our overall security strategy. And that
would further isolate Mr. Putin economically."

Largest tariff-free zone

Since last summer, the US and EU have been negotiating an end to tariffs and other
trade barriers. These include safety standards, technical standards and competition
rules. The goal is the creation of an economic area with more than 800 million
consumers and around half of global economic output.

The US and the EU together represent one-third of the global trade in goods. Experts
estimate that the free-trade agreement would increase the EU's gross domestic
product by half a percentage point per year - in the US, slightly less.

The Ukraine crisis has underlined the importance of the TTIP, said the German
ambassador in Washington, Peter Ammon. "I think the strategic importance of the
transatlantic link is particularly clear under precisely these circumstances."

Doubts growing

First, some obstacles remain to be cleared. In recent months, doubt and resistance
had begun to grow on both sides of the Atlantic.

Critics say the negotiations are not transparent enough. European environmental and
consumer protection advocates worry about American hormone-treated beef,
genetically modified foods and chlorine-washed chicken. And there were differences of
opinion on issues of data security, investment protection and the regulatory rights of
member states.

"Agreeing to these rules with each other is not easy," Ammon said. "We cannot
negotiate away the fact that in certain areas, we have different wishes and ideas."

The Americans insist on free-market access for their agricultural products to the EU's
single market. But they are disconcerted by the way their negotiating partners want to
protect their agricultural interests.

"You have those producers - particularly in France and Italy - who want to protect
geographic identities," Ammon said. "Things like Parmesan cheese and Bologna."
Cheaper US-made versions should not carry the name of the European originals, the
Europeans insist.

Slow going

Many are also frustrated with the pace of the TTIP negotiations - particularly after the
most recent round, when Americans were evidently less inclined to drop trade barriers
than hoped.

Gas was another issue which resonated in Brussels. "We have to talk about exports of
American natural gas to Europe, and to help make Europe much less dependent on
gas from Russia," said Dent, who also sits on the House Ethics Committee and the
Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs.

The US wants to surpass the Middle East as a leading energy-producing nation as

early as six years from now. Thanks to new fracking technologies, the Americans
intend to produce more natural gas than they consume.

Republicans have been vocal in asking President Barack Obama to give the go-ahead
for the necessary export terminals. But under current law, the US may only deliver oil
and gas to countries with which it has a free-trade zone. The TTIP would make this
possible.

Nor is agreement the agreement a purely economic pact, says Alexander Priviteira,
who directs the economics program at the Washington-based American Institute for
Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

The TTIP is receiving a political boost, Priviteira says

"It's obvious now that there is a strategic component," he said. "And the strategic and
political component of getting the US and Europe closer together is probably even
more important than the mere slashing of tariffs and trying to find common ground, or
harmonize standards between the US and Europe. It's a political message now."

Scandals are yesterday's news

One problematic area of the past few weeks, Dent says, will also be on the table in
Brussels. "We have to talk about the NSA and the abuses that may have occured."

Others in Washington, however, wonder what remains to be said on the subject. A no-
spy agreement, as Berlin has requested in the wake of the eavesdropping scandal in
which Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone was bugged, is apparently off the table.

During his visit to Washington in February, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier

called for understanding: Germany and the US would have to accept seriously that they
might simply have different assessments of the relationship between security, freedom
and privacy.

As recent events have shown, Dent says, the real dangers lurk outside the EU and
NATO. "We have to be prepared to defend ourselves, and we shouldn't let the NSA
discussion distract us from greater threats outside the alliance."

Just a few weeks ago, the scandal threatened the free trade agreement - and the
partnership. But Moscow's invasion of Crimea has pushed the NSA into the
background. Intelligence experts in the US say the NSA affair will be a topic of
conversation used to save face in Brussels - but thanks to Putin's intervention, it's no
longer a reason to split. Too much is at stake.
Ukraine orders Crimea withdrawal
Gavin Hewitt, Europe editor BBC News 24 March 2014

In both Washington and Moscow I suspect officials are asking the same question of
Europe: "How strong is its resolve when it comes to Ukraine?"

This week brought a reminder that Europe's economies are still struggling to emerge
from recession, that unemployment remains stubbornly high and that there is growing
discontent with the political establishment in many countries.

So on Sunday in France the far-right National Front made strong gains in the first round
of local elections, even topping the polls in several towns and cities.

Last week in local elections in the Netherlands the anti-immigration party of Geert
Wilders won in the city of Almere and came a close second in The Hague, with his
supporters chanting they wanted "fewer" Moroccans in their city.

On Saturday there was violence in Madrid, as tens of thousands protested against

unemployment, poverty and corruption.
Grit and spine

These are just the news fragments from an average week, but they serve as a
reminder that politically many European countries are still worn down by years of
economic crisis, with a mood angry and mistrustful of political elites.

It is against this background that Europe's leaders are being asked to show grit and
spine in a crisis which just weeks ago they could scarcely have imagined.

Many of them will gather again on Monday in The Hague with their resolve once again
under scrutiny.

The meeting was intended to focus on nuclear security, but it will be overshadowed by
the crisis in Ukraine.

The leaders of the world's seven largest economies - minus President Vladimir Putin -
will have to fashion a response to Russian actions in Ukraine and Crimea.

They are meeting with a sombre warning from the Nato Supreme Commander, US
General Philip Breedlove, ringing in their ears that the Russian force on the Ukrainian
border was "very, very sizeable and very ready". All of this will raise pressure on the
meeting to speak convincingly.

Privately the Americans say EU sanctions "are very limited and symbolic". But at their
summit in Brussels last week the Europeans pledged to move to some form of
economic sanctions if there was an escalation of Russian military action.

They have powerful tools to hurt Russia, but using them almost certainly will hurt
Europe's economies as well.

US 'more resolute'

Europe's leaders believe their asset freezes and travel bans against 33 Russian and
Crimean officials have sent a powerful message.
European officials last week insisted that the measures announced so far are having
an impact. But President Putin scoffed at the moves. Ukraine's Ambassador to the UK,
Volodymyr Khandogiy, said that Europe had not done enough to help Ukraine. "The
US," he went on to say, "is more resolute in their actions and words".

What the Americans have done is to impose sanctions on some of the Russian
president's inner circle and they have moved against Bank Rossiya - one of the
Kremlin's favourite banks.

But powerful Russians spend much more time in Europe than in America. It is where
they invest their funds, where they buy their football clubs, where they party and where
often they choose to educate their children. Europe's leaders, if they chose, could still
hurt those closest to President Putin, but so far they have been very cautious.

Other moves are no more than gestures: ending bilateral Russia-EU summits;
declaring the G8 has been replaced by a G7 without Russia.

What is unclear is what precisely would trigger the Europeans moving to economic
sanctions and whether it would be possible to maintain European unity. And without
unanimity there can be no economic sanctions.

Would Italy, which gets nearly 30% of its energy from Russia, agree?

Would France actually be willing to cancel two state-of-the-art warships destined for
Russia? The French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that "if Putin continues doing
what he's doing, we could envisage cancelling the sales but we will ask others, and I'm
thinking namely the British, to do the same with the assets of the Russian oligarchs in
London. Sanctions have to be shouldered by everyone." And that begs the question of
whether the British would back financial sanctions at risk to their own interests? Other
countries, dependent on Russia for their energy, have already signalled their opposition
to economic sanctions.

'Pandora's box'

Talking to officials last week there is no doubt they understand the seriousness of the
crisis and the threat to European security. It was perhaps best summed up by the
German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said "I'm very worried the
unlawful attempt to alter recognised borders in our European neighbourhood, 25 years
after the end of the Cold War will open Pandora's box." Putin's moves are resurrecting
deep fears and anxieties.

So at the meeting in The Hague the first task for President Obama will be to preserve
allied unity. He will urge a stiffer response particularly against President Putin's inner
circle.

Ultimately Russia's weakness is its economy. European officials point out that since the
crisis began the Russian stock market has fallen sharply and the value of the rouble
has declined. Europe has the means to turn the screw, to isolate Russian financial
institutions from the markets and to freeze assets.

There would be retaliation, although Chancellor Angela Merkel believes it would be the
Russian economy which would be damaged the more. But Europe has some
convincing to do - that if the crisis deepens its words will deliver action.
Confronting Putin’s Russia
By MICHAEL A. McFAUL | NY Times | MARCH 23, 2014

The decision by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to annex Crimea ended the post-
Cold War era in Europe. Since the late Gorbachev-Reagan years, the era was defined
by zigzags of cooperation and disputes between Russia and the West, but always with
an underlying sense that Russia was gradually joining the international order. No more.
Our new era is one defined by ideological clashes, nationalistic resurgence and
territorial occupation — an era in some ways similar to the tragic periods of
confrontation in 20th-century Europe. And yet there are important differences, and
understanding the distinction will be critical to a successful American foreign policy in
the coming decades.

We did not seek this confrontation. This new era crept up on us, because we did not
fully win the Cold War. Communism faded, the Soviet Union disappeared and Russian
power diminished. But the collapse of the Soviet order did not lead smoothly to a
transition to democracy and markets inside Russia, or Russia’s integration into the
West.

Some Russians pushed forward on this enormous agenda of revolutionary change.

And they produced results: the relatively peaceful (so far) collapse of the Soviet
empire, a Russian society richer than ever before, greater protection of individual rights
and episodically functioning democratic institutions.

But the simultaneity of democracy’s introduction, economic depression and imperial

loss generated a counterrevolutionary backlash — a yearning for the old order and a
resentment of the terms of the Cold War’s end.

Proponents of this perspective were not always in the majority. And the coming to
power of an advocate of this ideology — Mr. Putin — was not inevitable. Even Mr.
Putin’s own thinking changed over time, waffling between nostalgia for the old rule and
realistic acceptance of Russia’s need to move forward.

And when he selected the liberal, Western-leaning Dmitri A. Medvedev as his

successor in 2008, Russia’s internal transformation picked up the pace. Though
Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 isolated Russia for a time, its integration into the
existing international order eventually regained momentum.

In my first years in government, I witnessed President Medvedev cooperating with

President Obama on issues of mutual benefit — a new Start treaty, new sanctions
against Iran, new supply routes through Russia to our soldiers in Afghanistan and
Russian membership in the World Trade Organization. These results of the “reset”
advanced several American vital national interests. The American post-Cold War policy
of engagement and integration, practiced by Democratic and Republican
administrations alike, appeared to be working again.

When Mr. Putin became president again in 2012, this momentum slowed, and then
stopped. He returned at a time when tens of thousands of Russians were protesting
against falsified elections and more generally against unaccountable government. If
most Russians praised Mr. Putin in his first two terms, from 2000 to 2008, for restoring
the state and growing the economy, some (not all) wanted more from him in his third
term, and he did not have a clear response.
Mr. Putin was especially angry at the young, educated and wealthy protesters in
Moscow who did not appreciate that he (in his view) had made them rich. So he
pivoted backward, instituting restrictions on independent behavior reminiscent of Soviet
days. He attacked independent media, arrested demonstrators and demanded that the
wealthy bring their riches home.

In addition to more autocracy, Mr. Putin needed an enemy — the United States — to
strengthen his legitimacy. His propagandists rolled out clips on American imperialism,
immoral practices and alleged plans to overthrow the Putin government. As the
ambassador in Moscow, I was often featured in the leading role in these works of
fiction.

The shrill anti-Americanism uttered by Russian leaders and echoed on state-controlled

television has reached a fanatical pitch with Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea. He has
made clear that he embraces confrontation with the West, no longer feels constrained
by international laws and norms, and is unafraid to wield Russian power to revise the
international order.

Mr. Putin has made a strategic pivot. Guided by the right lessons from our past conflict
with Moscow, the United States must, too, through a policy of selective containment
and engagement.

The parallels with the ideologically rooted conflicts of the last century are striking. A
revisionist autocratic leader instigated this new confrontation. We did not. Nor did
“Russia” start this new era. Mr. Putin did. It is no coincidence that he vastly weakened
Russia’s democratic institutions over the last two years before invading Crimea, and
has subsequently moved to close down independent media outlets during his Ukrainian
land grab.

Also, similar to the last century, the ideological struggle between autocracy and
democracy has returned to Europe. Because democratic institutions never fully took
root in Russia, this battle never fully disappeared. But now, democratic societies need
to recognize Mr. Putin’s rule for what it is — autocracy — and embrace the intellectual
and normative struggle against this system with the same vigor we summoned during
previous struggles in Europe against anti-democratic governments.

And, as before, the Kremlin has both the intention and capacity to undermine
governments and states, using instruments like the military, money, media, the secret
police and energy.

These similarities recommend certain policy steps. Most important, Ukraine must
succeed as a democracy, a market economy and a state. High on its reform list must
be energy efficiency and diversification, as well as military and corruption reforms.
Other exposed states in the region, like Moldova and Georgia, also need urgent
bolstering.

Also, as during the 20th century, those states firmly on our side must be assured and
protected. NATO has moved quickly already, but these efforts must be sustained
through greater placement of military hardware in the front-line states, more training
and integration of forces, and new efforts to reduce NATO countries’ dependence on
Russian energy.

And, as before, the current regime must be isolated. The strategy of seeking to change
Kremlin behavior through engagement, integration and rhetoric is over for now. No
more membership in the Group of 8, accession to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development or missile defense talks. Instead there must be
sanctions, including against those people and entities — propagandists, state-owned
enterprises, Kremlin-tied bankers — that act as instruments of Mr. Putin’s coercive
power. Conversely, individuals and companies not connected to the government must
be supported, including those seeking to take assets out of Russia or emigrate.

Finally, as during World War II and the Cold War, the United States and our allies can
cooperate with Mr. Putin when our vital interests overlap. But this engagement must be
understood as strictly transactional, and not as a means to pull Russia back into
accepting international norms and values. That’s how he will see this engagement. So
should we.

At the same time, many important differences distinguish this new confrontation in
Europe from the Cold War or interwar eras. Most help us. A few do not.

For one thing, unlike Communism or even fascism, Putinism has little appeal beyond
Russia. Even inside Russia, brave civil society leaders still defy autocracy, war and
nationalist fervor, and have managed to mobilize tens of thousands against Mr. Putin’s
intervention, while a larger but quiet section of society will lament the advent of this
new era.

I met these silent skeptics — in government, business and society — every day in my
last job. Citizens rally round the flag during crises, and propaganda works. But Mr.
Putin’s nationalism is fueled primarily by a crude, neo-Soviet anti-Americanism. To
continue to spook Russians about American encirclement and internal meddling will be
hard to sustain. They are too smart.

Second, Mr. Putin’s Russia has no real allies. We must keep it that way. Nurturing
Chinese distance from a revisionist Russia is especially important, as is fostering the
independence of states in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Another difference is that Russian military power is a shadow of Soviet might. A new
global conflict is unlikely. But Russia’s military can still threaten Russian border states,
so Europeans must bolster their defenses, and Western governments and companies
must stop assisting Russia’s military modernization.

One obvious difference is that the Internet did not exist during the last standoff. Recent
Kremlin moves to cut off citizens from independent information are disturbing, but the
communications revolution ensures that Russians today will not be as isolated as their
grandparents.

Greater exposure to the world gives Russians a comparative analysis to judge their
situation at home. This is a powerful tool, which needs to be nurtured through
educational exchanges, peer-to-peer dialogues and increased connectivity between the
real Russian private sector and its international partners.

But there are two important differences that weaken our hand. First, the United States
does not have the same moral authority as it did in the last century. As ambassador, I
found it difficult to defend our commitment to sovereignty and international law when
asked by Russians, “What about Iraq?” Some current practices of American democracy
also do not inspire observers abroad. To win this new conflict, we must restore the
United States as a model.

Second, we are enduring a drift of disengagement in world affairs. After two wars, this
was inevitable, but we cannot swing too far. As we pull back, Russia is pushing
forward. Leaders in Congress and the White House must work together to signal that
we are ready to lead the free world in this new struggle.
The United States — together with Russians who want to live in a prosperous and
democratic Russia — will win this new conflict in Europe. Over the last century,
democracies have consolidated at a remarkable pace, while autocracies continue to
fall. Especially in educated, rich, urban societies like Russia, democracy eventually
takes hold. A democratic Russia will not always define its interests as we do, but will
become a more stable partner with other democracies.

We cannot say how long the current autocratic government in Russia will endure. But a
sober, realistic strategy to confront this new threat will help to shorten the tragic era we
just entered.

Michael A. McFaul, a Hoover fellow at Stanford, served for five years in the Obama
administration, as a special assistant to the president at the National Security Council
and as ambassador to the Russian Federation.
Reckoning with Russia
Christopher Hill | Project Syndicate | DENVER – Sunday, March 23, 2014

Anyone who believes that foreign policy choices come down to Manichean choices
between good and evil need to look no further than the Ukraine crisis. It is truly, as
former US Secretary of State Warren Christopher said of the Balkans, “a problem from
hell.” Worse, resolving it will require a temperament and clarity of thought that has
become increasingly rare at a time when leaders must be seen to emote, rather than to
reason their way to wise choices.

is enough blame in this crisis to go around, but that does not mean that there is moral
equivalence. The most direct responsibility lies with the Kremlin, which, sadly, is far
more interested in manipulating nationalist sentiment to preserve Russia’s crony
capitalism than in making a clear choice to join the global economy.

Historically, President Vladimir Putin is by no means the first Russian leader to confront
such a choice. But he seems to have a preference for shallow populism – a penchant
for seeking ready-made symbols of legitimacy to win over a restive population. That
makes him particularly unsuited to leading a great power in a time of trouble.

Russia today combines the worst features of capitalism and statism – conditions that
Putin has had more than enough time to identify, analyze, and correct. His grasp of
facts and his knowledge of what is wrong indicate that what is missing is the wisdom
needed to respond appropriately.

Russia’s energy resources, for example, are fast shifting from an opportunity to a
familiar curse as the country fails to make the structural adjustments needed to
diversify its brittle economy. As a result, Russia is a world leader in capital flight, while
Putin’s authoritarian political style has alienated the intellectual and entrepreneurial
classes that are crucial to creating investment opportunities at home.

None of this means that Russia can be turned into a Western state, akin to, say, the
Benelux countries or northwest Europe. But Russia does need to resolve its own
centuries-long tensions concerning its relationship with the West – tensions that
continue to define its leaders’ conception of national identity and interest. Russians’
failure to figure out what their country “means” will result, in the end, in the choice being
made for them. Ironically, a Russia that wants to determine Ukraine’s future could find
that it is Ukraine – or at least its crisis – that defines Russia’s future.

But the Ukrainian leadership bears its own share of the blame for the crisis.
Sovereignty requires the protection provided by effective governments and political
systems. In its 23 years of post-Soviet independence, Ukraine has lurched from one
political crisis to the next under a succession of governments that were corrupt, inept,
or, in former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s case, both.

Ukraine sits on rich natural resources and has a talented population. Yet it is one of the
world’s worst economic performers. Ukrainians may lament that they are fated to be
Russia’s neighbor, rather than, say, Canada’s; but they need to deal with that neighbor
and manage the relationship, difficult as it may be. Instead, Ukrainian politicians have
alternated between venality and arrogant disregard for Russia’s interests. The
prominence within the anti-Yanukovych “Maidan” movement of far-right forces has
given Putin a highly effective political cudgel.

Yes, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ceded Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 (to
commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Pereyaslav, which unified Ukraine
and Russia); and, yes, Boris Yeltsin confirmed Crimea’s status during a period of
fraught negotiations to dissolve the Soviet Union and secure Russia’s own statehood.
But Ukrainians know well the complexity of the history and the need to tread lightly on
Russian sensitivities.

And, lest there be any doubt, the West has hardly covered itself in glory. The European
Union surely had the best of intentions in negotiating an Association Agreement with
Ukraine, but that prospect had the unintended effect of setting off alarms in the
Kremlin, which instantly put Yanukovych in a quandary. By all accounts, Yanukovych
has a tough enough time with life’s easy decisions; this one was way over his head.

Finally, the United States’ politicians and pundits deserve a bouquet of dead flowers.
No issue that enters the mosh pit of American politics can escape being framed in
terms of domestic partisanship. But the future of Ukraine – and of Russia – is not a
game that any US leader can win or lose.

The West has no choice but to impose sanctions on Putin’s Russia, and they will now
come fast and furious. But they are unlikely to be anything more than punitive, with no
coercive power to reverse facts on the ground in Crimea.

A sanctioned Russia – and a Russia that maintains its own set of sanctions – will be
the new reality. But the great historical task remains to coax Russia back in the
direction of membership in the international community. That means maintaining the
dialogue between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
and seeking opportunities – Syria? North Korea? – for cooperation in a multilateral
context.

At a time when the instinct is quite understandably to throw the book at the Russians,
real statesmanship will be needed. To use the cliché of the month in Washington,
everybody needs an exit ramp. The question is whether there are enough good drivers.

Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for
Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with
North Korea from 2005-2009. He is currently Dean of the Korbel School of International
Studies, University of Denver.

[ “But the great historical task remains to coax Russia back in the direction of
membership in the international community “ – go back to the blackboaord, Prof. Hill….
]
Russia Without Illusions
Ross Douthat | NY Times | MARCH 22, 2014

SINCE the end of the Cold War, America’s policy toward Russia has been shaped by
two dangerous illusions.

The first was the conceit that with the right incentives, eyes-to-soul presidential
connections and diplomatic reset buttons, Russia could become what we think of, in
our cheerfully solipsistic way, as a “normal country” — at peace with the basic
architecture of an American-led world order, invested in international norms and
institutions, content with its borders and focused primarily on its G.D.P. Not the old
Russian bear, and not an “Upper Volta with rockets” basket case, but a stable, solid-
enough global citizen — Poland with an Asian hinterland, Italy with nukes.

The second illusion was the idea that with the Cold War over, we could treat Russia’s
near abroad as a Western sphere of influence in the making — with NATO expanding
ever eastward, traditional Russian satellites swinging into our orbit, and Moscow
isolated or acquiescent. As went the Baltic States, in this theory, so eventually would
go Ukraine and Georgia, until everything west and south of Russia was one military
alliance, and its western neighbors were all folded into the European Union as well.

On the surface, these ideas were in tension: One was internationalist and the other
neoconservative; one sought partnership with Russia and the other to effectively
encircle it. But there was also a deep congruity, insofar as both assumed that
limitations on Western influence had fallen away, and a post-Cold War program could
advance smoothly whether the Russians decided to get with it or not.

Now both ideas should be abandoned. After Crimea, as Anne Applebaum wrote last
week, it’s clear that Putin’s Russia “is not a flawed Western power,” but “an anti-
Western power with a different, darker vision of global politics.” It may not be America’s
No. 1 geopolitical problem, as a certain former candidate for president suggested.
(Don’t sleep on the Chinese.) But it is a geopolitical threat — a revisionist, norm-
violating power — to a greater extent than any recent administration has been eager to
accept.

But at the same time, after Crimea there should also be fewer illusions about the
West’s ability to dictate outcomes in Russia’s near abroad. Twice in this era — in
Georgia in 2008 and now in Ukraine — Russian troops have crossed alleged red lines
in conflicts with countries that felt they had some sort of Western protection: Ukraine
through the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which supposedly guaranteed its territorial
integrity, and Georgia because of our support for its potential entry into NATO. And in
both cases the limits of Western power have been laid bare — the disorganization and
disunity of “European” foreign policy, and the fact that even the most bellicose U.S.
politicians aren’t ready to say that South Ossetia or Simferopol is worth the bones of a
single American Marine.

What’s needed, after these illusions, is a more realistic assessment of both Russian
intentions (which are plainly more malign than the Obama administration wanted to
believe) and Western leverage (which is more limited than Obama’s hawkish critics
would like to think).

Such an assessment should yield a strategy intended to punish Putin, in the short and
longer run, without creating new flash points in which the West ends up overstretched.
So yes, for today, to sanctions on Putin’s cronies and economic assistance for Ukraine.
Yes, as well, to stepped-up cooperation with those former Soviet satellites — the Baltic
States, the “Visegrad battle group” quartet of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and
Slovakia — with which we actually have binding commitments and mostly stable
partners. Yes, in the long run, to a shift in U.S. energy policy that would use our exports
to undercut Russia’s petro-power.

But no to sudden overcommitments that would give Putin exactly what his domestic
propaganda effort needs — evidence of encirclement, justifications for aggression.
Unless we expect an immediate Russian invasion of Estonia, for instance, we probably
don’t need a sweeping NATO redeployment from Germany to the Baltics. Unless we’re
prepared to escalate significantly over the fate of eastern Ukraine, we shouldn’t
contemplate sending arms and military advisers to the unsteady government in Kiev.
Unless we’re prepared to go to war for Abkhazia and South Ossetia, we shouldn’t fast-
track Georgia’s NATO membership.

And unless the European Union wants to make its current problems that much worse,
its economic accord with Ukraine shouldn’t be a prelude to any kind of further
integration.

The key here is balance — recognizing that Russia is weak and dangerous at once,
that the West has been both too naïve about Putin’s intentions and too incautious in its
own commitments, and that a new containment need not require a new Cold War.

When illusions are shattered, it’s easy to become reckless, easy to hand-wring and
retrench. What we need instead is realism: to use the powers we have, without
pretending to powers that we lack.
Katya Gorchinskaya: Putin’s original plan
for Ukraine
Kivypost | March 21, 2014, 12:16 a.m

A trusted source of mine materialized this week carrying a freaky gift: a leaked
document allegedly produced by Russia’s National Security Council. The document
itself, he says, looks like a compilation of pieces of other papers that lay out the
Russian plan for Ukraine – at least a version of what they hope to carry out.

Meant to look like a photocopy of a document with a covered-up secrecy stamp on it, it
falls short of some features that would identify it as such a secret paper, but carries
others that make much of the information and analysis look authentic.

But even if it’s only partially true, Ukraine should brace itself for a long war with Russia,
after which our once good neighbor would like to permanently increase its borders –
the scenario some observers already call the “state of Israel solution.”

The reference is meant to describe how a state, using instability and infighting in
neighboring countries, takes advantage of the weakness to expand its own territory.
Except, in the case of Russia, the plan was designed to provoke and nurture the
instability first.

The document, entitled “On The Crisis in Ukraine,” is written in solid Russian and reads
like a prequel to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on March 18 welcoming
Crimea as a part of Russia that laid out a set of very skewed, but passionate
arguments for the annexation of Ukraine’s peninsula.

The document gives a snapshot of Russia’s view of Ukraine before the end of the
revolution, change of government and ex-president’s cowardly escape at the end of
last month. In fact, Viktor Yanukovych was designated a major role to play in the
Russian plan, despite a highly unflattering assessment by its security forces of him as
“extremely weak, indecisive and a generally inadequate partner.”

The final goal for Russia is stated in two key paragraphs of the document, and they in
fact be the reason for the leak, which seems to be designed to gauge people’s reaction
to this goal.

“Firstly, only the full inclusion of the territory of Russian regions of Ukraine, namely
Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov,
Kiev, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa regions to the Russian Federation can guarantee
peace, security and prosperity to its population, as well as reliable defense of Russia’s
interests.”

“Secondly, implementation of this task is possible only by establishing control over the
mother of Russian cities, the capital of Ukraine, the hero city Kyiv.”

Citing a “full bankruptcy of the so-called Ukrainian statehood” and the danger of
“fascists-Banderites” (Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader accused by the
Kremlin of collaborating with Nazi Germany) and other extremist elements to
implement their misanthropic ideas, terror and broad masses of the population,” Russia
planned to ride in on a white horse sometime last month and save “millions of
compatriots” from what it describes as “suffering.”
Over the past three weeks, identical rhetoric has been used to exonerate first Russia’s
presence, and then full annexation of Crimea. Now, it seems, other parts of Ukraine
may be at stake – if we assume that Russia’s main goal still stands.

According to the original plan, at the opening of the Olympics in Sochi on Feb. 7,
Yanukovych was to be forced to sign a paper asking Moscow to move in the army to
“support constitutional order” in the capital and other cities.

The paper would serve as a guarantee that Yanukovych would go back to Kyiv to
quash the demonstrations “by all available forces and means.” He would have Russia’s
guarantees of personal security. In case of failure of Ukrainians to do so, Russians
would step in as “direct executives” of this part of the plan.

Yanukovych did indeed travel to Sochi for the opening of the Winter Olympics, but the
outcome of his trip was covered in secrecy and under-reported as revolution on Maidan
entered its most dramatic, deadly and hypersonic-fast stage.

After the Sochi preparation stage and crunch, the Russian document predicted a “full
destabilization of the situation in Ukraine” as a result of Yanukovych’s operation, which
would then push him to dismiss the parliament and remain the only legal power in
Ukraine.

“In this situation the appeal of Yanukovych to the Russian Federation’s leadership
would secure complete legal purity of our participation in stabilization of the situation in
Ukraine and will limit a possible negative reaction by the USA and other Western
countries,” the document says.

At the same time, its prediction of Europe’s leading nations’ reaction to Russian
aggression as “lukewarm” stands true even today, when German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier says West must try to avoid “spiral” of sanctions with Russia
even after its invasion of parts of Ukraine’s territory.

“The possible period of chaos in Kyiv, which will last after the failure of operation to
bring order and the stabilization operation with Russia’s participation, must be used to
full degree for fulfillment of Russia’s interests,” the paper concludes.

That involves neutralization of opposition, the revelation of the “true face of Ukrainian
fascism,” gaining access to offices of secret foreign organizations through opportunities
that Russian secret services claim would open up when “fascist youths” attacked
embassies of western countries and residences of their ambassadors.

As a result, Russia wanted to create “favorable conditions for Ukraine’s participation in

integration processes on the territory of CIS,” the Commonwealth of Independent
States, a collection of ex-Soviet republics, and cleanse the government and law
enforcement of all nationalist elements.

It sounds like Ukraine’s decision to quit even its symbolic presence in the CIS will not
go down well.

Kyiv Post deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at

katya.gorchinskaya@gmail.com.
Ticking Timebomb: Moscow Moves to
Destabilize Eastern Ukraine
By Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp | Der Spiegel | March 18, 2014

It's not only in Crimea where Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing with fire, but
also in eastern Ukraine. The majority of the people in the economically powerful region
speak Russian and reject the new government in Kiev.

The pensioner Oxana Kremenyuk limps as she passes by the House of Culture in a
small village in eastern Ukraine. As a young woman, she used to dance here. Today
the stucco is crumbling and the windows are broken. "The people in Kiev are driving
our country into civil war," she says. "These good-for-nothings should be slaving away
the way we do here." Kremenyuk receives a pension of about €90 ($125) a month. In
order to ensure there is food on the table, she keeps 10 chickens and a pig.

Kremenyuk's village of Maidan, with its three dozen homes, is a peaceful place in a
gentle, hilly landscape. The village is 378 kilometers (235 miles) -- but also worlds
apart -- from the Maidan in the capital city of Kiev, the Independence Square that has
become known around the world since the start of the revolution. Most of the village's
homes have fallen into a state of disrepair and young families moved away long ago.
The people living here don't think much of the revolution taking place in the western
part of the country.

Three-Quarters in East Reject Popular Revolt

In the eastern part of Ukraine, with several large cities including Donetsk, Kharkiv and
Dnepropetrovsk, polls show three-quarters of those surveyed rejecting the popular
revolt in Kiev. Between 70 and as many as 90 percent of the residents in this region
say that Russian, and not Ukrainian, is their primary language. In Kharkiv, locals threw
eggs at Vitali Klitchko, one of the protest leaders.

After the Crimean peninsula, eastern Ukraine has become the second powder keg in
the conflict with Russia -- only it is a much larger one than the former. At the end of last
week, the government in Moscow put the fuse on display.

After at least one person died and dozens were injured in clashes between friends and
opponents of Russia in Donetsk, the foreign minister in Moscow warned: "Russia is
aware of its responsibility for the life of compatriots and citizens in Ukraine and
reserves the right to take these people under protection."

At the same time, the Kremlin again began mobilizing tank and artillery units. Some
4,000 men marched near the Ukrainian border and para-troopers also performed drills.
It would be difficult to make a threat more clear.

In Kiev, politicians seemed to react helplessly. On Thursday, the Ukrainian parliament

voted to establish a 60,000-strong National Guard. On Facebook, Interior Minister
Arsen Avakov wrote: "We will mobilize the guard in a very short time. It will protect the
border and maintain order in the country. This is our answer to the foreign
destabilization happening in the country."

But given that Maidan fighters associated with the radical "Right Sector" are also
expected to join the guard, Moscow state television promptly scoffed, "They shouldn't
call the troops the national guard, but rather the nationalist guard. These are the same
people who shot at police in Kiev. They will follow any order to strike down pro-Russian
protests in Kharkiv or Donetsk."

Will Conflict Split Ukraine?

Indeed, the conflict could ultimately split Ukraine -- with the east turning to Moscow and
the west to the European Union. If that were to happen, it's possible the new
government in Kiev would lose the part of the country that is most important
economically because the coal mines and the steelmaking plants of the east comprise
Ukraine's economic heart. The large firms are highly dependent on Russian orders.
Ninety percent of Russian nuclear power plants, for example, are equipped with
turbines from the Kharkiv-based high-tech firm Turboatom.

When it comes to the geo-political power-play for Ukraine, the ace up Putin's sleeve is
the east, not Crimea. It would be easy for him to light the fuse there, even without a
military operation.

His intelligence service agents could simply continue to prod protesters there. In order
to eliminate any doubts that Kiev, Brussels and Washington might have had about
Moscow's determination, Putin conducted a major maneuver at the end of February
that involved 150,000 soldiers, 880 tanks and 90 fighter jets.

Konstantin Zatulin, director of the Institute of CIS Countries, claims that the Russians
wouldn't even have to invade for eastern Ukraine to disintegrate. He believes that the
people of eastern Ukraine will refuse to accept the political results of the revolution in
Kiev, that they will create their own power structures and sabotage the national
presidential election planned for May 25. "I don't think that Kiev will succeed in
maintaining control over the east for long," Zatulin says.

Hawks in Moscow are hoping that rage will continue to grow among coal and
steelworkers. If their good salaries and social benefits are placed at risk, they could
quickly form a front against the government in Kiev.

'God Have Mercy on the New Government'

Toppled ex-President Viktor Yanukovych had barely fled to Russia, but he was already
threatening, "if the workers in Donetsk rise, then God have mercy on the new
government in Kiev."

In addition, Moscow is openly betting on destabilization. Part of its effort to aid this
process includes the financing by the Kremlin of so-called patriot clubs and pro-
Russian associations in Ukraine. During the protests in Kharkiv and also some in
Donetsk, voices of firebrands shouting "Russia, Russia," could be heard -- people who
had been bussed in from neighboring regions in Russia. The watches they wore
showed the time in Moscow, not that in Kiev.

Among the groups involved is the Eurasian Youth Movement, headed by Aleksandr
Dugin of Russia. Dugin, the son of a general, has enjoyed a remarkable rise under
Putin's regime. Back in 2000, he had to receive people coming to meet with him in a
narrow back room. In the past, Dugin served as the chief ideologist for the since
banned ethno-nationalist National Bolshevik Party, a right-wing political grouping.

Today his treatises are published in Kremlin-aligned tabloid newspapers that have
circulations in the millions. "Putin is on his way to becoming the leader of the real free
world," Dugin writes. "It is only Putin who decisively confronts American hegemony.
The Russian president is a bulwark against Washington's policy of installing puppet
governments around the world through bloody coups."
As the head of the Center for Conservative Studies, he has even advanced to become
a professor at the respected Moscow State University. His youth movement has been
collecting money for a "true popular revolution in Ukraine" for weeks now. He has
called on the Russian-speaking population in his neighboring country to blockade the
buildings of Ukraine's SBU intelligence service and to "arm themselves and organized
self-defense forces." Under the slogan, "Send tanks to Kiev," the youth movement has
also been propagating a military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

The case of Kharkiv demonstrates the simplicity with which Moscow's auxiliaries can
trigger a region's descent into chaos. Opponents of the West-oriented Kiev government
already organized a pro-Russian conference in Ukraine's second-largest city in
February. Mikhail Dobkin, the former governor the region around Kharkiv served as
their leader.

On the same day, his opponents, supporters of the Kiev Maidan movement, with the
aid of right-wing radical hooligans from the local football club, occupied two stories of
the governor's headquarters, the region's administrative seat. They included pro-
European students wearing metal-rimmed glasses, but also many men with clubs,
helmets, bullet-proof vests and even a few with firearms. They said they wanted to
"topple the governor."

In the hallways, the activists spread out sleeping bags on the red carpet. The
occupiers' intellectual leader, poet and novelist Serhiy Zhadan, whose works have also
been published internationally, proudly showed off the field kitchen they had set up in
the lobby. "There's a wary, but also peaceful coexistence in the building," Zhadan said
before pro-Russian protestors recaptured the two floors just one day later. Zhadan has
been in the hospital ever since with a head injury.

Locals Don't Know Who Is Leading

The leaders in Kharkiv have changed in recent weeks with such frequency that many of
the 1.4 million residents no longer know who is actually in charge -- not to mention
whether it is someone from Moscow or from Kiev.

Two weeks ago, the new government in Kiev placed Dobkin under house arrest.
Justice officials also ordered Gennady Kernes, the popular mayor of Kharkiv and one
of Dobkin's most important allies, to Kiev. Prosecutors have accused him of unlawful
deprivation of freedom, torture and making a death threat. "I am innocent and a victim
of political revenge," Kernes claims.

Moreover, the new leaders in Kiev are doing little to integrate their Russia-friendly
opponents in the east. On its second day of rule, the government introduced a law
aimed at eliminating Russian as an official language -- as if the country didn't have
more important problems. Acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov didn't sign
the law in the end, but the damage had already been done, with many Russians in the
country feeling threatened.

'It Will be Easy to Bring People to the Boiling Point'

At the beginning of March, Pavel Gubarev, the head of the pro-Russian People's Militia
of Donbass, declared himself the "people's governor" of the Donetsk region. Shortly
before his arrest by the Ukrainian domestic intelligence agency, the Security Service of
Ukraine, Gubarev met with SPIEGEL reporters in a conspiratorial apartment in
downtown Donetsk and explained his plans for annexation into Russia.
 "Many people write to me that they want to defend their homes against the fascists in
Kiev. They have pistols, machine guns, protective shields, baseball bats and helmets,"
the leader said. "It will be easy to bring the people to a boiling point. They hate the
Ukrainian oligarchs and their political minions."

The investigation into Gubarev is being led by the Ukrainian chief prosecutor in Kiev, a
member of the nationalist Svoboda party. Gubarev's supporters have pledged militant
protests to free the "people's governor."

Gubarov has already given his marching orders for the fight: "Not one step back!" It's a
slogan well-known to people in the region. It originates from an order given by Josef
Stalin to Soviet soldiers on July 1942 in their battle against the Nazis.

Translated from the German by Daryl Lindsey

Belarus Wants Out
By Andrew Wilson | Foreign Affairs | March 22, 2014
One of Russia’s Closest European Allies Begins to Play the Field

There is a bitter irony at the heart of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of
Crimea. Putin’s short-term victory is already coming at the expense of his most
cherished long-term strategy — the creation of a Eurasian Union, a trade union linking
Russia and its closest neighbors. In other words, as the invasion expands Russian
territory, it will diminish Russian influence in the very places he’d like to increase it. One
need only look to Belarus, which is already beginning to hedge against its alliance with
Moscow, to see why.

Fanciful as it might sound, the Eurasian Union was never idle talk for Putin. It was
meant to serve as a genuine alternative to the West for the countries bordering Russia,
including those on Europe’s eastern frontier. For now, only Belarus and Kazakhstan
have volunteered to be part of the formal January 2015 launch. But Putin has been
closely eyeing other countries in the region, particularly those that have been targeted
by the EU’s Eastern Partnership program, which was designed to foster closer ties
between the EU and Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed the strategic ambiguity of Putin’s project.
Russia liked to emphasize that the Eurasian Union would serve as an equal
partnership among its member states and a vehicle for each to better pursue its
political and economic interests. But Moscow’s interests suddenly seem much more
expansive than they did just a few months ago. Putin has justified his Crimean gambit
with a vast but vaguely defined “responsibility to protect” doctrine. No one knows
whether Putin now intends to back up the doctrine with military force, or even whom he
aims to protect: ethnic Russians, Russian speakers, or any people at all that Russia
thinks might need help.

Russia’s partners are understandably spooked. Early in the Ukraine crisis, when pro-
Western protesters were camping out in Kiev, Aleksandr Lukashenko, Belarus’
president, seemed happy to see Russia encourage the Ukrainian regime to crack
down. Like Putin, he had no desire to see Ukraine’s fellow Slavs in Russia or Belarus
copying the slogans and tactics of the Ukrainian protestors. (Lukashenko is still scarred
by the demonstrations that followed the controversial 2010 elections, in which he won a
fourth term in office.) But Russia’s military intervention in Crimea was a very different
matter. Lukashenko pointedly refused to send observers to Crimea’s March 15
referendum. He has also defied Moscow by saying that he will work with the new pro-
Western government in Kiev (which Putin has described as “illegitimate”).

There are good reasons for Belarus to feel threatened. It does not have any single
enclave with a majority ethnic-Russian population like Crimea, although approximately
eight percent of the population in eastern Belarus is ethnically Russian. But Russia is
the dominant language across all of Belarus. According to Putin’s reasoning for seizing
Crimea, even Belarus could one day be a target of Russian pressure. (It’s similarly
plausible, if not even more likely, that Russia would stage an intervention in
Kazakhstan’s Russian-speaking north.)

Even if it is unlikely that Russia would invade Belarus anytime soon, Lukashenko does
have reason to worry about the consequences of joining Putin’s Eurasian Union. For
one, Lukashenko may already sense that the Eurasian Union won’t be the economic
boon for Belarus that he had once imagined. Although he may have hoped that it would
provide an open market for cheap Belarusian goods, its precursor, the Customs Union,
has so far underscored that Belarusian goods have difficulties competing in a free
market, even with goods produced in Russia or Kazakhstan.
Further, even as Russia talks of creating a mutually beneficial partnership, it has been
trying to weaken the states around itself. Ukraine is not the only such example. Georgia
and especially Moldova have come under pressure as they try to tie up their EU
Agreements in 2014. The last thing that Lukashenko wants is to become another weak
leader challenged by domestic revolt, often fomented by Russia, who then becomes
dependent on Russia to survive — as Yanukovych would have become if he had not
overreacted to the protests in Kiev and been forced to flee, or as Serzh Sargsyan has
already become in Armenia. Even worse, Lukashenko knows he could end up as a tin-
pot dictator of a mini-state, like Yevgeny Shevchuk, the president of Transnistria, or
Sergei Aksyonov, the new prime minister of Crimea.

Above all, Lukashenko wants to avoid having to make a decision between Russia and
the West. He has always been happy to be Russia’s ally, but only as the leader of a
strong, independent state capable of steering its own course. The key to his staying
power — he has led Belarus for nearly 20 years — has been his ability to make the
case, to his audience at home as well as in Russia, that he holds some bargaining
power with the Kremlin. Belarus benefits greatly from Moscow’s assistance in the form
of cheap oil and gas, and other Russian subsidies and scams that are estimated to add
over 15 percent to Belarusian GDP. But, in exchange for that help, Lukashenko has
provided services. He has made money for Russian oligarchs in transit trade through
Belarus, supported Putin’s historical revisionism about the Soviet Union, and put down
any hint of civil unrest that could spread to Russia. He suggests that no other
Belarusian leader would be capable of doing the same.

Lukashenko’s economic model also depends on good relations with countries in the
European Union. Belarus can’t afford to lose its trade relations with Latvia and
Lithuania, for example. But Russia’s aggression in Ukraine — and Putin’s suggestion
that the competition in the region is zero-sum — is now threatening to put those
relationships in jeopardy. With a massive ethnic Russian minority population of its own,
Latvia in particular understandably feels threatened by Putin’s Crimean gambit. Putin
may not worry about worsening trade ties with the Baltic states, but Lukashenko must.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea could also have other costs for Belarus. In order to keep
Crimea afloat, Russia will have to make substantial investments in transportation,
water, and gas infrastructure. The money used for those investments will not be
available for further Belarusian subsidies. If Russia’s invasion leads Europe to change
its energy policy, that will also have a negative impact on Belarus. The Belarusian
economy depends largely on its status as a transit hub for Russian oil heading toward
the EU. Belarus’ biggest single source of income is its sale of refined petroleum
produced from subsidized Russian crude. Sanctions on Russian oil, or increased oil
production elsewhere that reduced oil prices, would hit Minsk hard.

It should not be surprising that Lukashenko has been demonstrably edging away from
Putin in recent weeks. Belarus has started hinting that it wants better relations with the
EU, agreeing in February to participate in visa negotiations with Brussels. But any
shifts toward the EU are going to be a gradual process; Lukashenko is still a dictator,
after all, who has little interest in meeting Europe’s democratic standards. For now,
Lukashenko is inside the Russian tent looking out. And he is not about to head for the
door just yet. But ever since Putin’s aggressive takeover of Crimea, Lukashenko has
been more anxiously looking toward the exits.

Russia cannot afford to gain Crimea while losing more post-Soviet friends. Yet that is
precisely what its behavior will do in the longer run. Countries like Belarus and
Kazakhstan may eventually be obliged to recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea —
if and when Russia absorbs the territory, they will have no choice. But those countries’
current silence speaks volumes about their present worries and future plans.
The West’s obligation to Ukraine
By Madeleine Albright and Jim O’Brien,
Washington Post | Saturday, March 22, 3:11 AM

Madeleine Albright was secretary of state from 1997 to 2001. Jim O’Brien was
presidential envoy for the Balkans in the Clinton administration. She is chairman and
he is vice chairman of the Albright Stonebridge Group.

When President Obama and European allies meet next week, they can begin forming
a meaningful response to Vladimir Putin’s adventurism. This new strategy should note
that Putin’s view of the world is rooted in dangerous fictions.

Churchill said Russia was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Under
Putin, Russia’s rhetoric can be described as a fantasy inside a delusion wrapped in a
tissue of lies. He may believe that Ukrainians are fascists intending to attack Russians,
but it is not true. Ukraine’s interim government is widely representative, and no outside
observer has found evidence of a campaign of violence against Russians.

The greatest disaster of the 20th century was not, as Putin has said, the dissolution of
the Soviet Union. The greatest disasters of that century were one world war that came
about as a result of uncertain leadership and unclear priorities; another world war that
began when ethnic jealousies were used as a pretext for domination; and a half a
century during which a totalitarian power oppressed its own people and its neighbors.
The first was a result of misunderstandings, the second a result of outright lies and the
third a result of brute force.

After the Soviet empire collapsed, the hope was to have a Europe whole and free and
for Russia to be a part of it. But to Putin, the ultimate revisionist, Russia has spent
more than 20 years being insulted, unable to project its power, to persuade others or to
stop others from projecting their power. He tells Russians not of their potential to join
the world but that they are victims and have enemies. In reality, Russia is more
prosperous today than during the Soviet era, and its citizens benefit more from
international involvement.

Given that Putin’s aggression has broken international law, it is interesting that he is
trying to justify his actions with precedents — which also are not based on facts. Putin
says that he is doing what other states did in Kosovo, but that is simply not true. In the
1990s, international interventions in the Balkans were approved, contributed to and
governed by large numbers of states in many institutions and informal arrangements,
including the U.N. Security Council. Steps were taken over many years, with force used
only after diplomacy was exhausted.

Drawing on this package of fictions, Putin has resorted to military power and
propaganda — his available tools — and has acted in a place where a majority of the
population is Russian and where he thinks manipulating ethnic tensions might work.
His lies cannot be allowed to stand. If his doctrine of “helping” minorities that are not in
danger were endorsed, the world would become much more dangerous. Only a firm
response has a chance of preventing this scenario from being repeated. Putin’s Russia
may not listen, but states around the world are looking to see how the United States
and its allies answer.

To that end, we have made a good beginning. The European Union has signed an
association agreement with Ukraine. The United States and others have supported
international observers, reinforced our allies in Central and Eastern Europe, and
pledged financial and security support for the interim Ukrainian government. Sanctions
are in place against those who have violated international law, and more are coming.

But these steps, and those that follow, must be in service of a wider strategic vision.
The best principles to draw from are those that have guided the West since World War
II: that each country may decide its own relationships, and that Europe should be
democratic, free and undivided.

The strategy should have three parts.

First, the status of the territories Putin claims should remain disputed. No aid should
flow to Crimea, and its officials should not have international standing. Europeans,
Americans and the International Monetary Fund must help Ukraine with funds, a plan
and advisers.

Second, the president and U.S. allies should let Russia’s leaders and its people know
that Russia would be welcome if it chooses to be a responsible member of the
international order. We welcome those who would measure their country’s greatness
by its wealth, engagement with the world and stability of relationships with neighbors,
and not only by military power on its borders.

It is not for us to say who governs Russia. But Putin’s authority lies in his role as arbiter
among 400 so-called men of power who benefit from state-controlled banks and
companies. They and he should be made to feel the price of his actions. Their assets
should be subject to scrutiny and interdiction when they cross international boundaries.

Third, and most important, President Obama’s trip to Europe for the Group of Seven
and the U.S.-E.U. Summit should produce a strategy for the states bordering Russia.
The crux of any strategy must be to create durable economic and social ties for
Ukraine and the West.

Here we can draw a lesson from the Balkans. As the Kosovo War ended in 1999,
President Bill Clinton concluded that the weak states of the region, torn by ethnic
divisions, could not thrive. He immediately pledged at a summit in Sarajevo to bring
those states into a Europe whole, democratic and free.

Obama and our allies can make a similar pledge next week and immediately take steps
to support the macroeconomic stability of Ukraine and key countries, to integrate their
companies into trading relationships and to allow the people of the region opportunities
to pursue education and employment, in a manageable fashion. A stronger
transatlantic community embodied in the proposed transatlantic trade agreement would
provide a magnet for countries looking to reject the Eurasian Union.

We must recognize, however, that Ukrainians have to be able to defend themselves.

While we are beginning to provide some non-lethal assistance, the president needs to
reverse a previous proposal to cut funding for a program to modernize the Ukrainian
military. The Ukrainian government also needs help defending against cyberattacks
and help with policing, especially riot control.

As Ukrainians prepare for presidential elections in May, they will be seeking leaders
who can deliver and help them live as they want. Since the Orange Revolution, the
Ukrainian people have made clear that they want to participate in Europe. Then, they
were failed by their leaders but also by the international community, which did not pay
enough attention.
It does not happen often that a country is given a second chance. Ukrainians have one,
and so do international leaders. World War I was followed by World War II and the Cold
War. History will not forgive those responsible if another Cold War occurs.
Would America Go to War with Russia?
James S. Robbins | The National Interest | March 22, 2014

Vice President Biden was in Warsaw last week to reassure our eastern NATO allies
that they have the support of a “steadfast ally.” But if Russia moved against Poland or
the Baltic States, would the United States really go to war? Or would we do nothing
and effectively destroy the NATO alliance?

President Obama has ruled out a “military excursion” in Ukraine. America is not
obligated legally to take action against Russia for annexing Crimea. We would not go to
war if Russia mounted a large-scale invasion of Ukraine to restore the ousted, pro-
Moscow government of Viktor Yanukovych, currently under U.S. sanctions. And we
would not even send troops if Ukraine was partitioned, or absorbed by Russia.
Americans have no interest in such a conflict, and no stomach for it.

NATO allies are a different matter. The North Atlantic Treaty is a mutual-defense pact,
and Article 5 says that an armed attack against one member state “shall be considered
an attack against them all.” This is a clear red line. The only time Article 5 has been
invoked was in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and most NATO
allies sent troops to support the efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Could the current crisis expand to touch NATO? The developing situation in Ukraine
has been compared to Germany’s absorption of Austria in 1938, or the subsequent
partition and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Hillary Clinton compared Russian
president Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler, which by extension puts President Obama in
the role of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who famously failed to achieve
“peace in our time” at Munich.

Push the analogy further. The Second World War was sparked by Warsaw’s resistance
to Berlin’s demand to annex the Polish Corridor, a small stretch of land—smaller than
Crimea—separating the German provinces of Pomerania and East Prussia. Hitler
responded by invading Poland and partitioning it with the Soviet Union. Britain and
France had pledged to defend Polish independence, and two days after Germany
invaded, they declared war. In his war message, Chamberlain explained that Hitler’s
actions showed “there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his
practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.”

This may or may not describe Mr. Putin, as Mrs. Clinton alleged. But if similar
circumstances arise in the near future, will the United States honor security guarantees
made to Poland and the Baltic States when the Russian threat was only a theory?

Mr. Biden stood with Estonian president Toomas Ilves Tuesday to “reconfirm and
reaffirm our shared commitment to collective self-defense, to Article 5.” He wanted to
make it “absolutely clear what it means to the Estonian people” and that “President
Obama and I view Article 5 of the NATO Treaty as an absolutely solemn commitment
which we will honor—we will honor.” Shortly thereafter, Moscow “expressed concern”
about the treatment of ethnic Russians in Estonia. Mr. Putin justified his actions in
Crimea as “restoring unity” to Russian people. Estonia’s population is 25 percent ethnic
Russian, compared to 17 percent in Ukraine, mostly in the north and east part of the
country. Suppose anti-Russian riots “spontaneously” broke out in Estonia. What would
the United States do if Moscow invoked a “responsibility to protect” these people and
bring them “back” to the Motherland? Would President Obama take military action
against Russia over a small, secluded piece of a tiny, distant country? Would it be like
the Polish Corridor in 1939? This is highly doubtful—highly doubtful.
Aren’t we obligated by treaty to intervene? Mr. Biden mentioned the “absolutely solemn
commitment which we will honor.” It was so important he said it twice. However, Article
5 says that NATO members pledge to come to the assistance of the attacked state
using “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” It doesn’t
take a White House lawyer to see the gaping loophole—President Obama can simply
deem that the use of U.S. force isn’t necessary. He can walk back the red line, as he
did with Syria. Stern talk and minimal sanctions would follow, but Estonia would lose
some, if not all of its territory. And in practical terms it would mean the end of
NATO, which is one of Moscow’s longstanding strategic objectives. Mr. Putin’s chess
game does not end in Crimea.

James S. Robbins is Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign
Policy Council in Washington, DC.
A Playbook for Denying Putin Strategic
Victory
Zalmay Khalilzad | The National Interest | March 21, 2014

With Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian crisis has entered a new phase that
requires adjustments in U.S. and Western policy. Until now, the Obama administration
has sought to defuse the situation by offering Putin a deal: Cancel or postpone the
referendum in Crimea on joining Russia in exchange for a political formula to
accommodate legitimate Russian interests. Diplomatic pressure, disengagement by the
G-8 and OECD, and the threat of sanctions did not persuade Moscow to compromise
on Crimea. These efforts failed to persuade Putin, who has put his signature to the
annexation treaty.

The United States and its allies have responded to Putin's defiance by imposing
minimal, targeted sanctions—mostly on those carrying out Putin's orders. The Russian
stock market rallied at the news, as investors had anticipated more onerous and unified
sanctions. In any case, stronger sanctions would not restore Ukraine’s territorial
integrity. Broadly enforced international sanctions—even against weak regimes in the
developing world—have mostly proven ineffective and unsustainable when
authoritarian leaders deem important interests to be at stake. Given Europe’s
dependence on Russian gas—a reality that will need to change in order to make a
tougher transatlantic strategy more viable—Russia’s trade relationships and
geopolitical position would likely give Moscow the leverage to thwart any U.S. push to
impose a biting sanctions regime.

Concerns, however, that the United States is bereft of options in countering Russian
aggression are overstated. While remaining attentive to the situation in Crimea, U.S.
policy should focus on four objectives: deterring a Russian move against Eastern
Ukraine; stabilizing Ukraine and anchor it in the West; reassuring other countries in the
former Soviet space; and minimizing possible Russian retaliatory against U.S.
interests. The achievement of these objectives would deny Putin a broader strategic
victory from his Crimea gambit, while advancing core U.S. interests in the wider region.

1. Deter a Russian move against Eastern Ukraine

Putin's statement that Russia has no claim against other parts of Ukraine—if true—is a
positive development. But Russia is destabilizing Eastern Ukraine by inciting civil strife
and Putin may still order military forces to move to Eastern Ukraine to “protect Russian
speaking populations.” Beyond enhanced sanctions, the United States, in coordination
with its allies, must make it clear to Moscow that further aggression in Ukraine would
risk a protracted and expensive conflict. Washington should be ready to respond to
Russian moves against Eastern Ukraine by providing military assistance to the
Ukrainian government and arming those willing to resist further Russian occupation.

2. Stabilize Ukraine and anchor it in the West

Russia’s invasion of Crimea has exposed the costs and unfeasibility to Ukrainian
leaders of oscillating between Russia and the West. The Putin regime has inadvertently
presented the West with the clearest opportunity in many years to let the results of the
two different systems speak for themselves.

The United States should lead a broad a coalition to provide economic and political
support for Ukraine as it pursues reform and internal reconciliation. NATO’s recent
pledge of support to Ukraine is encouraging, but the overall success of Western policy
is contingent on the United States and Europe delivering sufficient assistance. The
amount of military, economic, and political assistance the West provides should be
determined, for now, by a strategy that enables a “Finland” option for Ukraine—one in
which Kiev remains unified and independent, engages in extensive cooperation with
the West, but does not pose a military threat to Russia. The West should nonetheless
preserve the option of bringing Ukraine closer to NATO if Russia proves unwilling to
respect Ukrainian independence or wields the threat of force.

3. Reassure other countries in the former Soviet space that the West will help prevent
Putin’s long-term goal of reestablishing Russian hegemony over the region

Countries on Russia’s periphery have been shaken by Putin’s move against Ukraine.
The United States and its key allies can reassure these states through increased
security cooperation. Granting Georgia, for example, the NATO Membership Action
Plan and accelerating the delivery weapons in the pipeline would underscore Western
resolve.

Reassuring Central Asian states will require a strategic dialogue with China and
Turkey. China’s abstention in the UN Security Council on an anti-Russian resolution on
Crimea is encouraging, but Beijing’s broader strategy toward the region is unclear. As it
becomes more isolated, Moscow is likely to seek improved cooperation with China. But
given that the United States, Turkey and China have a common interest in preventing
Russia’s bid for regional hegemony in Central Asia, the three countries can cooperate
in enforcing a security architecture that preserves a stable balance of power in Central
Asia.

4. Minimize and manage retaliatory steps Russia might take against U.S. interests

A strategy to isolate Russia carries the risk of reinforcing hardline voices in a country
that has been drifting from the West and could result in a more aggressive Russian
policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and beyond. U.S. pressure could lead Moscow
to decrease cooperation on three main fronts: Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.

A nuclear Iran is not in Russia’s interest, but Moscow does not treat the Iran nuclear
issue with the same level of urgency as the West. Russian support for Tehran’s
position in nuclear talks could stymie efforts to negotiate a permanent agreement, and
Moscow might complicate Western military options by providing enhanced capabilities
to Iran (even if violating UNSC sanctions would further isolate Russia). Should Russia
seek to undermine the negotiations with Iran, we should be prepared to work through
alternative diplomatic mechanisms to test Iranian intentions on the nuclear front.

While U.S. hopes of gaining Russian cooperation for a political settlement in Syria were
lagging well before the Ukraine crisis, Moscow could increase support for the Assad
regime. This would oblige the United States and its allies to take significant steps to
strengthen moderate opposition forces. Afghanistan is an area of mutual interest where
Russia is unlikely to take drastic steps in scaling back cooperation. Moscow may,
however, seek to extract a higher price from Washington to keep the Northern
Distribution Network open. However, US dependence on the Northern network is not
as important as it once was, because of the already reduced US forces on the ground
and the availability of the Southern route. The United States currently depends on the
Northern route to transport only approximately 6 percent of “retrograde”—cargo such
as vehicles and military equipment that are being withdrawn from Afghanistan. The
degree of dependence is higher for supplies such as food and fuel, but the U.S. military
is confident that it has work-around options.

Putin’s gamble to retake Crimea provides the rare opportunity to rebuild and sustain a
bipartisan foreign policy, which, with the exception of issues like terrorism and
homeland security, has generally been lacking since the days of the Cold War.
Opposition to Putin's Crimea move—which may be the first in a series of political and
military moves to reestablish Moscow's regional hegemony—can be a defining issue.
Such bipartisanship will be necessary for the United States and its allies to sustain and
prevail in any long-term strategy.

Zalmay Khalilzad was the US Ambassador to the United Nations from 2007-2009.
Wishes Won't Stop Bullies Like Putin
Dov S. Zakheim | | The National Interest | March 21, 2014

In her excellent book on the events and social movements leading up to the First World
War, The War that Ended Peace, the noted historian Margaret Macmillan quoted
Britain's soon-to-be King Edward's observation concerning the Kaiser's attitude to war
and militarism: "William the Great needs to learn that he is living at the end of the
nineteenth century and not in the Middle Ages." Just over one hundred years later,
after two World Wars, and countless conflicts, Secretary of State John Kerry said of
Vladimir Putin, "you just don't in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth century
fashion by invading another country." Some people never learn.

The Obama administration remains blind to the realities of international politics. Like
the pacifists who lobbied for disarmament and international arbitration prior to what was
called the Great War—until it was superseded by an even more devastating conflict—
the administration is living in a dream world that presupposes that its own vision of
rationality is universally shared. Germany and Britain were each other's largest trading
partners prior to the War, economically intertwined the way the US and China are
today. Businessmen—they were called Capitalists—argued strenuously that war would
cause an economic disaster for all who became involved. They were right, but it did not
stop the war.

The administration, and its increasingly feeble Western European allies, needs to
recognize that nationalism is alive and well in the rest of the world, indeed in Europe
itself. It is rampant in Poland, in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the
Balkans, as well as in Israel, Iran, much of the Arab Middle East, Pakistan and East
Asia. In some countries, such as Poland, it has taken on a milder form, but it is still
there. In Russia it is virulent, as Putin's skyrocketing popularity has demonstrated.

Only American power can put a brake on the more irrational designs of hyper-
nationalist leaders, as it has since 1945. Beijing, for example, has benefited for
decades from American presence in the Western Pacific, where the American alliance
with Japan, and its nuclear guarantee, has dissuaded that country from pursuing its
own nuclear weapons program. Similarly, American presence in Europe underpinned
the postwar reconciliation of Germany with its neighbors and prevented the Soviet
threat from justifying a massive Western European return to pre-World War I militarism.

The Obama administration, with its hectoring tone, its red lines, its fanciful support for
weapons reductions, its determination to reduce defense spending, and its singular
desire to avoid any foreign entanglements that might complicate its domestic agenda,
is signaling to the world that it is increasingly becoming the paper tiger that Chairman
Mao often called it. Putin has now twice taken advantage of what he, and virtually all
American allies, adversaries and others around the world, perceive as an American
withdrawal from the international security stage. Georgia and Crimea have paid the
price of American war weariness. The toothless pivot to Asia, the withdrawals from
Europe and the downsizing in the Middle East—the pious banalities of the Quadrennial
Defense Review notwithstanding, have convinced the Russian autocrat that he can
bully his neighbors without repercussions.

The current sanctions regime imposed on Russia is a joke. Indeed, even if it is

toughened, it will take years before it has the kind of effect on Russia that is has, at
last, had on Iran (only to be eased as Western Europe in particular desperately seeks a
deal on Tehran's nuclear program). Equally vapid are NATO's military responses.
Previously scheduled exercises, and the deployment of a few aircraft to NATO's
eastern members, will do nothing to dissuade Putin from whatever else he has in mind
for Ukraine or other former republics of the Soviet Union he so venerates.

There are things that the United States, as the world's leading military and economic
power can do to convince Putin to go no further than the Crimea. First, it must lead
NATO in stationing troops in the Baltic states and Poland. If Putin doesn't like it, he can
lump it. Second, the administration should immediately increase the current Fiscal Year
2014 defense budget through a budget amendment that, sidesteps the Budget Control
Act and adds $25 billion to the operations and maintenance and procurement
accounts. Third it should make clear to Moscow that any movement into eastern
Ukraine will lead to NATO's immediate invitation to both Ukraine and Georgia to join
the alliance. Finally, in addition to imposing financial sanctions on Russia, Washington
should release American oil and gas for export to Europe, and immediately approve the
Keystone pipeline from Canada. A Germany that is less reliant on Russian energy will
stiffen its spine vis a vis Moscow. And as Germany goes, so will go the rest of NATO.

What the West should not do is target Putin himself, or his closest advisors. Backing
him into a corner could lead to unwanted results. Predictions that the Russian economy
will collapse fly in the face of similar predictions about the impact on the economies of
Europe's major powers prior if they went to war. They did, and fought for nearly five
years. Nazi Germany managed to fight on even when its people lived on ersatz foods.
Putin may well choose to fight.

Putin needs to be given the opportunity to save face, in exchange for guaranteeing the
territorial integrity of Ukraine. Such an arrangement is still possible. After all, the Soviet
Union withdrew from Austria in 1955, and tolerated an independent Finland that was
sensitive to the Kremlin's concerns. A "Finlandized" Crimea, perhaps with the kind of
latitude that Kurdistan enjoys within Iraq, would give that peninsula's Russophones the
autonomy they seek and the links to Moscow that so many of them desire. But
targeting Putin personally and directly could lead to the very war the West seeks to
avoid.

There is no way Putin will agree to any deal, however, if he perceives that Washington
is spineless. That is currently how he sees it. The Obama administration may seek to
wish away international crises. But wishes are just that, and nothing more. Washington
needs to show its mettle, nothing less will do. And Putin will then back off once he sees
what he has provoked, as all bullies do when confronted with overwhelming strength
and the determination to use it.

Dov Zakheim served as the undersecretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial
officer for the U.S. Department of Defense from 2001–2004 and as the deputy
undersecretary of defense (planning and resources) from 1985-1987. He also served
as DoD's civilian coordinator for Afghan reconstruction from 2002–2004. He is a
member of The National Interest's advisory council.
Russia Will Never Be Like Us
We’ve spent 20 years trying to make it a Western country. Bad idea.
By Anne Applebaum | Slate | March 20 2014 8:00 PM

There have been high moments: Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, locked in a bear hug;
George W. Bush looking into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and seeing “a sense of his soul”;
Hillary Clinton pressing the “reset button.” There have been some very low moments,
too. But for more than 20 years of Russian independence, a single narrative about
Russia in the West has nevertheless prevailed.

Openly or subconsciously, Western leaders have since 1991 acted on the assumption
that Russia is a flawed Western country. Perhaps during the Soviet years it had
become different, even deformed. But sooner or later, the land of Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky, the home of classical ballet, would join what Mikhail Gorbachev, the last
Soviet leader, so movingly called “our common European home.”

In the 1990s, many people thought Russian progress toward that home simply required
new policies: With the right economic reforms, Russians will sooner or later become
like us. Others though that if Russia joined the Council of Europe, and if we turned the
G-7 into the G-8, then sooner or later Russia would absorb Western values. Such
privileges were never even extended to China, which is a far greater economic and
political power. This is because we’ve never believed that China would be “Western.”
But deep down we believed that Russia would someday join our club.

Still others thought that Russia’s forward progress required a certain kind of Western
language, a better dialogue. When the relationship deteriorated, President Bush
blamed President Clinton. President Obama blamed President Bush. And all of us
blamed ourselves. Back in 1999, the New York Times Magazine ran a cover story titled
“Who Lost Russia?” Much-discussed at the time, it argued that we’d lost Russia
“because we pursued agendas that were hopelessly wrong for Russia” and gave bad
economic advice. Last week, a former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock,
echoed Putin and argued that the United States, by “treating Russia like a loser,” is
responsible for the current crisis.

These arguments are self-serving: Russian politics has never been “all about us.” In
truth, we’ve had very little influence on Russian internal politics since 1991, even when
we’ve understood them. The most important changes—the massive transfer of oil and
gas from the state to the oligarchs, the return to power of men formed by the KGB, the
elimination of free press and political opposition—took place against our advice. The
most important military decisions—the invasions of Chechnya and Georgia—met with
our protests. Though many appear to believe otherwise, the invasion of Crimea was
not primarily intended to provoke the West either. As one astute Russian commentator
has noted, the most important lines in Putin’s annexation speech this week were
largely overlooked: his reference to the “fifth columnists” and the Western-funded
Russian “traitors” who will now have to be silenced. Putin invaded Crimea because
Putin needs a war. In a time of slower growth, and with a more restive middle class, he
may need some more wars, too. This time, it’s really not about us.

But because Crimea is so close to Europe, and because Putin’s new ethnic-nationalist
language contains so many echoes of Europe’s bloody past, the Crimean invasion
might have a bigger effect on the West than even he intended. In many European
capitals, the Crimean events have been a real jolt. For the first time, many are
beginning to understand that the narrative is wrong: Russia is not a flawed Western
power. Russia is an anti-Western power with a different, darker vision of global politics.
The sanctions lists published in Europe this week were laughably short, but the fact
that they appeared at all reflects this sea change. For 20 years, nobody has thought
about how to “contain” Russia. Now they will.

In any case, even the new and longer U.S. sanctions list is only a signal. Far more
important, now, are the deeper strategic changes that should flow from our new
understanding of Russia. We need to reimagine NATO, to move its forces from
Germany to the alliance’s eastern borders. We need to re-examine the presence of
Russian money in international financial markets, given that so much “private” Russian
money is in fact controlled by the state. We need to look again at our tax shelters and
money-laundering laws, given that Russia uses corruption as a tool of foreign policy.
Above all we need to examine the West’s energy strategy, given that Russia’s oil and
gas assets are also used to manipulate European politics and politicians, and find ways
to reduce our dependence.

All of this will take time, and for some it may be too late. In Kiev, Ukraine, last week, I
met young Ukrainians who were heartbreakingly enthusiastic about the idea that they
might, someday, live in a different kind of country. I didn’t have the heart to tell them
that I didn’t know if they ever would.
Obama’s pathetic response to Putin’s
invasion of Crimea
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: March 21 | Washington Post

Early in the Ukraine crisis, when the Europeans were working on bringing Ukraine into
the EU system and Vladimir Putin was countering with threats and bribes, one British
analyst lamented that “we went to a knife fight with a baguette.”

That was three months ago. Life overtakes parody. During the Ukrainian prime
minister’s visit to Washington last week, his government urgently requested military
assistance. The Pentagon refused. It offered instead military ration kits.

Putin mobilizes thousands of troops, artillery and attack helicopters on Ukraine’s

borders and Washington counters with baguettes, American-style. One thing we can
say for sure in these uncertain times: The invasion of Ukraine will be catered by the
United States.

Why did we deny Ukraine weapons? Because in the Barack Obama-John Kerry
worldview, arming the victim might be taken as a provocation. This kind of mind-
bending illogic has marked the administration’s response to the whole Crimea affair.

Why, after all, did Obama delay responding to Putin’s infiltration, military occupation
and seizure of Crimea in the first place? In order to provide Putin with a path to de-
escalation, “an offramp,” the preferred White House phrase.

An offramp? Did they really think that Putin was losing, that his invasion of Crimea was
a disaster from which he needed some face-saving way out? And that the principal
object of American diplomacy was to craft for Putin an exit strategy?

It’s delusional enough to think that Putin — in seizing Crimea, threatening eastern
Ukraine, destabilizing Kiev, shaking NATO, terrifying America’s East European allies
and making the West look utterly helpless — was actually losing. But to imagine that
Putin saw it that way as well and was waiting for American diplomacy to save him from
a monumental blunder is totally divorced from reality.

After Obama’s Russian “reset,” missile-defense retreat and Syria comedown, Putin had
already developed an undisguised disdain for his U.S. counterpart. Yet even he must
have been amazed by this newest American flight of fantasy. Putin reclaims a 200-
year-old Russian patrimony with hardly a shot and to wild applause at home — Putin’s
72 percent domestic popularity is 30 points higher than Obama’s — and America’s
leaders think he needs rescue?

Putin made it clear that he preferred Sevastopol to good reviews from the “international
community.” Yet Obama and Kerry held off doing anything until the Crimean
referendum — after which, they ominously threatened, there would be “consequences.”

Obama unveiled them Monday in a four-minute statement as flat-toned as a legal

notice in the classifieds. The consequences? Visa denial and frozen assets for 11
people, seven of them Russian.
Seven! Out of 140 million. No Putin. No Dmitry Medvedev. No oligarchs. Nor any of
Putin’s inner circle of ex-KGBers. No targeting of the energy sector or banks, Russia’s
industrial and financial lifeblood.

This elicited unreserved mockery from the targeted Russians themselves. One
wondered whether the president’s statement had been written by a prankster. The
Duma voted that it should be sanctioned -- all 353 members who’d voted for
annexation. And the financial markets, which abhor disruptions and crave nothing but
continuity, responded with relief: Russia’s spiked 3.7 percent; the Dow Jones rose 1.1
percent (180 points).

Putin responded with appropriate contempt. Within hours he recognized Crimea’s

secession. The next day, he signed a treaty of annexation. (Two days later, Obama
expanded the list of sanctioned Russians and added one bank. It will make no
difference.)

Europe’s response was weaker still, sanctioning a list of even lesser Russian
functionaries. The irony is that for two decades we’ve encouraged Russia’s integration
into the world economic system — including Obama’s strong support for Russian
accession to the World Trade Organization — thinking those ties, and the threat of
losing them, would restrain Russian behavior.

On the contrary. It restrained European behavior. Europe has refused to adopt any
measure that might significantly affect its commerce and natural gas imports from
Russia.

What’s our excuse? We import no Russian gas and have minimal trade with Russia.
Yet our president appears strangely disengaged. The post-Cold War order of Europe
has been brazenly violated — and Obama is nowhere to be seen.

As I’ve argued here before, there are things we can do: Send the secretary of defense
to Kiev tomorrow to negotiate military assistance. Renew the missile-defense
agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic. Announce a new policy of major U.S.
exports of liquefied natural gas. Lead Europe from the front — to impose sanctions
cutting off Russian enterprises from the Western banking system.

As we speak, Putin is deciding whether to go beyond Crimea and take eastern Ukraine.
Show him some seriousness, Mr. President.
Europe scrambles to break gas dependence
on Russia, offers Ukraine military tie
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Telegraph | 8:14PM GMT 21 Mar 2014

European leaders have rushed through plans aimed at breaking the Kremlin’s grip on
gas and energy supplies, marking a fresh escalation in the emerging Cold War
between Russia and the West.

The move came as the EU slapped sanctions on 12 leading Russians in President

Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, and vowed “additional and far-reaching” action if he
intervenes in eastern Ukraine or further destabilises the region. The European
Commission has been told to cock the gun by preparing “targeted measures”
immediately.

The South Stream pipeline intended to link the EU to Russia through the Black Sea by
2018 is now “dead”, according to sources in Brussels, hitting contractors close to Mr
Putin. EU staff are to come up with plans to shield Europe from energy blackmail by
Russia within 90 days, finding ways to prevent frontline states being picked off one by
one. Ukraine’s premier, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said in Brussels that the West must stop
Russia deploying energy as a “new nuclear weapon".

The radical shift in EU energy policy comes as Russia feels the chill of US sanctions
imposed on Thursday. The share prices of companies linked to oligarchs on the US
blacklist plummeted on the Moscow bourse.

Gas group Novatek, owned by Putin-ally Gennady Timchenko, has dropped 16pc
since he was named. He has had to sell his 43pc stake in Gunvor to his partner in
order to save the firm, the world’s fourth largest oil trader.

Visa and Mastercard halted transactions for Rossiya bank. Mr Putin said defiantly that
he would make sure his salary was transferred to a new account at Rossiya “first thing
Monday morning”.

They also cut off SMP bank, co-owned by Mr Putin’s judo partner Arkady Rotenberg,
though the bank itself was not named – evidence that US firms will not take any risks
with US regulators.

Aluminium group Rusal is in talks with lenders to delay rolling over some of its $10bn
debt, a sign that Russian companies with $650bn of debt may struggle to refinance
loans. An estimated $155bn must be rolled over this year.

“Until yesterday people thought there would two months of shouting and then we get
back to business, but nobody is quite sure anymore,” said one Moscow banker.
“What’s worrying the markets is that there will be more US sanctions. Russian
companies are extremely vulnerable. The real fragility is whether they can roll over
their debts.”

Tim Ash, from Standard Bank, said Washington is determined to make Mr Putin pay
for changing Europe’s borders by force, and will ratchet up “stealth sanctions” by
regulatory muscle. “Foreign companies will have to be very careful who their partners
in Russia are,” he said.

American agencies will probe deeper into the origin of funds, using money-laundering
codes to tighten the noose. Mr Ash said the US will step up sanctions even if there is
no direct Russian incursion into mainland Ukraine. Any attempt to destabilise the
Ukrainian government will be punished. “The Kremlin has misread the Americans
badly,” he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel – emerging as Europe’s dominant figure in the

crisis – said there had been an “unbelievable loss of trust in Russia” since the seizure
of Crimea. She called for measures to ensure that gas flows can be reversed to supply
the most exposed states in eastern Europe.

Professor Alan Riley, from City University, called the comments a “solidarity
statement”, pledging that Germany will funnel some of its own gas from the Nord
Stream pipeline to Poland, Slovakia and others if need be. “Putin would not dare cut off
Germany itself,” he said.

Mr Riley said the EU had spent €1.3bn building inter-connector links across Europe
since 2009. All new pipelines have reversible flows. “The EU could probably withstand
a cut-off in Russian gas. Putin is far less dangerous today than he was in 2009,” he
said.

The pan-EU group Gas Infrastructure Europe said Europe is currently well-stocked
with 37bn cubic metres of gas – 47pc of storage capacity – as a result of a mild winter.
“Most of the European transmission systems currently can withstand a disruption of
Russian gas through Ukraine. The pipeline network is available for diverting gas flows
in case of supply problems from Russia, from storage and LNG (liquefied natural gas),”
said the group.

Eight EU states have LNG hubs, the largest in Britain and Spain. Poland’s new facility
will come on stream this year. Deutsche Bank said gas reliance on Russia is 93pc in
Slovakia, 83pc in Poland, 81pc in Hungary, 66pc in the Czech Republic and 61pc in
Austria.

Germany's dependence is 35pc, falling to 29pc for oil and 19pc for coal. Very little of
the country’s industry relies on power from gas.

The one island of vulnerability is the Baltic region, where Finland, Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania rely 100pc on Russian gas. There are plans afoot to send a “regas ship” to
the area capable of supplying liquefied natural gas to a port in Lithuania. “President
Barack Obama could commandeer all US regas ships in an emergency and send them
to harbours in the Baltics,” said Mr Riley.
 The new energy plans were tucked away in the so-called climate dossier of the EU
summit but experts said there should be no doubt that the real aim is to confront Mr
Putin.

Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, said there is no symmetry in the economic
damage that each side can do to the other, arguing that Russia’s reliance on Gazprom
sales matters far more than Europe’s reliance on Gazprom. "Russia needs Europe
more than Europe needs Russia," he said.

Yet how the clash between Russia and the West goes is not really driven by economic
calculation, and may escalate regardless of sanctions. Mr Putin’s core demand is that
Ukraine remains “politically neutral”, certainly outside the Western military camp. The
EU swept this grievance aside on Friday by signing an Association Agreement that
includes a clause calling for the “gradual convergence between the EU and the Ukraine
in the areas of foreign and security policy, including the Common Security and Defence
Policy”.

Mr Yatsenyuk played up the military angle, describing the main thrust of the accord as
“security and defence cooperation”. Diplomats said this was a red rag to a bull.

“This Association Agreement cuts right across Russia’s geopolitical orbit and I wonder
if it’s entirely wise,” said Mats Persson, from Open Europe. “It was a mistake to make
Ukraine choose between the EU and Russia. Now they risk repeating that mistake.”

Ian Bond, from the Centre for European Reform, said the military tie is mostly low-key
cooperation on tactical issues. “This is not NATO by the back-door, and we are not
going to see EU divisions lining up on the Russian border,” he said.

The question is whether Mr Putin sees it that way. Mrs Merkel said last week that he
had “lost touch with reality”.
New Sanctions No Joke: Putin Risks Regime
For Ukraine Invasion
(Treasury Issues A Direct Threat To Putin)
Forbes | Paul Roderick Gregory, Contributor 3/20/2014

The reaction to the first round of U.S. and European sanctions against the Russian
ruling elite was laughter. Declared one of those singled out: Whoever put these
sanctions together is a “joker.” Indeed, the first set of U.S. sanctions was weak and the
European sanctions weaker. This is no longer the case. The Western sanctions bite
where they hurt. Moreover, the U.S. Treasury has sent Vladimir Putin a chilling
warning: We know where your money is, and we can expose you for what you are.”
The Treasury hinted at a “direct (financial) relationship” between Putin and owner of a
shadowy oil trading company chartered in Switzerland, who happens to be on the
sanctions list.

A reputable Russian Web site just published the news that Putin’s purported business
partner sold his shares worth billions of dollars, yesterday, one day before being placed
on the sanctions list. It does not seem that Putin is laughing at the joke any more.

Putin’s latest gift to the world — the “green men” matryushka dolls. I hear they are
selling well in Crimea.

President Obama announced today a second round of sanctions imposed on

individuals in Putin’s inner circle, a Russian bank, and against key sectors of the
Russian economy. Obama recognized that such sanctions will disrupt not only the
Russian but also the global economy. However, these penalties are regrettably
necessary if we want to live in a 21st century world that respects the sovereignty of
nations, declared Obama.

Angela Merkel, earlier today, announced in a Bundestag speech that “the G8 is no

more,” before leaving for meetings in Brussels to plan the response to Russia’s
violations of international law. Notably, only the small extreme Left party (die Linke)
opposed Merkel’s tough stance on Russia. It is expected that the Europeans will grant
Ukraine association status in the EU tomorrow, much to Putin’s chagrin. They will also
continue to push for international observers in what Putin claims is the extremist and
neo-Nazi dominated Ukraine.

The Obama administration’s sanctions list, leaked shortly after his speech by the UK’s
well-connected Telegraph, coincides largely with that published by banned Russian
blogger-opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, in today’s New York Times (How to Punish
Putin). Navalny, a lawyer by training, has devoted his career to exposing corruption at
the highest levels of the Putin regime. Navalny’s list, a Who’s Who of Putin’s inner
circle, includes Putin’s suspected personal money launderers and bankers and
Kremlin-favored oligarchs. Obama’s list spares, for the time being, the heads of
Russia’s national oil and gas companies.

According to reports from the Russian web, the U.S. Treasury goes so far as to note
that one of those sanctioned, a founder of the shadowy Russian oil trading company,
Gunvor, one Gennady Timchenko, “has a direct relationship to Vladimir Putin.”

The furious Putin regime published its own list of sanctions of U.S. figures, most
notably, Senator John McCain. Included in the list are none other than Harry Reid and
John Boehner. I doubt if any of the U.S. officials have hidden bank accounts in Russia
or will be inconvenienced by a ban on travel to Russia.
The freezing of assets and visas of the inner circle cannot be spun as a “joke” even by
Putin’s spin masters. Any bravado from those sanctioned will be whistling past the
graveyard. Moreover, those spared, such as the heads of the national oil and gas
companies, must wait for the axe to fall.

The impact of these sanctions extends far beyond the inner circle. It sends shudders
down the spines of all of Russia’s moneyed elite. Although Putin ordered Russians
(presumably excluding his inner circle) to de-offshorize their wealth over a year ago,
Russian assets remain conspicuously abroad, concealed behind layers of secrecy that
the U.S. Treasury Department can easily penetrate. All Russian citizens with foreign
bank accounts, estates, apartments, and children studying at elite Western universities
will worry whether they are perhaps next. Among themselves they will whisper: What
has this Putin guy got us into? Is there a way to get rid of him?

Despite Putin’s order to keep money at home, Russia’s 2013 capital flight was $63
billion, which offset 70 percent of inflows of foreign direct investment (Crimean Crisis
Will Exacerbate Capital Flight). Personal capital is fleeing en masse from a country
desperate for capital and foreign technology. One of Russia’s most trusted financial
experts, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, estimates that Putin’s Ukrainian
adventure will cost Russia $200 billion. If adjusted for the smaller size of the Russian
economy, this figure would be the equivalent of a $2 trillion loss to the U.S. economy,
more than the entire cost of the Great Recession.

Russia’s most notable weakness is the absence of a rule of law that protects private
property from arbitrary seizure. All Russian officials and businessmen understand that
their assets can be taken away at any time if he or she falls on the wrong side of a
powerful official. They have no choice, therefore, but to hide their money in what were
safe havens in the West. Whatever they have in Russia is of little or no lasting value.
Their whole life depends on their hidden foreign assets. In threatening the inner circle
with the loss of their foreign assets, the whole of Russia’s elite and even moneyed
middle class with their Miami Beach apartment or children in Ivy League schools are
threatened.

The Crimean adventure has temporarily raised Putin popularity among the Russian
people. His incessant Big Lie campaign has boosted Russian national pride, but Putin’s
mass propaganda campaign cannot sustain the hysterical level it has reached.
According to Russia’s most respected pollster, mass mobilization propaganda can be
effective at most three months before its subjects come back to earth. At that point,
there will be a reverse effect: “People will feel, first, the unpleasant effects of the
Crimean action and then, from the other side, start to ask why Russia is in political
isolation and why the economic position of Russia is worsening.” (Lev Gudkov, head of
Levada Center, Moscow).

Dictatorial regimes, like Putin’s KGB state, look rock solid. Visible opposition has been
liquidated by harsh repression. Attending a demonstration can be punished by jail time.
Opposition press has been muzzled. But the Putins of the world must be wary. They do
not know where the fatal spark will come from. History shows that Putin-like regimes
are usually toppled from within, a classic case being the overthrow of Nikita
Khrushchev in October of 1964, notably for his harebrained schemes (such as placing
missiles in Cuba and nonsensical economic reforms).

Legendary Russian dissident, Vladimir Bukovsky, describes Putin’s likely overthrow in

the following terms: “Those around Putin are like a criminal band, a group that operates
according to ‘the simple principle: the head of the band works for the band and the
band for him.’” Bukovsky warns that if this principle is violated” – and the fallout from
Crimea could lead some of the band members to conclude that – then the leader is in
trouble as are those around him who may decide that the world that allowed them to
“steal for 14 years” and take the benefits is collapsing around them.

Their only option: Get rid of Mr. Putin. He like Khrushchev pursues dangerous
harebrained schemes, which threaten us all.

We have tended to underestimate Putin. He usually has a chessboard-like come back.

We’ll see what he has up his sleeve this time. Or perhaps he has already pulled out all
the live bunnies he has.

I am a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, at Stanford, and the Cullen Professor
of Economics at the University of Houston. I am also a research professor at the
German Institute for Economic Research Berlin.
The author serves on the International Academic Advisory Board of the Kiev School of
Economics. The views are those of the author and not the school.
The West Needs a New Form of Deterrence
that Targets Russia’s Weaknesses
by John Lough, Associate Fellow, Russia and Eurasia Programme
Chatham House | Friday 21 March 2014

Western countries are waking up to the fact that Russia’s grab of Crimea is far more
than a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Its actions have created a serious threat
to Europe’s security and the crisis is far from over as Moscow positions itself to decide
the future of Ukraine.

The recent events in Ukraine have shown that the West’s current deterrence model
cannot constrain Russian behaviour in Europe’s immediate vicinity. Its nuclear
deterrent in this case was irrelevant.

Despite Russia’s claims that NATO poses a military threat to its security, this supposed
threat did not stop it from seizing Crimea and telling the West to stop fiddling in
Ukraine. Moscow correctly calculated that Western leaders would not respond militarily
to the crisis because they would not risk war with Russia. However absurd their talk of
neo-Nazis running riot in Crimea, Russia’s leaders were not out of touch with reality on
this.

Western policy-makers must now identify strategic options for deterring Russia from
further destabilizing Ukraine and taking similar actions elsewhere on its periphery.

So far, only a tactical response has emerged. The US and EU visa bans and asset
freezes on individuals in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and those responsible
for Russia’s Crimean adventure are the first indications of the desire of Western
countries to punish Russia and constrain its behaviour towards Ukraine. Less
influenced by protecting business relations with Russia, the US is setting the pace. By
comparison the 28 EU members were inevitably going to struggle to find a consensus
position.

While a process has started, the impression remains that Western countries are
playing catch up and that the strategic initiative still lies with Moscow. To turn this
situation around, they need to decide in the short term whether in practice they
genuinely intend to back Ukraine’s independence and prevent Russia from dictating the
terms of its existence.

To do so, they need to assess the likelihood of Ukraine’s political leaders being able to
pull together to lead the country out of crisis before they commit to support the process.
Unfortunately, it is not a given that Ukraine’s politicians can catch up with society’s
expectations to provide the leadership required.

Buying time for this purpose requires two immediate actions: firstly, delivering
emergency financial resources to resuscitate to the economy and, secondly, creating
space for Ukrainians to decide themselves how to govern their country.

However, this approach can only work if there is a credible deterrent in place to
dissuade Moscow from destabilizing Ukraine. Russia has already set out its stall,
saying that the country should be non-aligned, should not enter into an association
agreement with the EU and should govern itself on a federal model allowing its regions
significant autonomy. This is a recipe for making the country ungovernable and
depriving it of its independence.
To give Ukraine a chance to re-group after the Maidan revolution, Western countries
need to persuade Russia to back off and drop these conditions.

Russia has not yet brought to bear on the new Ukrainian government the economic
instruments that it used successfully last year, through a series of selected trade
embargoes, to dissuade President Viktor Yanukovych from signing an association
agreement with the EU. Ukraine’s eastern regions are not Crimea, and Russia will not
be able to peel them away in the same way. However, it clearly retains the capacity
over time to sap the will of local elites to stay aligned with the central government in
Kyiv.

To face down these pressures, Western countries need to force Moscow to make
choices. This requires creating a new form of deterrence that targets its weaknesses.
While Russia has competitive advantage over the West in Ukraine and across much of
its periphery through the political, economic and military levers at its disposal, its
stagnating economy is still based heavily on commodity exports and highly vulnerable
to sustained economic pressure. To achieve traction with Russian decision-makers, the
West needs to present a credible threat to inflict severe and lasting damage on the
Russian economy.

Words matter. So far, the vocabulary of strategic deterrence is absent in discussions of

how to manage the current crisis. If Western leaders want to influence Moscow’s
behaviour, they need to find a linguistic register that moves beyond ‘sanctions’ and
‘possible targeted measures’ to express real strategic intent. The message to Moscow
needs to spell out that the West defeated the USSR economically and is ready to adopt
short-, medium- and long-term policies to undermine Russia’s economy if it continues
to undermine Europe’s security.
Just to make things clear :
We don't have anything against cooperation with NATO, nothing at all," Putin said in a
speech earlier this week. "We are against having the (NATO) military alliance ...
behaving as the master of the house outside our fence, next to our home or on our
historical territory."

which means :
Latvia
Lithuania
Estonia
Moldova
Finland
Poland
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Bulgaria
Romania
Georgia
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kazakhstan
etc.

Good night & good luck to the European Union !

How Russia Is Losing Germany
Judy Dempsey | Carnegie Europe | Thursday, March 13,

The German government is facing one of its most serious foreign policy crises since
the collapse of the Berlin Wall nearly a quarter of a century ago. After investing much
political, economic, and diplomatic capital in its relations with Russia, Germany is
coming to realize that many of those efforts may have been squandered.

Over the past several weeks, when prodemocracy demonstrators in Ukraine ousted
president Viktor Yanukoych and Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea,
Berlin consistently pursued a diplomatic track with Moscow.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, is a firm believer in Ostpolitik,

the Eastern approach that has underpinned the German-Russian relationship for
decades. During recent talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, Steinmeier
had one goal in mind: to deescalate the crisis. It was a blow to him when the regional
parliament in Crimea announced, with Russian backing, that it would hold a
referendum on the peninsula’s status on March 16.

Both Steinmeier and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had also hoped that Russia
would stick to its word and give an international “contact group” a chance to establish
some kind of dialogue between Moscow and the provisional government in Kiev.

But the Kremlin has made it clear that it has no intentions of talking to Ukraine’s
interim leaders. Berlin has been forced to conclude that for the moment, Russia is
simply not willing to deescalate and negotiate. Instead, Moscow is set on establishing
facts on the ground in Crimea. That is a bitter blow for German diplomacy.

Efforts by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also came
to naught. Even though Russia is a leading member of the OSCE, it has never been
able to bend the organization to its will. Moscow loathes the OSCE’s monitoring of
elections and its stance on the freedom of the media. In the current crisis, unarmed
OSCE monitors were prevented by force from entering Crimea.

In the longer term, Russia’s rejection of Germany’s diplomatic efforts spells bad news
for Russia itself: Moscow risks losing one of its most important allies in Europe.

Those allies are already few and far between. Putin’s close friend former Italian prime
minister Silvio Berlusconi has left Italy’s political stage. François Hollande, the French
president, has few bonds with the Kremlin apart from a lucrative French defense
contract. Barring one or two staunch supporters of Russia, such as Hungarian Prime
Minister Viktor Orbán, Russia risks being completely isolated in Europe.

Russia should not underestimate what losing Germany as an ally could mean. Putin’s
rejection of Germany’s diplomatic overtures could precipitate the end of Steinmeier’s
long-held belief in Ostpolitik. That would have tremendous consequences for
Germany’s relations not only with Russia but also with Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and
Georgia.

By dismissing Germany’s diplomatic efforts, Russia could be encouraging Germany to

take a much more considered look at the geopolitical and security concerns of Poland,
the Baltic states, and indeed Ukraine—countries that are now deeply afraid of Russia.

Indeed, Steinmeier’s brief visit to the Baltic states on March 11 was about more than
symbolism. The last thing Berlin wants is instability in the region or a backlash against
these countries’ ethnic Russian minorities that could provoke Russia in any way.
Steinmeier sought to reassure the leaders of the Baltic states that they could count on
the EU’s—and Germany’s—solidarity.

“We are not going to abandon Estonia and the Baltic states,” the German foreign
minister said after his talks in Tallinn. “This isn’t a problem for Estonia or the Baltic
states. This is a common problem for the EU and NATO.” That is a real shift in
language. Until recently, NATO had figured low on Berlin’s radar screen.

A day later, Merkel flew to Warsaw to hold talks with Donald Tusk, the Polish prime
minister. Until recently, the Poles had made every effort to put their relations with
Russia on a more predictable and pragmatic basis. The crisis in Ukraine has changed
that.

Poland and its Baltic neighbors do not just want promises of respect for their territorial
integrity. They are also anxious for greater security guarantees and increased support
from NATO allies and other EU countries.

Merkel is now in the unenviable position of having to decide whether to impose

sanctions on Russia. Her government cannot be faulted for having tried diplomacy. But
Berlin has now exhausted that track.

One thing is clear: sanctions would be the nail in the coffin for Ostpolitik. Then,
Germany could finally begin to pull the EU together around a long-overdue new policy
toward Russia and Europe’s Eastern neighborhood.
U.S. Eyes Russian Spies Infiltrating Ukraine
Eli Lake | World News 03.21.14

Moscow claims it hasn’t invaded anyone. That’s because Russia is slipping into
Ukraine special units of spies and saboteurs, senior U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast.

In the run-up to Russia’s paramilitary invasion of Crimea, U.S. intelligence saw Vladimir
Putin’s saboteurs and mercenaries coming, and not stopping at Crimea either.

During the last week of February, a summary of U.S. intelligence reporting said there
was a very low chance that the ordinary Russian troops doing military exercises on
Ukraine’s border were going to invade the country, according to a description of the
document by a senior American official. But the intel report did predict accurately that
Russian special operations forces would do all they could to reunite Crimea with
Russia—and cause trouble in eastern and southern Ukraine.

Russia’s activities in Crimea have been widely described in the west as an invasion.
But while some Russian military forces did cross into Ukrainian territory, the Moscow
government still claims that all of its military forces in Crimea are abiding by the terms
of its agreement with Ukraine.

This, U.S. officials believe, is because Russia is invading Ukraine with its Spetsnaz—
the special operations units and battalions attached to both the military and the
country’s intelligence agencies. An American intelligence report predicted that Russian
provocateurs would look to instigate low-level street brawls or “skirmishes” in eastern
and southern Ukraine.

U.S. intelligence officials now say Russia’s Spetsnaz are expanding into eastern and
southern Ukraine, as well. The intelligence report from February assessed that Russian
provocateurs would look to instigate low-level street brawls or “skirmishes” in eastern
and southern Ukraine. The report also predicted that Russia’s shadow warriors would
seek to pay off Ukrainians to attend pro-Russian rallies and in general fan the flames of
separatism. And since then, eyewitnesses say, that’s exactly what’s happened.

One U.S. official said the U.S. military intelligence analysts suspect elements of the
45th Spetsnaz regiment of Russia’s military intelligence service known as the GRU
were conducting the provocations in Ukraine. On Thursday the White House added
Igor Sergun, the 57 year old chief of the GRU, along with 19 others to a list of Russian
officials sanctioned for the invasion of Crimea.

“This is the use of deniable special operators under GRU control to create provocations
and really these are quasi-deniable operations,” added John Schindler, a retired NSA
counter-intelligence officer and specialist in Russian affairs who now teaches at the
U.S. Naval War College.

One U.S. official read into American intelligence reporting on Ukraine and Russia
pointed to German press accounts of German businesses in Ukraine being approached
in a menacing fashion by so-called “people’s self defense committees” as an example
of such Russian provocations.

Last week, the Ukrainian press reported that a member of Russia’s GRU was arrested
trying to enter the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson carrying heavy weapons and
phony identification documents. According to a second press account, the Security
Service of Ukraine arrested a Ukrainian citizen that it claimed was leading a spy ring to
conduct surveillance on sensitive military installations in Kherson.
Schindler said the GRU Spetznas were following a similar playbook of provocations or
“active measures” taken in the Republic of Georgia following the country’s 2005 Rose
Revolution. “This sort of Spetznas special operations, intel-driven exercise is the
continuing Russian refinement of the same model used in Georgia,” he said.

These kinds of Russian intelligence activities often take place in the shadows, but at
least in the case of Georgia, U.S. diplomatic cables disclosed by Wikileaks provide
some insight into Moscow’s game plan.

A July 20, 2007 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tblisi, Georgia, for example, details a
series of attacks—some quite serious such as a 2007 helicopter gunship attack on the
building of a pro-Georgian government organization in the break away province of
Abkhazia—on Georgian police and others inside the country from Russia. Russian
spokesmen have denied any involvement in these attacks.

The Russian provocations however did not end there. In 2010, the Georgian interior
ministry charged a Russian GRU Major based in Abkhazia named Yevgeny Borisov
with orchestrating a string of bombings and near bombings of targets inside their
country. This claim has also been officially denied by the Georgian government.

Giga Bokeria, who served as the last Georgian president’s national security adviser,
said he expects Putin will continue to use its intelligence units and Spetznas to
destabilize Ukraine as he did in Georgia.

“If Putin creates the perception that the Crimean move is accepted, that means for any
leadership in Ukraine or anywhere there is further trouble,” Bokeria said. “He will
continue strengthening all those who will create direct destabilization in eastern
Ukraine. His goal is to reverse the results of the cold war.”

In the meantime, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is continuing

to review the U.S. intelligence assessments leading up to Russia’s annexation of
Crimea. The committee’s Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, told The Daily
Beast this month that some House members left a briefing from the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence with the impression that Russia would not invade
Ukraine. A day later, the invasion began.

But while the ODNI “downplayed an invasion,” in the words of one senior U.S. official,
The Daily Beast has learned that—in one key respect—American intelligence reporting
from Ukraine was prescient. As the senior U.S. official told the Daily Beast, the
American intelligence community assessed there was a “high likelihood” Russia would
take action through its special operations forces instead.
Robert Coalson @CoalsonR 1:16 PM - 21 Mar 2014

Today is 22nd anniv of sovereignty referendum in Tatarstan (62% in favor of

sovereignty). Not all referendums equal: "Russia's Const Court ruled the
referendum's wording was unconstitutional, saying it implied altering Russian
Federation's state structure."

Russia Worried Over Tatarstan Referendum on Independence

SERGEI SHARGORODSKY , Associated Press Mar. 19, 1992 9:51 AM ET

KAZAN, RUSSIA KAZAN, Russia (AP) _ […]

On Saturday, Tatarstan votes on whether the oil-rich region should be
independent of Russia, posing a serious threat to the unity of the largest of the
former Soviet republics.
Russian television calls it ''a crucial moment in the history of the Russian
Federation.''
Voters will be asked: ''Do you agree that the republic of Tatarstan is a sovereign
state, a subject of international law, building its relations with the Russian
Federation and other republics (states) on an equal basis?''
Russia's Constitutional Court ruled last week the referendum's wording was
unconstitutional, saying it implied altering the Russian Federation's state
structure. But that decision is expected to have little effect on the vote.
This morning, President Boris N. Yeltsin appealed to the parliament of
Tatarstan to cancel the referendum, news agencies reported. […]
Ukraine Is Not the Only Battlefield Between
Russia and the West
Posted by: Dmitri Trenin | Carnegie Europe | Friday, March 21, 2014

Until the crisis in Ukraine, the EU and Russia were not geopolitical competitors. In one
“big bang” enlargement in 2004, the EU expanded its membership to include ten new
countries, many of them former Soviet satellites and three republics of the former
Soviet Union.

In the subsequent years, EU membership was granted or promised to several other

countries in southeast Europe, including Russia’s historical allies. Moscow’s reaction to
this was muted or, in some cases, barely noticeable—in sharp contrast to its response
to many of the same nations’ accession to NATO. The only issue arose when
Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave, became surrounded by EU territory, and a transit
agreement had to be negotiated.

Why is Ukraine different? To the Russian establishment, and to President Vladimir

Putin personally, Ukraine lies east of the line that marks the extent of Western
civilization in Europe.

Alongside Belarus and Russia itself, Ukraine is part of the historical core of the Eastern
Slav / Orthodox world that Putin and the Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian
Orthodox Church, commonly refer to as the “Russian world.” The term “Russian” used
here—and in the name of the church—is broader than ethnic Russian. It descends
from the mediaeval name “Rus,” which described the eastern Slav realm of Kievan
princes, a more durable and slightly later version of Charlemagne’s empire.

Putin was prepared to live with a Ukraine that was essentially a buffer zone between
Russia and the EU. Even the prospect of Yulia Tymoshenko replacing the ousted
President, Viktor Yanukovych, as the end result of the February 21 agreement did not
worry Putin too much. He had dealt with Tymoshenko as prime minister. He had even
preferred her to Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential elections. He would deal with her
again, if necessary.

Putin, of course, loathed the method of change of leadership in Ukraine: revolutionary

violence is always a bad example, particularly next door, but he looked forward to
continuing his tactical maneuvering in Ukraine in an effort to eventually win it over to
his side.

Then something unexpected happened. The radical nationalists in Ukraine’s Right

Sector coalition refused to support the February 21 accord and Yanukovych,
abandoned by the oligarchs, in turn abandoned his own supporters and fled from Kiev.

The power of these radicals demonstrated to Putin how much Ukraine had changed
since the Orange revolution a decade ago. He saw a threat of Galicia, or western
Ukraine, which lies west of Europe’s “civilizational boundary,” taking over the entire
country and turning it into an anti-Russian force. He also watched the EU, whose three
foreign ministers had witnessed the February 21 accord, to wash its hands off it when
the radicals scrapped it. Immediately, Moscow’s policies changed from passive to
hyperactive and contingency plans long prepared for the possibility of Ukraine making
a decisive step toward NATO membership have apparently been activated.

With Crimea now incorporated into the Russian Federation, Putin may have no need to
execute his authority to send the Russian military forces into eastern or southern
Ukraine. This does not mean, however, that the geopolitical battle for Ukraine between
the West and Russia is now over, with Crimea going to Moscow and Kiev aligning itself
with Washington and Brussels. As before, Moscow can live with a Ukraine that is
“neutral” while having close links with Russia, but it will not accept a Ukraine that is
leaning to the West. The only compromise the Kremlin would consider is allowing
Galicia to secede and join the West on its own, in whatever way and form it wants.

The battle for Ukraine promises to be a long and hard one. This, however, will not be
the only battleground between Russia and the West. Moldova exhibits some striking
similarities with Ukraine. Transnistria, a region attached to the Soviet Moldovan
republic by Stalin and which broke away from Chisinau even before the breakup of the
Soviet Union, wants to join Russia. By contrast, the government in Chisinau is looking
west, both to the EU and now also to NATO. But it is being challenged by a pro-
Russian communist-led opposition. The stalemate along the Dniester river and the
periodic alternation in power in Chisinau of pro-western and pro-Russian parties will not
continue indefinitely. The Ukrainian crisis and the Crimea annexation have changed the
pace of developments there as well.

Thus, what originated as the European Union’s modest Eastern Partnership program
has inspired civic and nationalist movements, demolished delicate balances within
elites, presented Russia with a specter of Western threat, and provoked a geopolitical
avalanche. The result, in the long run, is likely to be the end of the notion of the “lands
between” Russia and the EU. Hard and painful choices are now unavoidable.
The Power Vertical
The Pros And Cons Of Propaganda
RFE-RL March 20, 2014

Propaganda works. Or at least it's working for the time being.

In concluding his speech to a joint session of parliament this week, Vladimir Putin
claimed that 92 percent of Russians favored the annexation of Crimea.

The number was inflated, but not by much, according to Lev Gudkov, director of the
independent Levada Center, Russia's most respected pollster. In a recent interview
with Gazeta.ru, Gudkov said his data show that nearly 80 percent of Russians consider
Crimea to be part of Russia.

In recent weeks, Westerners have looked on with derision at the over-the-top and
clearly inaccurate way the Russian state-controlled media have depicted events in
Ukraine: a coup by neo-Nazis that has unleashed a wave of anti-Semitism and
reprisals against Russian-speakers, sparking a humanitarian crisis and a surge of
refugees escaping the chaos.

Who would believe this stuff, right? I mean, the facts on the ground so obviously run
counter to the distorted and outright false picture Kremlin spin masters have so
carefully painted.

Well, apparently somebody does.

According to Gudkov, between November 2013, when mass demonstrations in Kyiv

started, until late February, when President Viktor Yanukovych was deposed, a clear
majority of Russians thought what was happening in Ukraine was an internal affair and
Russia should not interfere.

Now, in addition to the 79 percent who view Crimea as part of Russia, some 58
percent favor the deployment of Russian troops

"The campaign that began in the last week of February -- which was unusual in its
intensity and aggressive tone -- has drastically changed the public mood," Gudkov
said. "The propaganda has stunned people. The public is now in an agitated state with
all of their imperial complexes awakened."

So game over, right? Putin's got his mojo back and he's got his people behind him. It's
2007 all over again.

Well, not so fast. The propaganda may be working wonders for the Kremlin now. But
according to Gudkov, it will likely prove ephemeral -- and eventually cause a backlash.
"After a while, the effect will wear off and a pensive state will set in," he said.

And after the pensiveness, comes the backlash. And the reason for this, Gudkov said,
can be found in the very nature of propaganda itself. "Propaganda's effectiveness is
directly linked to the subject. It is very difficult to convince people that the authorities
consist of competent and decent people. But it is easy to convince them that
Americans torture adopted Russian children because this cannot be verified," he said.
 "Basically, propaganda destroys alternative understanding. It may not quite convince
people, but it imposes on them the cynical view that everyone is a bastard, politics is a
squabble between interest groups, and nobody should be believed."

And it is here, he added, that the Kremlin may end up being a victim of its own
success.

"The Kremlin spin doctors and manipulators do not understand that after a while this
will turn against the Russian authorities themselves because imposing such a view of
social processes in a country dominated by a paternalist state mind-set cannot but lead
to increasingly negative attitudes toward the authorities themselves" he said.

"This should end with clear analogies or the association of the current Russian
authorities with the Yanukovych regime."

Gudkov is not alone in predicting that what looks like a stunning victory for Team Putin
will soon turn into an albatross.

Writing in "Nezavisimaya gazeta," Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie

Center says Putin has changed the game both in his relations with the elite and with
society -- and dangers loom on both fronts.

"The president has to know that even in the ruling class many people are 'perplexed'
by his Crimean action, and this is contributing to irritation with the leader," Malashenko
writes.

He'll still be president for a very long time. But he’ll no longer have a iron-clad rear. As
an ex-security service officer, he surely has to sense this. And keeping nationalist
intensity at its height for any length of time is very difficult. People will soon be
distracted by things like inflation and other issues from which their attention has been
temporarily averted."

And how will Putin react when this happens?

In a recent interview with "Nezavisimaya gazeta," political analyst Nikolai Petrov had a
chilling prognosis. "There will follow a surge in Putin’s popularity and a consolidation of
the legitimacy of the regime. But this surge will be very brief," Petrov said.

"When the price is clarified, we will see that people are not prepared to pay it. Not
prepared to take part in a war, not prepared to live under the stiff sanctions of the West,
and so forth. And Putin’s task will be in this short time to organize repressive
mechanisms. In order, when the public enthusiasm subsides, to preserve the system of
control of the country.”

With the ongoing crackdown on independent media -- most recently the television
channel Dozhd, which has already been pulled off cable networks, lost its lease --
those repressive mechanisms appear to be already moving into place.

-- Brian Whitmore
These Sanctions Against Russia Will Hurt,
and It's the Russian Liberals Who Will Suffer
BY JULIA IOFFE @juliaioffe | The National Interest | MARCH 20, 2014

Today, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on sixteen high-ranking Russian

officials as well as four of Putin's best friends who, magically, have become multi-
billionaires in the last decade. This, with a few notable people missing from the list, is
the most inner of inner circles. These sanctions are going to sting, because these
people aren't just multi-billionaires, but men who, because of their closeness to Putin,
control much of the Russian economy: railroads, banks, construction, media. One of
the men, Yury Kovalchuk, even had his bank, Rossiya, sanctioned.

These sanctions will not just ban travel to the U.S. or freeze assets (most of which
these guys keep in Europe and in various tax shelters around the world), but will
effectively bar them from participation in the world financial system. That is going to
sting and it's going to hurt, and it's going to hurt in the exact right places. Sources
inside the administration say that Europe's list of sanctions, which is forthcoming,
overlaps very significantly with the American one. The administration is also discussing
whether to distribute the sanctions to family members, given that these men officially
may own very little themselves, but have stashed their wealth in shell companies, and
wives and children who function as shell companies. But just having a last name that's
on the U.S. Treasury sanctions list may be hurt enough. And, as the White House has
emphasized repeatedly, this is only the beginning.

But there are people who are not on the list who are already cringing at the anticipation
of the blow: Russian liberals. They were largely horrified by their country's invasion of
Ukraine and are happy to see Putin's cronies punished by the West, but they know that
the Kremlin, unable to lash out at Washington, will take its fury out on them. There's
precedent for this: when Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, punishing those
Russians involved in the gruesome death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Russia retaliated
by...lashing out at its orphans and banning American adoptions of Russian children.

The Russian opposition has been withering since Putin returned to the presidency in
May 2012, and Putin has already singled them out for punishment for their protests
against him in 2011-2012. He has used the chaos in Crimea to clean house in Moscow,
cracking down on independent media and locking up opposition leader Alexey Navalny
under house arrest. In his big speech on Tuesday, Putin finally gave voice to what we
knew he'd been thinking all along, calling them "a fifth column" and "traitors." After
today's sanctions were announced, and the euphoria that followed, Navalny tweeted
through his wife (the terms of his house arrest ban him from using the Internet): "Just
so that there are no illusions: Somebody will have to pay for this happiness that the
crooks are being sanctioned. Need to pack my bag for jail." Navalny was sentenced to
five years in jail last summer on trumped up charges and his sentence was commuted,
but the authorities took care to have a couple criminal cases open against him, just in
case.

It's not that the crackdown is coming. The crackdown is already here, and the
opposition—or what's left of it—has been grunting under its weight for the last two
years. But now, it's about to get really, really bad. At least that's the fear. There's talk of
closed borders and exit visas, arrests, unemployment because of political beliefs: You
know, the kinds of things you do with traitors in Russia.

There's also talk of emigration. Those with Jewish ancestry are knocking on the door of
the Israeli consulate in Moscow. Others are discussing green card lotteries, grasping at
any possibility, however unlikely, to get out, and the possibilities are few and hard to
get. After all, Russians aren't the only people in the world who want to emigrate to the
West. Not everyone who opposes Putin wants to get out, of course, and someone
needs to stay behind to help catch pieces of this strange edifice when it inevitably falls.
But if Washington and Brussels are serious about human rights and democracy, they
should offer a helping hand to those who will inevitably be the whipping boys when the
sanctions really start to hurt.

[Игoрь Кoндрaшoв @IgorKon · 14h

@juliaioffe liberals will suffer either way. No matter what West does. It's officially
dictatorship now. It's Deutschland uber alles.]
IN UKRAINE: GAME, SET AND MATCH FOR
PUTIN
By Fox News Staff • Published March 20, 2014

President Obama’s declaration,"We are not going to be getting into a military excursion
in Ukraine,”put a pitiful punctuation mark on the weakness of the president’s attempts
to get Russia to abandon its aggressive moves in the Crimean peninsula.
Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have served up an ace for Mother Russia,
leaving Obama standing at the baseline watching the ball go by. While both sides
expressed a wish to avoid a direct confrontation and there has been no support for
U.S. troops on the ground in the region among Democrats and Republicans, the
president’s response to San Diego station KSND reporter’s question Wednesday made
it clear how limited his options are.
AP reports, “The question facing the White House now is whether actions that have
done little to stop Russia from claiming Crimea are tough enough to stop further
escalations by Moscow. And if they continue to prove insufficient, what else is Obama
willing to do to change Vladimir Putin's calculus?... thus far, sanctions levied by both
the U.S. and the European Union have done little to deter…Putin.”
So, with NATO allies worried that Putin might engage in a new match in Eastern
Ukraine, or elsewhere in Europe, what’s the Russian leader likely to serve up next? As
has seemed to be the case in the confrontation thus far and 2016 Democratic
frontrunner Hillary Clinton put succinctly Tuesday night. “That’s primarily up to Putin.”

Yes, this is unacceptable !

No, we are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine…
|/
American Fatigue Syndrome
If the U.S. doesn't lead, the strongmen win. For them it's easier.
By Daniel Henninger | WallStreet Journal | March 19, 2014 7:16 p.m. ET

By the time the second World Trade Center tower collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, the
whole world was watching it. We may assume that Vladimir Putin was watching. Mr.
Putin, a quick calculator of political realities, would see that someone was going to get
hit for this, and hit hard.

He was right of course. The Bush presidency became a war presidency that day, and it
pounded and pursued the Islamic fundamentalists of al Qaeda without let-up or
apology.

During that time, it was reported that Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer in East
Germany, deeply regretted the fall of the Soviet Union's empire and despised the
Americans who caused it to fall. But no one cared what Mr. Putin thought then.
Russia's power was a sliver of its former size. Besides, Mr. Putin's hurt was salved with
the limitless personal wealth that flowed from doing business with the West.
Conventional wisdom clicked in easily: Capitalism's surplus was enough to sate any
rational autocrat.

In 2008, the American people elected a new president, and Vladimir Putin, a patient
feline, would have noticed that President Obama in his speeches was saying that
American power would be used "in concert" with other nations and institutions, such as
the United Nations. What would have made Mr. Putin's eye jump was the decision by
George Bush's successor not just to leave Iraq but without leaving a residual U.S.
military presence to help the new government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Sometime in the first Obama term, opinion polls began to report that the American
people were experiencing what media shorthand came to call "fatigue" with the affairs
of the world. The U.S. should "mind its own business." The America-is-fatigued polling
fit with Mr. Obama's stated goal to lead from behind. A close observer of American
politics also could notice that Republican politicians, the presumptive heirs of Reagan,
began to recalibrate their worldview inward to accommodate the "fatigue" in the opinion
polls.

We are of course discussing Vladimir Putin's path to the forced annexation of Crimea.
And possibly in time a move on the independence of Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia,
Latvia, Kazakhstan or Moldova. This narrative has one more point of Putin
demarcation: Syria.

Last September, every foreign chancery in the world concluded that the United States
would bomb Bashar Assad's airfields with Tomahawk missiles in reprisal for killing
nearly 1,500 Syrians with chemical weapons, including sarin gas. Vladimir Putin placed
a bet. He suggested to the American president that in lieu of the U.S. bombing Assad's
airfields, their two nations, in concert, could remove all of Syria's chemical weapons.
Mr. Obama accepted and stood down from bombing Assad. Six months later Vladimir
Putin invaded and annexed Crimea.

This moment is not about Barack Obama. By now we know about him. This is about
Vladimir Putin and the self-delusions of Western nations and their famous "fatigue."
Vladimir Putin is teaching the West and especially the United States that fatigue is not
an option.
Sometimes world affairs go off the grid. Diplomats may give reasons why it is not in the
interests of Mr. Putin or Russia to take this course. Vice President Biden told the Poles
in Warsaw Monday that Mr. Putin's seizure of Crimea was "flawed logic." It is difficult
for men embedded in a world of rational affairs to come to grips with Mr. Putin's point of
view: He doesn't care what they think.

The solitary but thrilling world of Vladimir Putin's mind is the one inhabited by the
Assads, Saddams, bin Ladens, Kims, Gadhafis and Khomeinis of the world, and when
it really runs out of control, or is allowed to, by a Stalin, Hitler, or Mao. Whether one
man's grandiosity will burst across borders is not about normal logic. It is about
personal power and forcing the obeisance of other nations.

Vladimir Putin re-proves that sometimes a bad person gains control of the instruments
of national power. Their pop
ulations do nothing or can't, because they are disarmed by thugs with overwhelming
firepower. Or, as on Russian TV now, they are marinated in anti-U.S. propaganda.
Today even second-rate megalomaniacs gain access to high-tech weaponry, including
missiles and nuclear bombs.

Running alongside these old realities is a new phenomenon, surely noticed by Mr.
Putin: The nations of the civilized world have decided their most pressing concern is
income inequality. Barack Obama says so, as does the International Monetary Fund.
Western Europe amid the Ukraine crisis is a case study of nations redistributing
themselves and perhaps NATO into impotence.

Because no modern Democrat can be credible on this, some Republican presidential

candidate will have to explain the high price of America's fatigue. Fatigue will allow
global disorder to displace 60 years of democratic order. If the U.S. doesn't lead, the
strongmen win because for them it's easier. They don't lead people; they coerce them.
Ask the millions free for now in the old countries of the Iron Curtain.

Write to henninger@wsj.com
Thinking the Unthinkable in Ukraine
Janine Davidson | The National Interest | March 20, 2014

As Russian forces begin exercises on Ukraine’s border and continue their hold on
Crimea, I worry about military escalation—unintentional and intentional. What fuels my
concern about unintentional escalation is a disconcerting interaction I had last year with
a Russian general at a NATO conference in Europe. I was leading a breakout session
with a dozen generals and admirals from the region. I was taken aback as many of the
Western European NATO officers began lamenting their individual countries' declining
defense budgets and their inability to keep up with American military capability. As
complicated as things might be inside NATO, and as difficult as it is to rally collective
action at times, NATO is still the premier military alliance in the world. No one is giving
up on it, I assured them.

When the Russian general spoke, he leaned into the table and said, "When I was a
young soldier in the Soviet Army during the Cold War, I thought of NATO like this..."
and he held his hand into a powerful fist. "But now that I am serving with NATO as a
liaison, I am thinking, this..." and his hand went limp and wobbly with a whiny sounding
sigh. If this small interaction reflects in any way a wider view of NATO by Russian
civilian and military leaders, NATO has its work cut out for it in demonstrating to
Vladimir Putin that continued military aggression in Ukraine will be challenged.

It is perfectly reasonable to want to avoid military confrontation with Russia. But

deterrence requires a credible threat of military action. The various economic and
diplomatic efforts to isolate Russia and compel Putin to pull back his troops are wise,
and they are likely to have an effect. But soft and hard power are two sides of a coin.
We need to recognize how military options fit into this strategy.

Putin has already provoked the region militarily by taking Crimea and now aggressively
positioning more forces near the Ukraine border. The threat of further escalation
against greater Ukraine is clear. However uncomfortable it may be to contemplate
military action, not contemplating it and projecting that fact to one's adversary, would
be the opposite of deterrence.

Militarily and politically, it would be unwise for Putin to push further into Ukraine. At a
minimum, the farther west his troops go, the more Ukrainian resistance they will
encounter. Assuming Russia is able to quickly defeat Ukraine's much smaller military,
Putin must know that securing this victory and occupying greater Ukraine will require a
complex counterinsurgency-like operation of uncertain duration that in the end may not
be worth the cost. Still, the less resistance Putin perceives he might meet in that initial
drive, the more likely he might risk it. The task for NATO, therefore, is to instill a healthy
dose of uncertainty about what kind of military might he may encounter if he continues
his march beyond Crimea and into Ukraine.

So it is welcome news that the U.S. is responding to requests from Eastern European
NATO allies to send more fighter planes to the Baltics. But there is more we can do
now to assure allies and deter, without necessarily provoking, Putin. For instance:

● Place NATO forces, such as the quick reaction force and America's 173rd Airborne in
Italy on alert;

● Start NATO contingency planning for humanitarian spillover or worse;

● Position NATO warships in the Black Sea;

● Offer military assistance and advice to the Ukrainian military who should be planning
the military defense of their country;

● Position reconnaissance assets (space, cyber, drone) to monitor escalation.

It is an uncomfortable reality that avoiding military escalation sometimes requires overt

military countermoves. In this case, such moves will assure allies and partners in the
region and send a powerful message that NATO's Article 5 guarantee (and also
America's security guarantees beyond the region) still mean something. Hopefully they
will deter Vladimir Putin from greater aggression; but if not, they will position forces in a
way that provides NATO leaders more options to aid Ukraine and prevent greater
spillover should the situation deteriorate. As Putin contemplates expanding his reach
beyond Crimea and into Ukraine, he needs to understand that there will be
consequences from all elements of NATO, Europe, and US power.

Janine Davidson is senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.
From 2009 to 2012, she served in the Obama administration as the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Plans. She began her career as a United States Air Force
cargo pilot, flying combat support and humanitarian missions in Asia, Europe and the
Middle East.
Don't Just Sanction Russia, Deter It
Job C. Henning, William Courtney | The National Interest | March 18, 2014

The initial Western response to Russian aggression in Crimea has emphasized

diplomacy and economic measures, and a temporary show of military support to North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies bordering on the former Soviet Union. With
Russian forces now occupying some positions in the southern mainland and massing
on Ukraine’s eastern border, stronger -- and permanent -- US and NATO defense
measures are required to deter Russian aggression and raise its costs. There will be
no return to a Cold War, but Russia is now a military adversary, even as it remains a
partner in other pursuits such as the International Space Station.

Without robust military steps, the West cannot achieve the two ambitious goals the
White House defined on March 6 -- the pull-back of Russia’s military forces to their
bases, and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Further, a weak response
would risk escalation of Russian aggression against its neighbors, and undermine the
confidence of US allies and friends in America’s policy of extended deterrence. One or
more of them might conclude that they have to pursue their own nuclear weapons
programs.

Earlier this month, the Lithuanian ambassador to the US voiced concern about the
viability of NATO's Article 5 guarantee, an attack on one means an attack on all. A
credible military response to Russian aggression will be important to quelling such
doubts.

In December 1994 in return for Ukraine’s agreeing to give up remaining Soviet-era

nuclear weapons, the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom signed the
Budapest Memorandum, pledging to respect the borders of Ukraine and abstain from
the use or threat of force against it. In addition, nuclear powers France and China
provided unilateral security guarantees. In 2009, Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry
Medvedev reaffirmed the Budapest pledge. The Western guarantors must now make
good on their solemn commitment.

The West has taken temporary but important military steps, including added combat
aircraft support to a NATO Baltic air policing mission and the dispatch of sophisticated
airborne warning and control aircraft to Poland and Romania. The AWACs deployment
will improve air situational awareness over Ukraine and increase some warning times.

An effective Western military response to Russia’s aggression, however, must be more

forceful and have lasting effect.

One place to begin is by revisiting the wishful 2010 NATO Strategic Concept. It
expresses a desire to pursue a "true strategic partnership" with Russia, while making
no mention of its posing adversarial risks. This thinking appeared to ignore Russia's
cyber attack on Estonia in 2007 and invasion of Georgia in 2008; the Kremlin’s new
strategic doctrine in 2010 that falsely claims one of the "main external threats of war" is
NATO's expansion eastward to Russia's border; and Moscow's persistent but
inaccurate characterization of NATO theater missile defenses as threatening Russia's
nuclear forces.

To reduce risks to Ukraine, Georgia, and other Black Sea littoral neighbors of Russia,
France should announce that it will not deliver the two modern, large helicopter assault
Mistral-class ships it is building for Russia as long as its troops occupy neighboring
territory. One ship is planned for delivery to the Russian Black Sea fleet in 2016.
The West should provide more and immediate defense aid to Ukraine and Georgia.
Early priorities ought to be intelligence sharing on nearby Russian forces, technology
for cyber defense, and systems for secure command and control. Antiarmor and
antiaircraft weapons would help these countries deter and defend against invasion.
America should provide them to deter Russian forces poised along the Ukrainian
border. Media reports says Ukraine's interim government asked for US weaponry, but
the request was deferred. A CNN poll in early March found that just over three-quarters
of US respondents oppose providing military support to Ukraine, no doubt reinforcing
Washington's hesitancy. As the consequences of Russian aggression sink in, and if it
widens, sentiments may change.

To build further confidence in NATO’s collective-security commitments to members in

its eastern area, Washington should return to Europe a third brigade combat team. If
requested by Poland, it ought to be based there. Anxiety there is high – andwith
reason. In suspending Russia’s observance of the Conventional Forces in Europe
Agreement in 2007, President Vladimir Putin expressed a possible need to mass
conventional forces on the border of new NATO members, particularly Poland. An
augmented NATO position in Poland now would bolster deterrence and incur fewer
risks than if in the future Putin follows through on his warning.

Non-Black Sea NATO states should increase their warship rotational presence in the
Sea, consistent with the Montreaux Convention limitation on each of them of three
ships and 21-day stays. While respecting Turkish sensitivities, NATO might review the
relevance of the Convention’s limits. Warship deployments could support NATO
contingency planning for any escalation of Russian aggression, such as the use of its
Black Sea Fleet to intimidate shipping that uses Odessa and other ports of littoral
states.

At its summit in September, NATO ought to deepen its ties with Georgia, which seeks
to join NATO, and Ukraine, which might now want a closer link or membership. Georgia
has met key criteria for defense reform, civilian control, and free and fair elections.
America's multi-year train-and-equip program has sharpened Georgian military skills
and confidence. NATO members have conducted many years of military training and
exercises with Ukraine.

In response to Russian aircraft flights near Turkey, its air force has scrambled fighters
to patrol the Black Sea coast. NATO could support sustained joint air patrols over the
Sea, led by Turkey and together with Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia.

The West should employ military power to deter Russian aggression against neighbors,
but there is no reason to believe that Moscow plans nuclear attacks. While Western
responses need not encompass nuclear-related countermeasures, no more
withdrawals of US nuclear weapons from Europe should take place.

Prudent but potent Western defense steps will increase uncertainty in Kremlin thinking
and unease about consequences of aggression in Crimea or beyond. They will also
provide more space for diplomacy and political resolution. Two decades after the
collapse of the USSR, a strong defense remains essential to achieving a Europe that is
whole, free and at peace.

Job Henning is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency
and Congress and Truman Project Fellow. William Courtney was US ambassador to
Kazakhstan and Georgia, and special assistant to the President for Russia, Ukraine,
and Eurasia
The Ugly, Pointless Domestic Fight Over
Ukraine
Daniel R. DePetris, Erik French | The National Interest | March 19, 2014

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military incursion into Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula
has generated a storm of commentary and analysis on virtually every question under
the sun. What is driving Putin to act in such an aggressive manner? What does
Russia’s speedy intervention in Ukraine tell us about the strength of the new
government in Kiev? And what can NATO and the European Union possibly do in
response?

All of these questions strike at the heart of the manner, and the answers will determine
whether the Ukrainian crisis can be resolved through a process of de-escalation—
Washington and NATO’s first preference—or made worse by ill-timed and uninformed
decisions.

Back in Washington, there is an entirely different set of questions that are being batted
around. Historically, a crisis of international proportions would band Republican and
Democratic lawmakers together. Yet in an age of rapid partisanship on seemingly
every major policy issue, that tradition has been relegated to the sidelines. Moscow’s
adventure in Crimea is instead resurrecting a divisive and politically-charged debate on
foreign policy that has often clouded the Obama administration’s legacy since the
moment it assumed office five years ago. The central question is and remains: Is the
United States under President Obama being too passive on the international stage and
abdicating global leadership?

“Weak, soft, unprincipled,” and “naïve” are words that President Obama and his
national security aides in the White House now well; from the administration’s early
decision to “reset” America’s bilateral relationship with Russia to Obama’s personal
determination for a comprehensive nuclear settlement with Iran, Republicans of all
ideological stripes have used the “America-is-weak” argument as a way to rile their
base and diminish the president’s credibility on matters of foreign policy.

Putin’s quick and unchallenged military invasion of Ukraine’s strategic Crimea

Peninsula—an area that has a majority Russian population and has traditionally been a
part of Russian territory—has provided these same Republicans with a great talking
point to buttress their claims. Speaking to the CBS program Face the Nation on
Sunday, March 9, former vice president Dick Cheney connected Putin’s actions in
Ukraine directly to what he views as America’s inability to lead the world since the
Obama team entered the White House. “We have created an image around the world,”
Cheney stated, “not just for the Russians, of weakness, of indecisiveness.” Former
Republican vice presidential nominee (and rumored 2016 presidential candidate) Paul
Ryan immediately picked up where Cheney left off on the same program, categorizing
the earlier U.S.-Russia reset policy as “naïve, wishful thinking,” while at the same time
encouraging the administration to revisit a missile-defense system in Poland and the
Czech Republic that was scrapped as costly and strategically useless in 2009. Even
Condoleezza Rice, the former Secretary of State in the George W. Bush
administration, entered the discussion with an op-ed in The Washington Post, urging
renewed American global leadership in order to ensure that an already tense situation
in Ukraine doesn’t get worse.

Conservatives are right, however, about one point: in the opening hours of Russia’s
intervention in Crimea, Washington was caught a bit flat-footed. Part of the surprise
can be chalked up to the initial confusion over the intelligence community’s assessment
of the situation, where there appeared to be a stark difference of opinion on whether
Putin would send troops into Ukraine. In an ideal world, the Obama administration
could have been more prepared during the first forty-eight hours of the crisis, perhaps
by ensuring that the White House, State Department, and Pentagon had a ready-to-go
policy package that they could have quickly employed to deal with such a contingency.

Legitimate critiques notwithstanding, it is long past time to stop carping over the
Obama administration’s initial response. Instead, Republicans and Democrats alike
need to work together in a rare act of bipartisanship to implement a unified policy that is
helpful to Ukraine’s future, punishes Russia for its clear violation of the United Nations
Charter and highlights U.S. resolve during a time of international crisis.

Taken from an objective perspective, it is difficult to see what the United States can
plausibly do to convince the Russians to withdraw their 20,000+ soldiers from Crimea,
short of Western acceptance of Moscow’s de-facto annexation of the peninsula. The
same policies that hawkish conservatives are recommending—strict economic
sanctions on Russian oligarchs surrounding President Putin; increased military
commitment to NATO countries like Poland and the Baltic states; the deployment of the
USS Truxton to the Black Sea for exercises; diplomatic isolation of the Russian
Federation in the world community—are either already occurring, or are being actively
embraced.

A broad system of visa restrictions and asset freezes on Russian individuals “[who]
undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine [and] threaten its peace,
security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” have been in effect since March
6. The U.S. House of Representatives swiftly passed a $1 billion loan package to the
interim Ukrainian Government in a bipartisan fashion last week, and the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee has passed their own bipartisan assistance package in
an overwhelming 14-3 vote. And in a show of support to the NATO alliance,
Washington has taken military steps as well, including the deployment of six additional
F-15 aircraft to the Baltic Air patrol fleet and an enhanced military training partnership
with Poland.

Indeed, the only major recommendations that that the Obama administration has
neglected to fully adopt or implement are those that could very well work at cross-
purposes with a political solution to the crisis, including preparing the Republic of
Georgia for admission into NATO.

The United States may be the world’s remaining superpower, but even a country that
possesses unparalleled military, political, and economic power would be wise to
operate on a classic realist paradigm: what are America’s core national security
interests in the Ukraine, and how can the United States best accomplish those
objectives within a reasonable cost? Fortunately, after a few days of rancorous partisan
bickering about the administration’s “reset” policy and President Obama’s credibility on
the world stage, it now appears that the White House and Congress—while still divided
on the intricacies of the response—are all in agreement that the U.S. must defend
above all else the very basic obligations of the UN charter: “All Members shall refrain in
their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity
or political independence of any state.” [read: we won’t use force, Putin can – he’s not
a member of NATO, after all… ! ]

The Russian incursion into Crimea is an unquestionable breach of international law and
a clear violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Vladimir Putin,
however, seems to care little about these concerns, particularly when he believes that
Moscow’s national interests are directly at stake. The trick for the United States, the
European Union, NATO, and every other power opposed to the use of brute force is to
respond in unison, but without provoking Putin into a further act of aggression. This
problem represents a classic deterrence-reassurance dilemma—the US must balance
between deterring further Russian aggression and reassuring Putin that the US, EU,
and NATO do not plan on threatening Russia’s interests if it behaves like a responsible
power. While the US must show strength and resolve, it must also better understand
why Moscow is acting in such a bold and aggressive manner.

Some, like Rep. Paul Ryan, have called for the reinstatement of the Bush-era missile
defense shield in Eastern Europe as a perfect way to demonstrate America’s resolve.
Yet even this option could create more problems for the United States than it solves: if
the objective is to punish Moscow while at the same time deescalating the crisis in
Crimea, it is difficult to see how more missile defenses in Russia’s neighborhood could
achieve that balance. Playing to Putin’s sense of insecurity is not the best recipe for
preventing further aggression.

Moving forward, Washington should focus on how to solve the crisis at hand rather
than dithering over the Obama administration’s previous policies. The last thing the US
needs when its credibility is on the line is to have its own politicians repeatedly
questioning the country’s credibility. Political debates over whether the administration’s
past policy toward Russia has been naïve can take place once this crisis has been
resolved.

Daniel R. DePetris and Erik French are analysts for Wikistrat, Inc., a geopolitical
consulting firm. The views expressed here are the authors' alone.

[ Hands off the President !! If anyone needed another proof of the unbelievable
weakness of the Obama administration stance, this funny article is a classic of its
kind… ]
Dictator's Handbook: Six Regrettable
Lessons To Take Away From Crimea Crisis
By Daisy Sindelar RFE-RL March 18, 2014

The speed and ease with which Russia reclaimed its hold on the Crimean Peninsula
have left much of the world reeling. But the factors that went into it were years in the
making. Here are six life lessons for acquisitive future dictators and countries trying to
break free of them.

1. Don't Give Up Your Nukes

Twenty years ago, Ukraine was the third-largest nuclear power in the world, with 1,900
long-range and 2,400 short-range strategic warheads that had once been part of the
U.S.S.R.'s Cold War arsenal. But Kyiv voluntarily handed them back to Russia in 1994,
when it signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance, trading in its
nuclear weapons in exchange for sovereignty and the promise that Russia would
"refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political
independence of Ukraine."

It seemed like a good deal at the time. But many Ukrainian lawmakers are now
lamenting the decision, admitting something that Pakistan and India have known for
decades -- that missiles beat memoranda when it comes to keeping interlopers off your
land. Or, as Verkhovna Rada lawmaker Pavlo Ryzanenko told "USA Today," "If you
have nuclear weapons, people don't invade you." Fellow Budapest signatories Belarus
and Kazakhstan may suddenly be ruing the day they gave up their nukes. Iran and
North Korea, meanwhile, are less likely than ever to respond to global pressure to give
up theirs.

2. Deals Are Meaningless

See above. The Budapest Memorandum, despite being approved by all five
permanent members of the UN Security Council, has in no way restrained Vladimir
Putin from taking over Crimea. The Russian president has argued that the
memorandum no longer holds weight because the current Kyiv government arrived via
"coup" and is not legitimate in Moscow's eyes.

Nor has the Budapest deal prompted the Western co-signatories -- the United States
and the United Kingdom -- to step in militarily against Moscow. The agreement, as its
title suggests, provides assurances but stops short of actual security guarantees, which
neither Washington nor London was prepared to offer in 1994 (or now).

In its annexation of Crimea, in fact, Moscow has violated a number of agreements,

including the UN Charter, the Charter of the Council for Security and Cooperation in
Europe, the 1975 Helsinki Accords, the 1997 bilateral Ukraine-Russia treaty, and its
recently renewed lease agreement on the Black Sea Fleet, which provides for Russia's
Crimean bases but not the influx of thousands of additional troops. (It did not violate the
CFE Treaty on conventional armed forces in Europe, but only because it withdrew from
the agreement in 2007, a year before its war in Georgia.)

3. Ethnic Cleansing Works

Possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law. And if you really want to put your
claim on a territory, the best way to do it is by removing the locals and establishing
yourself as the new majority. The tactic was successfully used against Native
Americans in the United States, against Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
and against millions of non-Slavic minorities living in Stalin's Soviet Union.

More than 200,000 Tatars were forcibly expelled from Crimea in 1944 on the false
pretext of Nazi collaboration. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Russians were sent to
take their place, cementing Moscow's influence and strengthening the peninsula's
loyalty to the imperial center. By the 1980s, when Tatars began to return to Crimea in
what was then the Ukrainian SSR, they were the interlopers and the minority. Now,
with a 97 percent referendum return, Russia can argue it has "democratic" data to back
its takeover bid. After all, numbers don't lie.

4. It's Not Lying If They Believe It

Both Adolf Hitler and his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels were avid proponents of
the "Big Lie," a falsehood so flagrant, and so consequential, that people choose to
accept it rather than believe its teller capable of such underhandedness. Putin, whose
KGB training and rumored plastic surgery have rendered his expression all but
unreadable, has employed several Big Lies -- and innumerable little ones -- in his
Crimea campaign:

1) Russians are having their rights violated;

2) He is upset by the idea of Russians having their rights violated;
3) Power in Kyiv has been seized by fascists;
4) The situation is so dire Ukrainians themselves are fleeing to Russia;
5) No Russian troops entered Ukraine;
6) "We are not considering [annexing Crimea]."

Even in instances where such claims were demonstrably false -- as in Crimea, where
Russian soldiers willingly identified themselves to journalists -- there has been no
tangible downside to the lie. Cracking down on the few remaining free news outlets in
Russia has only made it easier to sell this alternate narrative at home.

5. The Market Has No Morals

The Sochi Olympics provided an early reminder of this, when sponsors like
McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Procter & Gamble refused to pressure Russia on its
antigay laws out of fear of hurting their profits. With the Ukraine crisis, global
governance appears equally hapless. Until the EU and U.S. sanctions on March 17,
there were no bodies or governments willing to penalize Russia's actions in Crimea
with more than words. Some $63 billion left Russia in 2013 alone, destined for Swiss
banks, Caribbean offshore accounts, and luxury real-estate markets in London,
Manhattan, and southern France.

Economic struggles have compromised the ability of Western countries to act as moral
standard-bearers -- they are not only dependent on Russian investment, they are
potentially tied to the mafia networks that lie behind it. (Russia's Central Bank has
estimated that two-thirds of the country's capital outflow are proceeds from crime,
bribes, and tax fraud.) Although the Ukrainian crisis has strained Russia's $2 trillion
economy -- the direct cost of annexing Crimea is estimated to be at least $3 billion --
it's not clear that sanctions will avoid a ripple effect on the EU and U.S. economies.

6. Patriotism Is Good -- Except When It's Terribly, Terribly Bad

Putin has spent most of his years in power dedicated to restoring the Russian national
identity -- dusting off Stalin, resurrecting the Orthodox Church, bemoaning the collapse
of the Soviet Union, exercising world-stage diplomacy, and replacing Soviet
cosmopolitanism with increasingly nativist tendencies. This Great Nation-building
project made it easy for the Kremlin leader to argue that the Crimean takeover was not
only natural, but necessary. Leaving Crimea and its people in trouble, Putin said,
"would have been nothing short of betrayal."

But having invoked patriotic sentiment at home, Putin then distorted it in Ukraine,
seizing on the country's massive Euromaidan protests as an opportunity for
scaremongering. The Russian president has alternately described the forces behind
the Ukrainian "coup" that replaced President Viktor Yanukovych with a pro-Western
interim government as nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes, and anti-Semites.
(Ukraine has accused Russia of staging deliberate provocations to advance this train of
thought.) This double-edged sword -- which works to Russia's advantage regardless --
may be wielded again as Moscow considers the fate of Russian "patriots" in eastern
Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan, and elsewhere
How to Punish Putin
By ALEXEY A. NAVALNY NY Times MARCH 19, 2014

MOSCOW — AS I write this, I am under house arrest. I was detained at a rally in

support of anti-Putin protesters who were jailed last month.

In September, I ran for mayor of Moscow as a pro-reform, pro-democracy opposition

candidate and received almost a third of the vote despite having no access to state
media. Today, my blog, which was until recently visited by over two million readers per
month, has been blocked as “extremist” after I called for friendly ties with Ukraine and
compliance with international law.

For years, I have been telling journalists that President Vladimir V. Putin’s approval
rating would soon peak and then tumble. Russia’s economy is stagnant, I said, and the
Russian people would soon weary of the president’s empty promises. Even a rally-
round-the-flag military adventure — a “little war,” as it’s known in Russia — would be
impossible, I believed. Russia no longer had enemies.

Then, on Feb. 28, Russia sent troops to Ukraine in precisely such a “little war.” I admit
that I underestimated Mr. Putin’s talent for finding enemies, as well as his dedication to
ruling as “president for life,” with powers on par with the czars’.

As a citizen and patriot, I cannot support actions against Russia that would worsen
conditions for our people. Still, I recommend two options that, if successfully
implemented, I believe would be welcomed by most Russians.

First, although Mr. Putin’s invasion has already prompted the European Union to
impose sanctions on 21 officials, and the United States on seven, most of these
government figures cannot be considered influential. They do not have major assets
outside Russia and are irrelevant to Mr. Putin; sanctioning them will not change
Russia’s policy. After all the tough talk from Western politicians, this action is mocked
in Russia and even seen as a tacit encouragement to Mr. Putin and his entourage, who
seem to possess some magical immunity.

Instead, Western nations could deliver a serious blow to the luxurious lifestyles enjoyed
by the Kremlin’s cronies who shuttle between Russia and the West. This means
freezing the oligarchs’ financial assets and seizing their property.

Such sanctions should primarily target Mr. Putin’s inner circle, the Kremlin mafia who
pillage the nation’s wealth, including Gennady N. Timchenko, head of the Volga Group;
Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, influential businessmen and former judo sparring partners
of Mr. Putin; Yuri V. Kovalchuk, a financier believed to be Mr. Putin’s banker; Vladimir I.
Yakunin, president of Russian Railways; the oligarchs Roman A. Abramovich and
Alisher B. Usmanov; and Igor I. Sechin and Aleksei B. Miller, the heads of Rosneft and
Gazprom, respectively.

The sanctions must also hit the oligarchs whose media outlets parrot the regime lines,
and target Mr. Putin’s entire “war cabinet”: the TV spin doctors, compliant Duma
members and apparatchiks of Mr. Putin’s United Russia Party.

The invasion of Ukraine has polarized members of Russia’s elite, many of whom view it
as reckless. Real sanctions, such as blocking access to their plush London apartments,
will show that Mr. Putin’s folly comes with serious costs.
Second, Western authorities must investigate ill-gotten gains from Russia within their
jurisdictions. The Anti-Corruption Foundation, which I established in 2011, has revealed
dozens of major cases of graft. In 90 percent of those cases, Russian money was
laundered in the West. Sadly, American, European Union and British law enforcement
agencies have stymied our efforts to investigate such criminal plunder.

“Crimea has always been an integral part of Russia in the hearts and minds of people,”
Mr. Putin claimed this week. But even among the most nationalist and pro-Soviet of our
people, a longing to restore Crimea to Russian rule faded years ago.

Yet Mr. Putin has cynically raised nationalist fervor to a fever pitch; imperialist
annexation is a strategic choice to bolster his regime’s survival. Mobilizing the masses
by distracting them from real problems like corruption and economic stagnation can
take place only beneath the banner of fighting external enemies.

What is truly alarming in Mr. Putin’s rash behavior is that he is motivated by the desire
for revenge against the Ukrainian people for revolting against a Kremlin-friendly
government. A rational actor would know that the precedent of holding a local
referendum to determine sovereignty is risky for Russia — a federation of more than 80
disparate regions, including more than 160 ethnic groups and at least 100 languages.

It is true that the consensus in both Russia and Crimea is that the peninsula has
historically been closer to Moscow than to Kiev. But the notion that this reunification
should be achieved at the end of the barrel of a gun is supported only by Mr. Putin’s
hard-core base. The opposition has spoken clearly. The antiwar protest held in
Moscow over the weekend was the largest in two years, and it exceeded any
counterdemonstration mustered by pro-Kremlin movements.

There is a common delusion among the international community that although Mr.
Putin is corrupt, his leadership is necessary because his regime subdues the dark,
nationalist forces that otherwise would seize power in Russia. The West should admit
that it, too, has underestimated Mr. Putin’s malign intent. It is time to end the
dangerous delusion that enables him.

Alexey A. Navalny is a Russian lawyer, anti-corruption activist and opposition politician.

[100% right… but “this West” will never choose those options]
Russia Wants Much More Than Crimea
BY EDWARD LUTTWAK MARCH 9, 2014

The long-advertised Russian move to partition the Ukraine calls for a more serious
response than empty words—it is unacceptable to declare “unacceptable” what is
plainly being accepted without any effective response. Pathetically, the several
European leaders who rushed to declare the Russian move “unacceptable”
immediately added that they had no intention of doing anything about it. Our own
Secretary of State John Kerry resorted to the playground threat of disinviting President
Vladimir Putin from the next G-8 (G-7?) summit-party. Yes, they are great fun with all
those group photographs and the food is excellent, but the Crimea is worth a tiramisu.

Actually the Crimea is not what the Russians want—they want much more. The “Novy
Russia” plan prepared in the Kremlin—worked out in detail down to the design of its
flag—would separate all the territory east of the great Dnieper River into a new state,
“affiliated” with the Russian Federation, until its accession can be worked out in due
course. This Trans-Dnieper territory is many times larger than the Trans-Dniestr
republic (a.k.a. Republica Moldovenească Nistreană) that the Russians successfully
sliced off the Moldovan Republic and keep till this day, but unlike the latter which is
separated from the Russian Federation by Ukrainian territory, "Novy Russia" would
seamlessly form its southern extension down to the Black Sea.

The Dnieper as a dividing border gives Crimea to Russia including its irreplaceable
naval base, but mostly has the decisive advantage of enclosing a population that
includes many ethnic Russians, many Russian-speaking Ukrainians, and many
Ukrainians who see their future with Moscow because their livelihood depends on
Russian firms or is in Russia itself. Certainly the outlook of the populations living east of
the Dnieper is very different from the outlook of the protagonists of the revolt: the
activists from Lviv, that city being the Lvov of Galicia that was only annexed in 1944,
many of whose inhabitants are Uniate Catholics rather than Orthodox. Putin could
therefore appeal to the impeccably Wilsonian principle of self-determination to
legitimize his new state. Finally, the trans-Dnieper Novy Russia could still have Kiev as
its capital in the three districts (raions) east of the great river, allowing the Ukrainians
their Kyiv as their historic capital. Putin could even boast of his restraint in giving up
Odessa, historically Russian but west of the Dnieper.

At home, certainly, Putin has nothing to worry about: Many Russians believe that all of
the Ukraine should “return” to Russia, while the historically minded will recall that the
original Novorossiya won from the Tatars extended across both sides of the Dnieper.

Americans and Europeans now face a hard choice: start a new “cold war” of routine
non-cooperation with Moscow, or else join in the process of extracting a non-failed
state out of Ukraine, by conducting referenda in the 24 oblasts (provinces) and the
autonomous republic of Crimea.

Starting a new Cold War would have the advantage of moral clarity, and the
disadvantage of dividing Europe: The Germans will not quarrel with Moscow no matter
what—it would distract them from their economy-first national strategy. The re-
engineering of the Ukraine would offer the promise of stability at last, with the major
disadvantage of legitimizing Putin’s use of force. What offers no advantages at all is the
repetition of empty phrases and childish threats.
Cold War was only on vacation
March 19, 2014 01:00 AM By Peter Morici COLLEGE PARK, Md.

The Crimea is lost. The challenge now is to avoid a wider conflict with a Russia bent on
absorbing more territory and extending its influence farther into Eastern Europe.

To avoid an eventual choice between feeding Russia’s appetite for lost empire and a
hot war, European and U.S. leaders must embrace expensive and politically tough
economic and defense choices.

Save petroleum, aluminum and a few less significant products, the Russian economy is
broadly uncompetitive in global markets. Oil and gas account for 75 percent of exports
and 50 percent of Moscow’s revenues, and Russia depends on imports from the E.U.
for technology and many consumer goods. It even buys ships from France to
modernize its navy.

U.S. and European economic sanctions on Russian political and military leaders
responsible for the Crimean invasion will make a statement but are unlikely to have any
tangible impact on Vladimir Putin’s behavior. However, if the Europeans phase out
purchases of Russia’s gas, it has few options to sell it elsewhere. Putin would be
starved for cash to finance his military and spread benefits to political cronies.

Replacing Russian gas — which provides 30 percent of European supplies — won’t be

cheap or pleasant. Europe must frack for shale gas, re-embrace nuclear power and
accelerate solar and other alternatives.

For French shipbuilders, German equipment manufacturers and European technology

and consumer goods producers, cutting off Russia’s most important source of hard
currency to buy what they make would be wrenching. Still, it would impose far more
systemically destabilizing penalties.

More than Russian guns won the referendum in the Crimea. The sad state of the
economy and political corruption in the Ukraine made the former Russian possession
vulnerable to reacquisition.

To halt Russian expansion, the E.U. must do much more to assimilate the Ukraine and
other former Soviet states into the Western economy by building infrastructure and
moving significantly more industry into these regions, buying a lot more of their exports,
and imposing aggressive conditions for economic and political reforms in exchange for
those benefits.

All of this would be provocative to Moscow and require rebuilding NATO forces, and
moving those further east into Romania, the Baltic and aggressively courting
cooperation with Belarus.

Germany and the U.S. have the economic resources but have demonstrated
inadequate commitment to giving real meaning to the economic and security
commitments the West made to Eastern Europe — for example, in the 1994 Ukrainian
security agreement.

Now, Putin and his political allies, chastened by the loss of empire and emboldened by
Russia’s petroleum wealth, are exploiting western neglect of former Soviet states.

In America, President Obama’s economic policies have boiled down to raising taxes,
cutting defense spending and building out a European-style welfare state. Stiffening
NATO commitments to Eastern Europe will require German and U.S. governments to
step up and pay for stronger militaries.

In Germany and the United States, taxes are already quite high, even by Cold War
standards, and the obvious tradeoff between guns and butter would hit the Obama and
Merkel governments where it hurts most — their standing with voters who have come
to expect wider and wider welfare benefits.

The greatest courage will be required from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and
Barack Obama or they will bequeath to their successors a much more dangerous
world.

The Cold War never really ended, it just took a Black Sea vacation.

Peter Morici, an occasional contributor, is an economist and professor at the University

of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. He tweets @pmorici1

[i.e. party is over, welcome back to the 1950s… well, not so bad after all ]
US-Russia confrontation could drift to
Mideast
Paul J. Saunders | AL Monitor | March 18, 2014

As Russia moves steadily toward annexing Crimea — and the United States and
Western countries respond with sanctions and other steps — the risk of an extended
global confrontation is growing. Although any confrontation between the West and
Russia would likely differ significantly from the Cold War because of today’s massive
economic imbalance between the two sides, it may also look like the Cold War in some
respects. Among these may be a struggle for influence in the Middle East with
unpredictable results.

With 1.3% economic growth last year — without a major geopolitical crisis or Western
sanctions — Russia’s financial resources will be strained and its options limited. Still,
the Central Bank has nearly half a trillion dollars in reserves, which could help Moscow
to manage an economic slump for some time, possibly two or three years at current
energy price levels (oil and gas revenues make up about 50% of Russia’s federal
budget revenue, with oil providing the vast majority of this).

If Western-Russian tensions escalate, the Russian government’s immediate priorities

will be to inject state funding into the economy in order to sustain political support and
to find additional revenue. The new money will be especially important; a Russian
newspaper’s analysis puts the costs of annexing Crimea at $20 billion over the next
three years.

At the same time, Russia’s officials are sufficiently pragmatic to know that they cannot
prevail in a tit-for-tat exchange of economic sanctions with the United States and the
EU — Russia’s economy is one-eighth the size of the US economy alone. This will
encourage Moscow to look for asymmetrical instruments of pressure on America and
Europe. More challenging for Russia would be stitching together these tactical efforts
into a coherent strategy that leads to greater regional influence.

The Middle East offers many opportunities for Putin to combine business with pleasure
in challenging the United States. Consider its tumultuous strategic environment: a civil
war in Syria, a potential civil war in Libya, ongoing political instability in Egypt and Iraq,
simmering violence in Yemen, and political uncertainty almost everywhere else. Saudi
Arabia and Qatar are deeply engaged in Syria’s war, as are Iran and Hezbollah. Saudi
Arabia and Egypt (among others) are frustrated with the United States — the former
over Syria and the latter over America’s intervention in its complex politics, where
Washington seems to have been on almost every side at one point or another and has
consequently alienated almost all sides. Uncertainty about Iran’s intentions further
complicates all of this, as does a weakened relationship between the United States and
Israel (where Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman appears to be one of Putin’s closer
personal contacts among foreign officials). Meanwhile, China has surpassed the United
States as the largest buyer of Middle East oil even as broader China-Middle East trade
soars. Expanded Russian arms sales — or new Russian nuclear power plants — may
only further destabilize the region.

In addition to Syria, Moscow is likely to concentrate on Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Syria are Russia’s principal security concerns in the Middle East;
Moscow’s pre-eminent security interest is in minimizing its own domestic terrorism
problem, which means supporting a strong Syrian government that can crack down on
extremists and discouraging Saudi and other financial support, whether official or
otherwise, for al-Qaeda-connected opposition groups in Syria and extremists in the
former Soviet Union. Russia has long viewed Saudi Arabia and Qatar as key sources
of support for Chechen militia groups and two Russian operatives were convicted in
Qatar in 2004 for assassinating former Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev to cut
short his fund-raising activity there. Indeed, leaked reports purported to summarize a
six-hour summer 2013 meeting between Putin and Saudi intelligence chief Prince
Bandar bin Sultan suggest a tense discussion of Syria and terrorism in Russia.
Riyadh’s recently diminished support for al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria may facilitate
better relations with Russia (and many others). Saudi officials have also referred to
negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement with Russia, though little progress is
evident.

Egypt’s importance has more to do with its place as one of the region’s most populous
nations and largest economies, as well as its status as a top destination for Russian
tourists, who make up the largest share of international tourists visiting the country. It is
also symbolically significant as a former Soviet Cold War ally — essential context for a
recently reported Egypt-Russia arms deal that may or may not be for real. Modern
Russia is quite distinct from the Soviet Union in insisting that its clients pay their bills
and it is far from clear that reported Saudi financing for the multibillion dollar contract
will materialize. Nevertheless, leaders in both Moscow and Cairo seem motivated to
engage in public flirtation with an uncertain destination — and in a February meeting,
Putin endorsed Field Marshal Abdullah Fatah al-Sisi’s decision to run for president. The
statement highlights Russia’s reluctance to criticize or second guess regional
strongmen, which some might find an appealing contrast to the United States.

Since US military action against Iran seems to be off the table so long as negotiations
appear ongoing, Russia’s principal stakes in Tehran are economic — as a general
commercial partner and an arms supplier — and geopolitical. The Kremlin’s position as
a veto-wielding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and its
resulting place at the table in the P5+1 process, have been an enduring source of
international visibility and influence only recently surpassed by Russia’s Syria role.
Moscow also appreciates Iran’s restraint in the former Soviet region and, as a result,
sees it as a valuable partner in managing Saudi Arabia. Fundamentally, however,
some Russian officials have a conflicted attitude toward Iran, in that they welcome
diplomacy as an alternative to US-led war or regime change, but are not especially
eager for a US-Iran rapprochement that could undermine Tehran’s interest in their
relationship.

The central question in assessing Saudi, Egyptian and Iranian foreign policy is whether
any of them might truly make significant changes in its foreign policy orientation. Could
Saudi Arabia or Egypt develop considerably closer ties to Russia or could Iran do the
same with America? Experts on each of the three countries can likely provide a long list
of reasons that such change is improbable, as experts on Russia could describe why
Moscow can’t or won’t take particular steps. Chances are good that most will be proven
right; inertia is as powerful in policy as it is in physics.

Unfortunately, however, they could also be proven wrong. The international system as
a whole, and the Middle East in particular, now face levels of uncertainty not seen for
quite some time. And because experts of all kinds are inherently experts on the past —
not the future — they often fail to predict major dislocations. In times like these, leaders
on all sides have a special responsibility to think twice before acting, for unlike the
experts, their choices have consequences.

Paul J. Saunders is Executive Director of the Center for the National Interest. He was
a State Department Senior Advisor during the George W. Bush administration.
Where is America's missing foreign policy?
By Cal Thomas/ Published March 18, 2014/ FoxNews.com

Not only does the "emperor" have no clothes,

he appears to the world as having no
backbone and no guts

What happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may eventually be discovered, but there
is something else that has been missing for much longer and its "disappearance" has
far greater implications for America. It is our foreign policy. Can anyone say what it is?

With Russia's Vladimir Putin behaving like a modern Catherine the Great in his efforts
to annex Crimea and possibly all of Ukraine, what is our policy toward Russia, which is
behaving increasingly like its former, supposedly dead, communist self?

In a New York Times op-ed column last week, Arizona Republican Senator John
McCain wrote: "...Crimea has exposed the disturbing lack of realism that has
characterized our foreign policy under President Obama. ... For five years, Americans
have been told that 'the tide of war is receding,' that we can pull back from the world at
little cost to our interests and values. This has fed a perception that the United States is
weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative."

Secretary of State John Kerry warns of a "strong response" by the United States and
severe economic sanctions against Russia if Putin proceeds as he has threatened in
Ukraine. Whose threats are more credible?

President Obama has retreated on everything from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Iran's
nuclear program and his "red line," which Syria crossed and paid no price when it used
chemical weapons against its own people. He has even retreated on domestic policy
issues, most glaringly on the individual mandate in the misnamed Affordable Care Act.

Not only does the "emperor" have no clothes, he appears to the world as having no
backbone and no guts. It's not just a question of military power. It is about formulating,
articulating and implementing a consistent foreign policy that is credible and produces
results in support of U.S. interests.

Somewhere between Ron Paul's isolationism and neo-con interventionism is what the
U.S. should be modeling to the world.

Somewhere between John F. Kennedy's noble, but impractical ideal of "pay any price,
bear any burden" in the defense of liberty and George McGovern's "come home
America," is a foreign policy we should pursue.

It's up to the president to articulate that policy and then make it credible by consistently
acting on it. John Kennedy also noted, "Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign
policy can kill us."

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton spoke last week at the 2014 Conservative
Political Action Conference. He said, "Our biggest national security crisis is Barack
Obama."

Bolton suggested the president allowed the murderers of America's ambassador to

Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three others to "get away scot free" after he had
repeatedly promised they would be brought to justice.
Tyrants, terrorists and dictators watch an indecisive president and take note. Action
matters far more than words.

President Obama, perhaps our most self-absorbed chief executive, has said: "I would
put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any
president -- with the possible exception of [Lyndon] Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln -- just
in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

Leaving aside his hubris and a debate over whether retreat from the world and
pressuring Israel to give up more land to its enemies are accomplishments, what
should be concluded from such a ridiculous statement about America's foreign policy?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has observed: "No foreign policy -- no
matter how ingenious -- has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few
and carried in the hearts of none."

American foreign policy in 2014 hasn't been born, because under this administration it
does not even appear to have yet been conceived.

Cal Thomas is America's most widely syndicated op-ed columnist. He joined Fox News
Channel in 1997 as a political contributor.
Analysis: Russia's Crimea move poses West
huge questions
By Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent 18 March 2014

It may not be Belgium's answer to the Sochi Winter Olympics but the roof-line of Nato's
shiny new headquarters in Brussels looks like several giant ski-jumps fused together.

The new headquarters - as yet unfinished and over-budget - seemed to many critics a
costly extravagance at a time when the alliance was searching for a role. Even more so
since cost-cutting was forcing Nato countries to reduce staffing levels significantly.

The echo of Sochi is coincidental, but the upsurge of tensions between Russia and the
West may have given Nato new purpose. Indeed the crisis in the Crimea could well
have significant longer term implications: for Nato; for the European Union; for
Washington's relationship with Europe; and for the future pattern of energy supplies.

Though much of the rhetoric and the cast of characters may be reminiscent of earlier
times, this will not simply be a reprise of the Cold War. Russia, for one thing, is not the
Soviet Union. The globalised economy provides a very different context, and we are a
long way from a military confrontation between Moscow and the West.

But nobody should be under any illusions. The crisis in the Crimea is the most
significant drama to hit the Euro-Atlantic area since the end of the Cold War.

Hopes dashed

As the 20th Century came to a close, there were some who claimed that the collapse of
the Soviet Union marked an "end to history". The idea, put crudely, was that we were
all capitalists now and that the great ideological divisions that had blighted the world for
nearly 100 years were now over.

Such views were quickly seen as premature. But they nonetheless persisted in the
sense that there was still a strong desire in the West to see Russia - and China - as
partners, countries that could be made responsible stakeholders in the international
system.

China's behaviour in the East and South China Seas raises questions in many of its
neighbours' minds about the validity of this thesis. But as for Russia, its move in the
Crimea buries such ideas once and for all.

Narratives are important here. There was a sense in the West that they had given up
traditional power-politics, downplaying military aspects of power as defence budgets
tumbled (itself a product of austerity as much as anything else), while focusing upon
economic and soft power.

Taste of the future

That, of course, was not the way things were seen in Moscow, which saw a series of
unilateral Western military actions - in the Balkans, in Iraq, and in Libya - as a sign that
the West would use its power in an arbitrary and unilateral fashion.

This, coming after the advance of Nato's frontiers ever-closer to Russia, seemed to
confirm President Vladimir Putin in his view that only by reasserting Moscow's role in
the former Soviet-space could his country's prestige and security be assured. The
defence of Russian minorities became both a goal and a tactic to achieve this end.

The 2008 crisis with Georgia, which saw Moscow effectively establishing two Russian-
speaking protectorates carved out from Georgia-proper, was just a taster. Crimea itself
is not the main course; that is Ukraine itself.

Nobody knows Mr Putin's long-term goals here. His short-term actions have certainly
contributed to the establishment of a strongly anti-Russian government in Kiev.

But Russia clearly wants influence over Ukraine as a whole. Whether it seeks to bite off
further chunks of Ukrainian territory, or simply settles for seeking to undermine the new
authorities in Kiev from within, the clear signal is that this crisis does not end with the
Crimea vote. The fate of Ukraine could see Russia and the West at loggerheads for
some time to come.

US priorities

The implications of this are considerable. It has not been the European Union's finest
hour, with clear divisions between its members based largely upon their own histories
with Moscow and their proximity to Russia's borders.

Foreign policy has always been a problematic area for the EU, one largely based upon
a "lowest common denominator" approach, which is not necessarily the best way to
tackle a major crisis.

Nato has beefed up air coverage but faces longer-term questions about its resolve

One consequence of all of this will be a revived Nato, but there must still be huge
questions as to whether the alliance countries can match their stronger rhetoric with
increased defence capability.

Some of the biggest questions are posed for Washington. For all the talk about an
Asian pivot and the desire to hand over some responsibility to its European allies, this
crisis underscores the central role of the US in European security.

By an accident of timing it is US aircraft that are carrying out Nato's air policing mission
over the Baltics, so it is US jets that have been despatched to reinforce them, and more
US aircraft have been sent to Poland. Going forward, the Pentagon may now have to
look at how to guarantee the reassurance of its allies for the long-term.

Rhetoric cheap

There will be big diplomatic questions for the US as well. Many will want to look again
at how the whole relationship with Russia has been managed, ranging from the failure
to respond strongly to the Georgian crisis during the previous presidency to the failure
of Mr Obama's "re-set" of ties with Moscow.

But, equally, Washington is well aware that tensions with Russia could have
ramifications across a broad swathe of international activity: work at the UN; the Iranian
nuclear dossier; the crisis in Syria and so on.

The economic impact of the crisis could also be significant depending upon how it
evolves, and the seriousness of Western economic sanctions.

The problem is that Russia, too, has cards it can play. Damage can be done to the
Russian economy but at a cost to the wider global economic system; something US
and Western European politicians are only too aware of. Rhetoric is cheap. Real
actions have a price.

In the longer term, as the British Foreign Secretary William Hague noted in the House
of Commons, Europeans might accelerate efforts to move away from their dependence
upon Rusian gas supplies. The prospect of enhanced US exports could be important
here but this is for the medium-term. For the time being Russia and Europe remain
locked in an energy embrace that, if disrupted, will be damaging for both of them.

The stakes here are huge. The international system is facing a major turning point with
implications that go well beyond Russia's immediate neighbourhood.

Two decades after the end of the Cold War there could now be the prospect of a much
more distant and antagonistic relationship between Russia and the West becoming the
new norm.
Europe|News Analysis
Russia’s Aggression in Crimea Brings
NATO Into Renewed Focus
NY Times | By STEVEN ERLANGERMARCH 18, 2014

LONDON — Russia’s annexation of Crimea has suddenly revived the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization’s central role as a counterweight to Moscow, and with it questions
about the alliance’s options and ability to act.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. swept into Poland and the Baltic nations on
Tuesday with a message of reassurance that their membership in NATO carries the
protection of the United States. But given deep Western reluctance to use military force
in response to Russia’s aggression, it remains unclear what the alliance’s commitment
to collective security means for Ukraine and other nonmembers should President
Vladimir V. Putin continue to try to expand Moscow’s influence in the former Soviet
bloc.

Ian Bond, the director of foreign policy at the Center for European Reform, a London-
based research group, said that “Putin has just given NATO something to do, but the
question is whether NATO is up to it.” It is now crucial to deter further moves by Mr.
Putin, he said. “If Russian forces move into eastern Ukraine,” he said, “what would
NATO do?”

The Atlantic alliance was designed, as the old phrase went, to keep the Americans in,
the Germans down and the Soviets out. Now, with Mr. Putin acting more like a Cold
War antagonist, arguing that Russia has the right to defend Russians everywhere, the
United States will be under more pressure to sustain and exhibit military strength in
Europe despite the much ballyhooed “pivot to Asia.”

Since the Ukraine crisis began, the United States, in the context of the alliance, has
sent more F-16 fighters to Poland and F-15 fighters to the Baltics. It has begun
Airborne Warning and Control System, or Awacs, flights over the Polish and Romanian
borders, and has ordered more exercises with warships in the Black Sea.

“As NATO allies,” President Obama said on Monday, “we have a solemn commitment
to our collective defense, and we will uphold that commitment.”

The Ukraine crisis “is a complete reminder of why NATO is useful,” said Jan Techau,
director of Carnegie Europe. “If NATO were not in place, this would be a real existential
struggle for Eastern and Western Europe, and it isn’t.”

Kadri Liik, an Estonian analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said
simply: “It’s good to be in NATO right now.”

Some officials, like Foreign Secretary William Hague of Britain, have said that the
alliance “is not looking at military options here, this is not a Crimean War.” But Mr.
Bond at the Center for European Reform said he thinks such statements are a mistake.
“There’s a risk Putin will listen to that and think moving into eastern Ukraine is as
limited as taking over South Ossetia and Abkhazia: a couple weeks of weak sanctions,”
he said.

Instead, Mr. Bond said, he would prefer to see active military exercises, and soon. He
said that the United States Army in Europe was scheduled to have an exercise in July
in Ukraine, “and it might be worth moving that up.”
But reinforced American involvement of that sort is also likely to reduce faltering
European efforts, in a time of budget constraints, to create a capable European
security and defense identity.

As NATO’s long involvement in Afghanistan concludes, the renewed emphasis on

Russia and Europe is also likely to delay the alliance’s efforts to turn itself into a global
actor, able to deal with threats like terrorism and cyberwarfare. Those goals were
supposed to be the focus of the next NATO summit meeting in September, in Wales.

A vital task for the Atlantic alliance now is to ensure that Article 5 — its commitment to
collective defense — is seen to be firm and strengthened, said Ivo H. Daalder, a former
American ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global
Affairs. That will mean additional deployments and exercises like November’s
Steadfast Jazz, the first Article 5 exercise in more than a decade, which took place
near Poland and the Baltics. Far more French troops took part than American ones,
something that is likely to change for the next exercise, in 2015, scheduled to take
place near the Iberian Peninsula.

“Those allies that joined NATO in the last two decades did so fundamentally because
they wanted to be under the security blanket provided by the United States and NATO,
and the events of the last three weeks remind them that that’s a good thing,” Mr.
Daalder said. “But we have to be very serious about defending these 28 states, and
you do it through serious contingency planning, serious exercises like Steadfast Jazz
and visible deployments of armed forces.”

In recent years, even the commitment of Washington to Article 5 has been questioned
as the United States has sought an accommodation with Russia and emphasized a
growing threat from China. It was not until 2009, a senior NATO official said, that a war-
fighting contingency plan to defend the Baltics was even drawn up, five years after they
joined the alliance and were promised collective defense.

Similarly, the second Bush administration pushed a guarantee of alliance membership

for Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 without, the NATO official said, “seriously thinking
through how to defend them.” At an alliance summit in Bucharest, Romania, in 2008,
Mr. Putin crashed the dinner and said that he regarded Ukraine as an “artificial
country,” warning the alliance that Russia would never accept Ukrainian and Georgian
membership in NATO.

The Bush proposal was rejected by Germany, France and a divided alliance, and
Ukraine and Georgia were simply promised that one day they would be members.

“It was a mistake to be so hesitant in 2008 and not go in one direction or the other,” Ms.
Liik said. “We demonstrated that NATO was not united and provided Russia an
opportunity to establish facts on the ground.”

Since then, there has been no consensus in the alliance about expansion. At the same
time, Russia has moved against Western-leaning governments in both Georgia and
Ukraine on the pretext of defending ethnic Russians under threat, creating independent
states from Georgia and now annexing Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is
based.

The alliance has never figured out how to handle the countries, like Ukraine, Moldova
and Georgia, stuck between Russia and NATO, said James Goldgeier, dean of the
School of International Service at American University. “We never came up with a
solution for the insecurity of that area, and we still don’t have one,” he said. “We’ve
known for a long time that relations with the United States are not that important to
Putin, and making sure Ukraine doesn’t go West is a lot more important to him.”

Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International
Affairs, said that “Putin could not have scripted this better for those who believe in the
continuing relevance of NATO.”

The alliance is coming home after long years in Afghanistan and its limited but vital role
in Libya, Mr. Niblett said, amid divisions within the alliance about its role. “But Putin has
raised, even more than Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo, concerns about events that we
thought could no longer happen on the European continent,” he said.

“There’s still a 19th- and 20th-century Europe alongside the 21st-century one,” Mr.
Niblett said. “We thought Russia could change, was changing. But Putin has taken it in
another direction, consolidating power in a crude form.”

NATO and the West will have to balance reassurance and provocation. “We need to
think about the next generation of Russian leaders and carefully create space for
them,” he said. “To encourage Ukraine now to join NATO as some sort of solution
would be rash for the security of Europe.”
If History Is a Guide, Crimeans’ Celebration
May Be Short-Lived
NY Times | By OLESYA VARTANYAN and ELLEN BARRYMARCH 18, 2014

ATOTSI, Georgia — As Crimeans danced in the streets this week, giddy at the
prospect of being gathered into Russia, few were watching as closely as the residents
of the tiny mountainous enclave of South Ossetia, who, five and a half years ago, were
similarly ecstatic.

On the day in 2008 when Russia formally recognized the enclave as independent of
Georgia, young men hung out of their car windows, waving Russian flags and spraying
pedestrians with Champagne. Officials daydreamed about building an economy based
on tourism, like that of Monaco or Andorra.

That has not happened. These days South Ossetia’s economy is entirely dependent on
budgetary funds from Russia. Unemployment is high, and so are prices, since goods
must now be shuttled in through the tunnel, long and thin like a drinking straw, that cuts
through the Caucasus ridge from Russia.

Its political system is controlled by elites loyal to Moscow, suddenly wealthy enough to
drive glossy black cars, though many roads are pitted or unpaved. Dozens of homes
damaged in the 2008 war with Georgia have never been repaired. Dina Alborova, who
heads a nonprofit organization in the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, said her early
hopes “all got corrected, step by step.”

“During the first winter, we still thought, ‘The war just ended,’ ” she said. “By the second
winter, frustration had taken root. When the third winter came, everything was clear.”

When Russia invaded Georgia, repelling a Georgian attack on South Ossetia and
taking control of the separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it seemed
most unlikely that the Kremlin was thinking about long-term consequences.

As in Crimea, the war was presented to Russians as a humanitarian effort to protect its
citizens, and more broadly as a challenge to encirclement by the United States, which
was aligned with Georgia. Television stations gave the intervention blanket coverage,
and it was wildly popular in Russia, lifting the approval ratings of Dmitri A. Medvedev to
the highest point of his presidency.

The aftermath of recognition, however, has presented Russia with a long series of
headaches. This week, economists have warned repeatedly that Crimea, if it is
absorbed, will prove a serious drag on Russia’s budget, but their arguments have been
drowned out in the roar of public support for annexation.

Aleksei A. Malashenko, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said Russian

officials “will be shocked” with the challenges they face when trying to manage Crimea
— reviving its economy, distributing money and influence among its ethnic groups, and
trying to control the corruption that accompanies all big Russian projects. And, judging
from precedent, the public’s euphoria will fade, he said.

“I think that in Russia, the majority of the society forgot about Ossetia, and if it weren’t
for the Olympics, the majority of the society would also forget about Abkhazia,” Mr.
Malashenko said. “Of course, Crimea is not Ossetia. But anyway, the popularity of
Crimeans, and the Crimean tragedy, will be forgotten in a year.”
South Ossetia’s president, Leonid Tibilov, a former K.G.B. officer, was among the first
to celebrate Russia’s decision to absorb Crimea on Tuesday, calling it “the only
possible step to grant solid peace to Crimea, which is the main and essential condition
for its further prosperity.”

He has some insight into the question: South Ossetia for years lobbied Russia to
absorb it, voting for accession as far back as 1992. Russia did not respond until 2008,
sending tanks across the Georgian border and recognizing South Ossetia as an
independent country.

People were delighted to see the Russian soldiers.

Separatists here had spent two decades locked in conflict with the Georgian
authorities, and had little economy to speak of, apart from apple orchards and the
smuggling of drugs, counterfeit money and bootleg vodka through the tunnel into
Russia. Georgian forces had shelled Tskhinvali, forcing many residents to cower for
days in basements, and when Russia formally recognized South Ossetia, it meant a
guarantee of protection.

“Finally, finally, Russia has acknowledged that we exist, and that we have suffered,”
one Ossetian militiaman exulted that day. “Ossetia thanks its defenders,” read graffiti
on one building, and another read, “Shame, Georgian bootlicker!” One South Ossetian
official wondered aloud which country would be the next to offer recognition — Serbia,
China, Syria or Belarus. None ever did.

Russia, for its part, was lavishly demonstrating its commitment to South Ossetia; the
conductor Valery Gergiev, who has close ties in the Kremlin, flew the entire orchestra
of the Mariinsky Theater in to perform a symphony under floodlights near a ruined
building.

Some measure of that warmth has lasted. Ms. Alborova, director of the Agency for
Social, Economic and Cultural Development, still remembers being in her basement
with a few family members during the Georgian bombardment, with the “sense that
these were the very last seconds of my life.” Now, she said, “thank God, we sleep
peacefully.”

But within a few months of Russia’s recognition, shivering through the winter behind
windows made of plastic sheeting, people began to wonder when the billions of rubles
of aid pledged by Russia would reach them. The answer seems to have been that
much of it was stolen: Mr. Malashenko said he estimated that 30 percent of the aid
pledged by Russia had reached its target.

Russia’s federal audit chamber found that six months after the conflict, only $1.4 million
had been spent on reconstruction out of a disbursement of $55 million in priority aid. By
last year, the chamber estimated that $33 million had been lost or misused. South
Ossetia’s government eventually opened 70 cases against former officials, alleging that
they stole a total of $22 million.

The flows of cash changed South Ossetia, complained an academic from Tskhinvali,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the local authorities.
Officials who once lived modestly began to build lavish houses in “apricot and pink” and
cruise the streets in “black cars with blacked-out windows,” she said, adding that she
had recently paid $6 for a cup of green tea.

“It will be sad if Crimea turns out the same way,” she said. “This culture of Russian
expansion, it means lots of money, but terribly distributed. It destroyed the good ways
of a small people.”
Though many in South Ossetia had hoped to be absorbed into Russia, the Kremlin has
so far refused to consider annexation, most likely because it would prove destabilizing
for Russia’s turbulent Caucasus region, Mr. Malashenko said. Despite 15 months of
lobbying by Moscow, only four nations followed Russia’s lead in recognizing South
Ossetia as an independent country, and two of them were Pacific islands with
populations of fewer than 15,000.

Moscow has also stumbled in its attempt to maintain political control. When Kremlin
“political technologists” tried to engineer a victory for its preferred presidential
candidate in 2011 and 2012, they prompted street demonstrations that nearly ended in
civil unrest.

Varvara Pakhomenko, a researcher with the International Crisis Group, said that the
corrupt reconstruction process “created a very critical mood” toward Russia, and that
South Ossetians had begun to complain about the behavior of Russian soldiers based
outside Tskhinvali.

“More and more, you can hear people saying that Russia is actually not interested in
the people of South Ossetia, they ignore their opinions, and there is now fear that if the
political situation changes, Russia might revoke its recognition or in some way return
South Ossetia to Georgia,” she said. Many, she said, pin their hopes on the dream of
finally acceding to Russia, which they think will entitle them to higher pensions and
salaries. Others have begun to leave the region, she said, “feeling the impossibility to
change the situation.”

As Crimea hurtled toward accession this week, South Ossetia’s isolation deepened.
Villagers in Atotsi, in Georgian-controlled territory, watched men in unmarked military
uniforms build a five-foot-high barbed-wire fence across a stretch of pasture, part of a
30-mile barrier that officials say will eventually surround the entire enclave. A poster
read, “The state border of the Republic of South Ossetia.”

Zemfira Plieva, 43, who grew up inside South Ossetia and now lives just outside it,
once crossed the boundary several times a week to sell vegetables or visit her sister,
and she watched the spiky fence rising with dismay. When her mother died, three
years ago, she was so afraid of being arrested that she did not attend the funeral.
When asked what would happen if South Ossetia were formally annexed by Russia,
she started to cry.

“I will never again see anyone from my family,” she said. “I don’t even want to think
about it.”

Olesya Vartanyan reported from Atotsi, and Ellen Barry from Moscow.
Putin 3.0
Mark Galeotti | In Moscow’s Shadow | 18-3-14

A man alone

I don’t, alas, have time to give it a proper consideration, but my initial response from
watching Putin’s Crimea speech is that this is another of those watershed moments. To
me, we are seeing in foreign as well as domestic politics, a new Putin, let’s call him
Putin 3.0, an idea I first developed in the most recent Power Vertical podcast. Putin 1.0,
in his first terms in office, was characterised by assertive, sometimes ruthless, but
essentially pragmatic policy. Putin was no fan of the West and its ideals, but nor did he
regard himself as being at odds with it in any fundamental way, only when it tried to
impede his own ambitions. Putin 2.0, after the “castling”, his return to office and the
unexpected rise of the “non-system opposition”, was increasingly interested in foreign
policy precisely as a way of assuaging or diverting domestic pressure. He genuinely
seemed — and seems — to lack any real sense of how to build legitimacy in a time of
increasing economic trouble, except through well-trumpeted triumphs, from Syria to
Sochi. Even so, despite often-bruising rhetoric and such acts as the wilful persecution
of US ambassador Mike McFaul (a man whose transparent well-meaning commitment
to building bridges and spreading amity was akin to a “kick me” sign on his back in
these days of bare-knuckled Moscow), anti-Westernism was a tool, a means to an end,
deployed when useful, ignored when not.

Now, though, I can’t help but feel we have Putin 3.0, a man casting aside cerebral
notions for a more gut sense of where next to go. A man whose self-image of himself
as Russia’s saviour, as well as a growing belief in what we could call Russian
exceptionalism, a belief that Russian civilisation has a distinctive and unique place in
the world and must be protected from homogenising Western influence, have come to
the forefront. From being a means to an end, anti-Westernism becomes an end in itself
as is is just the flip side–to him–of preserving and exalting Russian civilisation. The way
the usual litany of grievances now seems to have even sharper edge, the sense that
Russia must act the way it acts not because it is right but because others did it wrong,
a commitment to “re”taking Crimea in absolute contradiction to common sense and, to
be blunt, Russia’s real best interests (as Ben Aris has pointed out, even before any
sanctions, this crisis has already cost Russian over $400 B, or 8 Sochis…), all of these
show a real change.

No, it’s not madness. It’s not even a global danger (remember, Russian civilisation, like
the Russian Orthodox Church that buttresses it, is not an aggressively and pan-
ethnically evangelistic religion). But as he signs the decree annexing Crimea, it does
begin to recast Russia’s relations with the outside world, in a way that will be hard to
manage, tough for Russia’s neighbours and also, I suspect, ultimately disastrous for
this regime.
This blog's author, Dr Mark Galeotti has been researching Russian history and security
issues since the late 1980s. Educated at Cambridge University and the LSE, he is now
Clinical Professor of Global Affairs at New York University's Center for Global Affairs
and an associate member of NYU's History and Russian & Slavic Studies departments.
Until 2008, he was head of the History department at Keele University in the UK as well
as director of its Organised Russian & Eurasian Crime Research Unit.
Krauthammer’s Take: Obama Is Being
‘Ridiculed by Russians’
By NRO Staff | March 17, 2014 7:14 PM

President Obama has thus far responded tepidly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
targeting only several individuals in Russia for sanctions and providing Ukraine with
rations as opposed to the arms it requested. Because of Obama’s rhetoric and policy,
Charles Krauthammer said the president is being “ridiculed by Russians.”

“If he thinks that sanctioning seven Russians out of a population of, what, 150 million is
a sanction, he’s living in a different world,” Krauthammer said. Instead we should be
sending Ukraine weapons, something the administration denied because it thinks
“somehow to arm the victim of aggression is a provocation,” Krauthammer explained.

The idea that such small, targeted sanctions will work is “preposterous,” Krauthammer
said. “This really is a humiliating response by a president who can’t even get the
Europeans to join him in effective sanctions.”
Crimea will cost Russia at least $400bn this
year
BNE Business News Europe | Ben Aris in Moscow | March 18, 2014

The West is threatening further sanctions should Russia proceed with the formal
annexation of Crimea. There is no need. The crisis has already cost Russia $187bn so
far and almost certainly wrecked any chance of economic growth this year. And the
impact of the crisis could do roughly $440bn worth of damage over the whole year –
and that is before the West inflicts a single cent's worth of sanctions, according to bne's
(very rough) estimates.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send in the army to Crimea is a massive
own goal as far as Russia's economy is concerned. This was the year Russia was
supposed to emerge from the aftermath of the 2008 crisis and grow by up to 3.5%.
However, it was obvious even before the first squaddie climbed into a truck that
intervening in Ukraine militarily was going to not only cost a lot of money, but also do
enormous economic damage to the already fragile investment climate.

"Regardless of the West's response to the Crimean crisis, the economic damage to
Russia will be vast. First, there are the direct costs of military operations and of
supporting the Crimean regime and its woefully inefficient economy (which has been
heavily subsidized by Ukraine's government for years)," exiled Russian economist
Sergei Guriev said in a recent article.

In this piece, bne attempts to tot up some of the costs already incurred by the Crimean
crisis and guestimate costs that will be incurred over the rest of the year. While a lot of
the estimates are wide open to debate, it is still clear that Russia has inflicted more
economic damage on itself than the West could ever hope to achieve with Iran-style
punitive sanctions.

The cost so far

As Russian troops appeared on the streets of eastern Europe's favourite holiday resort
in February, Russia's stock market tanked, losing 15% in a day and wiping an
estimated $55bn off the market capitalization at the shaky stroke of a pen. While most
pundits were expecting Russia to cancel its $15bn bailout deal for Ukraine and possibly
some economic retaliation after the Maidan government took over in Kyiv, no one was
expecting the display of force.

Running total: $55bn

Equity investors were already unsettled by emerging market uncertainties, with $130m
leaving in the week before the Crimean crisis alone, according to Emerging Market
Value Portfolio. But redemptions have probably since accelerated: Let's call it a round
$1bn for the whole year to date of redemptions from funds.

Running total: $56bn

The same collywobbles will also have accelerated capital flight, which the Central Bank
of Russia (CBR) was hoping would slow this year. An estimated $17bn left the country
in January according to the authorities – the same amount as that month a year ago –
but Renaissance Capital's chief economist, Charles Robinson, estimates $50bn has
already left in the first quarter of this year.
Running total: $106bn

The side effect of capital flight is to continue to push the ruble's value down, which fell
10% on the start of hostilities. Russians were already beginning to panic in December
as the ruble has been under pressure for months. The population were converting
rubles to dollars at a record pace in December – about $2bn a month, or a total of $6bn
since the New Year, but that too accelerated in March: the CBR was forced to spend
$11bn on trying to prop the ruble up in the last month.

Running total: $117bn

And the loss of this money to the economy was before Russia spent a penny on
actually running its military campaign, currently estimated to have cost $50bn-70bn –
more than it cost to put the Sochi Olympics on. With an estimated 60,000 Russian
soldiers massed on the Ukrainian border, that number is climbing daily.

Running total: $187bn

Rest of this year

That bill is only the tip of the iceberg. Even if a deal with the EU and Maidan
government were signed today, the costs from the shock Putin has given the West is
going to reverberate all year, if not longer.

The most obvious direct cost to the Kremlin of taking over Crimea is Russia is going to
have to pay to keep the region going. The Kremlin has already sent a reported $440m
in cash to tide Crimea over, but an article in Vedomosti put the annual cost of
subsidies, pension payments etc. at $3bn a year.

Putin is well aware of the cost of taking on crappy regions: after taking over Abkhazia,
a breakaway region of Georgia, Russian grants now make up 70% of the region's
budget for several years – and half of that was stolen by the local elites, according to
reports. Crimea is unlikely to be different.

Running total: $190bn

However, the cost of running Crimea is the least of the Kremlin's worries. Once the
dust literally settles, attention will inevitably turn to the dire state of Ukraine's economy:
the country is bankrupt and on the verge of collapse. It needs billions of dollars of aid
keep it running.

Some of Russia's largest banks are exposed to Ukrainian risk directly and via their
subsidiaries to the tune of $30bn, according to estimates by Moody's Investors Service.
More than half of these exposures ($17.4bn) are via subsidiaries of Russian banks and
some or all of this could be lost if the banking sector collapses. Indeed, if the EU
"takes" Ukraine, it is not unlikely that Russia will precipitate a collapse on purpose.

Running total: $223bn

Almost as much money that left Russia in all of last year ($63bn) had already fled by
the end of March and the CBR spent a total $30bn in 2013 defending the currency.
This year capital flight is expected to soar to $130bn, says Goldman Sachs, which
means the CBR will probably have to double its interventions to some $60bn to keep
some sort of currency stability.

"The Achilles heel of the Russian economy remains the flow abroad of Russian capital
following any shock. We would also think that any sanctions or even the threat of
sanctions will be ultimately targeted at these flows," Goldman said in a note.

Running total: $283bn

Capital flight will only pull the weakening ruble down further, which in turn increases the
costs to the budget. The ruble has already fallen by 10% this year, but Renaissance
Capital estimates that a further fall in the ruble's value this year will add another $10bn
to the government's costs.

Running total: $293bn

The incursion into Crimea was as much a shock to Russia's business leaders as it was
to the politicians in Brussels and Washington, and is bound to hurt domestic
investment. Russia desperately needs fixed investment to rise if it is to have any
chance of economic growth this year, but investment had already stalled by last year.
Now there is talk of war, Russia's business captains are even less likely to invest than
before. Fixed investment into the Russian economy totaled RUB2.33 trillion ($77.76bn)
in 2013, but Bank of America Merrill Lynch forecasts that investments in fixed capital
will decrease 3.3% as of the end of 2014, or by about $2.33bn.

Running total: $295bn

Russia attracted a whopping $94bn of foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2013, making
Russia the third largest recipient of FDI in the world, according to a February ranking
by the UNCTAD, although a big chunk of that was part of the TNK-BP/Rosneft deal.
But if Russian investors are unnerved, can you image how the foreign investors feel?
By the middle of March several big deals were already looking shaky.

Again, it is impossible to measure just how many deals-that-might-have-been are now

on ice, but some high-profile joint ventures are already in trouble. Swedish car
producer Volvo said in March it was taking a second look at a proposed partnership
with Russian state-owned railway equipment and tank maker Uralvagonzavod (UVZ) to
make modern armored cars due to the situation in Ukraine, worth about $100m
Separately, state-owned oil major Rosneft signed a binding deal to sell its oil-trading
arm to Morgan Stanley in December for hundreds of millions of dollars. That deal is
now in doubt and may be nixed by the US Foreign Investments Committee.

Assuming a modest 20% contraction in FDI against last year, that would wipe out
another $19bn of money lost to the economy.

"A significant decline in FDI – which brings not only money but also modern technology
and managerial skills – would hit Russia's long-term economic growth hard. And
denying Russian banks and firms access to the US (and possibly European) banking
system – the harshest sanction applied to Iran – would have a devastating impact,"
says Guriev.

Running total: $314bn

The stock market has already been hit, but it could be hit again if its performance in
recent years is anything to go by: the RTS index was down by 72.4% in 2008, 21.9% in
2011 and 6.8% in 2013 on crisis-related fears. Predictions for this year's gains were
already modest, but there is a very real chance that Russian stocks will return a loss
instead. Assuming a modest 5% year-on-year fall for the full year, that would destroy
another $50bn of market capitalization.

Running total: $364bn

Even if the market remains flat, collateral damage could be a string of IPOs that were
on the docket, but are now almost certainly going to be cancelled. Regional shoe
retailer Obuv Rossii has already postponed its $55m IPO until the second half of the
year (if then) due to the brouhaha. And the IPO plans of much larger companies are in
doubt: retailer Lenta, childrens' store Detski Mir, German wholesaler Metro and retail
bank Credit Bank of Moscow were all also hoping to get IPOs away this year (and raise
$1bn, $440m, €1.7bn and $500m respectively), collectively worth $4bn.

Running total: $368bn

And those are just the privately owned companies with listing aspirations; the state was
hoping to restart its long-delayed privatization programme in the second half of this
year, after an IPO window opened briefly in the second half of last year. Fat chance
that foreign investors will fork out billions of dollars for shares in state-owned
enterprises now. Given state-owned Sberbank raised just over $5bn last year with a
secondary public offering, pencil in the same this year for the non-privatization
programme.

Running total: $373bn

The bogeyman of financial sanctions has been raised as a possible punitive reaction by
the West against Russia's aggression in Ukraine, but actually it is highly unlikely
because western banks are so heavily exposed to Russia: according to Bank of
International Settlements (BIS) data, European banks have $193.8bn in exposure to
Russia, US banks $35.2bn, Japan $17.2bn, Switzerland $8bn, and South Korea
$5.2bn. If the West tries to freeze Russian assets abroad, Russia could easily retaliate
by refusing to pay these debts back.

Likewise, oil and gas majors Rosneft and Gazprom owe a combined $90bn in debt and
bonds with four state banks Sberbank, VTB, VEB, Rosselkhozbank owing another
$60bn in foreign credits. A Kremlin aide has already warned that if financial sanctions
are imposed on Russia, these institutions might refuse to pay their loans off.
But where Russia will be hurt, even without sanctions, is with bond issues. Russia's
sovereign external debt is very modest indeed, but its external commercial debt has
soared in recent years (although the maturities now are a lot longer than they were in
2008): Russia's total external debt rose to $732bn as of January 1, 2014, from $636bn
a year earlier and $464bn at the start of 2008, according to the CBR, with the bulk of
new debt raised by Russian state companies.

Although state-owned Gazprom Neft got a $2.5bn syndicated loan deal away in the
middle of March, largely financed by a club of European and US banks, plans by
another 10 big Russian companies to raise $8bn in loans this month are reportedly in
difficulty now.

Running total: $396bn

At the same time, the cost of these bonds has already increased significantly. Last year
saw a boom in Russian bond issues when yields fell to about the 4% for state and
quasi-state issues, but the rates have more-or-less doubled on the government's OFZ
in recent months, which broke through 9% earlier this month.

Again it is very hard to guess the value of bonds-that-might-have-been. But given

Russian corporates were adding approximately $60bn of debt a year over the last five
years, and again assuming a modest 20% reduction in bond issues, the value of bonds
that won't be issued will be on the order of $12bn.

Likewise, making a guestimate of the extra cost this borrowing will come in at due to
the rise in yields caused by the crisis could add at least another $3bn.

Running total: $411bn

The spillover from the crisis is also going to hurt the banking sector and cost it money
in the form of the need for higher capital and an increase in bad debt. According to
bankers in Moscow, corporate non-performing loans are already rising and lending will
slow even further: Fitch says that Tier 1 capital could be reduced by up to 2%, which
would be worth $12bn.

Running total: $423bn

Bad loan levels were already accelerating on the back of the economic slowdown, but
that problem will get even worse now.
"In light of the potential economic slowdown, we expect nonperforming loans (NPLs) in
the system to increase. Our base-case forecast estimates a system-wide NPL ratio of
8.0%-8.5% this year, and could go higher if the current volatility persists," says
Moody's.

The National Collection Service estimates total bad loans have reached about
RUB435bn ($12.8bn). And if this only increases by the same 40% that it grew last year,
it will be another $5bn lost to the economy.

Running total: $428bn

Corporate loans will also be affected. "There is a risk that the currency devaluation will
exacerbate negative asset quality trends in foreign currency loans, which we estimate
constitute around 17% of the total loan book and are mainly concentrated in
corporates. Approximately 50% of these loans are to borrowers that do not have
matching foreign currency cash flows and they would need to absorb the increased
repayment burden caused by the ruble depreciation," Moody's said in a report, without
putting any actual numbers on the cost. Let's call it another $5bn.

Running total: $433bn

Ironically, trade is probably one area that will be least affected. Indeed, it is the heavy
trade flow between Russia and Europe that makes the European powers like Germany
so reluctant to slap sanctions on Russia. About half of Russia's exports go to Europe,
but only 3% to the US. Conversely, only 7% of Europe's exports go to Russia (and next
to no US exports). But in money terms, the EU exports more to Russia ($264bn) than
Russia to the EU ($152bn). The upshot is trade sanctions can be ruled out because
Russia carries a very big stick in any trade war.

Whatever happens next, the crisis has already ruined Russia’s chances for economic
recovery this year. Last year Russia put in a very disappointing 1.4% growth but
analysts were hoping this year would be better, predicting between 2% and 3.5%
growth for the full year. The recovery that should have come last year would arrive this
year. Not any more. Goldman Sachs, among many, downgraded Russia’s growth
outlook to 1% at best on March 14. Other analysts are speculating the economy may
even contract this year. A 0.5% contraction would destroy another $10bn of value.

Running total: $443bn

As Investors Flee, Russia Inc. Is Feeling the
Pain
Bloomberg | By Carol Matlack | March 17, 2014 12:15 PM EDT

Want to know how President Vladimir Putin’s showdown with the West is affecting
Russian business? Ask retailer Detskiy Mir.

Detskiy Mir (Children’s World), which started as a Soviet-style department store across
from KGB headquarters in Moscow, rode demand from a growing middle class over the
past two decades to become a $1.1 billion-a-year company. It now has more than 200
stores selling children’s clothing and toys in dozens of Russian cities. Last fall, it
announced plans for an initial public offering on the London stock exchange early in
2014.

Then came Putin’s grab for Crimea. Detskiy Mir has put the IPO on hold, according to a
person with direct knowledge of the situation. “In these conditions [the company] will
not do anything,” the person said.

Detskiy Mir isn’t alone. Even as Europe and the U.S. have refrained from imposing all-
out economic sanctions, Russian companies are suffering as investors flee the country.
Cancelled IPOs, suspended loan negotiations, plummeting share prices—all are part of
an estimated $50 billion in private investment that has fled Russia since Jan. 1,
according to economist Neal Shearing of Capital Economics in London.

The Russian unit of German retailer Metro may scratch its planned London listing, as
shares in Lenta, another Russian big-box chain, have slumped more than 17 percent
since its Feb. 27 debut on the London exchange. The crisis also could derail some $8
billion in loans being sought by major Russian companies such as steelmaker
Novolipetsk and mobile operator VimpelCom. “Until the situation stabilizes there will be
fewer international banks willing to lend in Russia,” Dmitry Dudkin of Moscow-based
investment bank UralSib Capital told Bloomberg News earlier this month.

At the same time, these companies’ shares are getting hammered. Shares in
Novolipetsk, controlled by one of Russia’s richest man Vladimir Lisin, are down more
than 34 percent this year. VimpelCom, controlled by billionaire Mikhail Fridman, has
slumped 32 percent. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Russia’s 19 riches
people have lost $18.3 billion since the Crimea incursion began on Feb. 28.

Business people “are very scared,” Alexander Lebedev, who owns the Moscow-based
investment group National Reserve Corp., tells Bloomberg News. “There could be
margin calls, reserves might be drawn down, exchange rates may fall, and prices will
rise.”

And yet, business leaders have remained almost entirely silent, as the Kremlin in
recent years has tightened government control of the economy. “The business
community is freaking out, they’re terrified,” says Ben Aris, the Moscow-based editor
and publisher of Business New Europe, an online journal covering business and
finance in the former Soviet bloc.

Ordinary Russians also would be hurt by capital flight. If the outflow continues at its
current pace, it will total $70 billion during the first quarter, some 3.2 percent of gross
domestic product. “There is a real risk that this could push Russia into recession this
year,” says Shearing of Capital Economics. Adding to the pain, the ruble has plunged
22 percent over the past year—a blow to shoppers in a country where imported goods
account for more than 40 percent of consumption.

Despite its oil, gas, and mineral riches, Russia has suffered for years from a dearth of
private investment that could diversify its economy and cushion it against commodity-
price fluctuations. Consumer-facing companies such as Detskiy Mir, Lenta, and
VimpelCom looked set to help remedy that problem. Instead, Russia now will suffer an
“absolute decrease” in private investment, says Bernie Sucher, an American
entrepreneur and investor who has worked in Moscow for more than 20 years. “This is
going to be an enduring setback for the economy,” he predicts.

Some in Putin’s inner circle seem to think that the government can step up public
investment to compensate for the loss of private capital. But, Sucher says, that
approach is doomed to fail. Russia has already lost ground on competitiveness as the
Kremlin has played an increasing role in the economy, he says. “The state, no matter
how rich it is, cannot make up for the quality, efficiency, and competitiveness of private
capital.”
Ukraine crisis: we have to stand up to
Russia – it’s a rogue state
Any failure to respond to Putin’s unprovoked aggression would set a very bad
precedent
By Con Coughlin | The Telegraph | 8:40PM GMT 17 Mar 2014

No matter how hard Vladimir Putin tries to persuade us otherwise, there is no escaping
the fact that the proposed annexation of Crimea by the Kremlin constitutes a blatant
violation of territorial sovereignty that the Western powers cannot afford to ignore.

Moscow claims that 97 per cent of those who participated in the referendum voted to
join Russia, and there is no doubt that its outcome was popular among local
Russophiles. No sooner had the vote been counted than the Crimean parliament
declared independence, and voted to change its clocks to Moscow time and adopt the
rouble as its currency.

But if the referendum’s outcome satisfies Crimea’s pro-Russian majority, no one else
should take its validity seriously. Indeed, territorial violations of this kind were the
immediate cause of both world wars. More recently, the West has responded militarily
against Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to prevent them
from bullying others.

No one in the West – for the moment, at least, is advocating similar intervention in
Ukraine. But our leaders must establish the clear principle that unprovoked acts of
aggression against defenceless neighbours will not be tolerated in modern Europe – or
anywhere else, for that matter. Failure to do so would establish an unwelcome
precedent for other states to pursue their irredentist ambitions, such as China
occupying Taiwan, or Iran seizing Bahrain.

So in the wake of Mr Putin’s land grab in Crimea, it is imperative that we now establish
a grand strategy with the aim of intensifying Russia’s international isolation. The
medium- and long-term aim should be to ensure that the Russian leader and his clique
of KGB hoods are no longer able to threaten the West and its allies – while avoiding a
full-blown trade war that would, as The Telegraph has warned, send the world
economy into the deep freeze.

Yesterday, the United States and European Union took the first tentative steps
towards confronting Moscow by announcing travel bans and asset freezes against a
number of Russian and Ukrainian officials – “politically significant” figures who have
actively supported the Crimean putsch.

But if we really want to contain Mr Putin, then we should hit the Russians where it
hurts most – the energy sector. Much is made of Europe’s reliance on Russian gas, but
in fact it is Mr Putin’s economic survival that depends almost entirely on his ability to
export his oil and gas reserves at premium rates. The latest estimates suggest that
under a quarter of the gas Europe uses, and as little as six per cent of its total energy
mix, comes from Russia.

We do not need to close the pipelines tomorrow, nor could we. But most energy
experts believe Europe is already paying over the odds for Russian gas. By
restructuring the energy network to take in other producers, such as Qatar and Algeria,
we could, within the space of just a few years, cut our dependence on Russia, with the
disastrous implications that would have for Moscow’s balance sheet.
 The fact that Viktor Zubkov, the chairman of Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy
company, recently sold all his shares in the firm, shows what he thinks of Russia’s
long-term economic prospects. And this growing sense of isolation in Moscow would
only deepen if the world’s leading industrial powers followed through with their threat to
expel Russia from G8.

For far too long, the West has kowtowed to Moscow in the hope of persuading Mr
Putin to conduct himself according to international norms. That must now stop. No
longer should British ministers visit Moscow and conveniently overlook vexing issues,
such as the suspected involvement of its intelligence agents in the murder of Alexander
Litvinenko. We must abandon the ludicrous policy initiated by Hillary Clinton as
Secretary of State of “resetting” relations with Moscow.

Instead, America and its allies should redouble their efforts to construct an effective
missile shield in central Europe to protect it against the threat of attack by rogue states.
After Mr Putin’s Crimean adventure, Russia – which has one of the world’s largest
nuclear arsenals – deserves to be treated as one of their number.

Nato must also raise its game dramatically. Rather than blithely announcing, as it did
over Crimea, that it had no plans to intervene, it must make sure that its members give
it the resources to respond effectively to future transgressions. Britain’s offer of a
squadron of Typhoon jets to join Nato’s Baltic mission was a step in the right direction,
but our militaries have been run down too far, and need to be built up.

All this will take time to accomplish, and will cause some short-term inconvenience.
But a serious and sustained effort to isolate and neutralise Russia is the best and only
way to deter Mr Putin from any further acts of territorial aggression
While Russia moves on Ukraine, much of
western intelligentsia blames the victims
Andrew Coyne | Canada.com | March 17, 2014, 7:54 pm

As they watch Russia swallow Crimea whole, and wonder whether the rest of the
country will serve as the main course, the people of Ukraine can take solace in
knowing it was all their fault.

Had they not risen up against their Russian-backed president, especially after the
slaughter of the demonstrators in the Maidan; had they not rejected Russia’s offer of
absorption within its “Eurasian Union” of former Soviet satrapies in favour of
association with the European Union; had they simply accepted their fate as part of
Russia’s “sphere of interest,” things would never have come to this.

But perhaps that’s too one-sided. Perhaps Ukraine is really the victim in all this: the
victim of NATO, that is, whose aggressive expansion into eastern Europe since the fall
of the Soviet Union left Russia feeling besieged, threatened — with a hostile alliance
on its very doorstep! — or at any rate insulted.

True, NATO had punted on expansion into Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, in deference
to Russian objections. But even to have considered their applications! Could NATO not
have seen that, in the face of this provocation, Vladimir Putin would have no choice but
to invade both countries?

Perhaps you will be tempted to dismiss the foregoing as Russian propaganda. Or

perhaps it sounds like the sort of thing you’d hear only from Putin’s left-wing apologists
— for democracy’s enemies will never lack for defenders in the West. I assure you it is
not. It is the consensus view of much of the foreign-policy community, the acme of
“realist” wisdom, the thing to say if you want to display your superior understanding of
the world’s complexities.

You do not have to rely only on the testimony of the dire Stephen Cohen, Putin’s most
enthusiastic Western cheerleader (“Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever
so personally villainized?”). Here’s arch-realist John Mearsheimer, author of The
Tragedy of Great Power Politics, writing in The New York Times: “The taproot of the
current crisis is NATO expansion and Washington’s commitment to move Ukraine out
of Moscow’s orbit and integrate it into the West . . . One might expect American
policymakers to understand Russia’s concerns about Ukraine joining a hostile alliance .
. . Mr. Putin’s view is understandable . . . etc etc.”

Here’s journalist Peter Beinart, writing in The Atlantic: “From Putin’s perspective . . . the
United States hardly looks in retreat. To the contrary, the post-Cold War period has
brought one long march by America and its allies closer and closer to the border of
Russia itself.” Here’s Anatol Lieven, professor of war studies at King’s College London,
attempting even-handedness: “We’re now witnessing the consequences of how grossly
both Russia and the West have overplayed their hands in Ukraine.” Nevertheless, it’s
clear he places most of the blame on the West, for “the morally criminal attempt” to
force Ukraine to choose between the two. If you doubt how mainstream this view is,
here’s arch-middlebrow Tom Friedman in the Times, offering his considered view that
NATO expansion is “one of the dumbest things we’ve ever done.”

The same people have been saying the same thing for years, of course — it was very
much the thinking behind the “reset,” the dropping of the sanctions imposed after
Georgia, the unilateral withdrawal of missile-defence bases from Poland and the Czech
Republic — and though Ukraine should reasonably have marked the final discrediting
of this school of thought, it has instead only confirmed them in its divine rightness.

Thus, after the unprovoked invasion and annexation of the territory of a neighbouring
democracy by a proto-dictatorship, much of the academic and journalistic world
responded, not by condemning the aggressors, but by blaming the victims. While
NATO’s allies in eastern Europe sought renewed assurances of its protection — and as
Sweden and Finland debated joining — the smart set thousands of miles away in North
America was assuring them they had it all wrong: NATO is the problem.

Leave aside the total failure, in any of these pieces, to show a causal link between the
two — why NATO’s decision to admit Latvia in 2004 should have precipitated Putin’s
decision to invade Ukraine in 2014, still less how the rejection of Ukraine’s bid in 2008
could have done so. And let us take at face value the occasional disavowals of moral
judgment on the part of the writer, who is only considering this “from Putin’s
perspective” or reminding us how “this is seen in Moscow.”

Thus, if NATO is described as “marching” towards Russia, if it is presented as a

“hostile alliance,” it matters not whether NATO actually fits that menacing description,
only that Putin and the people around him view it that way. This takes us beyond
relativism: It effectively allows the most paranoid Kremlin view of the world to dictate,
not only their policies, but ours.

Well, no. Reality also matters. If NATO is “seen as” a threat, we are obliged at least to
ask what sort of threat? NATO is, after all, a defensive alliance: No sane person
believes that NATO would attack Russia, not least because it is a nuclear armed state.
Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse there was serious talk of
admitting Russia as a member. If there are countries in its “near abroad” who desire
NATO membership, it is not because they intend to invade Russia, but because they
fear invasion by Russia, a fear that would today seem well grounded.

The “threat” from NATO, then, consists entirely in the promise to defend these
countries from attack. If Putin finds such a benign pledge “provocative,” that is rather a
point in favour of NATO expansion than against.
Fake ‘Referendum’ in Crimea Sets a Real
Watershed for Russia
Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 11 Issue: 50 March 17, 2014 By: Pavel K. Baev

The only real result from the hastily organized and crudely manipulated political act in
Crimea last Sunday (March 16)—which should not be called a “referendum,” because it
had nothing to do with a free expression of popular will—was that it did, indeed,
happen. A last-minute postponement would have been awkward for the policymakers
in Moscow, but it would have still left them with some freedom of maneuver for
checking Russia’s transformation into a “rogue state.” Instead, now they have to act on
their own “choice” for the 2 million inhabitants of Crimea to secede from Ukraine and
join the Russian Federation. They have to act quickly before the “patriotic” fervor in
Russia, induced by a heavy dose of propaganda, gives way to a painful realization of
the material consequences of these actions (http://polit.ru/article/2014/03/13/acident/).
The Russian authorities are afraid that any back-pedaling would bring this sobering
realization closer. And so the bewildered Europe, which keeps expecting the
continent’s largest state to rediscover political common sense, will most probably see
the first execution of forceful annexation since the end of World War II already this
week.

In the coming days before the legislation on annexing Crimea is approved in Moscow, it
is more or less clear what is going to happen in relations between Russia and the
United States–led coalition of the willing, which includes all stakeholders in the
European security system. First, the narrow and secretive circle of President Vladimir
Putin’s courtiers will be banned from travelling to the European Union and the United
States because of their involvement in Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine
(Kommersant, March 14). Other personalized sanctions, including the freezing of bank
accounts, will be enforced in order to bring home the message that Russian elites, who
value their cosmopolitan lifestyle, should start adjusting to their country’s new status of
international pariah. Russian oligarchs still think that their fortunes will exempt them
from any punishment, but they are taking notice of the misfortune that, last week, befell
Ukrainian gas trader Dmytro Firtash in Vienna (http://www.forbes.ru/mneniya-
column/konkurentsiya/252012-arest-firtasha-novyi-povorot-v-gazovoi-voine).

It is harder to evaluate the impact of the next set of sanctions, which will have to be
enforced after Moscow tries to establish the annexation of Crimea as a fait accompli.
The Kremlin was obviously under the impression that the disunited West, led by its
compromise-oriented politicians, would never be able to agree on a meaningful
resistance to Russia’s determined offensive (http://www.gazeta.ru/comments/
column/lukyanov/5952017.shtml). And yet, despite the damage to its own economic
interests, the EU is well aware that it needs to take further extraordinary steps—
including ones that seemed inconceivable even a month ago. Putin’s lieutenants, on
the other hand, cannot quite comprehend that their demonstrative disregard of Western
pressure is only adding to the West’s resolve. Gazprom, for instance, was previously
seen in Europe as a partner too valuable to antagonize. But now its CEO, Alexei Miller,
is on the short list for sanctions and the company’s European assets are seen as
legitimate targets for economic penalties as well
(http://newsru.com/finance/17mar2014/gazpromsan.html).

Any pragmatic calculation shows that the costs of re-incorporating Crimea into Russia
are prohibitively high. Yet, such estimates are clearly not being taken into account by
the advocates of correcting the “historic injustice” (Novaya Gazeta, March 14). Further
sanctions are certain to increase this burden on Russia; but the policy planners in the
EU have to take into account the possibility that the Crimean peninsula, whatever its
symbolic value to many Russians, may not be the real goal of the Kremlin’s feverish
aggressiveness. In fact, Putin has never shown any sentimental feelings for this
beautiful but badly neglected resort. Rather, he remains anxiously obsessed and
preoccupied with the specter of anti-government revolutions in the region
(http://gefter.ru/archive/11640). Sending troops to Crimea seems ill-advised if the aim is
to succeed in detaching it from Ukraine. But it makes more sense if the intention was to
demonstrate Russia’s determination in deterring and discrediting the revolutionary
breakthrough toward a new democratic and European future for Ukraine. In order to
torpedo such aspirations, Russia must proceed from the first “victory” in Crimea to the
main theatre of counter-revolutionary struggle: eastern and southern Ukraine. The
bloody provocations in Kharkov last Saturday fit into such campaign plan
(http://newsru.com/world/15mar2014/mvdkharkov.html).

Russian public opinion is strongly in favor of embracing Crimea and broadly supports
the use of troops for stabilizing the situation in eastern Ukraine. Only 36 percent of
respondents express concern about the risk of war (Novaya Gazeta, March 15). It
takes courage to express a dissenting opinion; nevertheless, tens of thousands of
Muscovites marched last Saturday against the military intervention and in support of
Ukraine’s independence (http://echo.msk.ru/blog/old_dweller/1280272-echo/). The
police did not try to disperse the unexpectedly strong rally. However, independent
media voices, including Internet publications, are being silenced one after another.

Clearly, street protests, important as they are for preparing a shift in public opinion, are
not going to slow down Putin’s military crusade against the Maidan movement in
Ukraine (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 12). US President Barack Obama made yet
another futile effort last night (March 16) to dissuade Putin from breaking the basic
norms of international behavior. And the lengthy meeting between US Secretary of
State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last Friday confirmed
that the space for diplomatic compromises is non-existent (Kommersant, March 15).
Economic sanctions could push the Russian economy into a deep depression—and its
affluent elites into a quiet panic. But the sanctions’ impact needs to be reinforced by
some extraordinary measures that would shock the overzealous interventionists in the
Kremlin. Cyber instruments could prove useful, but some old-fashioned penalties, like
for instance the multilaterally ensured closure of the Bosporus for the Russian navy,
might produce a strong impression. That would certainly constitute a violation of the
Montreux Convention (1936), but Moscow is hardly in a position right now to appeal to
international law.

[ “which should not be called a “referendum,” “ – yep, I propose “R.F.erendum” ]

EU and Russia sanctions
Putin untouched
The Economist Mar 17th 2014, 18:44 by Charlemagne | BRUSSELS

“YES, the United States is from Mars and we are from Venus. Get over it.” Thus did the
Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, dismiss questions about why Europe was more
cautious than America in its response to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and its “illegal”
referendum on secession.

Indeed, the attempt by the EU and America to co-ordinate their announcement on

March 17th of sanctions against Russian officials served mostly to highlight their
differences. America’s list of seven Russian and four Ukrainian officials subject to visa
bans and seizure of assets overlapped with the EU’s 21 names. But the American list
included, crucially, three figures from President Vladimir Putin's inner circle—among
them Dimitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister, as well as two presidential
advisers, Vladislav Surkov and Sergey Glazyev—which the EU omitted.

Mr Rogozin mocked the American measures in a message on his Twitter account

(@DRogozin): “Comrade Obama, what should those who have neither accounts nor
property abroad do? Or maybe you didn't think of that?”

President Barack Obama also signed a new executive order to extend sanctions to
include three broad categories: Russian government officials, arms-sector figures and
alleged Kremlin “cronies”, as one American official put it. Beyond freezing assets,
Americans would be banned from doing business with those on the list.

The EU sanctions list was published in the Official Journal here. The American list is
here.

One reason for the European reticence, said diplomats in Brussels, was the internal
division among doves (among them Italy, Spain and Cyprus) and hawks (particularly
Britain, Poland and the Baltic states). Another was the need to have a legally sound list
that would stand up in court. A third, in Europe and America, was the desire for a list
that leaves room for dialogue with Mr Putin’s officials as well as room to escalate by
adding more names if necessary.

The British foreign secretary, William Hague, declared: “It is possible to add to these
measures. This is not a list that is set in stone for the future.” Linas Linkevicius,
Lithuania’s foreign minister, said the list was “open-ended” and could be extended later
this week, when leaders hold a summit in Brussels on March 20th-21st.

The EU list had been finalised at a late-night session of diplomats in Brussels on

Sunday night, hours after a referendum in Crimea was declared to have demonstrated
overwhelming support for breaking away from Ukraine and rejoining Russia, from
which the territory was detached in 1954. The EU foreign ministers declared the ballot
to be illegal and added, lest anyone be tempted to accept the Russian fait accompli:
"The EU does not recognise the illegal 'referendum' and its outcome.”

At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels, Poland had tried to re-open the list to add
the three senior Russian officials on the American list, but diplomats said the effort was
beaten back by, among others, Finland.

There is a fear from some senior figures in Brussels that the EU, having stumbled into
an unexpected confrontation with Russia, is entering an unstoppable cycle of sanctions
and retaliation. Pierre Vimont, one of the most senior figures in the EU's "foreign
ministry", the External Action Service, has expressed concern about the EU being cut
out of the diplomatic process by America, and issued a warning against indulging in
"cold war reflexes" (here).

Still, even EU hawks recognised that the EU has come up with a sterner response than
many expected, even though it has declined for now to target members of the Russian
executive (as opposed to parliamentarians and military officiers, including the
commander of the Black Sea fleet). “Three days ago I was not sure we would have any
list at all,” said one. The fact that it was issued, he said, was a sign of that Germany
was “waking up”.

Earlier this month Germany had acted as the back-marker in the EU’s response (see
Charlemagne, “Disarmed Diplomacy”, here). Now its officials are first to recognise the
EU will have to go further if Russia pushes ahead with the annexation of Crimea or,
worse, seeks to encroach on eastern Ukraine.

The foreign ministers’ communiqué warned Russia:

“Any further steps by the Russian Federation to destabilise the situation in Ukraine
would lead to additional and far-reaching consequences for relations in a broad range
of economic areas between the European Union and its Member States, on the one
hand, and the Russian Federation, on the other hand”

But quite what would trigger this response, and what the precise consequences would
be were left unsaid. The prospect that the EU will impose energy sanctions, or that
Russia will cut off supplies in retaliation, was high on the ministers’ mind as they were
briefed by the European Commission on the state of energy security in Europe. A
recent paper by the Centre for European Policy Studies argues that Russia may have
more to lose than the EU from an energy cut-off (PDF here).

If nothing else, EU leaders this week will send a strong message of support to the
Ukrainian government by signing parts of the association agreement that started the
crisis in November (see blog post here).

[“a sterner response than many expected” … wheew!

and NEVER TRUST ITALY. ]
Warnings From the Ukraine Crisis
A new century's dangers begin to come into
focus.
By Peggy Noonan | Wall Street Journal | March 14, 2014 7:43 p.m. ET

What has been happening in Ukraine is not a wake-up call precisely but a tugging at
the attention, a demand to focus.

There's a sense that in some new way we are watching the 21st century take its shape
and express its central realities. Exactly 100 years ago, in August 1914, the facts that
would shape the 20th century gathered and emerged in the Great War. History doesn't
repeat itself; you can't, as they say, step into the same stream twice. But it does have
an unseen circularity.

Sept. 11 started the century and brought forward the face of terrorism. It is still there
and will continue to cause grave disruptions. Since then we have seen we are living in
a time of uprisings, from the Mideast to Africa to the streets of Kiev. We are learning
that history isn't over in Europe, that East-West tensions can simmer and boil over, that
the 20th century didn't resolve as much as many had hoped.

A Mideast dictator last year used poison gas on his own population and strengthened
his position. He's winning. What does that tell the other dictators? What does it suggest
about our future?

I keep thinking of two things that for me capture the moment and our trajectory. The
first is a sentence from Don DeLillo's prophetic 1991 novel, " Mao II ": "The future
belongs to crowds." Movements will be massive. The street will rise and push. The
street in Cairo, say, is full of young men who are jobless and unformed. They channel
their energy into politics and street passions. If they had jobs they'd develop the habits
of work—self-discipline, patience, a sense of building and belonging—that are so
crucial to maintaining human society. But they don't, so they won't.

The second is the title of Tom Wolfe's most recent book, "Back to Blood." He was
referring to tribalism, ethnicity, the enduring call of clan. But also just blood. Another
enduring and even re-emergent force in human affairs.

We see Vladimir Putin as re-enacting the Cold War. He sees us as re-enacting

American greatness. We see his actions as a throwback. He sees our denunciations as
a strutting on the stage by a broken down, has-been actor.

Mr. Putin doesn't move because of American presidents, he moves for his own
reasons. But he does move when American presidents are weak. He moved on
Georgia in August 2008 when George W. Bush was reeling from unwon wars, terrible
polls and a looming economic catastrophe that all but children knew was coming. (It
came the next month.) Mr. Bush was no longer formidable as a leader of the free world.

Mr. Putin moved on Ukraine when Barack Obama was no longer a charismatic
character but a known quantity with low polls, failing support, a weak economy. He'd
taken Mr. Obama's measure during the Syria crisis and surely judged him not a shrewd
international chess player but a secretly anxious professor who makes himself feel safe
with the sound of his voice.

Mr. Putin didn't go into Ukraine because of Mr. Obama. He just factored him in.
A great question for the future: Will Mr. Putin ever respect an American president
again? He knows our political situation, knows we're a 50-50 nation, would assume
we're blocked from consensus barring unusual circumstances such as a direct attack.
He's not impressed by our culture or our economy. He might also make inferences
from America's demographic shifts. If we are a more non-European nation than we
were 30 years ago, might he think us less likely to be engaged by—and enraged by—
unfortunate dramas playing out in Europe? Mr. Putin, as Henry Kissinger says, is a
serious strategist acting on serious perceived imperatives. He would make a point of
figuring out the facts of his potential foe.

Three points on his overall tactics, all of which suggest what we'll be seeing more of in
the future.

First, we tend to think the Big Lie in foreign policy as antique, pre-Internet, as dead as
Goebbels. It is not. For days Mr. Putin insisted he went into Ukraine to protect innocent
people from marauding fascists. To some degree it worked, including among a few
foreign-policy professionals. Big lies can confuse the situation, fool the gullible, and buy
time. Expect more of them.

Second, after the invasion Mr. Putin murked up the situation and again bought some
time—and some tentativeness among his foes—by contributing to the idea that he was
perhaps crazy—"in another world," as Angela Merkel is reported to have told Mr.
Obama. (Imagine the White House relief: It's not our fault, you can't anticipate a
madman! I guess that's why it leaked.) Mr. Putin helped spread the idea in his March 4
postinvasion news conference in Moscow. From the grimly hilarious account of The
New Republic's Julia Ioffe : "He was a rainbow of emotion: Serious! angry! bemused!
flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still acting president of Ukraine,
but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president." It was apparently quite
a performance.

But Mr. Putin isn't crazy. Nor was Khrushchev when some of his communications were
wild enough during the Cuban Missile Crisis that the Kennedy White House wondered
if he was drunk or undergoing a coup. "We will bury you!" No, we will unsettle you. Mr.
Putin may be psychologically interesting, but he's not mad. Allowing the idea to
circulate added to the confusion, bought time and kept people wondering. Expect more
of this from Mr. Putin.

Third, there is the matter of the unmarked Russian troops. Reporters in the Crimea had
to shout, "Where are you from?" to be certain who they were. That added a new level
of menace.

And it had a feeling of foreshadowing the wars of the future. Normally nations make it
clear: We are Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, look at the rising sun on our planes. We
are the Soviets in Afghanistan, look at our lumbering tanks!

But we have entered a time of war by at least temporary stealth. If there were a huge,
coordinated, destabilizing cyberattack on our core institutions, it could be a while before
intelligence agencies knew for certain who did it, and with whose help. If an entity
attempted to take down the electric grid it might be some time before we knew who
exactly was responsible. The same with a chemical or biological attack on any great
city. Who are you? Who sent you?

It could be hard to know unless someone quickly claimed responsibility, as al Qaeda

did after 9/11. Otherwise we are looking at a new kind of war, in which the fog is thicker
and aggressions cannot be responded to quickly.
The most obvious Ukraine point has to do with American foreign policy in the sixth year
of the Obama era.

Not being George W. Bush is not a foreign policy. Not invading countries is not a
foreign policy. Wishing to demonstrate your sophistication by announcing you are
unencumbered by the false historical narratives of the past is not a foreign policy.
Assuming the world will be nice if we're not militarist is not a foreign policy.

What is our foreign policy? Disliking global warming?

After Crimea, Putin Is Going to Take Eastern
Ukraine. Geography demands it
BY JULIA IOFFE New Republic MARCH 16, 2014

It's been two weeks since Vladimir Putin asked the upper chamber of the Russian
parliament to authorize the use of force in Ukraine. Since then, he's non-invaded
Crimea, which is today voting on whether it wants to join Russia, though we already
know what the answer is going to be since there's no "no" option on the referendum
ballot. Even without the referendum, though, Crimea is already de facto his, and has
been for at least the last week.

Putin has also shown that he was serious about using force not just in Crimea, but in
Ukraine proper. So far, he has kept it just to busing in hooligans into eastern Ukraine to
act as grassroots pro-Russian protesters. But make no mistake, Putin is about to take
eastern Ukraine, too.

To wit: On Saturday, the two-week anniversary of the authorization, the Russian

foreign ministry was already laying the foundations for such a seizure, saying that it
was being flooded with requests from citizens across eastern Ukraine, asking the
Russians for protection against the western Ukrainian fascists.

But that’s just the pretext, not the reason. When Putin asked for and got his
authorization, I wrote that, in predicting Russia’s actions these days, pessimism always
wins. But, in this case, it isn’t just simple nastiness that’s going to drive this. For the first
time in this manufactured crisis, Putin is going to be acting out of sheer pragmatism
and necessity.

Take what else happened on Saturday. About 80 soldiers wearing uniforms without
insignia took over a gas plant just across the Crimean border, in the Kherson region of
Ukraine. Quoth the Times:

The move appeared to fit the pattern of deployment on Crimea. The Ukrainian Unian
news agency cited local residents saying soldiers without identifying insignia had landed
near the gas terminal in helicopters with Russia’s red-star tail art.

By early Sunday morning, Sergey Aksyonov, the new pro-Russian prime minister of
Crimea, was appealing to Russia to send in its Black Sea Fleet to protect this gas
plant.

The gas plant is in Strilkovo, which you can see on this map here as a narrow little
sandbar across the water from Crimea proper.
Why is Aksyonov appealing to Moscow to secure this gas terminal? Well, ever since
Russia non-invaded Crimea, the peninsula has been experiencing power outages and
Kiev has been threatening to cut it off from its energy, gas, and water supplies.

Which, given the geography of the place, is quite easy to do. Here, just to refresh your
memory, is Crimea.

[map]

Crimea qualifies as a peninsula on the slightest of technicalities, dangling from the

Ukrainian mainland by an isthmus (Perekop, on the left side of the map) that, at its
widest point, is just 4.3 miles wide. The rest looks like Greece, or lightly melted Swiss
cheese.

What’s Crimea’s physical connection to Russia? Well, there isn’t one. There is just the
bay just off of Kerch. No bridge there, nothing to connect it to Russia’s Krasnodar
region just across the water (on the right side of the map).

(Now you can start to see Khrushchev’s logic a bit in transferring Crimea to Ukraine,
no?)

So let’s say the inevitable happens today and Crimea votes to enfold itself in the
Russian Federation’s embrace. But what happens next? And what happens if, as is
quite likely, Kiev cuts newly-Russian Crimea off from gas, electricity, and water, which
Crimea has none of on its own? How will Moscow, the new owner, supply its latest
acquisition with the necessities?
Take a look at those two maps again.

If you’re Russia, do you really want to ferry the necessities across the bay, or build an
expensive bridge, or lay down expensive new pipelines? Wouldn’t you rather use pre-
existing land routes (and pipelines)? Wouldn’t it just be easier to take the land just
north and east of Perekop and the Swiss cheese area, now that you’ve already put in
the effort to massively destabilize it? And while you’re there, wouldn’t you want to just
take the entire Ukrainian east, the parts with the coal and the pipe-making plants and
the industry? You know, since you already have permission?
The home front
The Kremlin’s belligerence in Ukraine will
ultimately weaken Russia
The Economist | Mar 15th 2014 |

NOBODY, apart from Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, knows what awaits Ukraine. If
the Kremlin stops at the annexation of Crimea, the rest of Ukraine may survive and
reform itself into a modern European state. If, on the other hand, Mr Putin moves
deeper into Ukraine, the country may descend into a bloody partisan war. Russian
troops were reported to be massing on the eastern border of Ukraine as The
Economist went to press.

Worryingly, the Kremlin justifies its actions in Crimea by citing a need to protect the
Russian-speaking population, which would equally justify a military operation in the
south and east of the country. Mr Putin sees himself as not just the president of Russia,
but as a protector of the “Russian World”, an ill-defined conglomerate. His idea of
gathering historic Russian lands into his own fief has pushed Kiev, the cradle of
Russian cities, farther away from Moscow than it has ever been.

Yet it is not just Ukraine that faces a threat from the Kremlin. So does Russia itself. And
whereas Ukraine may yet shake off the Kremlin’s grip, the chances of Russia’s
becoming a modern, civilised country, open to the world and respectful of its citizens,
are diminishing with every outburst of war hysteria on Russian television.

This marks a new period in Russia’s post-Soviet history, rather as the Soviet invasion
of Czechoslovakia in 1968 marked a new chapter in the Soviet empire’s post-Stalinist
history. The tanks in Prague crushed not only Czech reformers, but also hopes among
Russians of building a more humane socialism at home. Similarly, Russia’s escapade
in Ukraine entrenches its own authoritarian, oil-dependent and fundamentally weak
state.

The Ukrainian revolution last month posed an existential threat to Mr Putin’s

paternalistic and kleptocratic system by prompting the question: if Ukraine can cut itself
off from the Soviet legacy, why can’t Russia? As one person close to the Kremlin says,
the most frequent comment echoing around those walls during the protests on Maidan
was: “Do we want this to happen in Moscow?”

In preparation for Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the Kremlin cleared the last pockets of
independent media. Ria Novosti, a state-news agency, which sheltered loyal but
liberal-minded journalists, was purged and turned into a blunt propaganda instrument.
TV Rain, a private television channel which provided the most objective coverage of
the Ukrainian protests, was taken off the air by the main cable providers, acting on the
Kremlin’s instructions. The internet, once free of Kremlin control, has been restricted by
new, vague laws. On March 12th the editor of one of the most popular news sites,
Lenta.ru, was replaced with a pro-Kremlin appointee. Its journalists threatened to
resign in protest: “The trouble is not that we won’t have anywhere to work, but that you
won’t have anything to read.” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Mr Putin, labelled
anyone objecting to the Kremlin’s actions part of a “nano-sized fifth column”.

A patriotic frenzy whipped up by television muffles any dissent. Television executives

who were trained as part of their Soviet-era military services in “special propaganda”,
which sought to “demoralise the enemy army and establish control over the occupied
territory”, created a virtual enemy in Crimea—fascist revolutionaries whose overthrow
of the legitimate government justified the movement of real troops.
People close to Mr Putin say he had been harbouring the idea of taking Crimea since
the war in 2008 with Georgia, which resulted in the de facto occupation of Abkhazia
and South Ossetia, its two breakaway republics. Yet the context is different. Kirill
Rogov, a political columnist, argues that the war in Georgia served as a patriotic
accompaniment to Russia’s economic resurgence. Ukraine serves as its substitute.

Russia’s economic stagnation has exposed the limits of Mr Putin’s political and
economic model, which relied on rising oil revenues and allowed him to buy the support
of the elite and the acquiescence of the population at large. Real disposable incomes,
which rose by 12% in 2007, on the eve of the war with Georgia, are forecast to rise by
3% this year. The Kremlin faced a choice between political liberalisation and
mobilisation of the country by the means of war and repression. Mr Putin has chosen
the latter.

Confrontation with the West is one of the main goals of Mr Putin’s operations. Any
sanctions imposed will allow him to blame Russia’s economic downturn on the West,
though that may not placate the ruling class, with its cash stashed abroad in property
and bank accounts.

Mr Putin has tried to reduce the elite’s vulnerability to sanctions by warning it to

repatriate its money and even passing a law banning the ownership of foreign bank
accounts by Russian officials. Yet there is little sign those measures have had any
effect, and Mr Putin’s actions are bound to damage the wider Russian economy. They
will accelerate capital flight, raise the cost of borrowing and restrict new investment.
This could lead to a fall in the value of the currency and in living standards. Although
Russian sabre-rattling has given Mr Putin’s ratings a short-term boost, it is unlikely to
arrest the growing discontent with his policies for long. As Andrei Zorin at Oxford
University notes, the militaristic euphoria was even stronger 100 years ago when the
tsar dragged Russia into the first world war. Two years later, that enthusiasm had
vanished and the Russian empire started to crumble.

As part of the mobilisation the Kremlin organised a Soviet-style letter, endorsing Mr

Putin’s policies, from famous cultural figures such as Valery Gergiev, a celebrated
conductor. But another letter, sent to Mr Putin by a journalist from Vologda, the heart of
Russia, provides a clue as to how some ordinary Russians feel. “Could you also send
the troops to the Vologda region?” it said. “We are all Russian-speakers here and our
rights are really infringed upon: our sick cannot get medication and care, our education
is getting worse every year, our agriculture is dead.”

[ “Valery Gergiev, a celebrated conductor” btw, worst Mahler conductor ever ]

A “Belgian Solution” for Ukraine?
Graham Allison | The National Interest | March 15, 2014

After Crimeans vote on Sunday to secede, but before Putin annexes Crimea, President
Obama, Chancellor Merkel, and other European leaders should take a page from
history and propose a "Belgian solution."

President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recently proposed

"Finlandization" of Ukraine. Ukraine would be allowed "wide ranging economic relations
with Russia and the EU but no participation in any military alliance viewed by Moscow
as directed against itself."

Henry Kissinger has warned that “for the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is
not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.” Reality, he argues, should lead us to
accept an outcome that excludes Ukraine from NATO.

An appropriate way to do this would be a “Belgian solution:” internationally-guaranteed

neutrality for Ukraine. From the 16th century until the early 19th, armies repeatedly
marched through the territory that is now Belgium. When Belgium declared
independence from the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830, its future was uncertain.
France proposed a partition of Belgium in which it would annex the strategic city of
Brussels. But others had a better idea. In the Treaty of London, the UK, France,
Prussia, Russia, Austria and Holland agreed to respect Belgium's territorial integrity
and permanent neutrality. As a result, Belgium enjoyed nearly a century of peace that
ended only with the outbreak of World War I.

Internationally-recognized neutrality has proved a viable solution for a number of other

states including Switzerland (which declared neutrality after the Peace of Westphalia)
and Austria (in a post-World War II Treaty signed by the US, UK, France, and USSR).

Why, it will be asked, should Ukraine not be free to enter into any economic or military
relationship it chooses—including the EU and NATO? In a word, the answer is: history.
However inconvenient, Ukraine's survival and wellbeing will remain highly dependent
on the forbearance and even largesse of its neighbors—none more importantly than
Russia. Russia provided half the raw materials Ukraine imports and supplies more than
half the gas it consumes at a discount one-third below market prices. Ukraine’s
metallurgical and chemical industries that account for a large part of its GDP are also
the largest consumers of discounted Russian gas. Moreover, the territory of Ukraine is
sharply divided between East and West, and if a fair vote were taken, a substantial
majority of Crimeans would vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.

Empires never collapse without leaving in their wake divided populations, disputed
borders, and decades of simmering grievances. When compared with the dissolution of
other recent former empires, the most remarkable thing about the Russian story is how
peaceful it has been—so far. Civil war in Tajikistan, a struggle between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and a short, limited Georgian-Russian war in 2008
aside, the captive nations of Eastern and Central Europe, as well as the territories
acquired by Peter, Catherine, and other czars over five centuries, have emerged with
strikingly little violence.

Yet of these post-Soviet states, Ukraine is a special case. Home of the original Kievan
Rus a thousand years ago, in the minds of most Russians, Ukraine is almost as much
a part of Russia as Moscow. When the grand dukes of Muscovy took control of what is
today western Russia in the 15th century, they proclaimed themselves as the
successors of Kiev. Eastern Ukraine has been an integral part of Moscow’s Empire for
more than three centuries.

Ukraine’s current borders are both artificial and accidental. Sevastopol was built by
Catherine the Great as a major base for the Russian Navy. Had Nikita Khrushchev not
made a symbolic gesture in transferring Crimea’s administrative status to an
administrative subunit of the USSR, Crimea would not have fallen on the Russian
rather than the Ukrainian side of the line when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
Economically, Ukraine is a basket case, likely to default on debts due in the year
ahead. Politically, Ukraine ranks at the bottom of the charts in corruption and
dysfunctionality.

Successful statecraft requires recognizing brute realities and imagining feasible

possibilities. Given the reality that is Ukraine today, an internationally-recognized
neutral state within its current borders would be a victory for all. By treaty, it could not
be a member of NATO or the EU, or Russia’s pale imitations of both; it would give
Russia a 100-year lease on the base for its Black Sea Fleet; it should internationalize
ownership of the pipelines that take Russian gas to European consumers; it would
guarantee minority rights in accord with European standards. Under these conditions,
its citizens will have a better opportunity to focus on nation building at home than they
will otherwise.

Graham Allison is Director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science
and International Affairs.
Russian Spetsnaz Commandos
Spearheading Covert Campaign Against the
Ukraine
Eli Lake and Anna Nemtsova The Daily Beast March 15, 2014

Putin appears to be using elite commandos—Spetsnaz—to spearhead his stealth

move into Crimea and, perhaps, beyond.

Forget the military forces massed on the border and brief incursions into Ukrainian
territory and airspace. Russia is invading Ukraine in the shadows. The same special
operations forces that appear to be rigging the election in Crimea are quietly escalating
tensions inside other parts of eastern Ukraine.

This week the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) arrested a group of people led by a
Ukrainian citizen who were said to be scoping out three of its most crucial military
divisions in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson.

In Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, press reports from the ground say that Russian
provocateurs have attacked Ukrainians who organized anti-Russian street protests.

The forces behind these operations, according to U.S. officials briefed on the updates
in Ukraine, are likely the Spetsnaz, the Russian military’s highly trained saboteurs,
spies and special operations forces who may change the face—and the borders—of
Ukraine without once showing the Russian flag on their uniforms. Or, for that matter,
without wearing any particular uniforms at all.

Few politicians in Kiev seemed to have any doubts that the results of the
referendumSunday will bring Crimea under the Kremlin’s control.

In 1979 the Soviet Union was able to take over Afghanistan with less than 700
Spetsnaz soldiers. These same operatives are now spreading out over Ukraine,
according to U.S. officials who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.
One of these officials stressed that while U.S. intelligence assesses there are more
Spetsnaz forces surging into Ukraine, there is no reliable number on how many are
inside the country and ultimately whether their presence is a prelude to a more formal
invasion.

On March 5, Jane’s Defense Weekly ran an analysis of Russian troop movements near
Ukraine and noted similarities with the USSR’s special operations campaign in 1979
before the full invasion of the country. “A significant indicator of Russia’s next steps
would be the arrival in Crimea of personnel from Moscow’s GCHQ-NSA equivalent
organization, previously titled the Federal Agency of Government Communications and
Information (FAPSI), to carry forward the situation,” Jane’s wrote. In the last seven
weeks, two recordings of high profile telephone conversations featuring European
Union and U.S. officials have mysteriously surfaced on the Internet, suggesting
Russia’s technical intelligence services have been active during the Ukraine crisis

Of course, the situation in Ukraine is fluid, and the intelligence coming from the area is
incomplete. Most analysts say only Putin and a small circle of advisers will decide
whether Russia’s current military incursions become a full-fledged invasion.

On the ground in Ukraine, such confusion reigns that the role of Spetsnaz is hard to
confirm. But its involvement would come as no surprise.
In Kiev’s Maidan Square, there’s the camp set up by veterans who fought for the
Soviets in Afghanistan when Ukraine was still part of the USSR. Twenty-five years ago,
Ukrainian and Russian soldiers belonged to the same army; they were dying shoulder
to shoulder in Afghanistan. So the Ukrainian veterans watch closely and understand
only too well the tactics used against them now.

For the last two weeks, Oleg Mikhnyuk, the commander of a group of veterans calling
themselves the Afghan Hundred, has been receiving reports from southern and eastern
Ukraine about the mysterious “Russian presence” on Ukraine’s territory. “If in the
beginning of March they were just ‘little green men’ without identity driving armored
vehicles all over Crimea, now the invasion is official, as Kherson region is definitely
outside of the Russian Black Sea fleet jurisdiction, ” Mikhnyuk said. (Putin played his
game initially within his self-defined version of a treaty that gives Russia the right to
locate military bases in Crimea.)

This evening the crowd in the Afghan veterans’ camp grew quiet as one of their senior
officers spoke on his cell phone. Earlier in the day, the foreign ministry of Ukraine
declared that the Russian invasion had gone beyond the Crimean peninsula, and the
ministry demanded immediate withdrawal of Russian military forces from Ukrainian
territory.

On the previous night, locals of Strelkovoye village complained to Afghan veterans

about Russian military helicopters circling over Kherson region. On Saturday morning
about 50 militants in Russian army uniforms occupied a natural gas substation there.
“But our forces immediately reacted and pushed them off our territory,” Mikhnyuk said,
expressing hopes that no “provocation could cause bloodshed in the future.”

Meanwhile, Petr Mekhed at the Ukrainian ministry of defense declared that “the
statement about the invasion came from foreign ministry, and the defense ministry
cannot confirm the invasion.”

Meanwhile, reports continue of “unknown armed men” kidnapping Ukrainian civil

society activists, and even anti-Russian activities are suspected as “false flag”
operations by Putin’s operatives. Saturday afternoon, an Orthodox priest, Nikolai Kvich,
was reportedly kidnapped as he conducted a service in his church in Sevastopol
church. At about 8 p.m. dozens of masked men stormed the Moskva Hotel in the
Crimean capital of Symferopol. The hotel’s visitors were told to stay in their rooms
while the men armed with machine guns raided the hotel.

Daily Beast correspondent Jamie Dettmer, who was there, says they may well have
been Spetsnaz: “They initially claimed it was an anti-terror exercise and then said it
was a false tip off. They were aggressive, waving guns, automatic weaponry with
silencers on, and they lashed out at a cameraman with rifle butts. Maybe an exercise in
intimidation—we don’t know.”

Few politicians in Kiev seemed to have any doubts that the results of the referendum
Sunday will bring Crimea under the Kremlin’s control. The question discussed in
political circles continues to be whether Russia will use open military force against
Ukrainian army bases outside the peninsula, in the rest of Ukraine. With the Spetsnaz
deployed, it may not have to.
Putin’s ‘Honest Brokers’
NY Times By MAXIM TRUDOLYUBOV Contributing Op-Ed Writer March 14, 2014

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s decision to slip soldiers in unmarked uniforms

into Crimea this month and escalate the race for control over other Russian-speaking
parts of Ukraine shows that former assumptions about Moscow’s political behavior no
longer apply. The United States and the European Union may still consider sanctions
as a tool to check Moscow’s foreign policy, but to Mr. Putin, the threat of such
sanctions means little: He has already factored them into his plans.

The chain of events the Kremlin has set in motion contains a message not only for
Western policy makers, but also for the Russian plutocrats and corrupt officials who
keep much of their wealth in the West. Mr. Putin is letting his Western adversaries
know that he is telling his Russian enemies and financially corrupt friends: “If you won’t
straighten up and behave as patriots, I am ready to throw you under the bus. If the laws
prohibiting you to feather your nests abroad or to serve as ‘foreign agents’ do not
persuade you, Western sanctions will do the job.”

After the Russia-supported president of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych, fled his country
on Feb. 22, the Kremlin went into emergency mode. Since then, key decisions have
been made by a group of Russia’s top security officials. The diplomatic, military and
business establishments have been pushed to the side.

The new ruling circle is now even smaller and more opaque than before. Those
insiders who used to counterbalance the Kremlin’s hawks are being marginalized.
Strategic decisions on Crimea are made at Security Council meetings presided over by
Mr. Putin. Important members include his chief of staff, Sergei B. Ivanov, the council
secretary, Nikolai P. Patrushev, the director of the secretary of the Federal Security
Service, Aleksandr V. Bortnikov, and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service,
Mikhail Fradkov.

Mr. Putin has surrounded himself with the Kremlin’s version of “honest brokers” —
ultraconservative in their conviction that Greater Russia must be restored, people
whose values (as Mr. Putin loves to think) are not distorted by vested interests nor
driven by the desire for personal financial gain (though many of their relatives have
lucrative jobs at state-connected companies — but that is a minor offense by Russian
standards).

This inner circle sees Ukraine’s February revolution as Western-led regime change.
The fact that the United States and the European Union recognized the Ukrainian
interim government and even promised it financial aid was presented in Russia as the
ultimate breach of trust by the West. The Kremlin now sees international treaties
concerning Ukraine, including the Budapest memorandum to the 1994 Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty that guarantees Ukraine’s territorial integrity, as null and void.

Mr. Putin says that the nature of Ukraine’s statehood has changed and that it is no
longer legitimate. Thus, Russia has the moral right to make a move against Crimea.
Moreover, the Kremlin thinking goes, if Moscow had not come up with a quick and
forceful response to the West (even at the cost of breaking rules), Russia would have
been seen as weak.

When Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, said last week that Vladimir Putin was in
“another world,” her statement was widely seen as a tactful attempt at saying that he is
crazy. But to many Russians, Mr. Putin’s decisions, though they may have been
radical, are not at all irrational.
The All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion, a state-backed polling
organization, declared on Thursday that his approval rating exceeds 70 percent and
has reached its highest point in three years. Independent pollsters have also found that
the Kremlin’s stance on Ukraine and Crimea is popular. “An absolute majority of the
Russian public would have approved of Crimea’s accession to Russia,” says Lev
Gudkov, director of the Levada Center, an independent polling firm. “On the other
hand, more than 70 percent are against any use of force in Ukraine.”

The self-imposed state of emergency puts Mr. Putin in his element. Here is a sketch of
what he is aiming to achieve: A popular leader is once more in tune with the majority of
his people. The regime has renewed its mandate. The Westernizers — the rich, the
clever and other untrustworthy minorities — are on the other side of the barricade.
Honest leaders, people who don’t have bolt-holes in the West, are once more in
charge.

For the moment, society is polarized. But a creeping purge of the elites is underway.
Anyone who wants to keep a role within the system will have to make a choice: Agree
to mobilize his resources for Russia and waive any remnant of property rights, or leave
the country and face the consequences. The choice is the same for any public
intellectual or journalist — take up a patriotic stance, stop writing, or go into exile.

Any criticism can be presented as unpatriotic. Russia now has an overarching agenda
that dwarfs petty issues such as graft or the arbitrary rule of the law-enforcement
officials.

That’s the picture the Kremlin’s “honest brokers” would like to see. It’s not yet reality,
but life in Russia is moving in that direction. Two independent media outlets have
recently been put under new Kremlin-approved management — the large and widely
read news site Lenta.ru and Russia’s largest social network VKontakte.ru. The state
communications authority has blocked three smaller news sites and the web page
produced by the opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The independent station TV Dozhd
(TV Rain) is also under threat.

Theoretically, Mr. Putin can still pull away from Crimea. By not officially acknowledging
those unmarked troops as Russian, he keeps his exit door slightly ajar. But no matter
how unclear his intentions are regarding Ukraine, there is little doubt that he is fully
committed to his dystopian vision of a united, patriotic Russia. As a response to the
bottom-up revolution in Kiev he has started a top-down revolution in Moscow.

Maxim Trudolyubov is the opinion page editor of the business newspaper Vedomosti.
Putin’s Imperial Road to Economic Ruin
Dergei Guriev Project Syndicate MAR 11, 2014

PARIS – The debate around Crimea is no longer centered on international law:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly recognized that he does not feel bound
by it and does not care if the rest of the world deems Russia’s actions illegal. What is
not clear is whether Russia’s economy can bear the burden of Putin’s objectives in
Ukraine.

Regardless of the West’s response to the Crimean crisis, the economic damage to
Russia will be vast. First, there are the direct costs of military operations and of
supporting the Crimean regime and its woefully inefficient economy (which has been
heavily subsidized by Ukraine’s government for years.) Given the uncertainty
surrounding Crimea’s future status, these costs are difficult to estimate, though they
are most likely to total several billion dollars per year.

A direct cost of this magnitude amounts to less than 0.5% of Russia’s GDP. While not
trivial, Russia can afford it. Russia just spent $50 billion dollars on the Sochi Olympics
and plans to spend even more for the 2018 World Cup. It was prepared to lend $15
billion to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s government and to provide
$8 billion annually in gas subsidies.

Then there are the costs related to the impact of sanctions on trade and investment.
Though the scope of the sanctions remains uncertain, the effect could be enormous.
Annual inward foreign direct investment is estimated to have reached $80 billion in
2013. A significant decline in FDI – which brings not only money but also modern
technology and managerial skills – would hit Russia’s long-term economic growth hard.
And denying Russian banks and firms access to the US (and possibly European)
banking system – the harshest sanction applied to Iran – would have a devastating
impact.

In the short run, however, it is trade that matters much more than investment. Russia’s
annual exports (mostly oil, gas, and other commodities) are worth almost $600 billion,
while annual imports total almost $500 billion. Any non-trivial trade sanctions (including
sanctions on Russian financial institutions) would be much more painful than the direct
cost of subsidizing Crimea. Of course, sanctions would hurt Russia’s trading partners,
too. But Russia’s dependence on trade with the West is certainly much larger than vice
versa.

Moreover, the most important source of potential damage to Russia’s economy lies
elsewhere. Russian and foreign businesses have always been worried about the
unpredictability of the country’s political leadership. Lack of confidence in Russian
policymaking is the main reason for capital flight, low domestic asset prices, declining
investment, and an economic slowdown that the Crimea crisis will almost certainly
cause to accelerate.

Indeed, Russia’s response to events in Ukraine has exceeded the worst expectations
of those who were already questioning whether Putin is, as German Chancellor Angela
Merkel put it, “in touch with reality.” The move to annex Crimea has reversed any soft-
power benefit that Putin might have gained from the Sochi Olympics and the pardons
he granted (as recently as December) to imprisoned opponents like Mikhail
Khodorkovsky and the members of Pussy Riot.

The sacrifice of these gains suggests that the Crimea adventure was not part of long-
considered plan. On the contrary, since the crisis began, Russia’s leaders have
repeatedly contradicted their previous statements, backtracked, reversed decisions,
and denied easily verifiable facts. All of this indicates that Russian political leaders
have no strategy and do not foresee the consequences of their decisions. Even the
Kremlin’s own supporters acknowledge that Putin “is improvising.”

It is also clear that the decisions to violate international law, despite the risk of
economic isolation, were made in an ad hoc fashion by Putin’s innermost circle. For
example, Valentina Matviyenko, the chairwoman of the Federation Council (the
parliament’s upper house), announced that Russia would not send troops to Ukraine –
just two days before she and the Council voted unanimously to authorize Putin to do
precisely that. And Matviyenko is one of the 12 permanent members of Russia’s
National Security Council, the supreme decision-making authority on such matters.

Regardless of whether the Kremlin is irrational or simply uninformed, its policy in

Crimea sends an unmistakable signal to investors: Russia’s political leaders are
impossible to predict. This will further undermine Russian and foreign investors’
confidence and increase capital flight, which could not come at a worse time. With
credit-fueled consumer spending – the engine driving GDP growth since 2010 – now
running out of steam, the economy is stagnating.

Meanwhile, investment is still below its 2008 peak. Despite a wealth of opportunities
across the Russian economy, the country’s hostile business climate – including bloated
bureaucracies, widespread corruption, and the expansion of state-owned companies –
has weakened Russian and foreign investors’ incentive to start new projects or expand
existing ones. The realization that Putin has entered, to quote Merkel again, “another
world” will only make matters worse.

Will Russians notice the economic costs of the Kremlin’s irrationality? GDP growth has
already slowed and may turn negative. The stock market has already fallen sharply and
may fall further. Of course, equity ownership in Russia is narrow; most Russians do not
even follow market indices. But increased capital flight will also affect something that
ordinary Russians know and care about: the ruble’s exchange rate.

On the Monday after Putin’s Crimea adventure began, the Central Bank of Russia
reportedly spent $11.3 billion to prop up the ruble. Such support is clearly
unsustainable; in fact, the CBR recently announced that it will allow the ruble to float,
implying an exchange rate that reflects the market’s expectations concerning oil prices
and future capital outflows.

Thus, worries about a Putin who has “lost touch with reality” imply not only a lower (or
even negative) GDP growth rate, but also – and more immediately – a weaker
currency, driving up prices of imported consumer goods. All Russians will soon feel the
effects; whether that will bring their president back from his world to this one is another
matter.
While the West Watches Crimea, Putin
Cleans House in Moscow
BY JULIA IOFFE @juliaioffe New Republic MARCH 14, 2014

While the world awaits Sunday’s referendum in Crimea and nervously watches the
Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s eastern border, the world is missing that, in
Moscow, Vladimir Putin is busily cleaning house.

Yesterday, Russian journalist Leonid Ragozin wrote here about Putin’s renewed
crackdown on the media: What began just days before the Olympics with a Kremlin
attack on Dozhd, the last independent television station in Russia, has now extended to
Lenta.ru, arguably the best news site in Russia. On Wednesday, the site’s editor-in-
chief was fired and replaced with a Kremlin loyalist, and the whole staff quit in protest.
Yesterday, the Kremlin went full-China on the Internet, the holy of holies of the Russian
opposition. Using some flimsy legal pretexts, it banned access to various oppositional
news sites, to the website of Moscow’s biggest radio station, and to the blog of Alexey
Navalny, who is currently under house arrest. Last week, the owner of Dozhd
announced that, due to the clampdown, the channel is going to close in a couple
months.

Within the span of a couple months, the Kremlin, by hook and by crook, has cleared all
the media underbrush. There’s suddenly not much left of the independent media, even
of what little of it there was left after Putin’s first two terms at the wheel.

But that’s not all. In fact, terrifyingly, it’s not nearly all. Yesterday, Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
the pseudo-nationalist pseudo-parliamentarian, proposed banning the letter Ы (usually
transliterated as “y” into English, as in NavalnY or, say, blinY) from the Russian
alphabet because it was too “Asiatic.” The day before that, Vladimir Yakunin, head of
Russian Railways, the biggest company in the country, proposed spending “trillions of
rubles” on a “Trans-Eurasian Development Belt” that would take certain non-Western,
non-Anglo-Saxon values into account. Yakunin added that the West had foisted onto
Russia a form of economics—in which, judging by the number of Russian billionaires,
it’s been quite successful—that was all growth for the sake of growth, and which
annihilated Russia’s intrinsic spirituality. (It’s also a strange statement for a man whose
children live in the very heart of the Anglo-Saxon West: London.) And that’s all
happening with the backdrop of thousands of mysterious men, armed with state-of-the-
art weaponry and dressed in uniforms that look very Russian but that Putin insisted
they had “bought in a store.”

Westerners rightly know Russia as a font of absurdity, but lately, it’s been hard to keep
up: I’ve been trying to write this post for a solid week now, and have been constantly
derailed by the increasingly bizarre and worrying developments coming from the Trans-
Eurasian Development Belt.

Actually, I wanted to start last week, the day a professor at Moscow’s elite diplomatic
academy was fired for writing an article that slammed the occupation of Crimea, and
comparing it to Germany of the 1930s. Or did I want to start with the zealously
Bolshevik response of Margarita Simonyan, RT's editor-in-chief, to the foolish on-air,
anti-war rant of Abby Martin? “The American propaganda machine, which Abby herself
denounces every time she is on the air," Simonyan wrote, "is so strong that it is
capable of brainwashing even the brightest and most ardent people. The more fiercely
we will continue to resist it.”
But then came the day a Moscow acquaintance announced on Facebook that her
daughter, a first-grader, came home from school in a panic because the teacher had
told the class that America was about to invade Russia. But then television host and
attack dog Dmitry Kiselev went after the “radicals” in Kiev in a special broadcast
dedicated to Ukraine, saying that the transfer of Crime to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic
in 1954 was “a historical crime” and blaming the dissolution of Yugoslavia on the West.
“What is Yugoslavia now? A pimple on the body of Europe.” (He’s the same man who
on his show recently ran a photo of liberal magazine editor Evgenia Albats, who is
Jewish, with the backwards Hebrew lettering asking: “What kind of a Jew are you?”)

I was going to write about that, but then came the letters. First, an open letter to Putin
from the Russian Writers’ Union, which is as Soviet as it sounds, declared that, “in
these worrying times, when the fate not only of Russia and Ukraine, but of all European
civilization, is being decided, we want to express our support of your firm and
responsible position.” They also blamed “the destructive forces of the West.”

No sooner had I looped that into my narrative, that another letter in support of Putin’s
Crimea strategy emerged, this one signed by hundreds of the country’s artistic and
intellectual elite, many of them dependent on the Kremlin for grants to their theaters
and opera houses. Not that they had never signed such brassily Soviet letters before,
but still, the sheer density of the zestily stale statist language was a little much.

And, while we were reading about the Washington visit of acting Ukrainian prime
minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, one state-friendly tabloid in Moscow—Moskovsky
Komsomolets, whose revolutionary name has not changed since its founding in 1919—
was reporting that Yatsenyuk had smuggled out Ukraine’s gold reserves to hand over
to the Americans. Not to be outdone, Putin, who has denied the legitimacy of the
provisional government in Kiev, went even further while Yatsenyuk was in D.C.:
Ukraine, he said, had left the Soviet fold in 1991 illegally.

That was Wednesday. Also on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry went apeshit
on hearing that the House passed some kind of version of sanctions against the
Russians. On its Facebook page, the Ministry posted a screed reminding the U.S. of
the Declaration of Independence, the core principles of which, it felt, should apply to
the residents of the Crimea, but not, for some reason, those of Chechnya, against
whom Putin fought the war that cemented his hold on power.

Yesterday, Ekho Moskvy, the biggest Moscow radio station who had its website
blocked yesterday, invited on the air the editor of Den, a strange Moscow paper, said
the crackdown on the press was necessary because the West had waged “an
information war” against Russia, to which Russia had to present a united front. A family
friend wrote from Moscow in shock: His television was telling him the internet is for
radicals and perverts, which, to him, was a clear foreshadowing of a great firewall with
the West. (Other Moscow friends, all liberals, are beginning to get seriously depressed.
One describes a foreboding feeling that a civil war is near, another asked for the
number of a good immigration lawyer in the U.S.)

I could go on, but that’s all the appetite I have for this grotesquery. Some of it proudly
Soviet, some of it is so outrageous and loony and crypto-fascist that it makes me wish
for the hardy good sense of Leonid Brezhnev. These days, I’m afraid to look at the
news and my almost entirely Russian Facebook feed in the morning. Who knows what
the loosed hounds have done while I was sleeping? And, more importantly, who can
stomach it?

My cup completely overfloweth.

Here’s what’s scary about this: this is all being done, according to various reports,
without any consultation with anyone outside Putin’s shrinking inner circle of old KGB
spooks. The economic elites most likely to suffer from a plummeting ruble and
sanctions have been shut out of the decision-making process. This is all about
intangibles, the things that reason can't hook, the things impervious to logic and
reasoning and even the cynical algebra of geopolitical interests. This is about pride and
values and the Trans-Eurasian Development Belt.

And, yes, all of this is familiar and increasingly terrifying, but to whom? To you and me
and an increasingly besieged island of Moscow liberals? Because, terrifyingly,
familiarly, all of this works. The method has been tried many times, and it is true:
Putin’s rating has grown to its highest level in three years. Nearly two-thirds of
Russians think there is no legitimate government in Kiev and that there is anarchy on
the streets of Ukraine. Over half said that moving Russian troops into Crimea was
legal; of those, two-thirds that this is basically Russian land. Nearly half of those polled
said that Russian presence in the area brings stability, and that Crimea should be
brought into the fold of the Russian Federation.

What Moscow liberals are discovering is how quickly the ground has shifted beneath
their feet since Putin came back to power in 2012, how futile and pathetic their
resistance, and how easily wartime mobilization can steamroll them into nonexistence,
in a way it couldn’t when Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008. This time, even their
tiny Internet ghetto isn’t safe anymore. And its not clear that, once all this over and
Crimea is safely part of Russia, that the regime will roll back these measures. In fact,
it's highly likely that it won't. Maybe the Soviet rhetoric will dissipate, but the Internet
ghetto will still stand pillaged and smoldering. And, most terrifying of all, why resist at
all? Moscow liberals have looked on with envy at what their Kievan brothers
accomplished on the Maidan, but their protest had a different end: All of this is
happening in Moscow precisely because they went out to the streets to protest Putin
two years ago. Dare they protest again, and lose even more? Or have they lost it all
already?
Why Germany demands so much of Russia
on Ukraine
By Christian Science Monitor's Editorial Board / March 13, 2014

In an emotional speech Wednesday, Germany's Angela Merkel rebuked Russia's

Vladimir Putin for his violation of Ukraine's sovereignty. Her country's incredible
progress since World War II gives her credibility to demand the same of Russia.

Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin have met dozens of times. They speak each other’s
languages. Their countries’ economies are tightly bound. Even though Ms. Merkel is
chancellor of Germany, she addresses the Russian president with the informal “du” of
German.

Feb. 28, Merkel began to set aside her personal ties with Mr. Putin. After two weeks of
diplomatic efforts to keep Russia from splitting Ukraine by force, the de facto leader of
the European Union stood before German lawmakers Wednesday and delivered an
emotional rebuke to Putin.

Her words serve as a reminder of why nations must embrace progress toward
universal values as inevitable.

Moscow, she said, is using the old method of might to resolve its fears over Ukraine’s
future rather than “the political means of our times” – the power of international law.

“The law of the jungle is placed against the strength of the law, unilateral geopolitical
concerns against understanding and cooperation,” she said. “The clock cannot be
turned back. Conflicts of interest in the middle of Europe in the 21st century can be
successfully overcome only if we don’t fall back on the patterns of the 19th and 20th
centuries.”

Merkel has given Putin ample time to prove his claims that ethnic Russians in Crimea
are in danger. But he did not permit international inspectors to enter. She also
distanced Germany from Washington’s moves to place warships and fighter jets closer
to Ukraine, thus affirming German pacifism.

But her patience ran out just days before a March 16 referendum in Crimea that could
pave the way for the peninsula on the Black Sea to be annexed by Russia – in violation
of international law about secession.

“What we are witnessing now is oppressive, and I fear we need to be prepared for the
long haul in solving this conflict,” she said.

If the majority of Russian-speakers in Crimea vote to secede, the EU plans to impose

travel bans and asset freezes on Russian leaders involved with violating Ukraine’s
sovereignty and territory. Then full economic sanctions will follow.

For its behavior, Russia must feel “massive damage,” Merkel said. And next week, the
EU and Ukraine will go ahead and sign the political accord that started the crisis last
year when Ukraine’s then-president rejected it, bringing mass protests that led to his
ouster.

Her speech signals a new Germany, one ready to take on global leadership as the
United States seeks a reduced role during a period of retrenchment. But more
important, today’s Germany understands the necessity for nations to make progress.
After all, in just seven decades, Germany has “turned a past blighted by war and
dominance into a present marked by peace and cooperation,” in the words of its
president, Joachim Gauck.

In a January speech on Germany’s role in the world, Mr. Gauck said the country has
transformed itself from being a beneficiary of a world order based on openness, human
rights, and peace to now being able to be its guarantor.

“We would be deceiving ourselves if we were to believe that Germany was an island
and thus protected from the vicissitudes of our age. For few other countries have such
close links with the rest of the world as Germany does. Germany has thus benefited
especially from the open global order. And it’s vulnerable to any disruptions to the
system. For this reason, the consequences of inaction can be just as serious, if not
worse than the consequences of taking action,” he said.

Nearly two months after his speech, Merkel did “take action” to restore a global order.
As leader of a country that has made so much progress, she has the credibility to
demand it of Russia.

She knows Putin well enough perhaps that he might yet listen. A phone call might give
them an opportunity to resolve this crisis using the common language of peace and
progress.

[ Sehr gut, Frau Merkel, aber … is not “the strength of the law” always accompanied by
the law of strength? We hear many judges talking but no policemen acting, for the time
being ]
Challenges Ahead in Crimea
Brookings Inst. Opinion | March 11, 2014 By: Steven Pifer

Editor’s Note from Lawfare: The Russian military occupation of the Crimea and Russian
president Vladimir Putin’s attempts to railroad a political settlement that would separate Crimea
from the rest of Ukraine is the latest, and perhaps the most formidable, foreign policy test for the
Obama administration. Events on the ground are fast-moving and defy easy categorization,
further complicating policymaking. Steven Pifer, a senior fellow here at Brookings as well as the
U.S. ambassador to Ukraine during several pivotal years in the Clinton administration, offers his
perspective on the challenges ahead and the best approach for the United States and its
allies.As the Russian military completed its armed seizure of Crimea, the regional parliament in
Crimea voted to join the Russian Federation and scheduled a referendum to ratify that course.
No one should doubt how the referendum will turn out. The outcome will confront Moscow, Kyiv,
and the West with uneasy and fateful choices.

The Russian army has seized all major locations on Crimea, blocked Ukrainian units in
their bases, and laid a minefield to cordon the peninsula off from the mainland. Led by
a prime minister who reportedly once was known in local organized crime circles as the
“Goblin,” the Crimean parliament on March 6 voted 78-0 with eight abstentions to join
Russia. Some deputies who might have opposed the motion were prevented from
taking part in the vote.

The parliament also scheduled a March 16 referendum. The ballot offers two choices:
join Russia or restore the 1992 constitution, which would grant Crimea substantially
greater autonomy. Keeping Crimea a part of Ukraine under the current constitutional
arrangements does not appear on the ballot.

In a different world, with no upheaval in Kyiv and no Russian occupation of Crimea, a

substantial portion of the Crimean population might favor drawing closer to, or even
joining, Russia. Ethnic Russians constitute about 60 percent of the population. The
peninsula was a part of Russia until 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to
Ukraine, something that did not matter much as long as there was a Soviet Union.

That said, 54 percent of Crimeans voted for an independent Ukraine on the eve of the
Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. So, in different times, the choice might not be that clear-
cut.

These, however, are not different times. One way or another, the referendum will
produce a vote to join Russia. And the referendum will lack legitimacy. It will be
conducted as armed Russian soldiers patrol the streets and Ukrainian television
channels have been shut down, replaced by Russian broadcasting with its decidedly
propagandistic slant. Crimean Tatars, composing 12 percent of the population, will
boycott the vote.

The referendum is illegal under Ukrainian law. That does not seem to bother Moscow,
though the Russians would be quite bothered were the Chechens to call for a
referendum on independence—something the Kremlin fought two bloody wars to
prevent.

For the past two decades, most of Europe has generally agreed that ethnic minorities
have no right to unilaterally separate themselves, a principle the Russians have
strongly backed when it has come to Russia. The principal exception in Europe was
Kosovo, a victim of Serbian ethnic cleansing in 1998-99. More than 100 countries have
recognized Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence, which came only after a
decade of failed negotiations with Serbia.
Once the Crimean referendum is done, Russian president Vladimir Putin will face two
primary choices. The Russian parliament has begun considering legislation to simplify
how a foreign territory can join Russia. Putin could simply annex Crimea, which would
be popular with many in his conservative base.
That would come with costs. Russia’s neighbors would become more anxious. The
West and others would regard it as a naked land grab, which should trigger more
sanctions.

Putin’s alternative would be to let Crimea hang in a kind of limbo of undefined status,
much like Transnistria, which broke away from Moldova in the early 1990s. That could
leave alive a thin glimmer of hope that Ukraine might some day recover Crimea (if
Russia annexes it, it’s never going back). But the near-term prospects of recovery
would be zero.

Moscow presumably will discard a third option, to recognize Crimea as an independent

state. It proved diplomatically embarrassing when the Russians declared South Ossetia
and Abkhazia independent following the 2008 Russia-Georgia conflict. Only
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Nauru, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu recognized the two statelets, and
Vanuatu later withdrew its recognition. Crimea could hardly expect to fare better.

Some suggest the Ukrainian government should accept the loss of Crimea as a fact
beyond its ability to reverse. It could then focus on the rest of the country, which poses
plenty of political and economic challenges. Having taken Crimea, or at least pried it
away from Ukraine, Russia perhaps would be content.

Moscow, however, likely will not be content as long as Ukraine desires to draw closer
to the European Union—and Russia’s seizure of Crimea will only fan that desire. Kyiv
will not accept the referendum or, should it come to that, Russia’s annexation of the
peninsula. Doing so would not end the broader dispute with Moscow but would set a
dangerous precedent that the Russians might be tempted to apply elsewhere, such as
in eastern Ukraine, where ethnic Russians constitute a significant share of the
population—though not a majority—and where there have been some pro-Russia
demonstrations.

As for the West, some will suggest accepting Crimea’s new status. They will argue that
the West cannot reverse the situation without military action, and the United States and
Europe plainly are not prepared to go to war over Crimea.
But Western acceptance of Russia’s aggression and the Crimean referendum’s results
would prove a mistake. It would weaken key rules—such as respect for sovereignty
and territorial integrity—that have governed post-Cold War Europe. It would fuel
worries in countries with sizable ethnic Russian populations, including NATO allies
such as Latvia and Estonia. And it would not resolve the longer-term tensions between
Moscow and a Ukrainian state that sees a better future for itself with Europe.

The United States and European Union should support Ukraine’s territorial integrity, as
they are committed to do as members of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE). In addition to imposing penalties on Russia—including more severe
sanctions should Moscow proceed to annex Crimea—Western countries should refuse
to deal with Crimean officials, bar investment by Western companies there, and allow
Ukraine to exercise a measure of border control by making ship port calls and
international airline service subject to approval by Kyiv.

Such policies will not have an impact immediately and may not succeed in restoring
Crimea’s status. But they are the right thing to do. The West needs to prepare a patient
and persistent campaign that makes clear that unilateral attempts to redraw Europe’s
borders will have consequences.
 Excerpt December GEAB - June 2014: Europe retakes control of its
neighbourhood policy

[ Published March 14, 2014 ]

The same day as the Ukraine’s refusal to sign the association agreement with the
EU, the two powers to show their joint indignation were the EU…and the US.
Catherine Ashton, a good little soldier, certainly continues to play her role by now
accusing the Ukrainian president, Viktor Ianoukovytch, of corruption. But since the
UK continues to distance itself from the European continent, the Americans are
obliged to come forward unmasked and everything is becoming clearer over who is
behind the EU enlargement policy for at least two decades. It’s probably now that it’s
the most annoying because it’s the clearest, but US policy here has certainly been
more effective when it was camouflaged. In fact, we are witnessing the last
desperate attempts to exploit the EU in favour of US strategic interests...

[ This piece (…) is a quote from the December 2013 edition of the GEAB.
Interesting how they consider it as a proof of their ability in “anticipating” events.
During the Ukrainian crisis, everybody could easily see how the EU is “in control of its
neighbourhood policy”.
And yes, Ashton accusations against Mr Yanukovich are obviously false and intended
to mislead EU policy-makers to the benefit of the malicious US.
Then ask the Ukrainian people how they are worried about “Americans obliged to come
forward unmasked”…
“Everything is becoming clearer” – to whom, GEAB? Surely not to you. ]
Putin ‘wants to rebuild USSR with Ukraine’ –
Brzezinski
euronews 07/03 18:16 CET

Russia and western powers have been talking tougher than at any time since the Cold
War over Ukraine.

The Crimean peninsula seems to have been under the control of soldiers following
orders from the Kremlin for just over a week, though Moscow denies it.

Crimea is an autonomous region of Ukraine, with 75 percent of the people of Russian

origin.

The Crimean parliament has called a referendum on formal attachment to Russia for
next week.

US President Barack Obama said such a referendum would violate international law.
He ordered visa restriction sanctions on a number of officials he considered to be
threatening Ukraine’s sovereignty, and he froze certain assets.

European Union leaders received Ukrainian Prime Minister Artseny Yatsenyuk in

Brussels with confirmation of their own suspension of negotiations with Moscow on
visa-free travel, and threatening economic sanctions in case of any further
deteriorations in Ukraine.

Political scientist, geostrategist and former United States National Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski, at 85 highly respected in Washington foreign policy circles, spoke
to euronews about the events in Ukraine.

An author of many books, this Polish-born American has been a critic of a number of
the superpower’s policies over the years; some of his ideas have rankled both US and
European governments as well as Moscow.

Alternately, he has supported international detente, engagement and vigorous

intervention in theatres where morality and human rights have been under threat,
globally.

Washington correspondent Stefan Grobe asked: “Dr. Brzezinski, you have been
warning against a situation in which Russia would bully Ukraine and destabilise
Ukrainian statehood for more than two decades. Did Putin’s action now come as a
surprise to you?”

Zbigniew Brzezinski: “No, not at all, because he has told us things such as, ‘the
Collapse of the Soviet Union is the greatest calamity of the 20th century.’ Just think
what that means: World War I – millions killed. World War II – millions and millions and
millions killed, plus the Holocaust. The Cold War – the possibility of a nuclear disaster
for all of humanity. No, no, all of that is not as important as the disappearance of a
state in which he was a secret policeman, KGB type. He wants to rebuild the Soviet
Union. And Ukraine is the prize. If he can get Ukraine he can have a crack at that
undertaking.”

Grobe: “We know the Russians are good chess players…”

Brzezinski: “Some of them; some of them are very bad.”

Grobe: “But now it looks like Putin is throwing the chessboard against the wall. Does he
know what he is doing? Does he follow a master plan for Ukraine?”

Brzezinski: “Well, he is certainly following a calculus, but a rather short-term one in my

judgement. For example, he disguised his troopers that he sent into Crimea as,
somehow or other, people from Mars: you don’t know where they are from, right. That’s
deniability. That’s a little bit like mafia sending in gangsters to kill someone with their
faces covered. Okay, so what does that accomplish? Everybody knows that they are
from Russia, but still there is deniability. My guess is that, when he did that, he was
contemplating the possibility of then going further. If there is no reaction from the
Ukrainians in general and if there is no reaction from the West, he can pull these stunts
off in eastern Ukraine, take over district by district, and then eventually dismember
Ukraine and then impose a government of his choice in Kyiv.”

Grobe: “You were National Security Advisor to President Carter when the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan. If you were National Security Advisor to President Obama now
that the Russians have invaded Ukraine, what would be your advice?”

Brzezinski: “We ought to convey to the Russians that if they are serious in having a
cooperative relationship with Ukraine, though not one hundred percent on their terms,
we are also willing to accommodate, because we don’t want a monopolistic relationship
with Ukraine. The country needs help, the country needs stabilisation, and both we and
the Russians can cooperate in doing that. At the same time, we can assure the
Russians that it is not our objective to seduce Ukraine into NATO, which the Russians
might view as a military threat. And, incidentally, a large percentage of Ukrainians don’t
want to be in NATO, while they do want to be independent. So, it’s quite consistent with
political reality. But at the same time we have to convey to him very quietly, not in a
fashion that humiliates him, that if he is not inclined to accommodate or if he is even
inclined to go further and threaten Ukraine, there will be consequences. If the Russians
refuse to accommodate in Crimea, I guarantee you the vast majority of Ukrainians who
are not anti-Russian [now] will turn anti-Russian.”

Grobe: “What tools can the US and Europe bring to the table?”

Brzezinski: “Economic accommodations that now exist can be suspended. Money

owned by Russians abroad can be put under constraint. There are many things of this
sort that can be done that signal to the Russians that there are tangible costs for
creating this kind of a challenge almost in the middle of Europe, geographically.”
Putin's 'big mistake': How sanctions could
cripple Russia
By Christopher Snyder / Published March 07, 2014 / FoxNews.com

Western sanctions placed on Russia and its leadership could have a wider impact on
the country’s economy than believed, according to a former U.S. ambassador to
Ukraine.

In an interview with Fox News’ Jonathan Hunt, William B. Taylor gave his take on the
possibility of new U.S. sanctions. Taylor served as ambassador in Kiev during the Bush
Administration and now acts as a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace.

Taylor says Russia’s support for a referendum on Crimea independence will only harm
Moscow’s global political and economic interests.

“I think he [Putin] is making a mistake,” Taylor said. “The sanctions that we are
considering and already imposing … will have an effect. I don’t know if they will have
an effect on Vladimir Putin, but they will have an effect on the people around him.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday sanctions imposed by the West
“would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang." Their foreign ministry added
they “will not accept the language of sanctions and threats,” and will respond if
sanctions are imposed.

Taylor dismissed these comments as “bluster.”

Taylor believes broader sanctions, especially those that would affect Russia's banking
sector, could grab Moscow’s attention more than current ones put mainly on
individuals.

“The United States could have a big effect on that even without the Europeans
because of the size of our banking sector,” Taylor said.

Taylor warns further Russian military movement would only hurt the country's standing
with Europe and the U.S..
Garry Kasparov: Time to call Putin's bluff
Heard on Fox/ Published March 06, 2014/

Given the chance, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov thinks he could put
Russian President Vladimir Putin in checkmate. But that's the problem: When it comes
to Ukraine, Kasparov says Putin isn't playing chess; he's playing poker.

"He has a weak hand, but he knows how to raise the stakes and he knows how to bluff.
And it's time to call his bluff," Kasparov said.

On Thursday, the Russian former chess grandmaster and chairman of the Human
Rights Foundation joined co-hosts Alisyn Camerota and Bill Hemmer on "America's
News HQ" to discuss the crisis in Ukraine.

When asked about Putin's endgame, Kasparov predicted that the Russian president
will go "as far as he's allowed to go. That's very simple. This is the rule for any
dictator."

According to Kasparov, the West's response has been "better than nothing. But, in my
view, it's not enough and it's late."

Kasparov's advice? "Don't impose sanctions on 140 million Russians. Pick out 140
oligarchs. Because you cannot have rational arguments with Putin. He's dictator for
life.... But every dictator needs his allies, his cronies, his henchmen. And they're
vulnerable."

But Kasparov cautioned that any sanctions should not "exclude a demonstration of
military might. Dictators can only be stopped by demonstrations of strength. They grow
with our weakness, with our indecisiveness."

Kasparov warned: "It's dangerous to confront Putin today, but tomorrow it will be more
dangerous and more costly."
Why West's economic engagement has
failed to rein in Putin's Russia
By Peter Morici/ FoxNews.com Published March 07, 2014

The crisis in the Ukraine will likely end with Russia permanently controlling the Crimea,
with the remainder of the country more tightly in its orbit than anticipated a few weeks
ago.

It's easy to attribute this to Vladimir Putin’s appetite for empire, but for a long time now
the West has pursued economic policies toward Russia that ill serve its objectives.

Since the Berlin Wall came down, the United States and its European allies have acted
as if Russia’s transition to a non-threatening democracy could be hastened through
economic engagement. After World War II, deepening trade helped end centuries of
enmity among western European states.

Russia provides 30 percent of Europe’s natural gas -- half flows through Ukraine -- and
it is a major supplier of crude oil and other resource based products to the West.

Conversely, Russia depends on Europe for sophisticated machinery, chemicals and

everyday products to stock store shelves. France is building ships to modernize
Russia’s navy and western multinationals are helping retool its automobile industry and
unlock oil and gas in difficult Arctic locations.

Despite constitutional limitations and protests in the streets, President Putin has
managed to lead Russia since 1999. He has repeatedly risked economic cooperation
with the West by using Russia’s natural gas supplies to advance his agenda, and
waged war in Chechnya in the early 2000s and Georgia in 2008.

Those actions have expressed Putin’s foreign policy doctrine that Russia enjoys a
“sphere of privileged interest” in former Soviet countries—something the West refuses
to formally acknowledge but has given him every reason to expect. After all, the West
twice beat its breasts about Russian aggression but did little to respond, continued
Russia’s participation in G8 and granted it admission into the WTO.

Meanwhile Moscow is forming a custom’s union with former Soviet states to stem
economic ties with the EU, and increase its influence on their foreign policies.

German Chancellor Merkel has complained that Putin is living in “another world” and
pondered whether he is “in touch with reality.”

Hardly.

Putin firmly grasps his objectives and the resolve of westerners who might thwart
partially reassembling the Soviet empire.

The West has a wide range of sanctions it can apply but all have negative reciprocal
consequences.

It can freeze Russian assets but its banks have significant exposure—for example,
France’s Societe Generale SA and Italy’s UniCredit SpA have substantial operations in
Russia.
Unfortunately, Obama, Merkel and most other western leaders are inclined to evaluate
the Ukrainian crisis as an isolated incident and conclude the Crimea, with its home port
for its Mediterranean fleet, is far more important to Russia than the West.

Poland, caught between Germany, Russia and tragic history, is more realistic, and its
leaders more inclined to agree with Senator Marco Rubio who said, “The very
credibility of the post-Cold War world and borders is at stake.”

Pulling all the corks—trade sanctions, asset freezes, and travel restrictions on Russian
leaders —would be costly and painful. And Europeans will finally have to develop their
substantial natural gas resources that may be released through fracking and diversify
their imports.

Reordering relations with Russia as if the Cold War has awakened from a long
hibernation may seem reactionary, but it is realistic. Russia has broken the peace,
economic engagement has failed and to continue that policy is nothing more than
appeasement.

Mr. Putin is scraping the rust off the iron curtain, and now it is just a question of how far
west the U.S. and European leaders will permit him to set the fence posts.

Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University
of Maryland, and widely published columnist. Follow him on Twitter @PMorici1
Russia Experts See Thinning Ranks’ Effect
on U.S. Policy
By JASON HOROWITZ NY Times MARCH 6, 2014

WASHINGTON — “I have to do a TV broadcast now, can I call you back in maybe an

hour?” Angela Stent, the director of the Russian studies department at Georgetown
University, said when she picked up the phone. An hour later she apologized again.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to call you back.”

For Ms. Stent and other professional Russia watchers, the phone has been ringing off
the hook since Ukraine became a geopolitical focal point. “It’s kind of a reunion,” she
said. “Everyone comes out of the woodwork.”

But while the control of Crimea by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has brought
America’s Russia experts in from the cold, the news media spotlight has also showed
important shifts in how American academics and policy makers think about Russia, not
to mention the quality and quantity of the people doing the thinking. Among those
experts, there is a belief that a dearth of talent in the field and ineffectual management
from the White House have combined to create an unsophisticated and cartoonish view
of a former superpower, and potential threat, that refuses to be relegated to the ash
heap of history.

“It’s a shorter bench,” said Michael A. McFaul, who returned from his post as the
American ambassador in Moscow on Feb. 26, as the crisis unfolded. He said the
present and future stars in the government did not make their careers in the Russia
field, which long ago was eclipsed by the Middle East and Asia as the major draws of
government and intelligence agency talent.

“The expertise with the government is not as robust as it was 20 or 30 years ago, and
the same in the academy,” Mr. McFaul said.

The drop-off in talent is widely acknowledged. “You have a lot of people who are very
old and a lot of people who are very young,” said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the
Peterson Institute for International Economics and a former economic adviser to Boris
N. Yeltsin, a former president of Russia. Mr. Aslund, who had a dozen interviews on
Ukraine on a single day this week, said people in the prime of their careers mostly
abandoned Russia in the 1990s.

“It is certainly harder for the White House, State Department and intelligence
community to find up-and-coming regional experts who are truly expert on that region,”
said Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution and President Bill
Clinton’s Russia point man. “It’s a market problem.”

Compounding the effects has been a lack of demand for Russian expertise at the very
top of the foreign policy pyramid. Successive White Houses have sought to fit Russia
into a new framework, both diplomatically and bureaucratically, as one of many
priorities rather than the singular focus of American foreign policy. Since Mr. Clinton
empowered Mr. Talbott, the portfolio has shrunk, and with it the number of aides with
deep Russian experience, and real sway, in the White House.

As a result, Russia experts say, there has been less internal resistance to American
presidents seeking to superimpose their notions on a large and complex nation of 140
million people led by a former K.G.B. operative with a zero-sum view of the world.
While President George W. Bush looked into Mr. Putin’s soul, former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice spoke his language and President Obama sought a so-called reset
of relations, they all found themselves discouraged that Mr. Putin, and Russia, did not
behave the way they thought they should.

Some experts lamented that instead of treating Mr. Putin as a partner on issues like the
global economy and energy markets, the Obama administration has taken a more
transactional approach. After Mr. Putin returned to the presidency following a stint as
prime minister, dismissed new American arms control ideas and gave asylum to
Edward J. Snowden, Mr. Obama essentially threw up his hands and declared a “pause”
in the relationship. By that point, Mr. McFaul was considered about 8,000 miles too far
from the Oval Office to affect decision making.

“When the Russians talk to the Obama administration, they want someone who they
know speaks on behalf of the president personally,” said Andrew S. Weiss, vice
president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a Russia
expert formerly on the National Security Council staff. “Now that McFaul is gone, they
are not sure they have that.”

That deficiency is not an accident of history.

In the midst of the Cold War, leading universities had whole departments dedicated to
understanding the Soviet Union. The top national security question of the day drew the
top minds, many of whom became fluent in Russian language and culture and
graduated into the government or the spy agencies. But the breakup of the Soviet
Union broke up those departments, and the national security enthusiasts melted away
with the thawing of relations. Professors found themselves out of funding and
eventually jobs.

Last year, the State Department ended a grant that Mr. McFaul benefited from as a
young Russia scholar and that was specifically intended for Russian and Eurasian
research. “That looks shortsighted, considering what we are looking at lately,” Mr.
McFaul said.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York
University, said that if anyone had the power to save the program, it would have been
Mr. McFaul. Mr. Cohen, who recently wrote an article titled “Distorting Russia” for The
Nation, which is edited by his wife, Katrina vanden Heuvel, has embraced his role as
dissenting villain in the current Russia debates, during which he consistently argues a
perspective closer to that of Mr. Putin.

“This is what I tell bookers,” Mr. Cohen said, referring to those who book him for
television appearances. “I will go on with somebody who disagrees with me 100
percent, but the moment he calls me a Putin apologist, I’m going to say” something that
cannot be said on the air.

He does agree with his colleagues that the field is not what it once was. It is something
the Russians have noticed, too.

During his time in Russia, Mr. McFaul said, American indifference bothered the
Russians. “That asymmetry, that we still loomed large for them but for us they didn’t
loom large,” he said. “I felt that a lot as ambassador.”

Now the Russia experts hope that a global crisis some believe is a result of American
naïveté and unsophistication about Russia may serve as the catalyst for a new
generation of Russia experts. Andrew C. Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia
program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was himself drawn
to the subject as a 13-year-old watching President Richard M. Nixon’s 1972 visit to the
Soviet Union, said the Ukrainian crisis was big enough “to capture your imagination.”

If not, the United States may be increasingly caught off guard.

“When we’ve all retired, 10, 20 years down the road, I don’t know how many people will
be left with this area of expertise,” said Ms. Stent of Georgetown University, who just
published “The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the Twenty-First
Century.” “And we can’t assume that our relationship with Russia won’t suddenly
command a lot of attention. Because as we can see, it does.”

For now, she and her remaining colleagues continue to be on call.

Mr. Cohen, speaking on his home phone, excused himself to respond to one of the 30
requests a day he has received, this one a CNN booker for Anderson Cooper. “Utterly
fantastic, thank you so much,” Mr. Cohen told her. “Do you have it written down there
when the car is coming to get me?”
Ukraine Crimea: Russia's economic fears
BBC News By Nikolay Petrov, Professor of political science, Moscow 7 March 2014

“The political-economic base of Vladimir Putin's 2004-2013 administration is coming to

an end”

So far Russia's actions in Ukraine have been assessed mainly in terms of its
international relations.

From that perspective, Russia's actions do not look very rational and foreign
commentators have explained them in terms of President Vladimir Putin's anger and
feelings of humiliation after the overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
But I would focus on domestic political considerations as a driving force.

The famous Bill Clinton presidential campaign slogan, "It's the economy, stupid",
comes to mind.

The Russian government's expectations of economic recovery by the end of 2013 went
wrong.

According to different experts, Russia's economy is already in de facto recession with a

drop in investment, a rapid decline in consumer demand and a real-terms decrease in
incomes.

The economy has already shrunk for two consecutive quarters. The rouble is
weakening, causing expectations of growth in inflation.

Russia's ministry for economic development has revised downwards its short-term
forecasts on an almost monthly basis.

According to the most recent forecast by the independent Gaidar Institute for Economic
Policy last month, the Russian economy will not grow faster than 2% per year until
2016, even with a best-case scenario of growing quasi-state investment, an improving
investment climate and small business growth.

Economic stagnation

Now with all the events developing in Crimea, even this scenario looks too optimistic.

On 3 March, dubbed Black Monday, Russia's RTS stock market index plummeted 12%
and the rouble fell 1.9% against the dollar in spite of massive intervention by Russia's
Central Bank. The stock market has since recovered its losses.

The Crimean parliament's decision to join Russia has only added to the economic
instability.

The rouble had already fallen by 10% in two months, which due to the high
dependence of the Russian economy on imported goods and commodities almost
automatically translates into a fall in real incomes.

A lengthy economic stagnation, perhaps even a recession, caused by domestic

problems rather than by the world market might not be so devastating if the
government was not already facing accusations of a decline in legitimacy since the
2011-2012 political protests.
It should be taken very seriously because it means that the political-economic base of
Vladimir Putin's 2004-2013 administration is coming to an end.

Turning the screw

The regime had to do something about these: either by improving the economy at the
expense of weakening its control over it, or by focusing on the image of an external
enemy and consolidating the nation around the leader.

Russia appears to have made its choice, passing a very important fork in the road, by
choosing to tighten the screw and switching to a different model of relations between
state and society rather than liberalising the economy and improving the investment
climate.

This is by no means an immediate reaction. The events that culminated in the past
week in Crimea had been developing for a while. Looking back, several developments
over recent months fit this scenario.

There was the merger of Russia's two top courts - the merger of the Supreme
Arbitration Court with the Supreme Court - along with tougher controls on the judiciary
and the increasingly powerful role of Mr Putin's inner circle at the Kremlin, known as
the Siloviki.

The final stage can be traced back to the start of last autumn, first with the Kremlin's
appointment of Mr Putin's former deputy chief of staff Vladislav Surkov as his personal
aide; then the very serious reshuffle at Russia's Ria Novosti news agency; and finally
the intense pressure placed on two largely independent media outlets, Dozhd TV and
Echo Moskvy Radio.

Facing the prospect of recession, Mr Putin now appears to be returning to the days of
1999-2000, when "a small victorious war" in Chechnya led to a major rise in his
tremendous approval ratings.

Paradox of sanctions

Attacking Ukraine may promote mobilisation and the consolidation of the society
around the leader, at least in the short term, with a tightening of the screws on his
opponents and any potentially disloyal members of the elite.

The paradox is that sanctions placed on the elite could serve Mr Putin's goal of closing
Russia and creating a siege mentality.

Serious economic sanctions, especially from Europe, seem unlikely for now. But
Russia has already paid a high price for its aggression in terms of a fall in the stock
market and a further decline in investment due to both the increased cost of borrowing
and the further alienation of investors.

However, it doesn't look like this changes his calculations of costs and benefits.

It became evident last year that Russia's leadership was not put off by the high cost of
keeping Ukraine on side - with an eagerness to pay almost $15bn (£9bn) a year in
discounts on gas sales.

However, if more serious European sanctions were to be imposed such as an embargo

on Russia's gas supply, by replacing it as some experts suggest with Norwegian gas
and liquefied natural gas, then Russia would stand to lose some $100bn a year and
face economic collapse.
Nikolay Petrov is professor of political science at the Higher School of Economics in
Moscow.
US visa restrictions an attempt to prevent
escalation
Mark Mardell BBC News North America editor 6 March 2014

The West, in the shape of the EU and the US, is talking about tough action against
Russia - but these are threats, not punishment.

They are intended to be a big rock hovering over the head of individuals, forcing them
to question their next step in Ukraine.

The White House is being coy about who might be targeted - apparently a list of names
is being prepared but right now it is a blank.

We know that the bank balance of the man most responsible for the crisis in Ukraine is
not in America's sights.

Russian President Vladimir Putin isn't on any potential blacklist. It's others lower down
the food chain who would take the hit.

Visas - and the EU travel ban - are a different story.

Both Ukrainians and Russians are having their US visas revoked. They will be told who
they are, although the list won't be made public.

Officials say this is part of making Russia feel the costs of its action - there must be a
penalty for the violation of Ukraine's sovereignty.

But this is mostly about the near future, not the recent past. It is not a response to the
plan for a referendum in Crimea.

US President Barack Obama's first aim has to be to stop things getting worse - in
particular to make sure there's no Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine.

The second aim must be to get Russia to talk to the government in Kiev about the
Crimea - even if the Ukrainians decide to give it away.

Senior administration officials say today's move is a powerful, flexible tool that allows
them to escalate their response to what happens on the ground.

They evidently calculate that a threat, rather than actual sanctions, will help, not hinder,
US Secretary of State John Kerry's talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

The EU's threat of "far-reaching" consequences of action in "a broad range of

economic areas" is far less specific, and far weaker.

This will be blamed on the EU's difficulty in getting agreement.

In fact, while the Poles and the Baltic states might have wanted tougher action, Europe
is united in its hesitancy. But the US has demanded, and got, them to join in the
threats.

There may be more problems down the line if Russia decides to ignore the big rock
and bets that they won't dare pull the lever.
5 lessons for a new Cold War
By Frida Ghitis
updated 12:51 PM EST, Thu March 6, 2014

Editor's note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World
Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of "The
End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television." Follow her on
Twitter @FridaGhitis.

(CNN) -- Russia looks set to slice off a part of Ukraine and keep it for itself.

With heavily armed Russian-speaking troops patrolling the streets, the Crimean
Parliament voted Thursday to join Russia and put its decision to a referendum. The all-
but-inevitable annexation of Crimea is moving forward, despite protests, warnings and
threats from the U.S. and its allies.

We have entered a new Cold War.

The clash between Vladimir Putin's Russia and the forces arrayed in support of
Ukraine's independence-minded leaders has crashed the vaunted "reset," ending
hopes that Moscow and the West would smooth relations and work hand-in-hand
toward common objectives.

Nobody can predict with certainty how this conflict will end. But the world can already
glean important lessons. Unfortunately, most of those lessons are cause for deep
concern. Here are five clear messages from the crisis in Ukraine.

1. Nobody's scared of America, but American and European values hold strong
appeal.

Lest we forget, this all started over a move by the now-deposed Ukrainian president,
Viktor Yanukovych, who broke his promise to sign a partnership agreement with the
European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow. Ukrainians were enraged, not just
because they want more trade with Europe but because they have seen what Western
standards can bring to a society.

They were fed up with corruption, authoritarianism and stagnation. They wanted their
country to be free of Moscow's interference, and many gave up their lives to fight for an
ideal of stronger democratic institutions, rule of law and fair play.

As strong as the pull of these values is, their principal advocate, the U.S., has lost
much of its ability to stare down its foes in support of those who want to institute
democratic principles in their countries. We saw it when President Barack Obama
declared -- years ago -- that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad must step down. We saw
it when then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was pelted with tomatoes in Egypt. And
we saw it in Ukraine, when Obama warned Putin to respect Ukraine's territorial
integrity, only to see the Russians capture Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. America does
not intimidate.

Its loss of influence means strongmen and dictators have a freer hand.

2. You don't mess with Putin without paying a price.

Even if Moscow were to relinquish all control of Ukrainian territory today, Putin has
already achieved a main goal. He has sent a clear message to countries that were
once part of the Soviet Union -- and perhaps to the USSR's former Eastern European
satellites -- that they cannot defy his wishes without paying a painful price. In that
sense, Putin has won.

A top Putin aide warned last summer that Ukraine was risking "suicide" if it dared to
defy Moscow. Now we know this was no bluff. Putin is serious about protecting
Moscow's sphere of influence. It's not clear how closely he wants to control what are
supposed to be independent countries.

3. If you are a vulnerable state, you may regret surrendering nuclear weapons.

This may be the most dangerous of all the lessons from this crisis. Ukraine had a
sizable nuclear arsenal at the end of the Cold War, but it agreed to give it up in
exchange for security guarantees. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine
committed itself to dismantling the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. Russia, in
exchange, vowed to respect Ukraine's borders and its independence. Now, Russia has
clearly violated those commitments. If Ukraine still had its atomic weapons, Moscow
would have thought twice before seizing parts of Ukraine.

4. Don't expect support from all international peace activists (unless the U.S.
invades).

To liberal activists in Ukraine and Russia, the reaction from international peace
movement must be a hard pill to swallow. Parts of Ukraine have been captured at the
point of a gun by a regime that actively suppresses dissent. When liberal Russians
protested, police arrested hundreds of anti-war demonstrators.

While Russia's invasion of Ukrainian territory and its harsh crackdown on local protests
have been criticized by some human rights activists, the reaction among some
prominent "peace" activists has been astonishing. Several have mimicked Putin's line,
blaming the U.S. for the crisis. Instead of taking a clear stance in support of a country
with invading military forces on its soil, some so-called anti-war groups have taken the
opportunity to dust off their anti-American vitriol.

A favorite line of discussion is whether Washington has any right to criticize Russia's
invasion of Ukrainian territory after the U.S. invaded Iraq, a country that was ruled by
one of the world's most brutal, genocidal dictators. However misguided America's Iraq
invasion, even drawing the comparison is an insult to Ukrainians.

5. The use of brute force to resolve conflicts is not a thing of the past.

One day, if history moves in the direction we all wish, countries will solve their disputes
through diplomacy and negotiation. Sadly, that day has not arrived. John Kerry has
expressed dismay at Putin's "19th-century" behavior, but power politics, forcible border
expansion and brazen aggression have not been relegated to the history books;
witness events in places like Syria, the Central African Republic and now in Ukraine.

Those are the first five lessons. But allow me to offer a bonus, a work in progress that
could join as No. 6: When the stakes grow high enough, the U.S. and Europe may rise
to the challenge.

Western nations seemed caught off-guard by Putin's "incredible act of aggression," as

Kerry termed it. Some of Putin's gains (see No. 2) may be irreversible. But the U.S. and
Europe have been shaken up by events, and they may yet send a message of their
own, helping Kiev's government succeed and prosper as it sets out to chart a future of
its own and limiting Putin's ability to replicate his acts of intimidation.
Kerry's visit to Kiev was a powerful moment. His unvarnished message to Putin, if
backed by action, was a respectable start. The U.S. would prefer to see this crisis
resolved through negotiations, he declared, but if Russia chooses not to do so,
Washington's and its partners "will isolate Russia politically, diplomatically and
economically." Already the EU is offering Ukraine an aid package comparable to the
one Putin used to lure it away. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is boosting ties with
Poland and the Baltic States, and economic sanctions are under discussion.

If Putin wants another Cold War, he has one.

U.S. Announces New Sanctions in Ukraine
Crisis
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ELLEN BARRYMARCH NY Times 6, 2014

ROME — The United States escalated its response to Russia’s military and economic
threats to Ukraine on Thursday, announcing it has imposed visa bans on officials and
others deemed responsible for actions that have undermined Ukraine’s sovereignty
and territorial integrity.

The new sanctions, announced by the Obama administration, carried the threat of
further steps. The announcement came as the European Union was working on its own
punitive measures and as Secretary of State John Kerry met for a second day with the
Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on ways to defuse the Ukraine crisis, one
of the most serious East-West confrontations since the Cold War.

Russian officials reacted angrily and suggested that Russia would reciprocate with its
own anti-American sanctions.

“The U.S. has the right, and we have the right to respond to it,” Vladimir Lukin, Russia’s
human rights commissioner and a former ambassador to the United States, was
quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying. “But all that is, of course, not
making me happy.”

In Washington, President Obama said the new sanctions were intended to demonstrate
that the world stands united against the Russian occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea
Peninsula undertaken this past weekend. “These decisions continue our efforts to
impose a cost on Russia and those responsible for the situation in Crimea,” he said.

Mr. Obama emphasized that they were taken “in close coordination with our European
allies,” in effect rejecting efforts by Russia to split the United States from its partners on
the other side of the Atlantic. “I’m pleased our international unity is on display at this
important moment,” he said.

But he reached out to Moscow, calling for a de-escalation of the crisis by allowing
international monitors into all of Ukraine, including Crimea, and opening talks between
Russia and Ukraine. “There is a way to resolve this crisis that respects the interests of
the Russian Federation as well as the Ukrainian people,” he said.

Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said earlier Thursday in a statement
announcing the sanctions that the ban would apply to those “responsible for or
complicit in threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.” American
officials said that meant the measure could apply to Russians as well as Ukrainians.

The new restrictions expand the visa bans that had already been imposed on those
considered responsible for human rights abuses and political oppression in Ukraine in
recent months, particularly in February when dozens of antigovernment protesters in
Kiev, the capital, were killed by forces loyal to Viktor F. Yanukovych, the pro-Kremlin
president who then fled for Russia. The interim government that took over is regarded
by Russia as illegitimate.

In addition to the new restrictions, President Obama issued an executive order that
provides the legal basis for imposing sanctions on “individuals and entities” who have
undermined Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The restrictions also apply to those who have misappropriated Ukrainian assets or
have asserted authority over parts of Ukraine without the approval of its government, a
reference to officials in the Russian-populated Crimea Peninsula who claim that they
have broken free of Ukraine and who are seeking Russian protection.

The sanctions under the executive order could include freezing assets or preventing
Americans from doing business with certain individuals.

The executive order “is a flexible tool that will allow us to sanction those who are most
directly involved in destabilizing Ukraine, including the military intervention in Crimea,”
the White House statement said, adding that it “does not preclude further steps should
the situation deteriorate.”

Mr. Kerry’s discussions with Mr. Lavrov, a continuation of their talks in Paris on
Wednesday, were held on the margins of a conference in Rome about how to support
the Libyan government. Mr. Kerry also met with the foreign ministers of Germany,
France, Italy and Britain.

Senior officials declined to say how many people would be affected by the visa bans or
who they might be, but they emphasized that some existing visas would be nullified.
Although the executive order paves the way for additional sanctions, no foreign entities
were sanctioned under the measure on Thursday, a senior official said.

A block on visas is the easiest step for the Obama administration to take because it
can be imposed immediately and at the sole discretion of the government. But
Washington cannot publicly disclose the names of those who are subject to the ban,
which limits its effectiveness. People would know that they had been barred only if they
applied for a visa to travel to the United States or, if they already had a visa, if they
were told it had been revoked.

The executive order would permit the government to go further. It would allow
Washington to issue new visa bans that would let targets be identified publicly, and it
could authorize asset seizures. But officials cautioned that it would take time to develop
such financial measures because, unlike with a visa ban, they have to have evidence
that could withstand a challenge in court.

The visa bans and the executive order are intended to punish Russia for its military
intervention in Crimea and to discourage further military action in eastern Ukraine.

The United States’ European partners, who were meeting in Brussels, were told about
the move in advance. Officials said that the measures had been planned for a while
and were not set off by plans for Crimea to hold a referendum on March 16 on joining
Russia.

The announcement, a senior official said, should prompt individuals in Russia and
Crimea to wonder if they are going to “find their name on a list.”

There was no immediate reaction from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia after the
White House statement was released.

Mr. Lavrov, meeting with journalists after conferring for 40 minutes with Mr. Kerry,
expressed irritation and said he had been assured that the United States had no list of
officials who would be targeted by the sanctions.

“I drew the secretary of state’s attention to the fact that the incessant fanning up of the
atmosphere continues, there are some secret lists of Russian citizens who will be
forbidden entry to the United States,” he said. “He assured me that these lists do not
exist. There is only an instruction, but this does not change things. It is still a threat.”

Mr. Lavrov also expressed regret about the suspension of activities in the Group of 8,
the conference of leading industrialized nations of which Russia is a member, as well
as the NATO-Russian Council.

“There are many one-sided, half-hysterical evaluations in the media,” he said. “I

repeated this to John Kerry, who seems to understand that it doesn’t really help the
flow of normal work. It’s impossible to work honestly under the threat of ultimatums and
sanctions.”

A senior State Department official said that Mr. Kerry had again urged Mr. Lavrov to
talk directly with the new Ukrainian government. “The two discussed possible formats
for how that dialogue might take place,” said the official, who cannot be identified under
the protocol for briefing reporters.

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, hinted at one possible format: a “contact
group” that would include Russia, Ukraine, France, and the United States, among other
nations. Mr. Fabius said the idea of forming such a body and institutionalizing the
negotiations over Ukraine had been discussed on Wednesday in Paris.

Russian business and finance circles have been nervous since Monday, unsure of
what economically punitive steps the United States and the European Union might
take, said Igor Y. Yurgens, a former Kremlin adviser who now heads the Institute of
Contemporary Development, a Moscow research organization. He said the text in the
White House statement was so broad that it was unlikely to directly affect most major
Russian businesses.

Mr. Yurgens said there was less at stake in the trade relationship with the United
States, which amounts to $40 billion a year, and that many were braced for a European
Union meeting scheduled for Friday, where member states may formulate their own
sanctions. “Then it’s $600 billion, and that’s existential,” he said.

In Brussels, the 28-nation European Union announced measures to freeze the assets
of Mr. Yanukovych, and of 17 of his closest aides and family members, holding them
responsible for the embezzlement of state funds. But British and European officials
said European leaders were likely to be divided on whether to threaten Mr. Putin or to
encourage him to seek a diplomatic outcome.

Europe “needs to send a very clear message to the Russian government that what has
happened is unacceptable and should have consequences,” said Prime Minister David
Cameron of Britain, one of those pressing for a tougher posture, even though many
European nations, including his, have deep economic and financial ties with Russia.

Michael R. Gordon reported from Rome and Ellen Barry from Moscow. Peter Baker
contributed reporting from Washington, Alissa J. Rubin from Brussels and Rick
Gladstone from New York.
Eastern Ukraine Is Still Fighting Its Past
Life under Stalin's long shadow
BY JULIA IOFFE The New Republic MARCH 6, 2014

It’s hard to tell Donetsk from, say, Novosibirsk, and it’s really only the soft pronunciation
of g’s that tips you off that you’re in Ukraine, not Russia. Donetsk has the same wide,
gray avenues peppered with gaudy new construction; the same shabby Soviet five-
story building blocks; the same language; and the same gruffness you’d find farther
north. It wouldn’t stretch one’s imagination too much to picture this Ukrainian city
spinning in Moscow’s, rather than Kiev’s, orbit.

Late last month, just two days after protesters in Kiev ousted Ukrainian President Viktor
Yanukovych, I traveled to Donetsk to see what his hometown made of the revolution. It
was a strange time to be there: Donetsk wasn’t thrilled, but it was calm. “If they send
new people in to replace us, we won’t hold on,” one high-ranking functionary from
Yanukovych’s party had told me. “We’ll go peacefully.” Only a few days later, Vladimir
Putin catapulted the region into conflict.

“Personally, I see what happened as a government coup,” Kirill Cherkashin told me. He
is a political scientist here, and I visited him at his office at the Donetsk National
University, a brute box of a building that doesn’t seem to have gotten much custodial
attention since it was built in the 1960s. Cherkashin, a wiry, jittery man in his early
thirties, is also an activist in a local group pushing for regional integration with Russia.
Waiting for us in his office were four young women, all around 20, well-dressed, with
notebooks in their laps. “My most promising students,” he explained, bowing in their
direction as he ushered me in to the bare room.

As his students listened, I asked Cherkashin about the Russian-Ukrainian tension that
was said to be on the verge of tearing the country apart. “Let’s start with the fact that
the Ukrainian and Russian populations here in the south of Ukraine are basically one
and the same,” he said. “We don’t have such a clear-cut division here.”

What of the endless tug-of-war over Ukraine between Russia and Europe? And of
Putin’s reported quip to George W. Bush, back in 2008, that Ukraine wasn’t a real
country? Cherkashin admitted that this was not a totally alien point of view to many in
Donetsk. “I agree with it,” he added. “That is, formally, even if you don’t consider the
current political moment, Ukraine is not an independent government. That—”

The girls burst into a shocked, embarrassed giggle.

“What, you want to say that it’s independent?” he shot back, politely. “It’s dependent on
Russia and on the U.S. and on the Europeans. You name it.”

“But we’re a young country,” one of the students interjected. Cherkashin barreled over
her: “I think that Ukraine, as an independent state, has no future.”

In the last tense months, the conflict in Ukraine has been described as a fight over
Ukrainian identity—in terms of language, territory, and great-power influence. Maps on
television and in newspapers show a country conveniently cleaved in half between
Ukrainian speakers in the pro-Yulia Tymoshenko west and Russian speakers in the
Yanukovych east. The former love Europe; the latter love Russia. The former have
been oppressed for centuries by the latter, who want to see a return to the days of the
USSR.
But Cherkashin’s informal office lecture demonstrated that the truth is more
complicated, as it always is. The real split is generational. Unlike Cherkashin, his
students were all born after 1991, in an independent Ukraine, and they see their
country’s close relationship with Russia very differently than their older professor. In
fact, Cherkashin’s own research confirms this division. The younger a citizen of
Donetsk, the more likely she is to view herself as Ukrainian. The older she is, the more
likely she is to identify as Russian. And this is the crux of it all: What we are seeing
today is the reverberation of what happened more than 20 years ago. This is still the
long post-Soviet transition. And this is what it’s like to wander in the desert, waiting for
the old generation to die off.

Ukraine the country has existed for only brief spurts. In the nineteenth century, as
nationalism spread through Europe, Ukrainian language and culture—as well as the
new idea of independence—became fashionable in Ukrainian cities. Before that, the
area was a fluid mix of languages and ethnicities. The Ukrainians, southwestern Slavs
who escaped Tatar rule in the Middle Ages, developed independently of the Russians.
(Their language, for instance, was heavily influenced by Polish, and their religious
affiliation was, for a long time, partly Catholic.) Then it was absorbed into the creeping
sprawl of the Russian empire.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, though, Ukrainian speakers were mixed throughout

the country, and the language divide was more socioeconomic than geographic. For
the most part, the Ukrainian speakers were the peasants, and the Russian speakers
were the city dwellers, a blend of Russians, Tatars, and Jews. When industrialization
came to the region, those who worked in the new factories were also mostly Russian.

To this day, language in Ukraine follows these same socioeconomic lines, rather than
the east-west axis. A map produced by The New York Times, for instance, represents
Ukrainian in orange and Russian in blue, and announces that it depicts a simple split
between the speakers of these languages. And yet, the fault line is hard to see: There
are heavily orange dapples in the west, and intense blue spots in Crimea and Donetsk,
but most of the rest is a brackish mingling of the two. It would take a very talented
surgeon to carve the two languages apart—or a charlatan to claim it can be done.

If we set aside Crimea, which was not part of the country until 1954, the much-
advertised rift inside Ukraine originates neither in language nor in ethnicity. Rather, it is
the bounty of the seed planted in the early 1920s by the People’s Commissar for
Nationalities, Josef Stalin.

For five years, between the 1917 Revolution and the end of the Civil War, Ukraine had
a brief and tumultuous experiment with independence, as did other former Russian
colonies and future Soviet republics, like Georgia and Armenia. Those few years of
independence gave Ukrainians a taste of national liberation that they would not soon
forget and were marked, as now, by lengthy sit-ins in public squares, by rowdy
parliamentary debate, and by diverse factions of Ukrainian society jockeying for
influence. Then, in 1920, Ukraine—like the republics of Georgia, Uzbekistan, Belarus,
and others—began signing a series of vague military and economic treaties with
Moscow that gave shape to what we would come to know as the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.

Very quickly, though, the Union became a distinctly Russian entity. According to Soviet
historian Geoffrey Hosking, this was no accident. Stalin “wanted to see a political
framework which would give expression to the dominance Russia had assumed in the
world revolutionary movement,” in which communist patriotism was sublimated into
Russian patriotism. Vladimir Lenin was slightly horrified by all this, seeing it, correctly,
as a revanchist moment and a return to the bad old days of imperialism. He even
prepared a memorandum in protest and was to deliver it at the Twelfth Party Congress
in 1923. He demanded that, in the new Union, some form of autonomy be returned to
the various national republics.

But Lenin had his third and final stroke before he could go on record with his protest,
and Stalin and Leon Trotsky had the memorandum suppressed. (It came out after
Stalin’s death.) As a result, notes Hosking, “the new [Soviet] constitution embodied
Stalin’s conceptions rather than Lenin’s.” Moscow and the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic got to run the show, not just in terms of military and diplomatic
matters, but in pretty much everything else. Ethnic Russians made up nearly three-
quarters of the Communist Party, and official business all across the ussr was done in
Russian. Which is all to say that, when the older respondents of Cherkashin’s poll in
Donetsk say they are Russian, what they mean, mostly, is that they are Soviet.

Vladimir Putin fits Cherkashin’s paradigm nicely, too. Born in 1952, he came of age in
an era dominated by Leonid Brezhnev and his neo-Stalinist policies. The policies were
a comparatively toothless version of Stalinism, but they were Stalinism nonetheless.
Not in the sense of mass repressions and genocide, but in the sense of a unified Soviet
space that is, at its core, Russian. So when Putin and his surrogates speak about a
larger Russian-speaking universe, they are talking about a Soviet universe.

Only 23 years have passed since this universe was carved up by Boris Yeltsin and
regional party chieftains who wanted their own national fiefdoms. In the scheme of
things, that’s not a very long time, just one generation.

But notions of linguistic and even ethnic identity are highly malleable, politicized
concepts, and they evolve with time. Cherkashin’s four young students, for instance,
prefer to speak Russian over Ukrainian, but not one of them agreed with his idea that
Ukraine is a fictional country. Their city is economically tied to Russia; they have family
there. But it doesn’t mean for them that Ukraine should meld back into a resurgent
Soviet Russia. Their generation has a profoundly non-Soviet understanding of
nationality, one that is based on citizenship: “I was born in Ukraine, therefore, I am
Ukrainian.” For their parents and grandparents, it is defined by language and ethnicity,
and so many Russian speakers in Donetsk and the Ukrainian southeast may feel like
they are living on islands, far adrift from the motherland. It is why a few dozen
pensioners and middle-aged citizens stood guard by the statue of Lenin in the town
square, though the irony of it surely escaped them.

If Ukraine survives this crisis intact, it will still have miles to go to a fuller embrace of its
own independence. This standoff—with a Moscow that is itself still struggling with its
own Soviet legacy—is just a step along the long road out of the Soviet Union. It will
take more time still for this newer understanding of citizenship to become as firmly
entrenched in eastern Ukraine as the old one was, for the old one to die away, for the
Lenin statue to lose its emotional significance, for the old Soviet apartment blocks in
Donetsk to crumble and for something newer and more distinctively local to spring up
in their place—even if the locals still speak Russian.

Julia Ioffe is a senior editor at The New Republic.

Another view from “beyond the trenches” :

Russia needs to defend its interests with an

iron fist
FT 6 march 2014 Sergey Karaganov

Sergei Karaganov is Honorary Chairman of the Presidium of the Council on Foreign

and Defense Policy and Dean of the School of World Economics and World Politics at
the National Research University–Higher School of Economics.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union was not viewed as a defeat by the Russian
people, but the west treats Russia as a defeated nation all the same.

President Vladimir Putin has been trying to bring together most of the countries of the
former Soviet Union in an economic alliance. This would have strengthened the
region’s economic competitiveness and helped ward off the kind of instability that
bedevilled the Weimar Republic after the dissolution of the German Empire. However,
the west has done more or less everything it could to prevent this legitimate
rapprochement.

The Ukrainian elite has been unable to steer its country towards a more prosperous
future. In 1990 Ukraine’s gross domestic product per capita was similar to that of
Belarus; today, it is half. Each change of government has brought a worse cadre of
incompetents and thieves into Kiev’s corridors of power. The elections in 2004 – in
which the west openly interfered – ushered in the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko:
nationalist, unbelievably incompetent but staunchly pro-western. In 2010 he was
replaced by Viktor Yanukovich, whose flaws were just as deep.

This discredited elite has clung to power by playing off Russia and the west, extracting
favours in return for fleeting professions of allegiance. The last round came when the
EU, humiliated by a string of rejections, offered an association deal that would have
precluded Ukrainian participation in the Russian-led customs union. Mr Yanukovich,
hoping either to secure a loan from the west or to blackmail Russia into generosity,
pretended to embrace Europe. When Russia responded with the promise of a loan, Mr
Yanukovich duly switched sides.

Demonstrators who were disgusted by this behaviour took to the streets of Kiev. Soon
they were joined by murky rightwing fringe groups, who attacked police with firebombs
on and off for weeks. The Russian government believes these protesters were openly
supported by the west. Then the shooting began and Ukraine plunged deeper into
chaos.

These events happened against the backdrop of a campaign of anti-Russian

propaganda and smears that lasted for more than a year. I lived through two decades
of the Cold War, but I am hard pressed to remember such an avalanche of lies. This
took an especially vicious form during the Olympic Games in Sochi, which were a
triumph for Russia and its athletes.

In Russia pundits saw a clear purpose in this campaign: to lay the ground for a new
policy of containment. This refreshed memories of the double standards and lies that
have been characteristic of the west’s behaviour for the past 20 years. We were
reminded of the eastward expansion of Nato, over the pleas and protests of a
weakened Russian state. Had Ukraine been absorbed into the alliance, Russia’s
strategic position would have become intolerable.

When calls for reason proved powerless to stop Nato’s expansion, Russia halted it
instead with an iron fist. In 2008 Russia responded to an attack by Georgian troops that
killed Russian peacekeepers and scores of Ossetian civilians. Ukraine has since
designated itself a nonaligned state, although Nato officials continued to try to lure it.

It is against this background that Russia’s actions over the past week must be seen.
The iron fist is once again being shown to revanchists seeking consolation for the
geopolitical and moral loses of the last decade. Of course, some in the Russian
establishment also want to strengthen their positions or cover past mistakes by seeking
confrontation with the west.

To prevent the situation from deteriorating further, all sides now need to calm down. A
trilateral conversation on the future of Ukraine should take place between that country,
Russia and the EU, as Moscow has repeatedly proposed.

The outline of a compromise is clear. A federal structure for Ukrainian institutions – and
a switch to a parliamentary system in place of a presidential one – would enable the
people of each region to make their own choices over language and cultural allegiance.
Ownership and control of the gas transportation system should be shared between
Ukraine and its neighbours. The country should be allowed to participate both in
Russia’s customs union and the EU association deal. [Mr. Karaganov should study
some basic economics]

The crisis has exposed the failure of our post-Cold War policies, but it can be put to
constructive use. We should belatedly begin work towards the common goal of an
Alliance of Europe stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok, in which people and trade
would flow freely. We should merge the soft power of Europe with hard power and
resources of Russia, as prominent Europeans and Mr Putin have often proposed. [this
guy is openly proposing the demise of Europe as we know – let us welcome his
sincerity]

Russia is at last turning economically towards the rising east. It will be a great loss – for
Russians and other Europeans – if this shift is accompanied by political, social and
even cultural estrangement.

Wiki : Sergey Karaganov (Russian: Серге́й Караганов, born 12 September 1952) is a

Russian political scientist who heads the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy, a
security analytical institution founded by Vitaly Shlykov. Karaganov is a close associate
of Yevgeny Primakov, and has been Presidential Advisor to both Boris Yeltsin and
Vladimir Putin. [1].
Karaganov has been a member of the Trilateral Commission since 1998, and served
on the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations from 1995 until
2005. He has also been Deputy Director of the Institute of Europe at the USSR (now
Russian) Academy of Sciences since 1989. [2]
Karaganov is known as the progenitor of the Karaganov Doctrine, which states that
Moscow should pose as the defender of human rights of ethnic Russians living
in the 'near abroad' for the purpose of gaining political influence in these
regions. After Karaganov published an article advocating this stance in 1992, Russia's
foreign policy position linked Russian troop withdrawals from the Baltics with the end of
'systemic discrimination' against Russians in these countries.

[ “The disintegration of the Soviet Union was not viewed as a defeat by the Russian
people ” – greatest mistake the West made after 1991…. ]
If Russia swallows Ukraine, the European
system is finished
By Timothy Snyder, historian, Special to CNN
updated 11:07 AM EST, Wed March 5, 2014

Editor's note: Timothy Snyder is Housum professor of history at Yale University and
author of "Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin." The views expressed in this
commentary are entirely his own.

Vienna, Austria (CNN) -- As Russia continues its military occupation of the Crimean
district of Ukraine, as Putin enunciates a doctrine of military intervention in support of
ethnic brethren, and the West ponders what might be done, Europeans begin to think
again about the 1930s and the origins of World War II. The Russian historian Andrei
Zubov, for example, has published a sophisticated comparison between Putin's seizure
of Crimea and Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria, seeing both as the beginning of a
chain of events with fatal consequences not just for the subjects of the aggression but
for the aggressors themselves.

In Vienna, where I live, one also hears constant mentions of 1938. Austrians and other
citizens of European Union countries are beginning to consider what the end of Ukraine
might mean for their own European system. The point is not that Putin is like Hitler; the
point is that the removal of a state from Europe has consequences for the continent.

When we consider any state in isolation from the system, it can seem fragile, new,
perhaps unnecessary. Ukraine today, like Austria in the 1930s, is a creation of a
dramatic change in the world order. Austria as an independent republic owed its
existence to World War I, just as Ukraine as an independent republic owes its
existence to the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. Independent Austria lasted
for two decades; independent Ukraine has existed for only slightly longer. For some, an
artificial creation that had no right to exist; for others home to a people indistinguishable
from Germans, Austria had few friends in 1938. Ukraine finds itself in much the same
position today. Just as most European leaders were happy to accept the German idea
that Austria had no right to exist, many people around the West seem ready to forget
about Ukraine or to believe the Kremlin's propaganda that half of the country is
Russian.

Ukraine towns: Apricot trees and vanished graves

Yet the reasons why states are supposed to exist are general, transcending their
particular histories. The principles of international law are not subject to particular
claims about identities. As with Putin today in Ukraine, Hitler in 1938 in Austria based
his claim on the need to protect fellow ethnics. It is easy to criticize Putin's arguments
in some important details. He claims to be defending Russian citizens. But since dual
citizenship in Ukraine is illegal, the most visible of Russian citizens in Ukraine are (1)
the Russian soldiers and sailors based in Sevastopol, (2) the Russian soldiers who
have just invaded southern Ukraine and (3) Ukrainian riot police who are being given
Russian citizenship at the Russian consulate in Simferopol to reward them for beating
Ukrainian protesters. Putin claims to be defending "compatriots," but that is a category
that has no meaning. The suggestion is that anyone who speaks Russian needs a
Russian invasion; that would mean that since I am writing in English I need an English
invasion.

But the real problem goes much deeper. In both cases the claim of a right of protection
of ethnic brethren was only one element of a larger worldview. Hitler in fact cared little
for ethnic Germans in Austria or for Austria itself. Its destruction of Austria was meant
to show, as it did, that all standards of the European system were subject to corruption
if a single man took a single risk.

What Europeans decide to see in the Ukrainian revolution might in the end define
Europe. The interwar European system was based on the principle of state
sovereignty. No doubt this was an imperfect and incomplete moral and legal basis for
international relations. And yet its violation meant the end of the system itself. When
Europe's leaders abandoned Austria in 1938, they were conceding to Hitler the right to
define the new rules of the new order. The immediate consequences were clear
enough. Without the protection of a state, Austria's Jewish minority was subject to anti-
Semitic violence. Once Austria had been abandoned, European leaders had little
trouble betraying a country that truly deserved their support, democratic
Czechoslovakia. Its dismemberment began later that same year. Once Europeans had
the experience of allowing states to die they could do so again. By the time the great
powers came to their senses in 1939 it was too late.

The European system of today is based on the principle of state sovereignty, combined
with the robust international cooperation of the European Union, and legitimated by a
historically new attention to human rights. The European Union is based on the
premise of learning from history. National Socialism and Stalinism are seen as
experiences from which Europeans have learned and extremes to which European
politics must be restrained.

This system, like the interwar system, is vulnerable to challenge. Russia has now
proposed an alternative, in which Russian culture is historically unique and demanding
of protection, European fascism and Stalinism are a trove of constructive ideas, and
human rights are nothing more than a facade for western imperialism. Russian
propaganda assigns a particular importance to sexual minorities, with many prominent
commentators claiming for example that many in the EU are part of an international
gay conspiracy.

The Russian invasion of southern Ukraine is a threat above all to the citizens of
Ukraine. As Professor Zubov has argued, it has threatening implications also for
Russians. This was a courageous argument for him to make -- he says he was
immediately fired from his position.

Europeans who face fewer risks can continue the argument. The seizure of Crimea
was meant as a challenge to the European Union. It is meant to prove that European
values cannot defend themselves.

Can they?
Are Russia's Security Agencies At War (With
Each Other)?
By Mark Galeotti for ISN 6 March 2014

After a period of relative calm, Russia's fractious security agencies are once again at
odds with each other. Against the backdrop of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, Mark
Galeotti assesses the prospects of a new intra-elite turf war breaking out in Moscow.

While there is often a temptation to lump all of Russia’s so-called ‘siloviki’—the ‘men of
force’—into one faction, they are, in fact, divided by myriad fracture lines: factional,
personal, political and pragmatic. The last time conflicts between these agencies
became a serious problem was in 2007, when a corruption scandal led to a major
dispute between agencies that, in turn, led to arrests and even rumored deaths, before
President Vladimir Putin had to step in and impose an armistice. Back then, Putin was
at the height of his power. Now, as new tensions mount and the need to cooperate
over the Sochi security operation recedes, rivalries amongst the siloviki are becoming
increasingly open, something that may not only weaken Putin but also perhaps reflect a
growing suspicion that he is no longer as powerful and his time may be beginning to
come to an end.

Most-Favored Oprichnik

Of course, the security chiefs and agencies remain a long way off realistically
challenging the Russian president. Indeed, the struggles are often around opportunities
to seem most useful to him - through the tsar’s favor come budgets, privileges and
precedence. This has certainly been the lesson of the rise of Alexander Bastrykin, the
head of the Investigative Committee (SKR), an agency that carries out primary
investigations of serious crimes before referring them to the Prosecutor General’s
Office (GPRF).

Bastrykin is unusual amongst senior Russian officials in having no meaningful support

base of clients below him, nor allies and patrons beside and above him. He survives
through his utility to Putin, and so his actions are often a good indicator of the
president’s actual or assumed intent. In 2013, Bastrykin was very much in prominence,
culminating in the trial of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in July. However, with the
decision to free Navalny on bail and allow him to contest the Moscow mayoral
elections—very much at the urging of powerful incumbent Sergei Sobyanin, who
wanted a contested vote to legitimize himself—Bastrykin had clearly suffered a serious
political setback. In the latter months of the year, he kept a strikingly low profile.

This year, though, he is back at the forefront, championing a new role for the Kremlin
as the scourge of dishonest oligarchs, tax evaders and corrupt officials. In a series of
interviews, he has expressed cautious distaste for the privatization campaigns of the
past and warned that economic crime ought to be considered a serious national
security threat. In this, he is undoubtedly his master’s voice, as Putin appears to be
looking likewise to relegitimize himself with the public as the tsar who can keep the
corrupt and self-serving boyar aristocrats of Russia in check.

The Economic Crime Honeypot

However, Bastrykin is also using this as an opportunity to advance his and the SKR’s
agenda. While talking about the ills of tax crimes, he also proposes that the SKR ought
to have a greater role in investigating similar white-collar offences. This would give him
greater political leverage, as economic crimes are increasingly the weapon of choice in
intra-elite struggles. It is also popular with the less-honorable officers of the SKR, as
these crimes also lend themselves well to lucrative and easy bribe-taking.

This desire to maximize the opportunities for political firepower and illegal enrichment
are at the heart of an increasingly bitter struggle between the Federal Security Service
(FSB) and Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) over the latter’s cumbersomely-named
Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption (with the equally clumsy
acronym GUEBiPK).There have long been rumors about the directorate and tensions
between its head, Lt. General Denis Sugrobov, and Deputy Interior Minister Yuri
Alexeev, head of the MVD’s Investigations Department (SD). Sugrobov, who at 34 had
last year become the youngest general in the history of the post-Soviet MVD, was
associated with Prime Minister Dmitri Medevedev, a patron of diminishing influence. He
was also reportedly frustrated that Alexeev did not move more quickly or forcefully with
cases he raised, just as Alexeev considered Sugrobov too interested in quick headlines
and high-profile scalps.

However, these internal disputes acquired a more serious edge as the SKR began
looking for ways to assert its dominance over the SD, as its counterpart within the
MVD, and the FSB—which has long had its own economic security division—sought to
cherry-pick from the GUEBiPK’s cases and investigators. Late February saw a sudden
blood-letting, as both Alexeev and Sugrobov was sacked by presidential decree. This
followed the SKR’s decision to open a criminal case against senior GUEBiPK officers,
who stand accused of trying to entrap an FSB officer on bribery charges. The SKR then
arrested Major General Boris Kolesnikov, Sugrobov’s right hand man, generally
regarded as a tough and effective investigator. It was his team that reportedly opened
the investigation into embezzlement through the defense ministry’s Oboronservis
property arm that led to the downfall of minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

A War Of All Against All

While the SKR and FSB seem to be cooperating against the MVD, they are
nevertheless competitors on other fronts. For example, talk of the creation of some
investigatory super-agency—a “Russian FBI”—have resurfaced periodically. Putin, a
KGB veteran who well understands the power of dividing and thus ruling the security
apparatus, has always held back from such a move. Nonetheless, the Russian press
has now begun reporting leaks to the effect that such an agency may be announced
this spring, to be fully operational by 2016 or 2017. It would be founded on the basis
of—and thus dominated by—Bastrykin’s SKR, assimilating relevant elements from the
FSB, MVD and Federal Antinarcotics Service (FSKN).

Unsurprisingly, the FSB is opposed to this move, unless it can instead ensure that this
new agency is under its own control. The MVD is likewise hostile (and the suspicion is
that Alexeev’s ouster was in part to make the ministry look like it could not manage its
own investigations department). Sugrobov’s acting replacement at GUEBiPK, Maj.
General Sergei Solopov, is a client of Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev’s and the
hope is that a quick cleansing of the stables might help fight off the FSB and SKR alike.

As for the FSKN - one of the less powerful agencies - its director Viktor Ivanov has in
the past tried to empire-build himself, presenting his agency as outside the fray and
thus best able to police the secret policemen on the Kremlin’s behalf. Perhaps sensing
that its prospects of retaining a powerful domestic role are waning, the FSKN has now
started to argue that it needs its own external intelligence arm. In the process it has
stepped on the toes of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), as well as the FSB,
which in 2003 was granted the right to run its own overseas operations.

In short, the security community is bubbling with rivalries in a way it has not since
2006-7, and the prospects for increased political conflict are great. The current crisis
with the Ukraine is also having unpredictable effects: rumours suggest Putin sacked a
number of Ukraine analysts within the SVR and FSB for failing to predict Yanukovych's
demise, while the Kremlin's focus on the Crimea may well embolden some other
actors. Although Putin has played the siloviki against each other in the past, the danger
is that agencies lose focus on their primary missions when they are busy fighting turf
wars. Inevitably this could undermine the Kremlin at a time when domestic political
opposition may be about to revive. It may also be a symptom of a weakness in the
presidency. All the agency heads serve at the pleasure of the president, but likewise
the security community is a powerful player in the inner elite politics behind the Kremlin
walls. Since his inauguration, Putin’s foreign policy triumphs and the pageantry of
Sochi have masked a lack of direction and determination in domestic politics. A new
turf war within the security apparatus would be a distinct sign that they now no longer
fear Putin as once they did.

Dr Mark Galeotti is Professor of Global Affairs at New York University's SCPS Center
for Global Affairs and author of the In Moscow's Shadows blog. He is currently carrying
out field research in Moscow.
CARNES: Kissinger’s flawed and offensive
analysis of Ukraine
Why is the foreign-policy luminary siding with the Russian aggressors?
By Ben Carnes | Washington Times | Monday, March 10, 201

When luminary Henry Kissinger weighed in recently on the crisis in Ukraine, the entire
political world seemingly took notice. Unfortunately, Mr. Kissinger makes two fatal
mistakes in his analysis.

First, Mr. Kissinger insists that, “Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a
showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West.” Yet, rather ironically, he
simultaneously falls into a nearly identical trap that has claimed so many commentators
of late: vastly overstating the conflict in Ukraine as a showdown between East Ukraine
and West Ukraine. He writes, “The West speaks Ukrainian; the East speaks mostly
Russian. Any attempt by one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other … would lead
eventually to civil war or break-up.”

Second, even as he insists that Ukraine mustn’t move decisively towards either the
West or Russia, Mr. Kissinger seems to rather firmly side with some of the most
extreme positions held by Russians toward the existence of a Ukrainian state.

To the first point, Mr. Kissinger is far from alone in his analysis. Major newspapers
have recently declared Ukraine “a dangerously divided nation,” and a “tinderbox of
divided loyalties,” with some going so far as to suggest the country be partitioned
outright to avoid further conflict. This narrative makes for easy, black-and-white
reporting, but it does not represent reality.

Pundits too frequently ignore the fact that more than 90 percent of Ukrainians voted in
united support of independence in 1991. Nearly 60 percent of Ukrainians polled last
year supported EU integration, while only 24 percent opposed it. Meanwhile, in
December, 69 percent of Ukrainians had “little or no confidence” in President Viktor
Yanukovych, and 73 percent felt the same way about Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
The fall of the corrupt Yanukovych administration was not orchestrated by some mere
faction.

Nor is the view unique to Western and Central Ukraine, as has been suggested. In a
poll conducted last year, 52 percent of Ukrainians in the supposed Russian stronghold
of Eastern Ukraine supported EU integration, while only 31 percent opposed it —
hardly a nation on the brink of a civil war, as Mr. Kissinger and others have claimed.

Due, perhaps, to his extensive dealings with the Soviet Union during his career, Mr.
Kissinger makes an unforgivable mistake in his analysis. He states, “The West must
understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country. Russian
history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread from there.
Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries … .”

Hundreds of years of Ukrainian history — including many brutal years under the Soviet
system that specifically targeted and killed literally millions of Ukrainians — have been
marked by Russian attempts to not only subjugate Ukrainians, but to rob them of their
history entirely by claiming there is no separate Ukrainian history. Instead, Ukraine is
painted as a mere sidenote in the greater Russian history. In fact, in the early 1900s,
the term “little Russians” would be employed to implicitly reject outright the notion of a
Ukrainian national identity.
Mr. Kissinger emphasizes this point repeatedly. Vladimir Putin is a “serious strategist
— on the premises of Russian history,” he insists, going on to point out that
“understanding Russian history” has never been an American strong point. Russian
history, not Ukrainian history. Mr. Kissinger, rather symbolically, chooses the Russian
spelling of “Kievan Rus,” rather than the Ukrainian spelling of “Kyivan Rus,” as if to
hammer the point home. He later comes right out and suggests Ukraine is “an integral
part of Russian history and, indeed, of Russia.”

Mr. Kissinger seems to be echoing the sentiments Mr. Putin reportedly expressed to
George W. Bush at a 2008 NATO summit when he said, “You have to understand,
George, that Ukraine is not even a country. Part of its territory is in Eastern Europe and
the greater part was given to us.”

There may be a variety of views regarding the best resolution to the crisis in Ukraine.
However, joining the very chorus of forces that have held down Ukrainians for
hundreds of years and from whose shackles Ukrainians overwhelmingly freed
themselves in 1991 and 1917 is neither “balanced,” as Mr. Kissinger suggests, nor is it
helpful in advancing solutions to the crisis in Ukraine.

Ben Carnes is the communications director for Rep. Trent Franks and president of the
Congressional Ukrainian Association.
How the Ukraine crisis ends
By Henry A. Kissinger, Washington Post Thursday, March 6, 1:58 AM

Henry A. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.

Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are
going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public
support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew
unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.

Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the
East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s
outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.

Russia must accept that to try to force Ukraine into a satellite status, and thereby move
Russia’s borders again, would doom Moscow to repeat its history of self-fulfilling cycles
of reciprocal pressures with Europe and the United States.

The West must understand that, to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country.
Russian history began in what was called Kievan-Rus. The Russian religion spread
from there. Ukraine has been part of Russia for centuries, and their histories were
intertwined before then. Some of the most important battles for Russian freedom,
starting with the Battle of Poltava in 1709 , were fought on Ukrainian soil. The Black
Sea Fleet — Russia’s means of projecting power in the Mediterranean — is based by
long-term lease in Sevastopol, in Crimea. Even such famed dissidents as Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn and Joseph Brodsky insisted that Ukraine was an integral part of Russian
history and, indeed, of Russia.

The European Union must recognize that its bureaucratic dilatoriness and
subordination of the strategic element to domestic politics in negotiating Ukraine’s
relationship to Europe contributed to turning a negotiation into a crisis. Foreign policy is
the art of establishing priorities.

The Ukrainians are the decisive element. They live in a country with a complex history
and a polyglot composition. The Western part was incorporated into the Soviet Union in
1939, when Stalin and Hitler divided up the spoils. Crimea, 60 percent of whose
population is Russian, became part of Ukraine only in 1954 , when Nikita Khrushchev,
a Ukrainian by birth, awarded it as part of the 300th-year celebration of a Russian
agreement with the Cossacks. The west is largely Catholic; the east largely Russian
Orthodox. The west speaks Ukrainian; the east speaks mostly Russian. Any attempt by
one wing of Ukraine to dominate the other — as has been the pattern — would lead
eventually to civil war or breakup. To treat Ukraine as part of an East-West
confrontation would scuttle for decades any prospect to bring Russia and the West —
especially Russia and Europe — into a cooperative international system.

Ukraine has been independent for only 23 years; it had previously been under some
kind of foreign rule since the 14th century. Not surprisingly, its leaders have not learned
the art of compromise, even less of historical perspective. The politics of post-
independence Ukraine clearly demonstrate that the root of the problem lies in efforts by
Ukrainian politicians to impose their will on recalcitrant parts of the country, first by one
faction, then by the other. That is the essence of the conflict between Viktor
Yanukovych and his principal political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko. They represent the two
wings of Ukraine and have not been willing to share power. A wise U.S. policy toward
Ukraine would seek a way for the two parts of the country to cooperate with each other.
We should seek reconciliation, not the domination of a faction.
Russia and the West, and least of all the various factions in Ukraine, have not acted on
this principle. Each has made the situation worse. Russia would not be able to impose
a military solution without isolating itself at a time when many of its borders are already
precarious. For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi
for the absence of one.

Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military
impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to
avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established
by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history.
Understanding U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has
understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S.
policymakers.

Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing.
Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all
sides:

1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political
associations, including with Europe.

2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came
up.

3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will
of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation
between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture
comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce
independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids
institutional hostility toward Russia.

4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex
Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less
fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea.
Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of
international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the
status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

These are principles, not prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that
not all of them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute satisfaction but
balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on these or comparable elements is
not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come
soon enough.

[ here is the weak point : “ Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce
independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids
institutional hostility toward Russia.” – this hardly applies to Ukraine, where internal
cohesion is fragile ]
Now a refreshing view from the enemy camp…

Why There Will Be War in Ukraine

By Sergei Markov, “politolog” from the Kremlin, The Moscow Times Mar. 05 2014

The current crisis is not about Crimea. It is about the rights of Russian-speakers
throughout Ukraine whom the Kremlin wants to protect from violence and
discrimination. Russia does not want a military intervention in Crimea and does not
want to take Crimea from Ukraine.

[ read: they want it all ]

There is a political solution to this crisis. First, create a coalition government in Kiev
composed of all parties, including those from the east and south of the country. The
current government is dominated by anti-Russian extremists from western Ukraine.

[as are the governments of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland etc. ]

If the extremists who seized power in Kiev do not accept Russia's democratic
proposals, Russia will likely be forced to revert to military means to solve the crisis in
Ukraine.

[ nice way to spell the word democracy ]

Second, Ukraine needs to draft a democratic constitution that has guarantees for
Ukraine's Russian-speaking population that would grant official status to the Russian
language and establish the principle of federalism.

Third, presidential and parliamentary elections must be held soon. Independent

election observers must play an active role in ensuring that the elections are free and
fair. There is a real danger that they will be manipulated by the neo-Nazi militants who
de facto seized power in a coup.

[ The Kremlin obviously never manipulates elections… naaah! never did & never will ]

If these democratic and peaceful solutions to the crisis in Ukraine are rejected by the
opposition forces that have seized power in Kiev, I am afraid that Russia will have no
other choice but to revert to military means. If the junta leaders want to avoid war, they
need to adopt Moscow's peaceful and democratic proposals and adhere to them.

Those currently in power in Kiev are carrying out a political strategy that is not so much
pro-European as it is anti-Russian, as evidenced by the surprisingly heavy-handed
tactics the U.S. and European Union have employed in Ukraine. In the end, a minority
executed a violent coup that removed the democratically elected and legitimate
president of Ukraine.

The Kremlin believes that the current Ukrainian leadership will manipulate the elections
planned for May 25 to install a single leader or coalition government functioning much
as former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili did in Tbilisi. A "Ukrainian
Saakashvili" will unleash an even more repressive campaign of intimidation against
Russian-speakers, one that over several years would stoke anti-Russia hysteria among
the general population.
After that, Kiev may evict Russia's Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol and purge Crimea
of any Russian influence. Ukraine could easily become a radicalized, anti-Russian
state, at which point Kiev will fabricate a pretext to justify taking subversive action
against Moscow. This looks especially likely considering that ruling coalition members
from the neo-fascist Svoboda and Right Sector parties have already made territorial
claims against Russia. They could easily send their army of activists to Russia to join
local separatists and foment rebellion in the North Caucasus and other unstable
regions in Russia. In addition, Russia's opposition movement will surely want to use the
successful experience and technology of the Euromaidan protests and, with the help
and financial support of the West, try to carry out their own revolution in Moscow. The
goal: to remove President Vladimir Putin from power and install a puppet leadership
that will sell Russia's strategic interests out to the West in the same way former
President Boris Yeltsin did in the 1990s.

[ aha – here we are! Putin try to save his ass, no matter what ]

The official census puts the Russian minority in Ukraine at 16 percent of the total
population, although that number was falsified. The actual number is closer to 25
percent. Surveys indicate that 45 percent of the country's population speak Russian at
home, 45 percent speak Ukrainian and 10 percent speak both languages. In the most
recent Gallup survey, when asked in which language they would like to be polled, 83
percent of respondents chose Russian. Taking into account the rural population in
western and central Ukraine, about 75 percent of the people, probably speak Russian.
Of that 75 percent, only about 10 percent are those in Kiev and a few other major cities
who supported the protests. This means that only 35 percent of the population are
attempting to impose its will on the remaining 65 percent, using a violent coup to
achieve their goals.

[ who said mathematics is not opinion? ]

Putin made the right decision: He did not to wait for that attack and took preventative
measures. Many in the West say the Kremlin's reactions were paranoiac, but
Germany's Jews also thought the same of leaving the country in 1934. Most of them
chose to believe they were safe and remained in Germany even after Hitler came to
power. The infamous Kristallnacht took place five years later, one of the first early
chapters in the "Final Solution." Similarly, just four years remain until Russia's
presidential election in 2018, and there is a strong risk that subversive forces within
and outside Russia will try to overthrow Putin, in part using their new foothold in
Ukraine.

[ the Jews are ALWAYS wrong ]

Will there be war in Ukraine? I am afraid so. After all, the extremists who seized power
in Kiev want to see a bloodbath. Only fear for their own lives might stop them from
inciting such a conflict. Russia is prepared to move its forces into southern and eastern
Ukraine if repressive measures are used against the Russian-speaking population or if
a military intervention occurs. Russia will not annex Crimea. It has enough territory
already. At the same time, however, it will also not stand by passively while
Russophobic and neo-Nazi gangs hold the people of Crimea, Kharkiv and Donetsk at
their mercy.

Well guys, now you know what kind of people we are dealing with.
Vladimir Putin is losing the battle for
Ukraine
Alex Messie – The Spectator 5 March 2014 12:20

It is always tempting, in the field of foreign affairs, to suppose we are led by dupes and
fools while our opponents enjoy – or endure – leaders of boundless cunning. We are
over-matched; they are playing three-dimensional chess. We are weak, they are
strong. We are easily distracted, they are single-minded. We compromise, they are
implacable. It is easy to over-estimate the opposition while under-estimating our own
capabilities.

Sometimes this has unfortunate consequences. Saddam Hussein, for instance, had to
be hiding something. The Iraqi dictator – notoriously full of dark cunning – would not be
so stupid as to pretend to have WMD programmes he did not in fact possess. The less
evidence there was for them the more that proved he must be hiding something. That
we did not know what he was up to demonstrated he was up to something. He was not,
after all, a stupid man. As it turned out, we mis-overestimated Saddam.

Perhaps – only perhaps for one cannot be wholly certain about such matters – we are
mis-overestimating Vladimir Putin too.

It may seem as though Putin has the advantage right now. His troops are occupying
the Crimea and they will not easily be dislodged. He retains the capacity to make
mischief in eastern Ukraine too. Russian troops stand ready to “protect” Russian-
speaking Ukrainians in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Odessa and elsewhere. And what, precisely,
can we do to stop them? The Russians, not the west and certainly not the new
government in Kiev, will dictate the facts on the ground. Putin does not care what the
rest of the world thinks and this sets him free to act as he pleases. We are weak; he is
strong. He knows what he wants; we do not.

But this is a battle for Ukraine, not a test of will between Putin and “the west”. Putin can
have – and keep – the Crimea. He may even be able to take a couple of eastern
provinces that, historically and culturally, were part of Russia. But he cannot, not now,
take Ukraine. Not without starting a real war that even Vladimir Putin does not want.

Moscow, assisted by the blundering Yanukovych, has over-reached itself and in so

doing is losing the prize it coveted in the first place. No government in Kiev can submit
to Moscow now. Putin has pushed his near abroad further abroad. Russia is forcing
Ukraine to make a choice it might prefer not to make. Should Kiev look east or west?
By invading the Crimea and threatening eastern Ukraine Putin makes that choice for
Kiev. It cannot return to Moscow centre. It must instead, albeit with some trepidation,
look west.

That is, Putin is losing hearts and souls. Ukraine may remain a divided country but
Russia is helping legitimise the new Ukrainian government. Helping, too, Ukrainians
make up their minds. If they were conflicted a few weeks ago they are a little less
conflicted now.

Moreover, Putin’s hopes for his Eurasian Economic Union are ruined now. He has
Belarus and Kazakhstan in his pocket and little Armenia may have little choice but to
join. But that’s it. Ukraine is the prize and the only one really worth having. Without
Ukraine Putin’s pet project is, if not meaningless, severely devalued. The other former
Soviet republics are like so many toes; Ukraine is an entire leg.
And Putin has lost that leg. Or at any rate, at least half of it. Moscow’s best hope
scenario now is only half as promising as that posited just a year ago. It bears
remembering that since Putin’s demands proved too much for Yanukovych they will be
unacceptable to any other plausible government that may take power in Kiev. Putin’s
hand is weaker than it seems.

Perhaps this will change. Perhaps Russian escalation – or the threat of escalation – will
have an effect. Perhaps it will bully Kiev back into the near abroad. But the odds seem
against that happening. The old - by which I mean Soviet – rules do not apply as once
they did.

A real shooting war would, of course, be a disaster for everyone but most especially for
Russia because it is hard to see how such a conflict could help Russia achieve its own
long-term strategic goals. At least, not at an acceptable price.

Maybe this argument will look stupid (and soon!) but, as matters stand, I think there’s a
simple answer to the question Who lost Ukraine? and that answer is Vladimir Putin.
Setting the Record Straight on Ukraine
US Embassy in Moscow, March 4, 2014

Claim: We need to return to the February 21 agreement, which the opposition

failed to implement.

Response: As part of the agreement, the Ukrainian Parliament (the Rada) passed a
bill to return Ukraine to the 2004 Constitution. Under the terms of the agreement,
Yanukovych had 24 hours to sign this legislation, after which the protesters would need
to evacuate certain government buildings and take other de-escalatory steps. Instead
of signing the legislation, Yanukovych left Kyiv and ultimately Ukraine. Yanukovych is
the one who failed to implement the February 21 agreement. Yanukovych’s party has
moved on, voting in favor of legislation removing him from office and establishing a
new government.

- Ambassador Power: “It was Yanukovych who failed to abide by the terms of
that agreement, fleeing Kyiv, and ultimately Ukraine.”

Claim: Ukraine’s government is illegitimate or not representative.

Response: The new government was approved by the Rada with 371 votes, an
overwhelming majority of Ukraine’s parliament, with the support of all political parties
except the Communists. Even Yanukovych's Party of Regions (POR) voted in favor of
the new government just days after he disappeared. While POR is not represented in
the current government, this is a political decision and does not indicate lack of support
for the policies of the government. In fact, almost all legislation passed by parliament
since Yanukovych’s departure has enjoyed majority support from POR.

Claim: The Rada is under the influence of extremists or terrorists.

Response: The Rada is the most representative institution in Ukraine, and recent
legislation has passed with large majorities, including from representatives of eastern
Ukraine.

Claim: The streets of Kyiv are dangerous.

Response: Since the security forces pulled back 10 days ago and the new government
has been established, calm has returned to Kyiv. Ukrainian and other media present
report that there has been no surge in crime, no looting, and no retribution exacted on
political opponents.

Claim: There is a humanitarian crisis and hundreds of thousands are fleeing

Ukraine to Russia and seeking asylum.

Response: We have seen absolutely no evidence of this. The best means to prevent
such a crisis from happening would be to cease all provocative actions and allow
observers into the region to monitor and lower tensions.

- State Border Service of Ukraine: “Migration of Ukrainians remained

approximately at the same level that was one week, two, three years ago.”
http://www.unian.net/politics/892071-massovogo-vyiezda-ukraintsev-v-rossiyu-net-
pogranichniki.html

Claim: Ethnic Russians are under threat.

Response: There are no confirmed reports of any ethnic Russians being threatened,
only allegations in the Russian press and on Russian state television. The new
Ukrainian government has placed a priority on peace and reconciliation from the
outset. President Turchinov refused to sign the legislation limiting the use of the
Russian language at regional level. The U.S. and others, including the EU, have
welcomed the Ukrainian government’s inclusive approach.

- Ambassador Power: “There is no evidence that ethnic Russians are in danger.

On the contrary, the new Ukrainian government has placed a priority on internal
reconciliation and political inclusivity. President Turchinov – the acting President – has
made clear his opposition to any restriction on the use of the Russian tongue.”

- Assistant Secretary Nuland: “The OSCE has the tools to address any legitimate
concerns with regard to security on the ground, with regard to minority rights, and with
regard to preparations for this democratic transition to lead to free and fair elections.”

- Kazakhstani MFA Spokesperson Zhanbolat Usenov: “Kazakhstan calls on all

parties to renounce options that imply the use of power and make maximum political
efforts to resolve the current crisis by means of negotiations.”

Claim: Russian bases are under threat.

Response: Russian military facilities were and remain secure, and the new Ukrainian
government has pledged to abide by all existing international agreements, including
those covering Russian bases.

- Ambassador Power: “The central issue is whether the recent change of

government in Ukraine constitutes a danger to Russia’s legitimate interests of such a
nature and extent that Russia is justified in intervening militarily in Ukraine, seizing
control of public facilities, and issuing military ultimatums to elements of the Ukrainian
military. The answer, of course, is no.”

Claim: Kyiv is trying to destabilize Crimea.

Response: On the contrary, Russian troops moved out of their bases to seize political
objectives and infrastructure in Crimea. Ukraine’s government, in contrast, has acted
with restraint and sought dialogue. The government in Kyiv immediately sent the
former Chief of Defense to defuse the situation. The latest emissary, Petro
Poroshenko, was prevented from entering the Crimean Rada to talk.

Claim: There have been mass attacks on churches in Eastern Ukraine.

Response: We have seen no evidence of this. All of Ukraine’s church leaders,

including representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, have come out in support of
the new political establishment, calling for national unity and a period of healing.

- Ambassador Power: “There is no evidence, for example, that churches in

Eastern Ukraine are being or will be attacked; the allegation is without basis.”

- Eight Ukrainian churches and religious organizations issued an appeal for

peace and against foreign aggression; their letter is on the website of The Institute for
Religious Freedom of Ukraine at http://t.co/CF31axsK8O. In it, they “call the Russian
authorities to come to senses and stop its aggression against Ukraine, and immediately
pull out Russian troops from the Ukrainian land.” This letter was signed by
representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, other Christian
denominations, the Jewish faith, and the Muslim faith.
Claim: The Crimean “Prime Minister” invited Russian intervention.

Response: International law does not provide for use of force at the invitation of a
regional government. Under the Ukrainian Constitution, only the Ukrainian Rada can
approve the presence of foreign troops in Ukrainian territory. Sergei Aksyonov’s
appeal to President Putin to provide “peace and tranquility” in Crimea was a cynical
exercise in destabilization.

Claim: Russia’s actions fall within the scope of the 1997 Friendship Treaty
between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

Response: The 1997 agreement requires Russia to respect Ukraine’s territorial

integrity. Russia’s military actions in Ukraine are in clear violation of Ukraine’s
territorial integrity and sovereignty.

- Assistant Secretary Nuland: “We consider Russia’s actions in Ukraine to be a

… breach of Russia’s Helsinki Commitments and its UN obligations.”

- G7 Leaders statement: Russia’s military actions are “in contravention of

Russia’s obligations under the UN Charter and its 1997 basing agreement with
Ukraine.”

- Chinese MFA Spokesperson Qin Gang: "We respect the independence,

sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine."
FactCheck: Crimea myth and reality
March 4, 2014 4 News By Patrick Worrall

“Military action against Ukraine by forces of the Russian Federation is a breach

of international law.”
Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen

There appears to be broad agreement in the west that Russia is breaking international
law by occupying the Crimea peninsula, although Vladimir Putin insists otherwise.

Sending troops into Ukrainian territory would appear to be a breach of a number of

international legal instruments including the 1991 Minsk Agreement (which formally
dissolved the Soviet Union) and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security
Assurances.

The Budapest memo saw Russia, the US and the UK promise to respect Ukrainian
sovereignty and refrain from using or threatening force against the country, in
exchange for Ukraine giving up what was at the time the world’s third largest stockpile
of nuclear weapons.

Despite fears that the document could drag Britain and America into the conflict, there
is nothing in the wording of the Budapest agreement that commits the parties to
defending Ukrainian sovereignty.

Mr Putin says Russia’s actions are legal and his argument appears to depend on three
things. First, he says the armed men who have surrounded Ukrainian forces on the
Crimean peninsula are not Russian soldiers but “local self-defence forces”.

This has been met with widespread incredulity, and if Russia has in fact sent in troops
without identifying themselves properly, this could be a further breach of international
law, according to Dr Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute.

Second, Mr Putin says the new government of Ukraine is illegitimate. He says the
ousted Viktor Yanukovych is still the legitimate leader of Ukraine, and he has formally
asked Russia for military assistance.

The Russian president says regime change in Ukraine means Russia cannot be
breaking the Budapest Memorandum, saying: “We didn’t sign any documents with this
government.”

International law expert Professor Marc Weller from Cambridge University said
Yanukovych had “lost effective authority and could no longer claim to be the president”
when he asked Russia to intervene.

It’s true that Ukraine’s parliament did not follow the correct impeachment procedures
against Mr Yanukovych but it can nevertheless reasonably claim to represent the will of
the majority of Ukrainians, he said.

He also poured cold water on Mr Putin’s third point: that Moscow has a legal right to
intervene to protect ethnic Russians from attacks by Ukrainian nationalists. Prof Weller
says we are not talking about Russian citizens, there is no evidence of extremist
attacks and even if there were, “the remedy would hardly be an armed intervention on
foreign territory”.
But Prof Weller also said the fact that Russian forces have so far not resorted to
violence (apart from warning shots) could be important in terms of international law.

Under Article 51 of the UN Charter Ukraine has the right to defend itself if subject to
“an armed attack”. But if force is not used, it could be argued that the Russian
mobilisation does not constitute an “attack”.

Mr Putin said today that the open use of force would still be “fully legitimate and be in
line with international law”, but it is difficult to see what the legal justification would be.

“There has been a lot of speculation regarding movements of troops of the

Russian Black Sea fleet, taken as a precautionary measure in full compliance
with the relevant bilateral agreements with Ukraine.”
Russian embassy statement

This is a reference to the 1997 deal where Russia agreed to lease naval facilities on
the Crimean peninsula. Russia has said it is within its rights to deploy troops in the
region.

The full text of the agreement is here.

While it is true that up to 25,000 Russian navy personnel are allowed in Crimea under
the deal, the agreement states clearly that they can only be deployed on Russian
bases and must act in a manner “respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine, observing its
laws and permitting no interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine”.

The agreement also states that troops crossing the border have to identify themselves
by showing military ID.

Clearly the actions of Russian troops – if that is who they are – in recent days is in
breach of these clauses.

It also violates a broader agreement on friendship signed in 1997, which states that
Russia and Ukraine should “build their relations on the basis of principles of mutual
respect of sovereign equality, territorial integrity, inviolability of borders, peaceful
settlement of disputes, non-use of force or threat of force…”.

“Political power in Kiev has been concentrated in the hands of far-right extremist
elements that do not hide their xenophobic, anti-Semitic, neofascist credentials.”
Russian embassy statement

There are undoubtedly far-right politicians in the Ukrainian interim government formed
after Yanukovych fled the country, although it may be an exaggeration to say that
power is “concentrated in their hands”.

The moderate Fatherland Party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk will lead the cabinet until
presidential elections on 25 May. His deputy prime minister is Oleksandr Sych of
Svoboda, an ultranationalist party with links to the British National Party and the
Hungary’s Jobbik.

Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok has a history of making anti-Semitic comments and has
said that Ukraine is controlled by a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia”. Svoboda members have
also taken the posts of ecology minister, agriculture minister and prosecutor general.
Overseeing Ukraine’s armed forces is the new secretary of Ukraine’s National Security
and Defense Council Andriy Parubiy, who helped found the Social-National Party of
Ukraine, the openly neo-fascist precursor to Svoboda.

His deputy is Dmytro Yarosh, another Euromaidan organiser who leads the far-right
paramilitary group Right Sector.

“We are strong enough to defend ourselves.”

Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, Yuriy Sergeyev

Various assessments of the respective military strength of Ukraine and Russia have
emerged in recent days, most based on figures from the International Institute for
Strategic Studies.

Russia has an estimated 845,000 soldiers ready to deploy, compared to 129,000 in

Ukraine. Russia is also thought to have twice as many tanks in the field – about 1,100
compared to 2,500.

And Russia boosts huge air superiority, with nearly 1,400 fighter jets compared to
about 220 for Ukraine.

Experts have cast doubt on the battle-readiness of Ukrainian forces and raised fears
that some pro-Russian units might defect if fighting broke out.

On paper, Ukraine has four times as many soldiers and five times as many tanks as
Georgia, whose military was quickly overwhelmed by Russia in the 2008 South Ossetia
war, and Ukraine’s size would make a full-scale invasion a massive strategic challenge
even for Russia’s formidable armed forces.
Russia Is Doomed
By Zachary Keck - The Diplomat - March 05, 2014

Don’t be fooled by Putin’s façade; the pillars of Russian power are steadily declining.

Everywhere one looks today, signs of a resurgent Russia are omnipresent. Although
Vladimir Putin has undoubtedly worked hard to craft this image, it is a mirage. Russia is
doomed over the long-term, and its short-term maneuvers aren’t enough to
compensate for this fact.

Traditionally, Russian power has rested on four pillars: population, energy, weaponry
and geography. Three of these are diminishing.

The backbone of modern Russian power has been its massive population. Nowhere
was this better demonstrated than in WWII. Russia no doubt played a leading role in
orchestrating Hitler’s demise, starting with its legendary stands in Leningrad and
Stalingrad. However, Stalin sapped the military might of Nazi Germany less because of
the strategic or tactical genius he possessed, and almost entirely through his
willingness to expend the lives of his citizenry.

According to some estimates, the Soviet Union lost somewhere between 22 and 28
million people during WWII. To put this in perspective, the United States and Great
Britain each lost less than half a million people and even Germany only lost between 7
and 9 million lives during the war. Nonetheless, for nearly half a century after the war
the Soviet Union could credibly threaten the much richer West solely because of the
sheer number of men it could put under arms.

Yet like most of Europe, Russia has recently seen its population dwindle even as
countries like China, India and much of the third world have seen sharp rises in their
own populations. As AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt observed in World Affairs: “in the last
sixteen years of the Communist era, births exceeded deaths in Russia by 11.4 million;
in the first sixteen years of the post-Soviet era, deaths exceeded births by 12.4 million.”
Unless Russia can reverse this depopulation for a sustained period of time, it will likely
become increasingly irrelevant in international politics.

Another source of modern Russian power has been its massive energy reserves.
Indeed, high oil prices during the 1970s allowed the Soviet Union to flex its muscles
abroad. However, as energy prices stabilized during the 1980s the artifice upon which
the Soviet system began to crumble. Far from continuing to expand, the end of the
decade saw the Soviet empire disintegrate, with Moscow powerless to stop it.

The so-called resurgence Russia has enjoyed since Putin first assumed power has
also been built on high energy prices. And like the Soviet leaders before him, Putin has
squandered the temporary respite provided by high energy prices instead of using it to
reinvest in the country and its people. As the European Bank of Reconstruction and
Development noted gloomily in December 2012, “Not only are Russian exports highly
concentrated in natural resources, this concentration has increased over time: the
shares of oil, gas and other minerals in Russia’s exports are higher today than they
were 15 years ago.”

It went on to reflect: “In 2012 Russia remains highly dependent on its natural
resources. Oil and gas now account for nearly 70 percent of total goods exports…. Oil
and gas revenues also contribute around half of the federal budget. The non-oil fiscal
deficit has averaged more than 11 per cent of GDP since 2009, while the oil price
consistent with a balanced budget is now in the region of US$115 per barrel and
rising.”

The problem with the Russian Federation’s economic model, much like that of the
Soviet Union’s before it, is that it is only sustainable so long as energy prices remain
artificially high. But, of course, energy prices are almost certainly going to decline over
the coming years as a result of greater energy efficiency in the West, slowing growth in
the East, and greater supply as a result of the energy revolutions being enjoyed in the
Western Hemisphere and elsewhere around the world. And as goes the price of oil so
goes the Russian state.

Also like the Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia has managed to maintain a modicum of
global influence through the sale of its military weaponry. Although Russian military
technology is greatly inferior to the West and the United States, it is sufficient to meet
the national security needs of most states around the world. More importantly, Moscow
continues to exhibit a willingness to provide it to states that the West refuses to deal
with on moral or geostrategic grounds. In these states at least, Russia has been able to
maintain a degree of influence.

This source of influence will also diminish in the years ahead. In some places, this will
be because of declining defense budgets. In most cases, however, it will merely be
because of greater competition from the likes of China and South Korea, the former at
least also willing to overlook the moral transgressions of potential buyers.

Thus, over the long-term Russian power will have to come nearly exclusively from its
prized geography. To be fair, the value of this real estate is increasing thanks to the
increased importance of Asia and the warming of the Arctic. Still, this alone is hardly
sufficient to sustain Russia as the major power it once was, and may someday become
again.
Putin has miscalculated – Ukraine will not
be an easy victory
By Andrew Wood Telegraph 6:16PM GMT 02 Mar 2014

Diving into Ukraine may present more problems for Russia and its President

Whose interests underlie Russian military action in Crimea, and Moscow's threatening
stance towards Ukraine as a whole: Russia's or Putin's?

The Russian government claims that it has sent troops to Crimea to protect the
Russian speaking population. No one had threatened them. It was local Russian-
speaking "activists" who started the trouble, with barely disguised support from Russian
military personnel in the area. Crimean Tartars had every right to be alarmed. Ethnic
Ukrainians in Crimea were no doubt dismayed, but neither began nor took part in
action aimed at their Russian-speaking compatriots in Crimea.

It is argued, including by some in the West, that Moscow's interest lay in securing the
position of its Black Sea fleet. But again, no one of consequence in Kiev or beyond it
had suggested making the Russians leave Sebastopol. Even if they had, the Russians
had no need to conquer all Crimea to frustrate it. That simply landed Moscow with long-
term problems of maintaining order in the peninsula and stoked hostility towards
Russia in Ukraine in general.

Seizing the Crimea answered, however, a number of emotional, and not entirely
rational, Russian needs. Russia's signature of the 1994 memorandum guaranteeing
Ukraine's frontiers never stilled the belief of many Russians that the Crimea was truly
and in justice theirs, paid for in blood during World War II. Now, for them, it is, whatever
the legal formalities. Russian force, it is assumed, will make that stick. And for Putin,
this is revenge for defeat in Kiev. If the West doesn't like it, too bad.

Moscow has consistently misread Ukraine. Putin's repressive agenda since his return
to the Kremlin in May 2012 has meant insistence on the West as a threat to Russia.
Russian mass media have accordingly presented the struggle between Yanukovich
and the majority of Ukrainians as one between a malevolent and subversive West and
a virtuous Russia, the latter with the best interests of Ukrainians to heart.

This line is not merely cynical, but accords with a long lived Russian assumption that
there is no great difference between them and the Ukrainians, and particularly of
course Russian speaking Ukrainians.

The last thing that Putin and his colleagues would be prepared to acknowledge is the
reality, that when Yanukovich revoked his promised signature of an Association
Agreement with the EU, under pressure from Russia, he triggered a final wave of
disgust at his rule. This was not a struggle between Russia and the West. It was a
struggle for decent law based government in Ukraine, between Ukrainians.

The parallels that Putin drew over Yanukovich's fall were with the fates of other
authoritarian rulers, and with the 2004 Orange Revolution. He has constantly warned
Russians against the West threatening Russia similarly.

Support for Yanukovich and repeated Russian calls for ruthless suppression in Kiev
reflected Putin's concern at risks to the Russian status quo. It is the example and ideals
of the West, however imperfectly realised, that is the threat to Putin and his system, not
some cunning US or European plan.
The temptation to go further than Crimea is there, and Russians are provoking some
unrest in Eastern Ukraine. Moscow's hope that the present Kiev administration will fall
apart may be another misreading. But chaos in Ukraine would be no answer to
Russia's own problems.

The screws in Russia will now be tightened further – again no answer to Russia's
mounting problems.

Putin's vaunted Eurasian Union now looks still more unrealistic. His word will be even
more suspect than it already was in the West and beyond it. What looks like a cheap
and easy victory to Russian conservatives will prove to be nothing of the kind.

Andrew Wood is a former British ambassador to Moscow

Romney revisited: Media discover Russia is
a top geopolitical foe
By Howard Kurtz • Published March 05, 2014 • FoxNews.com

Mitt Romney is having a moment.

His poll numbers are rising, with a Purple Strategies survey showing him leading all
other Republican contenders in the 2016 New Hampshire primary. (Of course he’s
been out of the arena for over a year and isn’t running, but it shows that his stock is
up.)

Now he’s having an I-told-you-so moment in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,
even if he’s too polite to say he told us so.

It was widely considered a gaffe back in 2012 when the Republican candidate told Wolf
Blitzer that Russia “is without question our No. 1 geopolitical foe. They fight every
cause for the world’s worst actors.”

Romney’s comments came after President Obama was heard on a live mike telling
Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more “flexibility” after the election.

Well, you would have thought that Romney had declared that the Martians were about
to invade. He was roundly mocked and criticized by much of the mainstream media,
especially from the left.

Take the New York Times editorial page:

“His comments display either a shocking lack of knowledge about international affairs
or just craven politics. Either way, they are reckless and unworthy of a major
presidential contender.”

The Boston Globe said that Romney “seems intent on screaming ‘fire’ in a crowded
theater, even if his audience doesn't seem to be responding. He should choose his
words more wisely. Diplomacy, far more than campaigning, requires finesse.”

Romney was pilloried on MSNBC. Chris Matthews dripped with condescension: “I don’t
know what decade this guy is living [in]. It sounds like not ’72, but ’52. It’s not Stalin
over there. It’s not Khrushchev. It’s not Brezhnev.”

“It made Mitt Romney look dumb,” said Matthews’ guest, Cynthia Tucker.

Andrea Mitchell, who certainly knows foreign policy, called Romney’s comments “a
throwback to the Cold War.” She said that “we work with Russia all the time. Hardly an
ally, but certainly not an adversary.” (Hat tip to Mediaite for compiling the sound bites.)

Even Foreign Policy magazine, reacting to Sarah Palin saying in 2008 that Obama’s
approach would encourage a Russian invasion of Ukraine, called that “an extremely
far-fetched scenario.”

I asked Stuart Stevens, who was Romney’s top campaign strategist, what he made of
the coverage at the time.
He blamed the reaction on Democratic spin, which, he said, “gets amplified by MSNBC
and unfortunately it drives a narrative for many editors and reporters…It's an effective
spin machine, as we see with the coverage of the Christie bridge story.”

I also asked Tommy Vietor, a former foreign policy spokesman in the Obama White
House, for his take.

He still says it’s “ridiculous” to claim that Russia is America’s top geopolitical foe. He
called the media’s recent coverage of Obama and Russia “typically reactionary and
lacking context. We should not try to do foreign policy at Twitter speed.” After the
administration’s initial “reset” toward Moscow, Vietor says, the tone changed when
Putin returned to the presidency.

Let’s not overstate what happened. Mitt Romney didn’t predict an invasion of Crimea.
No one knew that the Ukrainian people would topple their president after he refused
under Russian pressure to sign a trade deal with Europe, which provided the pretext for
Putin to send in troops.

At the same time, the media haven’t portrayed Obama as a great foreign policy
president. It was the New Yorker that published the blind quote that Obama was
“leading from behind” on Libya. The president got terrible press after failing to back up
his “red line” vow on Syria, moving to the brink of war and then pulling back — in favor
of a deal brokered by Putin. And now the Washington Post editorial page is charging
that Obama’s foreign policy is based on fantasy.

Nor was the underestimation of Putin a purely liberal phenomenon. George W. Bush
famously looked into the former KGB colonel’s eyes and saw his soul. Bush, too,
struggled with limited options after the Russian invasion of Georgia.

The media largely reflect the consensus view of Washington’s foreign policy
establishment. And that view was that Putin, whatever his militaristic tendencies, was
no threat to Ukraine. Unfortunately, it was all too easy to dismiss contrary views as a
relic of the Cold War.

Second place: Two weeks in Crimea

Russia, you will not be shocked to learn, has a rather restrictive view of press freedom.

Sure, journalists can speak their mind, but there are, well, consequences.

Abby Martin, an anchor at the Kremlin-controlled station RT, abandoned the company
line — or should I say the country line — when it came to what she called “Russia’s
military occupation of Crimea”:

“Just because I work here, for RT, doesn’t mean I don’t have editorial independence.
And I can’t stress enough how strongly I am against any military intervention in
sovereign nations’ affairs. What Russia did is wrong.”

As Mediaite noted, Martin added that she doesn’t know as much as she should about
Ukraine’s history or culture, “but what I do know is that military intervention is never the
answer. And I will not sit here and apologize or defend military aggression.”

Here’s your helmet and your canteen, comrade. Enjoy your reeducation.
Europeans Pull Punches On Russia
By RFE/RL March 04, 2014

The Ukrainian crisis has sent European leaders scurrying to find responses to Russia's
aggression. But so far, they seem more confused over what to do than they are united.
One reason for the confusion is that many EU member states have close trade ties with
Moscow and are loathe to jeopardize them by slapping punitive sanctions on Moscow.
In the meantime, the scramble over what to do is producing some notable moments:
from threats, to backpedaling, to even some embarrassments.

A Czech Flip-Flop

The Czech Republic has personal experience with Moscow invading other countries,
having suffered a Soviet invasion itself in 1968. So, some Czech officials have reacted
fiercely to news of Russia intervening in Crimea. On March 3, Czech Defense Minister
Martin Stropnicky said he could "hardly imagine" that Russia could now win its bid
against a U.S.-based company to carry out the planned $10 billion expansion of the
Czech Republic's sole nuclear plant. But by day's end, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav
Sobotka walked back the defense minister's statement. "It is impossible to imagine that
we will burn all bridges by rupturing all commercial ties with Russia because of this
crisis," Sobotka said. "That would be very unwise."

Britain Warns Of 'Significant Costs' -- But No Trade Sanctions?

British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned President Vladimir Putin that Russia
will have to pay "significant costs" unless the Kremlin changes course on Ukraine. So a
photo of an apparently official document as it was being carried into Downing Street on
March 3 caused quite a stir by suggesting London might, in fact, oppose curbs on
Russian trade. The document says "the U.K. should not support for now trade
sanctions...or close London's financial center to Russians." Downing Street has refused
to comment.

The German Contact Group

Germany says it is counting on a "contact group" to open channels between Kyiv and
Moscow and de-escalate a crisis that could endanger trade ties between Berlin and
Russia, the source of almost 40 percent of its oil and gas, But Berlin, which has
suggested the contact group could be composed of states and international
organizations, is moving ahead slowly. Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokeswoman said
on March 3 that the initiative so far has been limited to just one phone call between the
chancellor and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The EU: 'Sanctions Are Not In Order Today'

European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on March 3 united over calls on
Moscow to return its troops to their bases and threatened to put visa liberalization and
economic cooperation talks on hold. But they made it clear they wouldn't go as far as
the United States in terms of economic steps. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter
Steinmeier called for more diplomacy, saying "crisis diplomacy is not a weakness." The
Netherlands' foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, said "sanctions are not in order
today." Some numbers may help provide context: trade between Russia and the EU
states is worth $460 billion yearly, while U.S. trade with Russia is worth just $40 billion.
Long Hours At NATO -- And A New Europe, Old Europe Divide?

Warsaw has pushed NATO to hold emergency meetings over Ukraine, saying the
crisis endangers Poland. But the most recent meeting went four hours overtime on
March 3 as the members struggled to agree on a statement. The new member states,
which only recently left Moscow's orbit themselves, wanted tough warnings for Russia.
So did Britain and the United States. But France and Germany prefer a more moderate
tone. Germany says it is still of the opinion that one can talk to the Russians without
coming to threats and ultimatums. That came as, separately, German officials denied
U.S. reports that Merkel said on March 3 in a phone call with U.S. President Barack
Obama that Putin has lost touch with reality.

[ which brings us back to Solovei’s point :

Russian history professor and political commentator Valery Solovei posted on

Facebook on March 3 that "well-informed" sources tell him Putin made the decision to
move into Crimea personally and that he did so in part because he believes "he is
opposed in the West by the weakest political elite of the entire postwar period."

Yep. We have a crisis in the West much more than in Ukraine ]

US officials see signs Russia may mount
broader invasion, as Kerry visits Kiev
By James Rosen
FoxNews.com • Published March 04, 2014

KIEV, Ukraine – Dispatching sizable troop reinforcements into Crimea on Monday,

Russia consolidated its military control over the southeastern Ukrainian territory and
may be preparing for a wider invasion of the country, senior U.S. officials traveling with
Secretary of State John Kerry to Kiev, the restive Ukrainian capital, said early Tuesday.

"We still have a very real concern that the Russians have other plans in the Ukraine,"
said one senior U.S. official, briefing reporters aboard Kerry's official airplane en route
from New York to Kiev. "They may be planning other moves."

For the first time since the crisis erupted, senior U.S. officials complained of difficulty
tracking Russian troop movements. They said the expected redeployment of Russian
security forces following the end of the Olympic Games in Sochi, as well as routine
military exercises in the area, had complicated the task of determining how many
Russian troops are still pouring into Crimea.

The officials could not immediately dismiss reports that the number of total Russian
troops in Crimea may now have reached as high as 16,000, which if true would appear
to mark a surge of an additional 10,000 troops into the area within a period of 24 to 36
hours. "It's clearly a large number," an official said.

At the same time, the officials noted reports of Russian aircraft approaching, or even
trespassing in, Ukrainian airspace, and Ukrainian jets scrambling to repel them. U.S.
Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power told the U.N. Security Council on Monday
that "it is a fact" that Russian jets entered Ukrainian airspace.

The U.S. officials also cited evidence that Ukrainian and Russian forces have each
been massing on opposite sides of the isthmus that connects Ukraine to Crimea -- a
development that one senior U.S. official said "raises the prospect" that the Kremlin
may be preparing to "extend" its invasion to the mainland.

As Kerry landed in Kiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered his first press
conference since the start of the crisis, blaming what he called an "unconstitutional
overthrow and seizure of power" by Ukraine's opposition.

The U.S. officials traveling with Kerry emphasized that the Obama administration is still
seeking to "de-escalate" the Crimean crisis by giving Putin "off-ramps" he can pursue.
However, the officials conceded that the Russian government has not listed any
conditions, or any set of conditions, that can transpire or be arranged that would
persuade Moscow to withdraw its forces from Crimea, as the U.S. and European allies
are demanding.

If Putin does not withdraw Russian forces, the officials said, the U.S. will impose "more
robust" punishments, including the imposition of sanctions on as-yet-unspecified
Russian individuals and institutions. One senior U.S. official said such sanctions will
likely be "coming soon ... in days, not weeks," but otherwise declined to elaborate on
whom or what they would target or how they would be structured. Another official said
the sanctions, in tandem with further measures coordinated with European allies, will
have as their goal the establishment of "leverage over Russia."
The objective is to persuade Moscow to enter into a dialogue with the new Ukrainian
government about the restoration of central control over Crimea and the holding of free
and fair elections for the entire country on May 25.

One idea for punishing Moscow that Republican critics of the Obama administration
have advanced in recent days these senior U.S. officials rejected flatly: a swift
reappraisal of the administration's previous decisions on the siting of missile defense
installations, long an irritant to the Kremlin.

Asked if the Ukrainian crisis has caused the administration to look at missile defense
"with fresh eyes," one official said flatly: "No." The official added only that the subject is
an "important" one for Washington to "keep talking to [the Russians] about."

Kerry touched down in Kiev early Tuesday, eager to demonstrate the United States'
support for the interim Ukrainian government. Within a fortnight, the cash-strapped
country has seen its Kremlin-allied president toppled from power amid bloody street
protests in its capital and an invasion of its southeastern peninsula by Russian forces.

Kerry was to tour shrines in the public square in Kiev where scores of protesters were
mowed down last month by snipers loyal to President Viktor Yanukovych, who has
since fled the capital. After that, Kerry was meeting with the country's new interim
prime minister and acting president, as well as leaders from its Rada parliament.

As Kerry arrived in the capital, the White House announced a $1 billion loan guarantee
for the new government, aimed at helping it cement a separate financing deal with the
International Monetary Fund. Specifically, the guarantee is intended to "insulate" the
Ukrainian economy from the price shocks that are expected to occur when the
government is forced, as a term of the IMF deal, to increase the cost of the energy
supplies that Russia once subsidized.

The White House also announced that the U.S. will provide technical assistance to
Ukraine, on matters ranging from the recovery of stolen assets and the diversification
of the country's energy portfolio to how to hold nationwide elections on May 25.

Before setting out for Eastern Europe, Kerry had made a quick stop in Manhattan,
where his daughter Alexandra resides, to welcome the birth of his second grandchild.

[“For the first time since the crisis erupted, senior U.S. officials complained of difficulty
tracking Russian troop movements” … oh boy that’s great]
Pentagon
Lawmakers probe spy agency split over
Russia's intentions in Ukraine
Published March 05, 2014 • FoxNews.com

A congressional committee has launched a review to find out why U.S. intelligence
agencies disagreed on Russia's intentions ahead of its intervention in Ukraine, as
lawmakers question why there was no clear warning of Moscow's military action.

The House Intelligence Committee is reviewing what caused the differing assessments
of possible Russian action by analysts with the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence
Agency, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Pentagon analysts said last Friday that there would be no movements in the next 24
hours, while Central Intelligence Agency analysts were "more circumspect," indicating
the possibility for intervention, one U.S. official told the newspaper.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R., Mich., the committee's chairman, told The Wall Street Journal
on Tuesday that his committee had begun an examination to find out "what was missed
in some of the [Russian] intentions piece."

Russia took over the strategic Crimean Peninsula on Saturday, placing its troops
around its ferry, military bases and border posts. Two Ukrainian warships remained
anchored in the Crimean port of Sevastopol, blocked from leaving by Russian ships.

But a classified report earlier in the week by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence
Agency concluded that Russian military drills near the Ukrainian border would not
provide a pretext for intervening in Crimea, The Los Angeles Times reported.

A separate classified report from the CIA stated that some signs pointed to a Russian
intervention, but that one was not expected, officials told the paper.

“I think the Russian steps came as a surprise,” Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., an
intelligence committee member, told The Los Angeles Times. “I think in part it comes
from trying to predict a fairly unpredictable [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.”

A Pentagon spokesman declined requests for comment from The Wall Street Journal
and The Los Angeles Times, but the CIA defended its assessments.

"Since the beginning of the political unrest in Ukraine, the CIA has regularly updated
policy makers to ensure they have an accurate and timely picture of the unfolding
crisis," CIA spokesman Chris White told the Journal. "These updates have included
warnings of possible scenarios for a Russian military intervention in Ukraine."

Rogers told the Journal that some analysts "came to the wrong conclusion," but that he
wouldn't characterize the issue as an intelligence failure. [*]

Meanwhile, some Senate Intelligence Committee members left a closed-door briefing

on Ukraine and other issues on Tuesday with questions of why there was no clear
warning of how Russia would respond to the political unrest in Ukraine.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Sen. Saxby
Chambliss of Georgia, the panel's top Republican, told POLITICO that something was
missed.
“Well, I’m not sure what the issue is," Chambliss said. "I mean obviously that’s why you
get briefings to try to deep dive into it to see whether it’s a lack of intelligence gathering
or whether there were some signs that analysts just didn’t see. But it’s pretty clear that
there was no indication that this was coming like it did."

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told
POLITICO earlier this week that President Obama and lawmakers initially viewed
Putin's decision to intervene as unlikely.

“From everything I’ve seen, this was not anticipated,” King told the publication. “I think
there will have to be a whole evaluation of what our links into Russia are and [into]
determining their policy.”

“As far as the administration, I think they had to be taken off guard,” he said. “They
were making these very tough pronouncements that there will be consequences and
he won’t do it. I don’t think they would have done that if they were thinking that Putin
would do this.” [*]

Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said
government officials would cooperate with the congressional review.

"We are aware that Chairman Rogers has asked his staff to work with intelligence
agencies to get a better understanding of the community's early analysis of the
situation in Ukraine," Turner told the Journal. "As always, we look forward to working
with the committee in support of oversight efforts."

[* sic]

[** Now this is very interesting.

The US Administration warned Putin of possible consequences of his of military force
BECAUSE they believed he would NOT do that.
IF they had known he would, THEN they would not even have threatened him.
House “Intelligence” Committee… hmm, indeed]
Putin's Ukraine Strategy: Crazy, Shrewd, A
Little Of Both?
By Robert Coalson RFE-RL Wednesday, March 05, 2014

Is Russian President Vladimir Putin crazy or crazy like a fox?

In remarks quoted by "The New York Times," German Chancellor Angela Merkel
reportedly wondered aloud whether the Kremlin leader was "living in another world."
And despite the fact that the German government later denied Merkel's comments, an
increasing number of analysts have been suggesting that, with his military intervention
in Ukraine, Putin may have indeed taken leave of his senses.

Stanislav Belkovsky, an influential Moscow-based political commentator, says "the

poor guy's brain isn't working."

And Andrei Zubov, a professor at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of

International Relations, agrees.

"We always make prognoses based on the assumption that the politician, even if
selfish and cruel, is intelligent and rational. But what we see now is the behavior of a
politician who has lost his mind," Zubov says.

Rumors of Putin's supposed madness have become so prevalent in recent days that
one can't help but recall the "madman theory" of former U.S. President Richard Nixon,
whose administration tried to plant the suspicion that he was unbalanced in order to
scare geopolitical opponents into concessions.

But Putin has been such a shrewd political player for more than a decade and a half,
and many observers see cold calculation and deliberation, rather than madness, in his
latest Ukraine gambit.

Cost-Benefit Calculus

Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe in Brussels, suggests that Putin is simply
employing a cost-benefit calculus that is completely different from that used by Western
politicians. Putin, he says, sees an existential threat to Russia in Ukraine's westward
drift and therefore is willing to bear a very high political and economic cost to prevent it
-- and has been preparing the ground to do so for a long time.

A U.S. diplomatic cable from the Kyiv mission in 2006 that was released by WikiLeaks
accuses Russia of funding "a deliberate effort to destabilize Crimea, weaken Ukraine,
and prevent Ukraine's movement west in institutions like NATO and the EU." It says
that plan had been in operation at least since the Orange Revolution of 2004.

Ben Judah, the author of "Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With
Vladimir Putin," says "the crucial thing that Putin was trying to achieve in Ukraine over
the past few weeks was to continue to impose a Russian veto over Ukraine's future."

"From the moment that Russia threatened a trade war to block [deposed Ukrainian
President] Viktor Yanukovych signing an Association Agreement with the European
Union to the decision to intervene in Crimea, it is all about this one thing -- it is that
Ukraine can't fully have autonomous control over its own destiny," Judah says.
In addition to geopolitics, domestic considerations are also a strong motivator for Putin,
analysts say.

Russian opposition figure Leonid Gozman said in Crimea, Putin is engaged in a

"genuine attempt at an Anschluss," an apparent reference to Adolf Hitler's annexation
of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938.

But Gozman says the reason Putin is seeking outside "enemies" is to bolster his
political legitimacy at home, which has declined among much of the population since
vocal public opposition to him emerged in late 2011.

"What is Vladimir Putin's situation? He has serious problems with his legitimacy, which
began -- or at least he recognized them -- when he was booed [at a martial arts event
in Moscow's] Olympic [stadium] back before the last Duma elections," Gozman says.

"He's a smart person and he understands that his charisma is weakened. It happens --
they loved him and now they don't love him. So he needs some other foundation for his
legitimacy. And another foundation for legitimacy is victory."

Dangerous Precedent

Likewise, analysts say the Ukrainian opposition's successful overthrow of an

authoritarian government is a dangerous precedent for Putin.

Russian political columnist Yevgeny Ikhlov says Putin is acting because of the
example of a democratic revolution in neighboring Ukraine "where there will be
lustration, the exposure of corruption, free elections."

"Such an example would show the population of the Russian Federation how all that
can be normal," Ikhlov says.

Regardless of Putin's motivations, is there anything the West can do to counter him?

Russian history professor and political commentator Valery Solovei posted on

Facebook on March 3 that "well-informed" sources tell him Putin made the decision to
move into Crimea personally and that he did so in part because he believes "he is
opposed in the West by the weakest political elite of the entire postwar period."

Solovei adds, however, the upper echelons of the Russian political elite is deeply split
by the decision and that those with economic assets in Europe are "scared to death."

Indeed, author Judah says, the ruling elite in Putin's Russia is, theoretically, extremely
vulnerable to Western sanctions.

"The Russian elite is theoretically extremely vulnerable to any choice by the European
Union to clamp down on its tax havens or to use visa bans or freeze bank accounts or
restrict Russian companies' access to its stock exchanges or financial services. But
Putin is absolutely confident the European Union is not going to do that," Judah says.

"Half the Putin cabinet has assets across Europe," Judah says. However, most
European countries -- particularly Britain and Germany, "have long ceased to be
interested in taking any policies toward Russia that would harm their [own] interests."

Analyst Techau agrees the West lacks the will and the unity to impose serious
economic penalties on Russia, although it has the ability to do so. Both Judah and
Techau say the United States has taken a harder line against Russia in general --
notably the so-called Magnitsky Act, which imposed targeted sanctions against
Russian officials believed to be involved in human rights abuses -- but that Washington
has limited leverage because Russian assets are overwhelmingly located in Europe.

Putin understands, Judah says, the Cold War days -- when the United States could de
facto order European countries to impose various trade sanctions on the Soviet Union -
- are over.

"None of this, of course, is likely to happen because the very same European elite that
funds political parties, that goes to cocktail parties with European political leaders, the
whole Davos elite, has made its fortune in the last decade of slow-to-nonexistent
economic growth off rents from oligarchs," Judah says.

QUOTES

What Are Putin's Motivations For Intervening In Crimea?

"I think the main goal is to make Ukrainians hateful to Russians, so that the Maidan is
not perceived by Russians as their own experience. So that it is seen as the
experience of an enemy that needs to be rejected." -- Russian political commentator
Andrei Zubov

"Why did Putin do this? Because of the example of a democratic revolution in

neighboring Ukraine -- where there will be lustration, the exposure of corruption, free
elections. Such an example would show the population of the Russian Federation how
all that can be normal." -- Russian political columnist Yevgeny Ikhlov

"The rationales that are being brought up today -- not by the president himself, but by
the Federation Council and others -- are absolute lies. This is not about defending
ethnic Russians in Crimea. It is a genuine attempt at an Anschluss. An attempt to take
over Crimea. -- Russian opposition figure Leonid Gozman

"The crucial thing that Putin was trying to achieve in Ukraine over the past few weeks
was to continue to impose a Russian veto over Ukraine's future. From the moment that
Russia threatened a trade war to block [deposed Ukrainian President] Viktor
Yanukovych signing an Association Agreement with the European Union to the
decision to intervene in Crimea, it is all about this one thing -- it is that Ukraine can't
fully have autonomous control over its own destiny." -- Ben Judah is the author of
"Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin"

RFE/RL Russian Service correspondent Mikhail Sokolov contributed to this story from
Moscow, and RFE/RL correspondent Claire Bigg contributed from Prague.
What is to be done? Putin’s aggression in
Ukraine needs a response
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washingnton Post Published: March 4

Zbigniew Brzezinski was national security adviser from 1977 to 1981.

Regarding the Russian aggression against Ukraine, much depends on what Vladimir
Putin does next. But what Putin does depends on not only his calculation of the likely
NATO (and especially the U.S.) response but also his estimate of how fiercely the
Ukrainian people would respond to any further escalation by Russia. And, to complete
the circle, the Ukrainian response would be influenced by citizens’ reaction to any
repetition of Putin’s Crimean aggression and by whether the nation believes that the
United States and NATO are truly supportive.

Putin’s thuggish tactics in seizing Crimea offer some hints regarding his planning. He
knew in advance that his thinly camouflaged invasion would meet with popular support
from the Russian majority in Crimea. He was not sure how the thin and light Ukrainian
military units stationed there would react, so he went in masked like a Mafia gangster.
In the event of serious Ukrainian resistance, he could disown the initiative and pull
back.

His initial success may tempt him to repeat that performance more directly in the far
eastern provinces of Ukraine. If successful, the conclusive third phase could then be
directed, through a combination of political unrest and increasingly overt use of
Russian forces, to overthrow the government in Kiev. The result would thus be similar
to the two phases of Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland after Munich in 1938 and the
final occupation of Prague and Czechoslovakia in early 1939.

Much depends on how clearly the West conveys to the dictator in the Kremlin — a
partially comical imitation of Mussolini and a more menacing reminder of Hitler — that
NATO cannot be passive if war erupts in Europe. If Ukraine is crushed while the West
is simply watching, the new freedom and security in bordering Romania, Poland and
the three Baltic republics would also be threatened.

This does not mean that the West, or the United States, should threaten war. But
Russia’s unilateral and menacing acts mean the West should promptly recognize the
current government of Ukraine as legitimate. Uncertainty regarding its legal status
could tempt Putin to repeat his Crimean charade. The West also should convey —
privately at this stage, so as not to humiliate Russia — that the Ukrainian army can
count on immediate and direct Western aid so as to enhance its defensive capabilities.
There should be no doubt left in Putin’s mind that an attack on Ukraine would
precipitate a prolonged and costly engagement, and Ukrainians should not fear that
they would be left in the lurch.

Meanwhile, NATO forces, consistent with the organization’s contingency planning,

should be put on alert. High readiness for some immediate airlift to Europe of U.S.
airborne units would be politically and militarily meaningful. If the West wants to avoid a
conflict, there should be no ambiguity in the Kremlin as to what might be precipitated by
further adventurist use of force in the middle of Europe.

In addition, such efforts to avert miscalculations that could lead to a war should be
matched by a reaffirmation of the West’s desire for a peaceful accommodation with
Russia regarding a joint effort to help Ukraine recover economically and stabilize
politically. The West should reassure Russia that it is not seeking to draw Ukraine into
NATO or to turn it against Russia. Ukrainians themselves can define the depth of their
closeness to Europe and the scope of their economic cooperation with Russia, to the
benefit of peace and stability in Europe. And after their May elections, they can revise
some of the arrangements for a special status for Crimea, but they should not do so
under duress or attack from a neighbor driven by imperial or personal ambitions.
Russian Revisionism
Putin's Plan For Overturning the European
Order
By Ivan Krastev Foreign Affairs March 3, 2014

Russia’s willingness to violate Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty is the gravest challenge

to the European order in over half a century. The conflict pits a vast nuclear power
against a state equal in size to France, an autocratic regime against a revolutionary
government. The Russian intervention in Ukraine raises questions about the security
guarantees that the West made to Ukraine after the country gave up its nuclear
weapons in 1994, and it flies in the face of many Europeans’ belief that, in recent
years, a continental war has become all but impossible. The end result may be the
emergence of a third Russian empire or a failed Ukrainian state at the center of
Europe.

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine should not be understood as an opportunistic power

grab. Rather, it is an attempt to politically, culturally, and militarily resist the West.
Russia resorted to military force because it wanted to signal a game change, not
because it had no other options. Indeed, it had plenty of other ways to put pressure on
Kiev, including through the Russian Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, the Ukrainian city in
which the force is based; playing with gas prices; demanding that Ukraine start paying
off its government debt to Russia; and drumming up anti-Ukrainian sentiment among
Ukraine’s sizeable Russian population. Further, senior American figures had already
noted that the Ukrainian crisis could not be solved without Russia, and European
leaders had expressed their unhappiness about a new (and unfortunate) law that
Ukraine’s transitional government passed soon after it was formed, which degraded the
status of the Russian language. In other words, resorting to force was unnecessary.

It was also dangerous: Ukraine is a big country, and its public, still in a revolutionary
mood, is primed to fight for a patriotic cause. Moscow’s intervention will provoke strong
anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine and will perhaps bring what’s left of the country
closer to the EU and NATO. Military intervention in Ukraine also risks unleashing a real
humanitarian crisis within Russia. According to Russian sources, nearly 700,000
Ukrainians have fled to Russia over the last two months. Around 143,000 of them have
asked for asylum. A war in Ukraine could triple these numbers. Finally, it is easy to
foresee that Moscow’s use of force will increase Russia’s political isolation. It has
already resulted in some economic and political sanctions, which could be a knockout
punch to Russia’s stagnating economy. By some estimates, the direct costs to Russia
of a war in Ukraine could reach over three percent of Russian GDP (over $60 billion).

Yet Putin decided to throw caution to the wind. Anger is one of his reasons for doing
so. Putin was defeated twice in Ukraine: first during the 2004 Orange revolution, which
brought to power a pro-Western coalition led by Yulia Tymoshenko, and second during
the recent protests, which booted President ViKtor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian
politician, out of office. Moscow had bet on Yanukovych and had tried to hold him
hostage to its own interests. For example, it pressed him to refuse to sign an
Association Agreement with the EU (his failure to sign was what first sparked the
protests in Ukraine) and loaned Ukraine nearly $15 billion, thus making the country
dependent on Russia. But it was really Putin who became hostage to the increasingly
unpopular Yanukovych and his hapless cronies. When Yanukovych lost power, Putin
suddenly and unexpectedly lost his strategic partner. Putin’s escalation, at least in part,
is an attempt to cover up the failures of his Ukraine policy.
For now, Moscow wants to topple the new regime in Kiev, which it views as being
made up of radicals who won’t survive more than several weeks in power. By
pressuring the regime with an invasion and by heightening the fears of the Russian
speakers in Ukraine’s south and the east, Putin will likely get what he wants. His
strategic goal is not to cut off Crimea, as recent events might suggest, but to bring
about a constitutional crisis that will remake Ukraine into a confederate state with a
very weak center, the eastern part of which will be more integrated with Russia and the
western part closer to Poland and the EU. Realizing that he has lost Kiev, in short,
Putin seems to want to move Ukraine’s center of power elsewhere.

The worst part of all this is that Putin knows that he can likely get away with it. “What
can we do?” asked Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar who was a top U.S.
intelligence officer on Russia during the Georgia war, in a recent interview with The
New York Times. “We’ll talk about sanctions. We’ll talk about red lines. We’ll basically
drive ourselves into a frenzy. And he’ll stand back and just watch it. He just knows that
none of the rest of us want a war.”

But maybe the rest of us should. The Putin of 2014 is not the Putin of 2004, or even the
Putin of 2008. He is no longer simply the ruthless operator who is interested in power
and money, the one who dreams of getting Russia back on the global stage. He is
interested in ideas. He presents his advisers with the writings of Ivan Ilyn, the Russian
philosopher and ideologue of the Russian All-Military Union. He personally directs the
writing of history textbooks. In the last few years, and particularly after the explosion of
protests in Moscow in the winter of 2011–12, Putin has come to view himself as a last
bastion of order and traditional values. He is convinced that liberalism is contagious
and that Western mores and institutions present a real danger to Russian society and
the Russian state. He surely dreams of the pre-1914 days, when Russia was autocratic
but accepted, revolutions were not tolerated, and Russia could be part of Europe while
preserving its distinctive culture and traditions.

From that perspective, the Ukrainian revolution is a symbol of everything that is wrong
with today’s Europe. It flirts with people power and moral relativism, it stirs passions,
and it shows utter disregard for Russia’s geopolitical ambitions. And with his adventure
across the border, Putin has signaled that he won’t stand for it. He is apparently ready
to abandon all thoughts of Russia being a European nation in good standing -- far
better for it to be a civilization of its own -- and has proved willing to sacrifice his
country’s economic interests to achieve his goals.

In other words, Putin’s march on Crimea is very different from Russia’s war in Georgia
in 2008. During that debacle, Moscow used force to draw a red line that it insisted
Western capitals not cross. In Crimea, Moscow has demonstrated its readiness to
cross the red lines drawn by the West -- to question legal norms and the structure of
the post–Cold War European order. His move is a challenge: Is the United States still
ready to guarantee the security of European democracies, or does it prefer offshore
balancing and pivoting to Asia? Is Germany powerful enough to deal with a Russia that
is uninterested in being European?

Whatever the answers, it will be hard to counter Putin. He has refused to play by
Western rules. He seems not to fear political isolation; he invites it. He seems not worry
about the closing of borders; he hopes for it. His foreign policy amounts to a deep
rejection of modern Western values and an attempt to draw a clear line between
Russia’s world and Europe’s. For Putin, Crimea is likely just the beginning.
Washington Post: Obama’s foreign policy
based on fantasy
By Editorial Board, Published: March 3, 2014

FOR FIVE YEARS, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he
thinks the world should operate than on reality. It was a world in which “the tide of war
is receding” and the United States could, without much risk, radically reduce the size of
its armed forces. Other leaders, in this vision, would behave rationally and in the
interest of their people and the world. Invasions, brute force, great-power games and
shifting alliances — these were things of the past. Secretary of State John F. Kerry
displayed this mindset on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday when he said, of Russia’s
invasion of neighboring Ukraine, “It’s a 19th century act in the 21st century.”

That’s a nice thought, and we all know what he means. A country’s standing is no
longer measured in throw-weight or battalions. The world is too interconnected to break
into blocs. A small country that plugs into cyberspace can deliver more prosperity to its
people (think Singapore or Estonia) than a giant with natural resources and standing
armies.

Unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has not received the memo on 21st-
century behavior. Neither has China’s president, Xi Jinping, who is engaging in
gunboat diplomacy against Japan and the weaker nations of Southeast Asia. Syrian
president Bashar al-Assad is waging a very 20th-century war against his own people,
sending helicopters to drop exploding barrels full of screws, nails and other shrapnel
onto apartment buildings where families cower in basements. These men will not be
deterred by the disapproval of their peers, the weight of world opinion or even
disinvestment by Silicon Valley companies. They are concerned primarily with
maintaining their holds on power.

Mr. Obama is not responsible for their misbehavior. But he does, or could, play a
leading role in structuring the costs and benefits they must consider before acting. The
model for Mr. Putin’s occupation of Crimea was his incursion into Georgia in 2008,
when George W. Bush was president. Mr. Putin paid no price for that action; in fact,
with parts of Georgia still under Russia’s control, he was permitted to host a Winter
Olympics just around the corner. China has bullied the Philippines and unilaterally
staked claims to wide swaths of international air space and sea lanes as it continues a
rapid and technologically impressive military buildup. Arguably, it has paid a price in the
nervousness of its neighbors, who are desperate for the United States to play a
balancing role in the region. But none of those neighbors feel confident that the United
States can be counted on. Since the Syrian dictator crossed Mr. Obama’s red line with
a chemical weapons attack that killed 1,400 civilians, the dictator’s military and
diplomatic position has steadily strengthened.

The urge to pull back — to concentrate on what Mr. Obama calls “nation-building at
home” — is nothing new, as former ambassador Stephen Sestanovich recounts in his
illuminating history of U.S. foreign policy, “Maximalist.” There were similar
retrenchments after the Korea and Vietnam wars and when the Soviet Union crumbled.
But the United States discovered each time that the world became a more dangerous
place without its leadership and that disorder in the world could threaten U.S.
prosperity. Each period of retrenchment was followed by more active (though not
always wiser) policy. Today Mr. Obama has plenty of company in his impulse, within
both parties and as reflected by public opinion. But he’s also in part responsible for the
national mood: If a president doesn’t make the case for global engagement, no one
else effectively can.

The White House often responds by accusing critics of being warmongers who want
American “boots on the ground” all over the world and have yet to learn the lessons of
Iraq. So let’s stipulate: We don’t want U.S. troops in Syria, and we don’t want U.S.
troops in Crimea. A great power can become overextended, and if its economy falters,
so will its ability to lead. None of this is simple.

But it’s also true that, as long as some leaders play by what Mr. Kerry dismisses as
19th-century rules, the United States can’t pretend that the only game is in another
arena altogether. Military strength, trustworthiness as an ally, staying power in difficult
corners of the world such as Afghanistan — these still matter, much as we might wish
they did not. While the United States has been retrenching, the tide of democracy in
the world, which once seemed inexorable, has been receding. In the long run, that’s
harmful to U.S. national security, too.

As Mr. Putin ponders whether to advance further — into eastern Ukraine, say — he will
measure the seriousness of U.S. and allied actions, not their statements. China,
pondering its next steps in the East China Sea, will do the same. Sadly, that’s the
nature of the century we’re living in.
Opinion: Putin planning 'Soviet Union lite'
By Ulrich Speck, visiting fellow at Carnegie Europe, Special to CNN
March 4, 2014 -- Updated 0052 GMT (0852 HKT)

Editor's note: Ulrich Speck is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Europe think tank in
Brussels. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his. Follow
@uli_speck and @Carnegie_Europe on Twitter.

(CNN) -- What's at stake in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine is
not just the future of Crimea, it's the future of international order.

Some weeks ago, Crimea was a remote place, to historians known as the center of a
war in the 1850s, while ordinary people would have associated it with some kind of
sparkling alcoholic beverage. But suddenly and unexpectedly, Crimea has become a
geopolitical hotspot in a conflict between Russia and the West that seems to be straight
out of a Cold War playbook.

Moscow has raised the stakes dramatically with a de facto annexation of this region,
which is home of an important Russian naval base and inhabited by a population
whose majority is oriented towards Russia (while an important minority, among them
the Cossacks, is strongly attached to Ukraine).

It is unclear at the moment whether President Vladimir Putin sees this only as a first
step, which may be followed by an invasion of other parts of southern and eastern
Ukraine.

What is clear is that Russia is not going to leave anytime soon.

'Soviet Union lite'

The tactics and strategies of de facto-annexation have already been displayed in the
Georgian regions Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the Russian-Georgian war in 2008;
we're likely to see them now in Crimea. Under the cover of sham legality, the region will
in essence be fully controlled by Moscow.

The current leadership in the Kremlin has never accepted that Ukraine, which achieved
independence in 1991, is a sovereign state. It considers Ukraine to be in its sphere of
influence, which means that on important issues the country must -- in Russia's view --
ask Moscow for permission.

Putin's broader plan is to recreate some kind of "Soviet Union lite," a ring of countries
under Moscow's control, with the goal of boosting Russia's geopolitical standing.
Ukraine is the cornerstone of that project.

The downfall of President Yanukovych and the triumph of the popular Maidan
movement in Ukraine have signaled to Moscow, however, that it is losing its grip on
Ukraine and that its grand strategy is going nowhere.

As the new government in Kiev appears committed to a close association with the EU
and as Putin had lost indirect means of control, he decided to use armed force to win
Ukraine back -- or at least to deny the West what he sees, in his terms, as the West's
victory.

Moscow has been consistent in viewing Ukraine as a satellite country but the West has
constantly ignored the risk that Russia could use armed force there.
Yes, there was the precedent of the war in Georgia, but back then Moscow had at least
some arguments to back up its narrative of a humanitarian intervention, while the
Georgian side lost its nerve and acted preemptively. And the U.S. and the EU were all
too happy to accept Moscow's version of events and continue to do business as usual.

The Ukrainian situation is different in many regards. First, there were no serious ethnic
tensions that could serve as a pretext for Russian intervention. Second, Ukraine lies
between the EU and Russia, which means that the West simply cannot ignore a
Russian aggression because of geographic proximity. Thirdly, the EU is already deeply
involved in Ukraine.

In the case of Ukraine, the West is not going to accept Moscow's narrative. This is too
obviously a case of aggression -- the use of force violating Ukraine's sovereignty. But
Putin must have calculated that nevertheless the price for challenging the West over
Ukraine won't be too high -- that the West is not going to unite behind a strong
response.

Western cracks

Is he right? Signs of disagreement about the proper response are visible. On Sunday,
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier publicly voiced doubts about the
proposal to exclude Russia from the G8. Berlin's tactic is to continue to act as if Russia
were ultimately a constructive partner, which just has to be brought back to its senses
through intense dialogue.

While Berlin wants to offer carrots to bring Moscow back on the path of virtue, others
think the time for sticks has come. Washington is preparing measures to step up
economic pressure. But inside the EU there is no unity about the proper reaction.

The West is far from a united stand and a forceful response. Worse, instead of keeping
their differences behind closed doors, Western cracks are all too visible, emboldening
Putin.

It's safe to assume that the Western reaction is shaping Putin's course of action.
Moscow fears isolation and economic retaliation. The money that permits the Russian
leadership to pursue costly and risky foreign policy adventures comes in large part from
the EU, as payment for gas and oil. And substantial parts of the investments of the
Russian elite are in the EU as well.

But it doesn't look as if the West is using its leverage. This caution may backfire. It may
incentivize Putin to go beyond the de facto-annexation of Crimea and try to split larger
parts away from Ukraine.

Western policymakers should raise their game and understand what is at stake.

If Russia goes beyond Crimea, there is the risk of a major war with Ukraine. No
government can simply watch as another country invades its territory.

Acting like an empire

Beyond Ukraine, this conflict is also a defining moment for future Russian foreign
policy. If Moscow succeeds in Ukraine, it will come to the conclusion that it can act like
an empire. An empire has no borders and doesn't respect the borders of others.

Moscow's pretext of protecting allegedly threatened Russian passport-holders could be

used against many countries. If the operation in Ukraine succeeds, it will scare many
neighboring countries and prompt them to try to buy off Russia.
Safe borders and sovereignty are core principles of the global order, enshrined in the
United Nations charter and in other documents -- many of which Russia has signed.
Russia is a stakeholder in this system, its U.N. Security Council seat is an important
element in ensuring its standing as a great power.

It is also in Russia's interests to insist on the sanctity of borders as it has itself a

stronger neighbor on its south-eastern side -- China. Moscow cannot put the
sovereignty of others into question without risking its own sovereignty.

Power vacuum

What is at stake in Ukraine is broader than just the region.

If the EU and U.S. accept Russia's land grab, they weaken the foundations of today's
international order, born out of the ashes of World War II and enshrined in the U.N.
charter.

A situation where powerful states set conditions according to their own interests and
weaker ones have no choice but to accept is precisely what this charter is aimed at
preventing.

If one state can invade another without being attacked, without having an international
mandate and a clear backing by international norms (such as the responsibility to
protect), the foundations of today's international order will be at risk.

In the past, it was the U.S. that promoted and guaranteed the U.N.-order. In the role of
a global quasi-sovereign, and faced with major threats, it sometimes violated this
principle itself. But these were exceptions to the overall beneficial role the U.S. played
in the promotion of a liberal democratic order.

Nowadays, however, Washington is diminishing its global footprint, with its taxpayers
no longer willing to bear the biggest chunk of the burden to uphold world order.

The Kremlin has sensed a power vacuum and is stepping in.

Now the West must decide whether to accept the new rules Russia is setting in its
neighborhood -- or whether it has the power and strength to defend an order which has
brought it decades of freedom, security and prosperity.
Ex-Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on Ukraine:
'It is US weakness that has shaken the
world'
Published March 03, 2014 • FoxNews.com

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren
Monday that he believes “U.S. weakness has shaken the world” and has created a
power vacuum that has led to instability and crises such as the one in Ukraine.

Rumsfeld said under the Obama administration the U.S. has been perceived as a world
power in decline, and wields far less influence than it used to. Consequently, the world
as a whole has become less stable.

“We have created a leadership vacuum in the world, and it is being filled by the Putins
of the world, by people without our values or our interest, and it’s to the detriment of the
United States and our friends and allies around the world,” he said. “It is the United
States that’s injected that instability into the world equation.”

Rumsfeld said the U.S. has to aim to create a coalition of nations that will put the
maximum amount of pressure on Putin and Russia.

“So, the thing we have got to persuade other countries of is that we get peace through
strength as Eisenhower said,” Rumsfeld said. “If we want peace, we have to be
prepared for war and that it is U.S. weakness that has shaken the world.”
Putin's Press Conference Proved Merkel
Right: Putin's Lost His Mind
BY JULIA IOFFE- The New Nation MARCH 4, 2014

In Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German chancellor Angela
Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an
affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: he served in the KGB in East Germany,
where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that
after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people
briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.

In Sunday's New York Times, Peter Baker reported that German chancellor Angela
Merkel had tried talking some sense into Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader has an
affinity for the Germans and Merkel especially: he served in the KGB in East Germany,
where Merkel grew up. And yet, nothing:

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that
after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people
briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.

If you weren't sure of the veracity of that little reportorial nugget, all doubt should've
vanished after Putin's press conference today.

Slouching in a fancy chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled.
And rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: serious! angry! bemused!
flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of
Ukraine, but he can't talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs
elections, but you can't have elections because there is already a president. And no
elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how
are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just
pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite? Look at how peaceful the Crimea is,
probably thanks to those guys with guns holding it down. Who are they, by the way?
Speaking of instability, did you know that the mayor of Dniepropetrovsk is a thief? He
cheated "our oligarch, [Chelsea owner Roman] Abramovich" of millions. Just pocketed
them! Yanukovich has no political future, I've told him that. He didn't fulfill his
obligations as leader of the country. I've told him that. Mr. Putin, what mistakes did
Yanukovich make as president? You know, I can't answer that. Not because I don't
know the answer, but because it just wouldn't be right of me to say. Did you know they
burned someone alive in Kiev? Just like that? Is that what you call a manifestation of
democracy? Mr. Putin, what about the snipers in Kiev who were firing on civilians?
Who gave them orders to shoot? Those were provocateurs. Didn't you read the
reports? They were open source reports. So I don't know what happened there. It's
unclear. But did you see the bullets piercing the shields of the Berkut [special police].
That was obvious. As for who gave the order to shoot, I don't know. Yanukovich didn't
give that order. He told me. I only know what Yanukovich told me. And I told him, don't
do it. You'll bring chaos to your city. And he did it, and they toppled him. Look at that
bacchanalia. The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn't
the first time they've done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these
people...these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing
experiments, like on rats. You're not listening to me. I've already said, that yesterday, I
met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you're not listening. It's not that Yanukovich
said he's not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based
on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have
problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they're not as bad as in Ukraine.
The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?

And so on, for about an hour. And much of that, by the way, is direct quotes.

Gone was the old Putin, the one who loves these kinds of press events. He'd come a
long way from they painfully awkward gray FSB officer on Larry King, a year into his
tenure. He had grown to become the master of public speaking, who had turned his
churlish, prison-inflected slang to his benefit. A salty guy in utter command of a crowd.
That Putin was not the Putin we saw today. Today's Putin was nervous, angry,
cornered, and paranoid, periodically illuminated by flashes of his own righteousness.
Here was an authoritarian dancing uncomfortably in his new dictator shoes, squirming
in his throne.

For the last few years, it has become something like conventional knowledge in
Moscow journalistic circles that Putin was no longer getting good information, that he
was surrounded by yes-men who created for him a parallel informational universe.
"They're beginning to believe their own propaganda," Gleb Pavlovsky told me when I
was in Moscow in December. Pavlovsky had been a close advisor to the early Putin,
helping him win his first presidential election in 2000. (When, in 2011, Putin decided to
return for a third term as president, Pavlovsky declared the old Putin dead.) And still, it
wasn't fully vetted information. We were like astronomers, studying refractions of light
that reached us from great distances, and used them to draw our conclusions.

Today's performance, though, put all that speculation to rest. Merkel was absolutely
right: Putin has lost it. Unfortunately, it makes him that much harder to deal with.
The West Needs To Play Hardball With
Russia For Its Invasion Of Ukraine
Mark Adomanis, Contributor - Forbes International | 3/04/2014 @ 7:17AM

I am, in general, rather more sympathetic to Russian concerns than most American or
Western European commentators. I don’t think that all Russian interests are ipso facto
illegitimate and I understand why the Russian government would view things like
ballistic missile defense or NATO expansion with a great deal of suspicion. I also
understand that, as detailed in Angela Stent’s truly outstanding new book “The Limits of
Partnership,” Russia-US foreign policy disagreements run very deep and are not simply
the product of Vladimir Putin’s personal nastiness. Given their very different cultures,
economies, geographic locations, and political traditions, I think that the US and Russia
will continue to clash on a number of important issues for the foreseeable future. These
clashes can be managed and do not have to preclude cooperation in other areas, but
Russia and the US are not going to be allies and it’s unrealistic to expect them to be.
Even an extremely successful and well-considered Russia policy will not be able to
eliminate substantial disagreements.

That is all a way of saying that I am generally in favor of cautious engagement with
Russia and that I do not regard a transactional relationship in which the Kremlin and
the White House work together on a few very narrowly defined issues as
“appeasement” or as some sort of dastardly capitulation that needs to be rectified. For
better or worse Russia is a big, influential country with lots of nuclear weapons that we
cannot afford to ignore and that we will have to deal with. But I am also not in favor of
having good relations with Russia just to have good relations with Russia. If the
Russians badly overstep the bounds of acceptable practice they, like any other country,
should be reminded of the costs of coloring outside of the lines. The fact that Russia is
important, influential, and has a lot of nuclear weapons absolutely does not mean that
“Russia gets to do whatever the hell it wants.”

The invasion of Crimea is one case in which harsh US and allied actions against
Russia are appropriate. The invasion of Crimea was, of course, utterly without
justification; the so called “attacks” on the ethnic Russian community in Simerfopol,
Sevastopol, Yalta, and other cities were not exaggerated, but were simply fictitious.
There was no threat to the lives or safety of Russian-speaking Crimeans, and there
isn’t any realistic threat to Russian-speakers anywhere else in the country either. That
doesn’t mean that Russia can or should be “kicked out” of Ukraine: Russian interests in
the country are real and any realistic solution will have to take them into account.
Rodric Braithwait wrote an excellent column yesterday in which he decried the folly of a
Ukraine policy in which the West managed to badly overestimated its own leverage
while simultaneously ignoring Russian concerns. Removing Russian influence from
Ukraine is not an attainable goal, and forcing Ukraine to make a binary and mutually
exclusive choice between West and East is a recipe for disaster. While the odds aren’t
good at the moment, the only solution that will have any staying power is one which
recognizes that for basic economic and geographic reasons Ukraine needs to have
good relations with both with the EU and with Russia.

But Russia’s attempt to defend its interests in in Ukraine through force of arms is
extraordinarily dangerous and cannot be allowed to stand without the Kremlin incurring
some very serious costs. By introducing troops into the sovereign territory of another
state, Russia has committed an egregious violation of international law and has
broached fundamental norms of conduct regarding other states (norms, incidentally,
that Russia has loudly defended in the past). Such transgressions need to have
consequences, and while the unique circumstances of Russia’s economy, which is
highly dependent on natural resources that are essentially impossible to boycott, make
sanctions less than ideal there should nonetheless be a comprehensive effort to make
Russia feel economic pain. Some of this is happening already regardless of what
anyone does, but the West needs to draw up a game plan that is short on meaningless
theatrics but long on quiet, behind the scenes activity. More than anything else this
means making the most aggressive possible use of international institutions to which
Russia already belongs, particularly the WTO (where there are pending cases against
Russia for protectionism and where additional cases can and should be brought). The
EU should also expedite its anti-trust investigation into Gazprom with the goal of
levying the largest possible fine within the shortest possible time frame.

Because Russia is not the Soviet Union but is an integrated part of the world economy,
the best way to strike back is not through military but through economic means. This
means the IMF , the World Bank, the WTO, and other similar groups, not NATO. As a
nuclear power Russia knows full well we aren’t going to attack it, and making any kind
of military threat is empty bluster that the Kremlin will rightfully ignore. But there are no
nuclear weapons in the economic world, and while Russia has some economic
strengths it has many more economic weaknesses, weaknesses that can be exploited.

In general I’m in favor of a narrowly tailored Russia policy that is not based on flighty
rhetoric or “values” but purely on American vital interests and Russia’s behavior in the
international system. For most of the past 14 years Russian behavior has, with a few
notable exceptions, been within acceptable bounds. Yes Moscow often made quite a
lot of noise and made it seem as if it was causing trouble, but when you looked at what
it actually did it was a lot less exceptional. But the Russian government’s behavior over
the past week has been completely appalling and the US and its allies need to very
clearly and unambiguously send the signal that such behavior is not acceptable. While
the United States doesn’t have any vital interest in the orientation or composition of
Ukraine’s government we do have a vital interest in preventing aggression across
international boundaries. If the Russians are upset by that there is an incredibly easy
solution: don’t invade other countries.
Ex- CIA Chief: Why We Keep Getting Putin
Wrong
TheDailyBeast World News 03.02.14

Blame a myopic mindset—and an intelligence corps focused on terrorism, not Moscow.

The last time Russian troops invaded one of its neighbors, the U.S. intelligence
community was also caught off guard.

The year was 2008 and the country was Georgia instead of the Ukraine. And just as in
2014, back then there were early signs that Moscow was serious—it was issuing visas
to ethnic Russian speakers in Georgia, like it's doing now in Ukraine. U.S. analysts just
didn’t believe Russia would go as far as it did.

Today, as in 2008, American policy makers have found themselves burned after trying
to make Vladimir Putin a partner when Putin himself sees America as a rival. This has
often led Republican and Democratic led administrations to find themselves flat footed
in the face of Russian aggression and U.S. intelligence analysts racing to explain how
they misread Putin’s motivations.

“This is less a question of how many collection resources we throw at Russia and more
broadly about the analytic challenge of understanding Putin’s mind set,” said Michael
Hayden, a former CIA director and NSA director under President George W. Bush.
“Here our Secretary of State is saying this is not the Cold War, it’s win-win and it’s not
zero sum. But for Vladimir Putin it is zero sum. That’s what we need to understand.”

Of course, U.S.-Russian relations have overlapped in some areas of mutual interest.

The two countries have worked to maintain the International Space Station, with
Russian Soyuz capsules bringing American astronauts into orbit. Both countries have
cooperated, at times, on sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program. And both sides
agreed to an ambitious plan in Syria to dismantle the regime's chemical weapons
arsenal.

But when it comes to the status of the newly independent nations that used to comprise
the Soviet empire, the United States and Russia have been at odds.“Our Secretary of
State is saying this is not the Cold War, it’s win-win and it’s not zero sum. But for
Vladimir Putin it is zero sum. That’s what we need to understand.”

Late last week, for example, U.S. intelligence analysts and lawmakers estimated that
the Russian forces massing near Ukraine's border wouldn't openly invade. Sen. Carl
Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Thursday that
he didn't know Putin's motivations, but was sure Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine: "I
can’t believe they are foolish enough to do that."

There wasn't an open pouring of troops over the border. But Russian mercenaries and
other troops wound up seizing power in the Ukrainian province of Crimea anyway. On
Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry called the move an “invasion.”

Hayden compared the problem with understanding Putin to the problem of the Arab
Spring, the democratic upheavals in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other countries in the
Arab world that was also entirely missed by the U.S. intelligence community. “That was
not a secret to be stolen,” Hayden said. “That was something that required a broader
understanding of the problem. This is the challenge to understanding Putin’s mindset.”
Damon Wilson, who in 2008 was the National Security Council’s senior director for
Europe and the lead manager at the George W. Bush White House for the Georgia
crisis, was blunt in his assessment of the warnings before Russia’s invasion that
summer. “Our analysts missed it on Georgia,” he said.

Wilson, who is now the executive vice president of the Atlantic Council, also said an
important reason was that the U.S. government has failed to understand that Putin
does not see America as a friend or a partner.

“We get used to outrageous Russian behavior and we come to accept that as normal
and we end up tolerating it,” Wilson said. “We had plenty of warnings in 2008 that
Russia would provoke a confrontation with Georgia and end up invading, but we still
didn’t think he’d actually do it.” Those warnings included many of the same kinds of
things the world was seeing in the run up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, such as the
distribution of passports to ethnic Russians and statements about Moscow’s interests
within its “near abroad” or those former Soviet Republics that largely gained
independence in 1991 after the break up of the communist empire.

Wilson said there were three reasons why the U.S. government was unprepared for
Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008. To start, he said, much of the hardware the U.S.
government uses to spy—the satellites, sensors, blimps and sophisticated intercept
technology—were focused in 2008 (as they are in 2014) on counter-terrorism and
proliferation targets like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. “We have enormous assets
that for a long time were focused much more on Afghanistan and Iraq and not really on
the Caucuses or Russia’s near abroad,” Wilson said.

For the last 13 years, the way you got ahead in America's intelligence services was to
specialize in stopping terrorists. Compared to al-Qaeda, the Russians were seen as
has-beena – albeit nuclear-armed has-beens. Spying on Moscow was considered a
second-tier priority. Sure, the Russian intelligence agencies were (and are) one of the
world's most sophisticated; competing against the sons of the KGB was one of the
toughest challenges for an American operative or analyst. But the stakes just weren't
that high. It was like having a chess match against your grandfather, while everyone
else played Call of Duty for money.

"Clearly Russia is not the collection priority that the Soviet Union used to be. Lots of
resources are pulled off into terrorism and proliferation," said Hayden, who has said for
years that America's spy corps was over-focused on the terrorist threat.

Moscow has always been a notoriously difficult target for espionage and intelligence
collection—while American policy makers have a number of channels for talking to the
leadership of Western-friendly regimes in Russia’s near abroad. In 2008, for example,
Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili had regular conversations with U.S. political
elites in the run up to the Russian invasion, the United States had far less visibility into
Russian decision making. If anything, the problem has gotten worse since then. The
rise of biometrically-enabled passports and the growth of digital data trails has made it
harder for American operatives and analysts, whose cover is often blown after a single
trip to Russia.

But the biggest problem, according to Wilson, was a failure to absorb that Putin does
not assess his own interests in the way Americans believe that he should.

A veteran intelligence analyst with the United States military, noted that younger
colleagues had been confident that "Putin wouldn't do anything" in the current crisis.
Then came the stealth invasion of Crimea. “How extraordinary it is that the
conventional wisdom and self-licking ice-cream cone is alive and well,” this analyst
said. "Why anyone should be surprised is what is surprising. We are believing our own
spin that the world has changed. Not in the Russia”n government, it hasn't.

An American intelligence operative with long experience in the Ukraine added, "Most
likely, force is the only thing that will resolve this matter, even if some people think an
angry [U.S. ambassador to the United Nations] Samantha Power is enough to make
Putin rethink his desire to secure Russian interests."

John Schindler, a former counter-intelligence officer at the NSA and an analyst of

Russian statecraft, said that many in the intelligence community favor a “rational
actor/social science” model of analysis that winds up confirming a lot of American
biases about how leaders ought to behave. But real life is messier. And there's more
than one way to be rational.

The problem historically has been U.S. intelligence analysts have lunged between
alternating models to predict Russian statecraft. Either Moscow was implacably
belligerent or shared the same rational interests as the United States.

“It was not rational, so to speak, for Putin to go in this heavy handed into Crimea,”
Schindler said. “The Kremlin could have gotten control of Crimea with much less direct
and less risky methods, but they went for the most politically risky model possible.”

Schindler said this has been a puzzle for the U.S. intelligence community since the
days of the cold war. In the 1950s, the spooks swore that the Russians were building
many more intercontinental ballistic missiles than the U.S.; it just wasn't so. In the mid-
80s, top Kremlinologist (and future CIA director and Defense Secretary) Robert Gates
famously argued that Mikhail Gorbachev was just another leader “cut from the old
Soviet mold.” Instead, he wound up being the midwife for the Soviet Union's demise.

In 1962 for example, President Kennedy’s director of central intelligence, John

McCone, asked the CIA’s analysts to conduct a special national intelligence estimate
on whether the USSR was placing missiles in Cuba. The analysts concluded that there
was a body of evidence that suggested this was indeed what was happening, but
concluded “the Kremlin was a rational actor and this would be a profoundly irrational
act and there is no way the Soviets would do such a thing,” Schindler said. “Fortunately
McCone called bullshit and asked for another assessment and that was the famous
assessment that concluded yes the Soviets were placing missiles in Cuba.”

In 2008, the United States ending up sending Georgia humanitarian aid on military
aircraft as its territory was invaded. Russian troops remain on Georgian territory to this
day and Moscow faced no real consequences.

Hayden observed that Putin “did not spend much time in the penalty box for invading
Georgia. That happens in August, then there is an election, then there is a new
administration and in a few months you have the reset.” That reset in relations began in
2009 when Obama came into power. The two sides explored ways of cooperating
instead of focusing on their divisions when it came to Georgia.

And in some ways it worked for a while. Russia and the United States signed a treaty in
2010 to reduce the strategic nuclear arsenals for both sides. Russia backed off threats
to kick the United States out of important airbases in Kyrgyzstan the U.S. military
needed to resupply forces in Afghanistan. But Russia continued to flex its muscles
nonetheless in Syria and now in Ukraine.

Not all senior officials underestimated Putin. In 2010, then Defense Secretary Gates
was quoted in one diplomatic cable disclosed by Wikileaks as saying Russia was an
"oligarchy run by the security services." But Gates was largely an exception.
On Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry promised that the United States was
considering a swath of options to punish Putin’s behavior in Ukraine beyond simply
boycotting the upcoming G8 summit in Sochi. When he was asked on NBC’s Meet the
Press about the “reset,” Kerry said that policy was from long ago. “We’ve entered into a
different phase with Russia,” Kerry said. From Putin’s perspective however we’ve been
in this different phase for years.
Answering Russia
The National Interest Denis Corboy, William Courtney, Kenneth Yalowitz | March 4,
2014

Russia’s aggression in Crimea, a replay of its 2008 invasion of Georgia, disrupts a

post-Cold War order that has assured the sovereignty and independence of Russia’s
neighbors. Now all of them--even NATO members in Central and Eastern Europe--feel
less secure. Only determined Western action can deter future coercion by Russia, and
raise the costs of militarily occupying Crimea.

As Secretary of State John Kerry has pointed out, Russia is violating international
commitments. It’s not just the United Nations Charter. The 1990 Paris Charter for a
New Europe pledged the USSR and other parties to “refrain from the threat or use of
force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Russia has
assumed this obligation. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, an
agreement concluded in connection with Ukraine’s accession to the Treaty on the Non-
Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, committed Russia, the United Kingdom, and the
United States to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or
political independence of Ukraine.”

Notwithstanding these pledges, President Vladimir Putin and his parliament assert
Russia's right to intervene militarily to “protect” the interests of Russians in Ukraine.
Recently Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov claimed Russian troops would stay in
Crimea until the political situation "normalized" – the disingenuous justification the
Soviets used in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.

Putin may think his occupation of Crimea will keep Ukraine from going westward and
will advance Russia’s broader plans for a Eurasian Union aimed at restoring dominion
over neighbors. Putin likely expects a Western rhetorical riposte over Russia’s actions
in Crimea, but, as after the invasion of Georgia, not much more. Disappointingly,
Russian public opinion backed the invasion of Georgia. Today, Putin may calculate that
the seizure of Crimea will also boost his popularity.

Misunderstanding the West’s strength and his own country’s weakness, Putin seeks to
convince Russians that the West lacks courage and conspires to harm Russia, that
history justifies Russian control of Crimea, and that Russia’s more unified and
authoritarian governance is superior.

So after Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined the European Union and NATO in 2004,
Putin seems to have drawn a line in the sand. Russia now occupies parts of three
neighbors--Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine--which have cooperative ties with NATO.
Moscow has pushed other neighbors, such as Armenia, into joining the Russia-
dominated, relatively protectionist Eurasian Customs Union. Notwithstanding the
pressure, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine remain eager to move closer to the EU.

Putin is abusing the international right to protect endangered populations when a

sovereign state is incapable of doing so by asserting Moscow’s right to protect ethnic
Russians in all former Soviet countries. The Kremlin is propounding false claims that
the physical security of ethnic Russians in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is now at risk.
This is not the first time. Russia has harshly criticized Latvia and Estonia regarding the
status of local Russians, who seem eager to remain where they are.

Moscow’s objectives in Ukraine beyond Crimea are unclear, but hateful propaganda
suggests the Kremlin is considering moving troops into eastern Ukraine, taking
advantage of a new and untried national government in Kyiv. Putin would like to see it
replaced and have its successor recognize Russia's interests in Crimea.

A united and determined Western response can make a difference. In 2008, Russia
was on the verge of capturing the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, but the EU and America
intervened with forceful diplomacy and public condemnation. Nonetheless, Russia's
military assault discouraged NATO from taking in Georgia as a member, and resulted
in greater Russian military presence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which Moscow
declared to be “independent.”

Putin’s hand is not as strong as it looks. The Russian economy has slowed and is
overly dependent on oil and gas exports, mainly to Europe. It is in a position to reduce
dependence on Russian gas, benefiting from the current worldwide glut. Western
technology and investment are essential for Russia to develop new and challenging oil
and gas fields. The seething Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus continues to
bleed Moscow.

Much now depends on how the West reacts to Russia’s intervention in Crimea. The
stakes are high. The West’s two-decade-old pursuit of a Europe “whole, free, and in
peace” is on the line.

Some responses are taking shape. German Chancellor Merkel has proposed to Putin
the positioning of international observers in Crimea to assess the Kremlin’s claims that
ethnic Russians are under threat of violence under the new Ukrainian government.
Stronger Western measures, however, are needed.

On March 2, Secretary of State John Kerry foreshadowed several: expulsion of Russia

from the G8 group of leading industrialized democracies, and visa bans and asset
freezes for officials. The EU as well is likely to undertake “targeted measures.” US and
EU sanctions should apply to all those tied to Russia’s leadership and security forces.

The Obama administration ought also to announce expedited licensing for the export of
liquefied natural gas to Europe, allowing it to reduce dependence on imports of
Russian gas.

In his visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, Kerry should offer urgent US help to Ukraine. It needs
substantial aid to avert bankruptcy, especially since it is mobilizing military forces and
calling up reservists. The West ought to extend the help right away, and offer military
advice and defensive supplies. NATO should share with Ukraine intelligence on nearby
Russian military activities.

Looking beyond Ukraine, the West should seek to deter Russian coercion of smaller
neighbors. While putting Western troops on the ground would be unwise, NATO
countries ought to beef up warship patrols in the Black Sea, and intensify military
exercises and patrols with allies in Central and Eastern Europe. Former NATO
commander Admiral James Stavridis properly advises that NATO develop contingency
plans to react to a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russian intervention in Crimea is the most acute challenge to European security since
the 1999 Kosovo war. Now another threat to European security looms, and the hour for
Western action has arrived.

Denis Corboy is Visiting Senior Research Fellow King's College London, and served as
European Commission ambassador to Armenia and Georgia. William Courtney was
U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan and Georgia, and special assistant to the President
for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. Kenneth Yalowitz is a Wilson Center Global Fellow
and was U.S. ambassador to Belarus and Georgia.
Ukraine: Russia's Weakness, Not Obama's
Jacob Heilbrunn | The National Interest March 2, 2014

Sarah Palin knows what's wrong with President Obama's approach to Ukraine. In a
Facebook post, she said that she had predicted that after Russia invaded Georgia in
2008, Obama's "moral indecision" would prompt Vladimir Putin to tackle Ukraine next:
"Yes, I could see this one from Alaska. I’m usually not one to Told-Ya-So, but I did."

The Washington Post editorial page also knows what's wrong.

"Mr. Obama," it says, "has been vague about the consequences of continued Russian
aggression." An aggression that is taking place, we are told, in "the center of Europe."
It suggests that the most forceful measure Obama could take would be to threaten
to...well, to threaten to exclude Russia from our banking system.

It's time to get real. Ukraine may be about to get sundered in half. If it does, the
reaction will be consternation but little more because 2014, as Klaus-Dieter
Frankenberger writes in an astute column, is not 1914. Nor is the Crimea Danzig. And
few in Europe were even prepared to sacrifice themselves in May 1939, the year an
article appeared in Paris called, "Who Will Die For Danzig?" Contrary to Senator John
McCain, who seems to adopt a new country every few months, we aren't all Ukrainians
now. And Crimea is not suddenly at the "center of Europe," no matter what the
geographers at the Post are now decreeing.

Nor is Obama displaying a pusillanimity dating back to his refusal to intervene in Syria.
The blunt fact is that he has few tools at his disposal to compel a change in Russian
behavior. Refuse to attend the G-8 summit? America needs Russian cooperation in
Aghanistan and elsewhere. Europe needs Russian natural gas.

No, the main constraint on Putin's freedom of movement in Ukraine will be that it's
dangerous for him to enmesh himself in a prolonged war in Ukraine. If he seeks to
occupy the eastern Ukraine, all bets are off--Ukraine is not Georgia. It has 200,000
troops--ten times, Elke Windisch notes, as many as Tbilisi did. And it is calling up a
million reservists. Still, Ukraine would be unlikely to be able to withstand a full-scale
Russian invasion. Its tanks, for example, consist mostly of fifty-year-old Soviet era T-
64s. The real trouble would come in occupying Ukraine. It would likely become not only
a geopolitical but also a military nightmare for Putin, on the order of Iraq or
Afghanistan.

Rather than threatening Putin, Obama should continue to seek to offer him an exit
strategy--just as Putin offered him one out of Syria. By all accounts, this is what Obama
is seeking to do. Such a course won't satisfy the nostalgic cold warriors in Washington,
but it would defuse a conflict that should not be allowed to jeopardize the West's
relations with Moscow. The truly dangerous course isn't if Obama seeks to treat with
Putin. It's if he doesn't. Then the cold war that neoconservatives and liberal hawks
have been dreaming about for decades would be reconstituted, with America and
Europe facing off against an emboldened and truculent Russia and China.

It is more likely that Russia carves up Ukraine. This will be hailed by Putin as a triumph.
In fact, it will serve as further testimony, not to Russia's strength, but rather its
weakness. Russia was once an empire that stretched all the way to Berlin. Now the
best it can do is to divide Ukraine, thereby creating a permanent wound in its relations
with Kiev. The Crimean Peninsula would become a new Kashmir. Putin has embarked
upon a course that is probably more dangerous for himself than for the West.
UN Ambassador Power says Russia
intervention 'must stop,' Moscow defiant
Published March 03, 2014 • FoxNews.com

America's U.N. ambassador blasted Russia on Monday for its "dangerous military
intervention" in Ukraine, calling it a violation of international law and saying: "It must
stop."

"There is nothing that justifies Russian conduct," Ambassador Samantha Power said,
speaking at a U.N. Security Council meeting just minutes after her Russian counterpart
delivered defiant remarks.

Russian Ambassador to the U.N. Vitaly Churkin defended the use of Russia's military
in Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, claiming the "legitimately elected authorities" in that
region asked Russia to intervene and saying this was "completely legitimate under
Russian law."

He also claimed Ukraine's ousted president wrote a letter to Russian President

Vladimir Putin asking for him to use the military in Ukraine.

Power retorted that Russian officials' statements are "without basis in reality" and "self-
serving." She said there's no danger to ethnic Russians living in Ukraine.

The sharp exchange came as western leaders, at the U.N. and elsewhere, scramble to
convince Vladimir Putin to stand down.

Shortly beforehand, President Obama also said Russia is "on the wrong side of history"
and warned that the U.S. and its allies are examining steps to "isolate" the country.
Obama, before a meeting in Washington with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, said the world largely is in agreement that Russia is "in violation of
international law."

He said Moscow's actions are deeply troubling, and said this would be a "costly
proposition" for Russia if it continues down this path.

"We are examining a whole series of steps -- economic, diplomatic -- that will isolate
Russia," Obama said.

What specific steps the U.S. and Europe would take to dissuade Putin, though, is an
open question, as the cold warrior toys with whether to advance Russian troops
beyond the Crimean Peninsula. Despite western countries discussing a range of
punishments for Moscow, hardly anybody is pushing military action.

The closest any top-ranking official got was Secretary of State John Kerry saying
Sunday that "all options are on the table." In a separate interview the same morning,
though, Kerry stressed that a military response is "the last thing anybody wants."

It's a far cry from the 2011 Libya uprising against Muammar Qaddafi, when Washington
and western European capitals were gripped by robust debate over whether to use
force to prop up the rebels.

This time, even the hawkish lawmakers on the Hill are saying it's best to stand down.
"There is not a lot of options on the table. And candidly -- and I'm a fairly hawkish guy --
sending more naval forces to operate in the Black Sea is not a good idea," House
Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told "Fox News Sunday."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called over the weekend for a range of options "without the
use of military force."

And on NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said: "If you're asking me
whether the U.S. should be taking military strikes against Russian troops in Ukraine or
in Crimea, I would argue to you that I don't think anyone is advocating for that."

So what options are there?

To hear Obama administration officials tell it, they're banking on the assumption that
diplomatic and economic pressure can convince Putin to ease off.

On Monday, a diplomat reportedly said the European Union has agreed to consider
"targeted measures" against Russia if Moscow does not dial back tensions, though it's
unclear what those measures might be.

On the U.S. side, Washington could expand asset freezes and visa bans and other
sanctions on powerful Russians. There's also the possibility of imposing trade and
investment penalties.

Kerry, who is leaving later Monday for Ukraine, said he has consulted other world
leaders and all are committed to doing what is necessary to isolate Russia
diplomatically. President Obama spoke Sunday with German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Polish President Bronislaw
Komorowski.

In Brussels, NATO's secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Russia's

actions have violated a U.N. charter. He said the alliance was re-evaluating its
relationship with Russia.

But the most immediate penalties appear to revolve around Russia's membership in
the G-8. All seven other members of that elite group have announced they are
suspending preparation work for an upcoming summit in Russia. Kerry and Capitol Hill
lawmakers say Russia also risks being kicked out of the group altogether.

Separately, the White House said Monday that the U.S. has decided not to send a
presidential delegation to the Paralympic Games in Sochi, Russia. Britain has also
decided not to send ministers to the Paralympic Games, which start Friday.

Several U.S. senators also called for bolstered missile defense systems based in
Poland and the Czech Republic. Rubio and fellow GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina said the Obama administration should return to plans it abandoned in 2009 to
place long-range missile interceptors and radar in Poland and the Czech Republic.

But a few lone voices say economic pressure may not be enough. Notably, retired
Adm. James Stavridis, NATO's former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, said in a
Foreign Policy column on Saturday that military options -- and others -- should be
discussed.

He urged NATO to develop contingency plans to react to a "full-scale invasion of

Ukraine," noting that NATO planners moved quickly in Libya.
He suggested bringing NATO's 25,000-member Response Force to a "higher state of
alert" and sailing maritime forces into the Black Sea.
Obama administration officials have pushed back on the possibility of a military
confrontation.

"I don't think we're focused right now on the notion of some U.S. military intervention,"
one official said.

But some fret that the United States is rapidly losing influence on the world stage,
absent any severe consequences.

"Everybody says 'no' to the U.S. these days without cost or consequence," Aaron
David Miller, former adviser to six secretaries of State and scholar at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars, told Fox News.

He said the last "truly effective" foreign policy was under former President George H.W.
Bush. "There was a cost for saying 'no' to the United States," he reminisced. "Right
now, there is no cost."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

How Obama could stop Putin's Ukraine
power grab without firing a shot
By K.T. McFarland/ March 03, 2014/ FoxNews.com

Author's note: President Obama had a 90-minute phone call with President Putin
Saturday after troops entered Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. No official transcript was
released. Here's my take on what might have been said, and what I hope Obama told
Russia's president.

Obama: We condemn with the strongest possible words your invasion of the sovereign
and independent state of Ukraine. If you do not withdraw immediately, there will be
consequences. Nations don’t invade other nations in 21st century. The Cold War is
over. You must understand your actions are not in Russia’s best interests.

Putin: Words are cheap, Mr. President. You and I both know you won’t do a thing to
stop me in Ukraine. Neither will anyone else. I’ve replaced you as the dominant
foreign power in the Middle East. I’ve got a close and growing closer relationship with
Iran, which will become the dominant local power in the Middle East. You didn’t even
notice it, but I left the Olympics for a day to fly back to Moscow during Olympics to
sign an arms agreement with Egypt’s General Sisi. I’m recreating Greater Russia,
and reclaiming lands we lost when the Soviet Union collapsed. And, as for my place
in history? Winners write history, Mr. President, not whiners.

Obama: Okay, Vladimir, you’ve had your chance. I realize now that not standing up to
you in years past has only whetted your appetite for more aggression.

So, I am reversing course. No more reset with Russia. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Now, let
me tell you what I’m going to do from here on. I’m going to hit you where it hurts –
crush your economy and make your borders vulnerable.

It won’t happen right away, it will take a few years, but once the momentum starts you
won’t be able to stop it. And I’m going to do it by taking a page from your playbook. You
have rebuilt Russia by exporting your energy resources: oil for revenue, natural gas for
political influence. I’m going to do the same to tear you down.

First: I will reverse my decision to halt the missile shield in Poland and the Czech
Republic. America will go ahead as originally planned and build the missile shield, but
an accelerated basis. That means U.S. military personal will be working alongside
Polish and Czech military to construct and operate the systems. The missile shield is
designed to protect Europe from Iranian missiles, but you get the point. Uniformed U.S.
military will soon be stationed near the Russian border.

Second: I will reverse course on the defense budget. Your defense minister just
announced Russia is negotiating basing rights in seven nations around the world. He
also said you were rebuilding old Soviet era military bases in central Asia. Your
parliament has just voted unanimously to invade Ukraine. In light of that, this is no time
for my Secretary of Defense to announce we’re gutting our military.

Third: I will allow the Keystone Pipeline to go ahead, again on an accelerated basis.
That will not only give a boost to the American and Canadian economies, it will start
driving down the price of oil.

Fourth: I will give my wholehearted support for fracking and horizontal drilling. American
energy companies will now develop the vast oil and gas resources that lie,
literally, under our feet. We’ve seen the U.S. go from natural gas importers to exporters
in less than five years and the price of gas fall accordingly. We will now do the same
with oil. Analysts expect the price of oil could decline by 20%.

I don’t have to tell you what that means for the Russian economy. Your economy and
government are solely dependent on energy revenues. You need oil above $90 to meet
payroll. It should settle well below that within a few years time. And free markets are a
great thing – they anticipate change and will start short selling you now. That will make
it difficult for you to pay for food imports, subsidies, your military buildup, and of course
the extremely expensive the Sochi Olympics.

Fifth: I will send a trade delegation to Poland and other countries in Central Europe to
explore ways of helping them use fracking technologies to develop their own gas
reserves. Chevron and Shell have already signed a $13 billion deal with Ukraine. I
expect others to follow.

At the same time I will throw roadblocks in front of any American energy company that
seeks to develop your eastern Siberian fields. Your existing oil fields in western Siberia
have, maybe, a decade left. You need our technology to develop new ones. You’re not
getting it.

Sixth: It’s time we refocus on Western Europe’s over-dependence on Russian natural

gas. We will explore ways to export our newfound natural gas surpluses to Europe by
underwriting building of LNG terminals to accept imports from America. And while we’re
at it, we will reassure our NATO allies, especially those that used to be under Soviet
control, that Article Five of the NATO charter is still valid. If you are setting your sights
on them next, think again. It’s all for one and one for all.

Seventh: It’s high time we expand our relations with the oil and gas rich nations of
central Asia. We will extend invitations to each of them to visit Washington, to see how
America and American energy companies might work with them to build pipelines to
get their energy exports to Europe and beyond bypassing Russia.

I will work my way down this list, announcing one new policy per week. It should take
almost two months, culminating just before the G-8 summit you’re hosting in Sochi in
June.

The result of these actions, as I’m sure you will appreciate, will devastate your
economy. That will feed the small but growing anti-Putin sentiment in Russia as you
are forced to cut back on subsidies and benefits for your people.

Your military will not be happy about the cuts you will have to make to their budgets. It
will also breed political independence in the capitols of East and West Europe since
they will no longer need to import Russian gas to survive. The countries on your
southern border will be cut loose from your grip preferring their newfound relationships
with America.

Mr. President, you’re a fine physical specimen of a man. You’re strong and healthy.
You no doubt want to rule Russian for another decade. But the future you face is very
different from the one you imagined.

So, I’ll offer you one last chance. We can have a different future, one that benefits us
both.

First, we will let American energy companies help you to develop oil and gas deposits in
Eastern Russia.
Second, we will encourage Western investment to develop Russian industry outside
the energy sector. You are desperate to diversity your economy. We have the technical
expertise and capital to help you.

Third, we have a common interest in fighting terrorism and radical Islam. We will be far
more successful in our efforts if we do it together. Let’s work together to keep the
Middle East at peace.

Fourth, we can have a mutual understanding that the nations on your borderlands
should not be a launching pad for aggression against you any more than nations in the
western hemisphere should be a launching pad against us. You can keep the Crimea
as long as you allow Ukraine and other countries in the former Soviet Empire to
continue along their own paths of independent governance. If they seek to join a
Russian economic union, fine. If they prefer to improve economic relations with the
West, that’s fine, too.

Finally, if nations of the former Soviet Union seek NATO membership, then we will offer
NATO membership to you. We do not see NATO as an anti-Russian alliance, but a
military and political alliance against aggression. Countries inside the NATO tent will
not encroach upon each other. Countries outside the tent – be it in the Middle East or
Asia – will meet a united front should they try to do so.

So, Mr. President, here are the two paths open to us. We can spend the next ten years
at each other’s throats. If so, we will win in the end, because we can destroy you
economically, just like we did in the 1980s and 90s when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Or we can spend the next ten years working in concert to the benefit of both our
peoples and to the world. If so, we both win.

The choice is yours.

Don’t answer me now. Take a day or two to think it over, and call me when you’ve
made a decision. But the deal isn’t on the table forever.

And, knowing you take your public image seriously, if you do take the deal, I won’t
release the transcript of this phone call.

If I don’t hear from you within three days, I will release this transcript and start working
my way down the list, one new initiative a week. Russians will know the looming
economic disaster they face is thanks to you. And for added fun, I’m going to deny
visas for your oligarch cronies. They won’t be spending their summer in the Hamptons
this year.

Oh, one more thing. Some say we should boycott the G-8 Summit you’re hosting in
Sochi in June. Or maybe kick you out of the G-8. Nope, I’d rather see you squirm in
person. I’m coming, after implementing the steps I’ve outlined above. We will see who
is smirking then.

But I’ve got a question, can we see the Crimean Peninsula from

Sochi? Putin: (undecipherable)

****
Sadly, that is not the real transcript of the 90-minute Obama-Putin phone call. The real
conversation probably consisted of Obama lecturing Putin about what was in Russia’s
best interests, and Putin ignoring him, instead daydreaming about what was next on his
expansionist agenda.
President Obama prefers public speeches. President Putin prefers to let his actions
speak for him.

Obama talks. Putin takes.

Did Russia’s cold warrior read Obama
perfectly?
Published March 03, 2014 EXECUTIVE • FoxNews.com

Russia's cold warrior has been studying his on-again, off-again adversary in the White
House for more than five years now -- and some lawmakers argue his military incursion
in Ukraine shows he's been emboldened by President Obama's actions.

"I think Putin is playing chess and I think we're playing marbles. And I don't think it's
even close," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., told "Fox
News Sunday."

As Secretary of State John Kerry decries Vladimir Putin's "incredible act of aggression"
in Ukraine, Republicans like Rogers suggest the Russian leader's military gambit
shouldn't be that surprising. The administration tried to hit the "reset" button with
Russia -- but, as Russian troops now secure control over the disputed Crimean
Peninsula, some say all Putin saw was a series of green lights.

Members of both parties are oddly aligned when it comes to what to do about Russia's
incursion in Ukraine -- pursue trade and other economic pressure, they say, but not
U.S. military action. But Republicans nevertheless are blaming Obama in part for
Putin's aggression, pointing to a series of steps, or missteps, over the last five years.

Rogers said the first was the controversial 2009 decision to abandon a missile-defense
agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic. The administration argued at the time
that it no longer needed the infrastructure to counter Iran and could make do by
upgrading existing interceptors.

But Russia was watching.

"It caused huge problems for our allies and emboldened the Russians," Rogers said.
"And it really has been a downhill slide."

More recently, Obama faced off last year against Syria's Russia-backed Assad regime
after drawing a "red line" over the movement and use of chemical weapons. Inspectors
pointed to evidence that chemical weapons were used in that country, but the Obama
administration ended up backing down, accepting an international deal - which only has
been partly completed -- to ship chemical weapons out of Syria.

The Obama administration, though, all along has downplayed historical tensions
between Washington and Moscow, which flared just before he took office during the
standoff between Georgia and Russia over two separatist regions.

Aside from the "reset," Obama underscored his approach several times during the
2012 campaign. In one infamous moment, he was caught on a live microphone telling
then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he'd have "more flexibility" on missile
defense after the election.

"I will transmit this information to Vladimir," Medvedev was heard saying.

Obama also tried to zing GOP rival Mitt Romney in a debate for calling Russia a
geopolitical threat.
"The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War's
been over for 20 years," Obama quipped.
Romney stood by his claim that Russia is a "geopolitical foe."

In hindsight, Republicans say Obama has sent a series of signals like this to Moscow.

"The Russian government has felt free to intervene militarily in Ukraine because the
United States, along with Europe, has failed to make clear there would be serious,
potentially irreparable consequences to such action," Sen. Bob Corker, top Republican
on the Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Thursday.

On top of the administration's dealings with Russia, Congress and the Pentagon have
also pursued steep cuts in defense spending as Obama repeatedly has touted the
coming end of the Afghanistan war. His public speeches, as well as comments from
bipartisan lawmakers, all reflect a war-weariness on behalf of the public. Whether that
was taken as a signal that the U.S. would stand back should Moscow advance on its
neighbors is an open question.

Administration officials, though, made clear that in the case of Ukraine, the Pentagon is
not preparing for military action. After Obama warned Russia there will be "costs" for
intervening in Ukraine, a senior U.S. official confirmed the Pentagon has not prepared
"any military contingencies" for the country.

NATO, and congressional lawmakers, appear to be on the same page.

But Kerry, who plans to travel to Kiev on Tuesday, and the rest of the administration
argue that they will take a range of steps to put heavy pressure on Putin. This could
include everything from economic sanctions to Security Council resolutions to
reconsideration of Russia's membership in the G-8. The U.S. and its allies already
have announced they will suspend preparation work for a looming G-8 summit
scheduled in Russia.

Putin is "not going to have a Sochi G-8," Kerry told NBC's "Meet the Press." "He may
not even remain in the G-8 if this continues. ... He's going to lose on the international
stage."
Western diplomats seek to ‘de-escalate’
Crimea crisis
FT March 3, 2014 11:35 am By Peter Spiegel in Brussels

The short-term diplomatic strategy adopted by the US and its European allies towards
Russia can be summed up by two phrases uttered repeatedly by diplomats in private
over the last 24 hours: “de-escalate” and “off-ramp”.

Although the US and EU have significant tools to hit Russian economic interests
through sanctions, diplomats made clear at the weekend that their priority was to lower
tensions and give President Vladimir Putin a face-saving “off-ramp” out of the crisis
through the offer of international monitors in Crimea to meet Mr Putin’s demands that
ethnic Russians be protected.

In the days since Russia seized Crimea there has been a noticeable ratcheting up of
rhetoric, including the warning by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, on Sunday that
all options were “on the table”.

But the effort to de-escalate the stand-off is evident not in what is being said, but rather
what is being done: a lack of any move towards sanctions or a military response.

Senior US officials on Sunday said they believed cancelling trade and commercial
meetings – including preparations for June’s G8 meeting in Sochi – would suffice for
now before moving to a “second subset of more punitive actions” such as sanctions.

EU foreign ministers are likely to take a similar stance during an emergency meeting in
Brussels on Monday.

In what may be the first sign of such moves, Rosselkhoznadzor, Russia’s animal
heath and sanitation agency, said Russian experts scheduled to take part in talks on
Kazakhstan’s WTO accession have been refused entry to the US. The Russian
regulator said they were notified less than a day in advance that their visit could not
go ahead.

The lack of military response has been even more pronounced. According to Nato
diplomats, during Sunday’s emergency meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the
alliance’s chief decision-making body, there was no mention of military planning or
deployments.

In a bit of diplomatic signalling, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the alliance’s secretary-

general, made clear to the assembled ambassadors at the start of the meeting that
they were not gathering under Article 4 of the alliance’s self-defence treaty – a
provision only invoked when alliance members feel they are under threat.

Despite rumblings by Poland and Lithuania that Article 4 should be invoked, Mr

Rasmussen reiterated the point in public remarks at the end of the nine hours of
meetings: “No one has requested to activate Article 4 at this stage.”

Similarly, US military officials said there have been no moves to send allied naval
forces to the Black Sea. According to one US military official, the USS Mount
Whitney, a command ship that was in the Black Sea to assist with security for the
Sochi Olympics, was due to return to its home port in Gaeta, Italy, on either Monday
or
Tuesday. The USS Taylor, a frigate also deployed for the Sochi games, remains in a
Turkish port for repairs after it ran aground earlier this month.

“There is nothing going in this week and we only continue with normal, pre-planned and
co-ordinated theatre operations, including navy units and port visits in the central and
eastern-Med,” said the US military official.

The effort to provide an “off-ramp” for Mr Putin is likely to prove more fraught, since it
would require the Kremlin to return Russian troops to base in exchange for
international monitors, possibly from the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in
Europe, of which both Russia and Ukraine are members.

US and European officials have made clear that they believe Mr Putin’s concerns about
the treatment of ethnic Russians inside Ukraine are a pretence and that there is no
evidence of any such persecution. Still, they believe Mr Putin needs some way to show
the west is taking his claims seriously, and the use of OSCE or UN monitors is the path
they have seized on.

The idea was endorsed by both Nato and the G7 in statements released on Sunday
night, and US officials said Mr Putin “did not slam the door on that” during his phone
call with President Barack Obama at the weekend. “There was agreement to continue
to discuss,” said a senior US official.

US diplomats have attempted to win Russian support for such a monitoring mission
from either the UN or the OSCE – which meets on Monday in Vienna – by convincing
the Kremlin that both organisations are ones which Moscow helped create and is a full-
scale member of, making them subject to at least partial Russian control.

“Russia has a leading role in both of those institutions,” said another senior US official.
“Russia has a leadership responsibility and a leadership opportunity, and so the door is
quite open to addressing the concerns that they’ve expressed, to working on them
together in a way that is consistent with international law.”

[ ohmygod.............]
The Invasion Of Crimea Is Crushing
Russia's Stock And Currency Markets
Forbes International | 3/03/2014 @ 8:07AM | Mark Adomanis, Contributor

I wrote yesterday how Russia’s invasion of Crimea was a catastrophic blunder and was
likely to be remembered as the worst foreign policy decision since the invasion of
Afghanistan. I argued that this was the case because Russia’s relationships with not
only the United States but with a range of Western European countries were likely to
deteriorate dangerously and because Russia was likely to suffer some pretty serious
economic harm.

Well the first weekday since the invasion gave us a better idea of the invasion’s impact
on the Russian economy and, if anything, it’s even worse than I expected. The stock
market has been absolutely pummeled: as of the time that this piece was written
(around 7:30 am on Monday the 3rd) the MICEX was down by 11.2% and the RTS was
down by 12.8%. As the Financial Times noted, the sell-off did not spare the companies
that function as bastions of the Russian state: Gazprom was down 10.7% and
Sberbank was down by 9.8%.

The activity in the currency market might have been even worse. The ruble reached all-
time lows against both the dollar and the euro, falling by 2.5% and 1.5% respectively.
The rout in the currency market was so great that the Russian central bank was forced
to aggressively intervene. In order to support this intervention it “temporarily” raised
interest rates from 5.5% to 7%. I thought it was possible that the central bank would
eventually have to raise interest rates in order to combat a weakening ruble, but I didn’t
think this would happen for several months (until now, the consensus expectation was
that the central bank would leave interest rates alone until the summer or fall). Russia’s
economy is already limping along at around 1.5% growth, and sudden monetary
tightening could very well drive it into recession.

It is, of course, early and it is possible (if highly unlikely) that Russia will quickly bounce
back from the damage that it suffered today. It is also, of course, true that the stock and
currency markets are highly imperfect barometers for the overall health of an economy.
But what happened on Monday gave us some insight into what the market thinks about
the decision to invade Crimea. Its answer was unambiguous: it thinks it is a disaster.
To the extent that the Russians continue to follow a policy (occupying Crimea) that the
market thinks is a disaster, they will suffer accordingly.

The invasion of Crimea is vaguely reminiscent of the Soviet invasions of Hungary and
Czechoslovakia (though thankfully a lot less violent), and the Kremlin seems to have
weighed the costs and benefits in a similar way. The problem is that the Russian
Federation is not the Soviet Union: it’s not an autarkic island that has been deliberately
isolated from world markets, it’s a more-or-less integrated part of the global economy.
And such an interconnected system makes the economic costs of political decisions far
more apparent than did the creaking and byzantine system of state socialism. If the
problems with the stock market or the ruble weren’t enough, yields on Russian
government bonds are already spiking and are withing spitting distance of their record
high.

It may not seem that Russia will pay a “price” for invading Crimea: there might not be
any sanctions, for example, and it is possible that Russia will continue to control the
territory it has already occupied. But as the rout in its stock, bond, and currency
markets clearly demonstrate the Kremlin is already paying dearly for its decision to
pursue a military solution to a political conflict. The longer the intervention in Crimea
drags on the more damage it will cause to Russia’s economy. Putin and the Kremlin
can think that there won’t be serious economic consequences for their actions, but
reality will show them otherwise.
[ a view from the financial markets ]

The reverse Berlin Wall? Russia, Ukraine

and the markets
Steen Jakobsen
Chief Economist & CIO / Saxo Bank Denmark Monday 3-3-14

• Russia is in a jam — politically, economically and strategically

• The country faces recession this year
• Economic reforms must start now

The Russian and Ukrainian escalation over the weekend and the aggressive central
bank hike on Monday are only part of the full story on Russia as the country's PMI is
running below 50.0 for a fourth consecutive month. (For more, see our latest
infographic here)

I visited Russia less than a month ago and I left concerned: Not since 2007/08 had I
had so many “crisis” questions from both investors, clients and the media. It was all
about the weak ruble, the emerging-markets crisis and how bad a shape Russia is in.

Let me stress that going to Russia is one of my favourite journeys, despite the
petrifying weather of minus Celsius throughout this trip!

Russia to me is in a corner — politically, economically and strategically. I will make no

big political statement on Ukraine etc, as I think it speaks for itself, but let me remind
you of the crisis in Georgia in 2008 — it led to one of the biggest sell-offs in history for
the Russian stock market (coinciding with the financial crisis) and, according to several
analyses Monday, a parallel exists in that the Olympics took place at or about the time
of both events.

In 2008, Vladimir Putin was out of the country attending the opening of the Beijing
Olympics. This time around, he used the end of the Sochi games to escalate. The point
being he tried to use the world media focus on the Olympics as a way to “get away with
something nasty”…..

Russia’s economy has moved from a six to eight percent current account surplus pre-
crisis to this or next year going into a deficit, despite high energy prices. Growth in
2013 was less than 1.3 percent against government expectations of three percent. This
year will see Russia in recession, according to my economic models, unless a real
reform takes root.

The new central bank governor has been brave and has steered a tight monetary
policy which I interpret as being a policy choice of a “small crisis now, rather than a big
one later” as unsecured lending has spiralled out of control. Further, the 83 regions run
a USD 100 billion deficit, Moscow doesn't really have control over the purse strings and
political leaders are spending more money than they earn.

The Russian model is being challenged. The country has all the necessary resources,
both human and in terms of mineral deposits to be a superpower, but economic
reforms must start now.

Just as in 1989, the Russian Bear is tired and we all risk Ukraine becoming a new
Berlin Wall. But this time, the wall is going up not down — and let us remind ourselves
that we will all be losers in that game! Europe needs Russia’s energy, Russia needs
Europe engineers and business people, but right now we are as far apart as we have
been since 1989. This is indeed ironic as we are at the 25th anniversary of the Berlin
wall falling.

Conclusion:

Russia/Ukraine is fast becoming a “reverse” Berlin Wall. Economically and politically

we will all lose. This will increase volatility and the stock market will be under pressure
as we all remember the 1998 devaluation.

Any major crisis has a catalyst. I think Russia/Ukraine is one. We have an even bigger
crisis though, that of political leadership and that’s what really concerns me. The RUB
will continue to weaken and the stock market globally could deleverage.
Crimea: Putin's mission accomplished
By PJ Crowley Former US Assistant Secretary of State 3 March 2014

US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed confidence on Sunday that "Russia is

going to lose" in its confrontation with the West over Ukraine. But by the time Mr Kerry
arrives in Kiev for urgent consultations with the country's interim government, President
Vladimir Putin will have already achieved his primary regional objective - regaining
leverage over what happens next in Ukraine's unscripted revolution.

The problem with assessing which side will ultimately prevail - Moscow or Brussels and
Washington - is that they are playing different games.

The West is playing against Russia, but Russia is competing for Ukraine. So far, Mr
Putin is winning at a cost he is willing to bear.

Ukraine and the West have a couple of trump cards to play, but may not be willing to
accept the costs and risk that go with them.

Secretary Kerry said on the Sunday talk shows that Ukraine need not become an
"East-West redux" based on zero-sum calculations, but in fact that is exactly what it is.
Ukraine is the last major unresolved issue from the end of the Cold War. Does it align
itself with the East or the West? It is the fault line at the heart of the revolution and
Ukrainian history, sociology and politics.

The crisis started in November over a binary choice for Ukraine: choose the European
Union or the Eurasian Customs Union.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych looked East, enticed by a $15bn (£9bn)
Mr Putin pledge to prop up the Ukrainian economy. A significant element of his
population looked West and protested his decision and forced him to flee - to Russia.

President Barack Obama said on Friday there would be costs for Russia's incursion
into Crimea and Secretary Kerry detailed the menu of options: political isolation,
targeted sanctions and reduced investment and trade.

Trading the cost

But Mr Putin has some costs he can impose on the West as well.

For example, Interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said on Sunday
Ukraine is on the "brink of disaster".

Mr Yanukovych may have absconded with as much as $70bn. The country's coffers
are empty.

Mr Putin put his cheque book away after dispensing only $3bn.

Can the West and/or international financial institutions pick up the slack and how
quickly? No guarantee it will be enough given the West's lingering economic
uncertainty.

The West could impose sanctions on individuals and entities viewed as subverting
Ukraine's independence.

But there is a limit to what can be done without damaging European economic
interests. Even with expanded global production, Russia still has considerable leverage
over Europe in the energy sector. Germany still gets a third of its gas from Russia.
There will be reluctance to mess with global markets.

The major economic powers have suspended planning for the upcoming G8 summit
scheduled for June in Sochi. In all likelihood, the meeting will be cancelled.

The G7 could suspend Russia's membership in the club, but the reality is Mr Putin
cares more about Ukraine than he does his relations with the West.

His strategic objective is to keep Ukraine in Russia's sphere of influence, either as a

client state or neutral buffer.

The West's trump cards are to resume negotiations that could eventually bring Ukraine
into the EU and perhaps even into Nato.

But are the United States and Europe going to risk a fundamental break with Russia
now over an uncertain outcome in Ukraine down the road?

Not likely.

Putin in charge

These issues will undoubtedly be the backdrop for Ukraine's upcoming elections in late
May.

Ukraine has no practical ability to pursue such strategic choices at present, but if it
appears the debate advances such options, it could mean the end of Ukraine as it
currently exists.

Crimea plans a referendum to consider continued autonomy, independence or union

with the Russian Federation.

It is not clear that Mr Putin wants Crimea re-gifted, but he has already signalled to a
core constituency - those with Russian citizenship or with strong ethnic, language and
cultural ties to the Motherland - that he has their back.

A Crimean secession would be a bitter pill for a new Ukrainian government to accept.

Kiev got a strong hint of such divided loyalties just this weekend. Its newly appointed
Navy chief defected after barely 24 hours on the job.

But after being wrong-footed on Ukraine's economic future, Mr Yanukovych's

survivability and Maidan's durability, Vladimir Putin has regained his leverage and time
and space to undermine this revolution just like he did in 2005, which is what the past
few days are really all about.

P.J. Crowley is a former Assistant Secretary of State and now a professor of practice
and fellow at The George Washington University's Institute of Public Diplomacy &
Global Communication.
Putin’s power play in Ukraine
Washington Post By Eliot A. Cohen, Monday, March 3, 5:39 AM

Eliot A. Cohen teaches at Johns Hopkins University. From 2007 to 2008, he

was counselor of the State Department.

In the first days of a crisis like the Russian invasion of Crimea, the questions are
operational: How many troops? Where are they? Should we cancel just the planning
session for the Group of Eight meeting in Sochi or abandon it altogether? Should the
president issue a statement? Leave it to John Kerry and Joe Biden?

Then come the recriminations. It is Khrushchev’s fault for giving Ukraine a peninsula
soaked in Russian blood. The overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych by the mobs was a bit
too much. Maybe it was a mistake to give gay athletes such a prominent role on the
American team at Sochi.

The final stage is excuses. Vladimir Putin is an unpredictable autocrat. There is not a
lot we can do about this other than make some gestures that will be forgotten in six
months anyway. Besides, the Bush administration didn’t do anything serious about
Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, so who are the Republicans to point fingers?

This sequence of events misses the deeper causes of the crisis, its larger frame and,
above all, the long-term consequences.

In retrospect, historians will not find it difficult to piece together why and how this
happened: Putin is indeed a brutal Great Russian nationalist who understands that
Russia without a belt of subservient client states is not merely a very weak power but
also vulnerable to the kind of upheaval that toppled Yanukovych’s corrupt and
oppressive regime. Ukraine’s chaos and Crimea’s anomalous history gave the opening;
Russian adeptness at the dark arts of provocation and covert operations provided the
means; President Obama’s history of issuing warnings and, when they are ignored,
moving on smartly to the next topic gave a kind of permission.

The largest issue here is whether Russia will remain bent on disrupting the post-Cold
War settlement, including through the overt use of force in Europe. Absent a severe
penalty — one that inflicts pain where Putin can feel it, to include Russia’s economy
and his personal wealth and control of that country — the lesson learned will be, “You
can get away with it.”

One larger issue is the future of the Baltic republics, which also have Russian
minorities and whose status as independent states can be no less contested than
that of Ukraine. But the Baltic republics belong to NATO, and Article V of the North
Atlantic Treaty obliges the United States and its allies to fight in their defense. Thus
to say that “no one wants a war,” which is true, is to begin introducing the
proposition that there is nothing worth fighting for in Europe. In which case NATO
does not really exist. And then that pillar of America’s position in the world since
1945 has evaporated before our eyes.

“There will be costs,” President Obama said on Friday, presumably referring to

something more than the aviation fuel for the transports and bullets in the guns of the
thinly disguised Russian soldiers occupying Crimea. The precedent to be remembered
here is not any phony red line previously proclaimed but Putin’s op-ed last fall after the
joint deal to (supposedly) remove Syrian chemical weapons. The Russian leader,
having gotten what he wanted, kicked a bit of sand in Obama’s face, declaring that the
United States really is not all that special — neither ideologically nor as a great power.
Power is a psychological relationship and not just a reflection of material
circumstances. At the moment, the Russian president, exquisitely sensitive to the
ripples and flow of power, knows that he is a strong man dealing with weakness.
That, in turn, means that he would see no reason not to push elsewhere, and hard.

Georgia was a tiny, remote country that had foolishly provoked the Russians and that
did not stand a chance when they invaded in 2008. The fighting was over in days.
There was no such provocation here, and Ukraine is a big country on the border of the
European Union. If Russia can rip off a limb with impunity, why can’t China do the
same with the Senkaku Islands?

Putin is not Hitler, and the 2010s are not the 1930s. But the world is a darkening place,
and the precedents being set are ones that will haunt us for decades to come unless
the U.S. administration can act decisively and persistently against Russia. Otherwise,
Churchill’s words after a not-dissimilar episode, in which a powerful state seized
borderlands inhabited by its ethnic compatriots, will ring true again: “And do not
suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”
It is time for the West to stand up to Putin
By Telegraph View 8:44PM GMT 02 Mar 2014

International diplomacy is, by and large, a game of manners and etiquette. Over the
centuries, a host of rules have built up about how nations should relate to one another.
These may be points of protocol – for example, that a president, as head of state,
outranks a mere prime minister. Or they may be fundamental points of law – for
example, that the use of force to take away another’s territory is the ultimate taboo, and
must be punished by ostracism.

Diplomacy is also, however, a game of power. And as we are seeing with Russia and
Ukraine, when a nation with power confronts one without it, there is not much the
weaker party can do. Vladimir Putin may claim, as he did with his invasion of Georgia
in 2008, that the occupation of the Crimea is about protecting ethnic Russians and his
country’s strategic interests. But this was, as the US Secretary of State John Kerry said
yesterday, a “completely trumped-up pretext”. What we are seeing is, at root, the policy
of the playground bully, laying claim to other people’s property because he calculates –
perhaps accurately – that there is no one with the strength to defy him.

This, then, is the question for the West. Russia refuses to be constrained by
international niceties. That applies to relations not only with its neighbours, but with our
own country, too: even if the Kremlin did not sanction the murder of a British citizen,
Alexander Litvinenko, on British soil, it certainly did its level best to obstruct the
investigation. So why, if Mr Putin is willing to break the rules of the club of nations,
should he be allowed to profit from membership?

This is not to argue that relations should be thrown back into the Cold War freezer. But
it is hard to see why the West should still be sending its Paralympic athletes to Sochi to
put on a show of harmony – nor, as Mr Kerry said yesterday, why Russia on present
form is worthy of G8 membership, let alone of playing host to the organisation in June.

It is generally accepted that there is little that we or our allies can do on the ground in
Ukraine, beyond supporting the new government as best we can. While Mr Putin may
not be willing to gamble on a wider seizure of territory, there is little doubt – as David
Blair writes – that Crimea is now de facto Russian territory. And in any confrontation,
Russia can hurt Europe more (in the short term) than Europe can hurt Russia – not
least by cutting off gas supplies. But Mr Putin’s regime and its increasingly stagnant
economy rely on access to our markets, and on the services of our accountants,
lawyers and bankers. He is free to ignore the rules, and to make his way in the world
via threats, bribes and naked force. But we do not have to make it quite so easy.
Russian forces in Ukraine: What does the
Black Sea Fleet in Crimea look like?
Washington Post By Kathy Lally, Published: March 1 2014

MOSCOW — The Russian military took up residence in Crimea more than 200 years
ago, when Catherine the Great built a naval base at Sevastopol. After the dissolution of
the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia and Ukraine tussled repeatedly over dividing up the
Black Sea Fleet based there. Today, Russia rents its Sevastopol base from Ukraine,
where it has a presence better suited to bullying small neighbors than fighting a real
war, according to Mark Galeotti, author of “Russian Security and Paramilitary Forces
Since 1991.”

Galeotti, a professor at New York University who blogs about security issues,
answered a series of questions about Russia’s military.

Q. How strong is Russia’s Black Sea Fleet?

A. As a war-fighting force, it’s not particularly impressive. Its main vessel was basically
built to fight other ships and so is only useful in fighting a naval war. It’s got the
Moskva, an aging guided-missile cruiser; a large anti-submarine warfare cruiser — very
dated; a destroyer and two frigates, which are more versatile; landing ships; and a
diesel attack submarine. It’s not a particularly powerful force. The Italian navy alone
could easily destroy it.

How capable is Russia’s military overall?

It’s moderately competent. It’s not at the level of the American or British or German
military, but it’s better than in the 1990s. The [Russian] military is good at bullying small
neighbors, but it would not be effective against NATO. It would not be able to defeat
China.

Why was it effective against Georgia?

The Black Sea Fleet had some value against Georgia because it was fighting a small
navy. The Russian military could roll into Ukraine, but it would be up for a fight. The
Ukrainians are rather more ready than the Georgians.

What does Russia want in Crimea?

If Russia wanted to conquer the place, they could conquer the place. But what would it
gain by claiming formal control over this region? It doesn’t add up to me as being a
takeover. It’s a martial and heavy-handed political maneuver to make sure Kiev
considers Russia’s interests.

Where are the Russian bases?

The main one is the fleet headquarters and naval infantry brigade headquarters at
Sevastopol. There are four coastal missile regiments, four different bases. There are at
least a dozen active bases on the Crimea. Some are just communication towers.
Others are real bases. For example, there are several air bases.

How is the Russian deployment regulated?

The treaty between Ukraine and Russia limits the total size. Russia can’t just add
another ship to the fleet. They can’t arbitrarily attach more units.
Can you describe the troops?

The 810 Naval Infantry Brigade has 2,500 marines. They’re not elite, but they are
better than average. They acquitted themselves well in Georgia and fighting pirates off
Somalia. There are also some naval special forces. It’s hard to be sure, but maybe
200 to 300. They may not be Green Berets, but they’re pretty good. There’s a large
Black Sea Naval Air Force and ancillary groups — technical, security, administrative.
You can put a gun in many of their hands, if need be. If you need people to block a
road, they can do it.

Are troops often seen on the highways in Crimea?

There’s nothing to stop them from moving troops around. You have slosh back and
forth twice a year because of conscription. The sight of military personnel on the road is
not unusual as they move between bases. And obviously they move back and forth to
Russia.

How many bases does Russia have outside its borders?

They have a presence in Cuba. It’s not really a base. It’s a way station. And Tartus, in
Syria. They have no bases outside the former Soviet Union.
Pressure Rising as Obama Works to Rein
In
Russia
NY Times By PETER BAKERMARCH 2, 2014

WASHINGTON — As Russia dispatched more forces and tightened its grip on the
Crimean Peninsula on Sunday, President Obama embarked on a strategy intended to
isolate Moscow and prevent it from seizing more Ukrainian territory even as he was
pressured at home to respond more forcefully.

Working the telephone from the Oval Office, Mr. Obama rallied allies, agreed to send
Secretary of State John Kerry to Kiev and approved a series of diplomatic and
economic moves intended to “make it hurt,” as one administration official put it. But the
president found himself besieged by advice to take more assertive action.

“Create a democratic noose around Putin’s Russia,” urged Senator Lindsey Graham,
Republican of South Carolina. “Revisit the missile defense shield,” suggested
Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. “Cancel Sochi,” argued Representative
Mike Rogers, the Michigan Republican who leads the Intelligence Committee,
referring to the Group of 8 summit meeting to be hosted by President Vladimir V.
Putin. Kick “him out of the G-8” altogether, said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois,
the Democratic whip.

The Russian occupation of Crimea has challenged Mr. Obama as has no other
international crisis, and at its heart, the advice seemed to pose the same question: Is
Mr. Obama tough enough to take on the former K.G.B. colonel in the Kremlin? It is no
easy task. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on
Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality,
people briefed on the call said. “In another world,” she said.

That makes for a crisis significantly different from others on Mr. Obama’s watch. On
Syria, Iran, Libya and Egypt, the political factions in Washington have been as torn as
the president over the proper balance of firmness and flexibility. But as an old nuclear-
armed adversary returns to Cold War form, the consequences seem greater, the
challenges more daunting and the voices more unified.

“It’s the most important, most difficult foreign-policy test of his presidency,” said R.
Nicholas Burns, a career diplomat who became under secretary of state in the George
W. Bush administration. “The stakes are very high for the president because he is the
NATO leader. There’s no one in Europe who can approach him in power. He’s going to
have to lead.”

Mr. Obama came to office with little foreign-policy experience and has been repeatedly
tested by a new world in which the main threats are Islamic extremism and civil war.
While increasing drone strikes and initially building up forces in Afghanistan, he has
made it his mission to pull out of two long wars and keep out of any new ones.

But the limits of his influence have been driven home in recent weeks, with Syria
pressing its war against rebels and Afghanistan refusing to sign an agreement allowing
residual American forces. Now the Crimea crisis has presented Mr. Obama with an
elemental threat reminiscent of the one that confronted his predecessors for four
decades — a geopolitical struggle in the middle of Europe. First, the pro-Russian
government in Kiev, now deposed, defied his warnings not to shoot protesters, and
now Mr. Putin has ignored his admonitions to stay out of Ukraine.
Caught off guard, Mr. Obama is left to play catch-up. With thousands of reinforcements
arriving Sunday to join what American officials estimated were 6,000 Russian troops,
Mr. Putin effectively severed the peninsula, with its largely Russian-speaking
population, from the rest of Ukraine.

“Russian forces now have complete operational control of the Crimean peninsula,” a
senior administration official said on the condition of anonymity.

No significant political leaders in Washington urged a military response, but many

wanted Mr. Obama to go further than he has so far. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee,
the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has already devised language
to serve as the basis for possible bipartisan legislation outlining a forceful response,
including sanctions against Russia and economic support for Ukraine.

The president has spoken out against Mr. Putin’s actions and termed them a “breach of
international law.” But he has left the harshest condemnations to Mr. Kerry, who on
Sunday called them a “brazen act of aggression” and “a stunning willful choice by
President Putin,” accusing him of “weakness” and “desperation.”

In addition to Ms. Merkel, Mr. Obama spoke with his counterparts from Britain and
Poland on Sunday and won agreement from all the other G-8 countries to suspend
preparations for the Sochi meeting and find ways to shore up the economically fragile
Ukrainian government. The administration also canceled a trade mission to Moscow
and a Russian trip to Washington to discuss energy while vowing to also scrap a naval-
cooperation meeting with Russia.

In television interviews, Mr. Kerry suggested that the United States might impose
sanctions, boycott the Sochi meeting in June and expel Russia from the G-8. Germany,
however, publicly expressed opposition to expulsion, an ominous sign for Mr. Obama
since any meaningful pressure would need support from Berlin.

But Mr. Obama offered Russia what aides called an “offramp,” a face-saving way out of
the crisis, by proposing that European observers take the place of Russian forces in
Crimea to guard against the supposed threats to the Russian-speaking population cited
by the Kremlin as justification for its intervention.

Mr. Obama’s aides said that they saw no evidence of such threats and considered the
claim a bogus pretext, and that they wanted to call Mr. Putin’s bluff. Privately, they said
they did not expect Mr. Putin to accept, and they conceded that Mr. Obama probably
could not reverse the occupation of Crimea in the short term. They said they were
focusing on blocking any further Russian move into eastern Ukraine that would split the
country in half.

Some regional specialists said Mr. Obama should ignore the talk-tough chorus and
focus instead on defusing a crisis that could get much worse. Andrew Weiss, a national
security aide to President Bill Clinton, said the Obama administration should be trying
to keep Ukraine and Russia from open war. “For us to just talk about how tough we
are, we may score some points but lose the war here,” Mr. Weiss said.

The crisis has trained a harsh spotlight on Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, with critics
asserting that he has been too passive.

Mr. Corker traced the origins of Mr. Putin’s brash invasion to September when, in the
face of bipartisan opposition in Congress, Mr. Obama pulled back from plans to
conduct an airstrike on Syria in retaliation for a chemical-weapons attack on civilians.
Instead, he accepted a Russian offer to work jointly to remove the chemical weapons.
“Ever since the administration threw themselves into the arms of Russia in Syria to
keep from carrying out what they said they would carry out, I think, he saw weakness,”
Mr. Corker said of Mr. Putin. “These are the consequences.”

Of course, had Mr. Obama proceeded with an attack, he would have paid a different
price for ignoring the will of Congress and the grave misgivings of an American public
weary of war. Republicans who opposed confrontation in Syria insist this is different.

Mr. Rubio, who opposed authorizing force in Syria, agreed that that conflict had serious
ramifications for American interests. But he said the showdown in Crimea was about
freedom itself and the hard-fought American victory over totalitarianism in the Cold
War. In that sense, even Republicans who opposed Mr. Obama in Syria were pushing
for a hard line against Mr. Putin.

“The very credibility of the post-Cold War world and borders is at stake here,” Mr.
Rubio said in an interview.

Obama aides reject the notion that he has underestimated Mr. Putin. From the
beginning, they said, he had a cold-eyed assessment of the possibilities and limitations
of engagement with Mr. Putin. And they noted that neither President Bush’s reputation
for toughness nor his courtship of Mr. Putin stopped Russia from going to war in 2008
with another neighbor, the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

While Mr. Obama has not gone as far as many in Washington want him to go, the
president has been less focused on immediate actions than on making sure he and
America’s traditional allies are on the same page. Working from the Oval Office over
the weekend, wearing jeans and a scowl, he called several of his G-8 counterparts to
“make sure everybody’s in lock step with what we’re doing and saying,” according to
a top aide.

Administration officials said Mr. Putin had miscalculated and would pay a cost
regardless of what the United States did, pointing to the impact on Russia’s currency
and markets. “What we see here are distinctly 19th- and 20th-century decisions made
by President Putin to address problems,” one of the officials said. “What he needs to
understand is that in terms of his economy, he lives in the 21st-century world, an
interdependent world.”

Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting.

Crimean Foreshadowing
Slate March 1 2014 3:01 PM By Joshua Keating

Given the degree to which this weekend’s events in Crimea seem to have caught the
world off guard, I was curious to see if the Wikileaks cables contained any discussions
by U.S. diplomats of a scenario like this one. Indeed, there is some now ominous
foreshadowing to be found.

A 2006 cable under the name of Kiev Deputy Chief of Mission Sheila Gwaltney, who
as it happens is now the highest ranking diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Moscow
following the departure of Amb. Michael McFaul, warns of a possible Russian threat to
Crimea – Ukraine’s “soft underbelly”:

Discussions with a wide range of contacts in Crimea November 20-22 and

officials in Kyiv discounted recent speculation that a return of pro-Russian
separatism in Crimea, which posed a real threat to Ukrainian territorial integrity
in 1994-95, could be in the cards. However, nearly all contended that pro-
Russian forces in Crimea, acting with funding and direction from Moscow, have
systematically attempted to increase communal tensions in Crimea in the two
years since the Orange Revolution. They have done so by cynically fanning
ethnic Russian chauvinism towards Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians,
through manipulation of issues like the status of the Russian language, NATO,
and an alleged Tatar threat to "Slavs," in a deliberate effort to destabilize
Crimea, weaken Ukraine, and prevent Ukraine's movement west into
institutions like NATO and the EU.

The cable notes that “the most active pro-Russian actors highlighted by our contacts
were the Russian Society of Crimea and its affiliates, the Russian Bloc political party
and the Crimean Cossack Union.” Russian Bloc has been particularly active in the
last few days. setting up roadblocks on important highways in the region.

The cable quotes a member of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council,
claiming that “While there has always been overwhelmingly pro-Russian sentiment in
Crimea's population, the beginning of systematic, organized efforts by pro-Russian
groups backed by Russian money is a relatively new phenomenon.” Other officials
acknowledge the “degradation of Kyiv's ability to assert central power and authority.”

An Oct. 5, 2009 cable discusses a visit by the visiting Assistant Secretary of Defense
Alexander Vershbow, now Deputy Secretary General of NATO. In the read-out,
Ukrainian officials don’t appear very optimistic that Russia’s treaty obligations, included
the now-much-discussed Budapest Memorandum, would do much to prevent a
Russian military incursion (my emphasis):

On security guarantees, ASD Vershbow said that the U.S. regarded the 1994
Budapest memorandum to be still in effect, regardless of the expiration of
START in December.
We expect Russia to abide by the assurances in the memorandum, as he had
stated publicly that afternoon in a speech to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs'
Diplomatic Academy. Russia is legally bound to respect Ukraine's territorial
integrity through a number of agreements as well.
While such documents are important, just as important is building up Ukraine's
own strength and thickening Ukraine's ties with the U.S. and other Western
countries, so as to establish "facts on the ground." That is why enhancing our
military and security cooperation in concrete ways is critical. In addition, the
 Budapest memorandum and the NATO-Ukraine Charter contained provisions
for consultation in times of crisis.
Responding, Former FM Ohryzko asked, rhetorically, whether such
consultations would matter if Russian forces were to take over Crimea.
He noted that Russia had violated its commitments in attacking Georgia and
had not been punished for this.

Four days later, the embassy in Kiev issued another cable, titled “Ukraine-Russia: Is
Military Conflict No Longer Unthinkable?” It discusses the views of defense analysts
Volodymyr Horbulin, Ukraine’s former National Security Advisor, who believed that
“internal Russian considerations are pushing Russia toward a confrontation with
Ukraine prior to the expiration of the Black Sea Fleet basing agreement in 2017.”

The cable followed a highly critical letter sent by Russia’s then president, Dmitry
Medvedev, which was interpreted by many as a warning to Kiev over its pro-Western
policies. The cable notes (my emphasis):

While Horbulin believed that Russia has many non-military levers with which
to influence Ukraine (above all, by stirring up trouble in the Crimea), he did not
rule out the use of military force, especially if Ukraine's new president proves
not to be as pliable as the Kremlin may hope.
...Horbulin characterized the Medvedev letter as unprecedented in the
brazenness of Moscow's attempt to interfere in Ukraine's upcoming
presidential election, with the message that "whoever becomes (the next
Ukrainian) president must follow in the wake of Russian policies." Since the
2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, Russian military action against
Ukraine is no longer unthinkable.

So it certainly doesn’t appear that a scenario like what’s playing out right now in Crimea
was totally unanticipated. But neither the Ukrainian government nor U.S. officials
appear to have thought of a way to prevent Russia from laying the groundwork for it.

Joshua Keating is a staff writer at Slate focusing on international affairs and writes the
World blog. Follow him on Twitter.
Ukraine crisis: No wonder Vladimir Putin
says Crimea is Russian
Rodric Braithwaite The Independent Saturday 1 March 2014

With irresponsible talk of EU and Nato membership, the West has badly mishandled
relations with Ukraine – and with Moscow

Much recent comment on Ukraine in the British press has been marked by a barely
forgivable ignorance about its history and politics, an overhasty willingness to put the
blame for all its troubles on Vladimir Putin, and an almost total inability to suggest
practical ways of bringing effective Western influence to bear on a solution.

So perhaps we should start with a short history lesson. A thousand years ago Kiev was
the capital of an Orthodox Christian state called Rus with links reaching as far west as
England. But Rus was swept away by the Tatars in the 13th century, leaving only a few
principalities in the north, including an obscure town deep in the forests, called
Moscow.

What became known as Ukraine – a Slav phrase meaning “borderlands” – was

regularly fought over by Tatars, Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Turks, Swedes and
Cossacks. One large chunk, including Kiev itself, joined Russia in the 17th century.
Galicia in the west fell to the Austrians in the following century, but was taken by
Poland after the First World War, when the rest of Ukraine joined the Soviet
Federation. Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin handed Galicia and its capital Lviv to
Ukraine in 1945. All these changes were accompanied by much bloody fighting.

Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula followed a different but equally tumultuous path. The seat
of a powerful and predatory Tatar state, it was conquered and settled by the Russians
in the 18th century. Stalin deported its Tatar minority in 1944 because, he said, they
had collaborated with the Germans. They were later allowed to return. Crimea only
became part of Ukraine in 1954, when Khrushchev gave it to Kiev as a present.

Ukraine became an independent country for the first time since the Middle Ages when
the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It had many of the requirements for success: an
educated population, good links with the outside world and substantial industry, though
its economy remained distorted by the Soviet legacy. But it was still divided, with an
uncertain sense of nationhood. Today 77 per cent of the country’s population is
Ukrainian. But 17 per cent is Russian, a third of the population speak Russian and
many of these people have strong family ties with Russia. Only the Ukrainians from
Galicia look unequivocally to the West.

Meanwhile, most Russians feel strong emotional links to Ukraine as the cradle of their
civilisation. Even the most open minded feel its loss like an amputated limb.

Things started well enough. Russia and Ukraine negotiated a sensible agreement to
allow the Russian Black Sea Fleet to remain in Crimea. With well-judged concessions,
the Ukrainians assuaged the demands of Crimea’s Russian inhabitants for closer ties
with the motherland. But the Ukrainians were unlucky in their country’s new leaders,
most of whom were incompetent or worse. They failed to modernise the economy;
corruption ran out of control. Then Putin arrived in 2000, ambitious to strengthen
Russia’s influence with its neighbours. And the West began its ill-judged attempts to
draw Ukraine into its orbit regardless of Russian sensitivities.
Despite his best efforts, both overt and covert, Putin has failed to shape Ukraine to his
will. He got his puppet Yanukovych elected president in 2004, only to see him
overthrown in an Orange Revolution supported by millions of dollars of Western
money. The “democratic” leaders who then emerged proved incompetent as well as
corrupt. Yanukovych was re-elected in a fair election in 2010, but was even more
incompetent and corrupt. His forceful ejection at the height of the Winter Olympics in
Sochi, intended to showcase a modern and powerful Russia, was a humiliation for
Putin and an unintended consequence of his intrigues. He is a vindictive man who will
want revenge.

Although he is also a cunning politician, he already looks incapable of calm calculation.

His apparent threat – or intention – to use force in Crimea would up the stakes in ways
whose consequences neither he nor anyone else can foresee.

He may of course believe that the West will be unable to find an adequate response,
and he may not be wrong. Western policy towards Ukraine has had two inadequate
parts. The first is respectable but merely rhetorical: Ukraine is entitled to decide its
future for itself, and Russia has no legitimate claim to a voice. The second is a piece of
old-fashioned geopolitics: Russia can never again become an imperial threat if Ukraine
is incorporated into Nato and the European Union. This part of the policy is impractical
to the point of irresponsibility. It ignores four things. The members of Nato and the EU
have lost their appetite for further enlargement. Most Ukrainians do not want their
country to join Nato, though they would be happy to join the EU. A majority want to
remain on good terms with Russia.

Above all, the West does not have the instruments to impose its will. It has no intention
of getting into a forceful confrontation with Russia. Lesser sanctions are available to it,
both economic and political, but they will hardly be sufficient to deflect a determined
Russia from its meddling.

The alternative is for the West to talk to the Russians and to whoever can speak with
authority for Ukraine. So far the Americans have been ineffective on the sidelines, the
British seem to have given up doing foreign policy altogether, and only the Germans,
the Poles and the French have shown any capacity for action.

An eventual deal would doubtless have to include verifiable agreement by the West as
well as the Russians to abandon meddling in Ukrainian affairs, a credible assurance
that Nato will not try to recruit Ukraine and arrangements for the both the Russians and
the West to prop up Ukraine’s disastrous economy. The sums involved are vast ($35bn
has been mentioned). The task of ensuring that they are properly spent will be taxing in
the extreme.

All that would involve much eating of words on all sides. It would enable the West to
show that it can move beyond fine rhetoric about democracy to real deeds. It will be
very hard to achieve. It may already be too late. But the alternatives are liable to be far
worse.

Rodric Braithwaite was ambassador in Moscow in 1988-92. His last book was
Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89

[ “talk to the Russians”…. sic]

Ukraine crisis: Nato ‘betrayal’ and Brussels
rhetoric pushing Vladimir Putin to act
Mary Dejevsky The Independent Sunday 2 March 2014

The popular pressure on the Russian president will be for action, not restraint

The Americans, Churchill supposedly said, could be relied upon to do the right thing,
but only after they had exhausted all the alternatives.

With Vladimir Putin, you might be tempted to turn that aphorism upside down: after
toying with all the better options, he turns around and plumps for the absolute worst.

After appearing to embark on a more cooperative foreign policy - helping the US with
transit arrangements for its Afghan withdrawal; facilitating a deal to remove chemical
weapons from Syria [!?], and entertaining the world at the Sochi Winter Olympics -
Putin now seems to be on the verge of plunging the region if not into World War Three,
then into a 21st century re-run of the Crimean War. Is he really prepared to sacrifice
the diplomatic gains of the past year to keep Ukraine inside Russia's sphere of
influence in what looks very much like a fit of personal pique? [yes he is]

From the Kremlin, the picture, and the options, will look very different. A common view
from abroad is that Putin runs Russia single-handed, as a latter-day tsar, and indulges
his own caprices. As a footnote, it has been suggested that the success - or at least
non-failure - of Sochi might have emboldened him to show (even) more assertiveness
in the neighbourhood. Such views disregard both the continuing weakness of central
power in Russia and the extent to which any Russian leader now must take account of
public opinion. [does not exist

Within Russia, the popular pressure on Putin will not be for restraint, but for action. His
stance reflects a domestic consensus that, while Ukraine may be independent, its
natural place is within Russia's orbit and Moscow cannot just stand by while the West
conspires to snatch it away. "Who lost Ukraine?" is a question that has real potential to
erode Putin's power.

Which is why, more remarkable than Putin's current threat to use force was the relative
calm with which he initially responded to the Kiev protests and the collapse of the
Ukrainian administration. He even sent an envoy to join the EU foreign ministers
brokering a deal between Yanukovych and the opposition, and looked ready to accept
the outcome.

It was when that deal collapsed, violence broke out, and the conflict spread, that Putin
started to play hardball. And he did so in a way, it is worth noting, that carefully
mirrored certain Western practice: a limited and deniable [deniable??] show of force (in
Crimea); a vote in Parliament, and reference to a "responsibility to protect" an
endangered population.

It is too simple to cite age-old cultural and religious ties as a reason for war over
Ukraine, though they count for much, and Putin has a fierce sense of Russia's dignity.
Nor is it because of fears that, one day, Ukraine might join the European Union,
(though this might be because Putin knows better than Kiev how tough the entry
conditions are). I have heard him say categorically that he accepts Ukraine as a
sovereign independent state and, equally categorically, that it is up to post-Soviet
states to determine their own economic course if - and it is a big if - they can afford the
cost of loosening economic ties with Russia.
The appeal of the EU is not itself a problem. There are, though, two other reasons that
may dictate Putin's current actions. The first derives from the 1990s and concerns the
West's betrayal - as Russia sees it - of its pledge not to expand Nato to Russia's
borders. One view is that this promise, given to then President Gorbachev, lost its
validity when he lost power. This is not the view subsequent Russian leaders have
taken. Putin, and even his usually mild-mannered prime minister and defence minister,
become utterly incensed when they talk about it. They see it as a prelude to humiliation
and "encirclement".

The all-or-nothing, now-or- never, east-or-west language used by EU leaders, when

they tried to persuade Ukraine to sign up to the EU association agreement before the
Brussels-imposed November deadline only strengthened Russia's suspicion. Those
Western officials - John Kerry and William Hague among them - now saying that any
solution for Ukraine must recognise its position between East and West and involve
Russia were singing a very different tune late last year.

The other reason for Putin's threat is the gulf that has opened up between the way in
which recent events in Ukraine are seen in Russia (and in Eastern Ukraine and
Crimea) and the way they are seen in the West. Putin might still sacrifice Yanukovych -
a leader who cannot keep order is no good as an ally anyway - but the fact that he was
democratically elected, the way in which he was toppled (by street protests), and the
far-right elements in the crowd (presented in Russia as a majority) all combine to
foreshadow a new regime that could, in Moscow's view, indeed imperil Ukraine's
Russian-speakers.

This may not be the truth of the situation, but it is one that many Russians, including
Putin, who were educated in Soviet times, find credible - more credible, at least, than
the Western version of enlightened protesters removing a despot in the national
interest. So long as these two versions of recent events persist, so too will the prospect
of armed conflict.

[sooo… what ???]

Crimea and Punishment
Slate March 1 2014 5:43 PM By Mary Mycio
Vladimir Putin is miscalculating how easy it will be to control a Crimean mini-
state. Putin’s imperialist gambit may turn out to be his Waterloo.

With events in Ukraine changing so quickly, it is impossible to predict what will happen
next. But now that the Russian parliament has rubber-stamped Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s request to invade the country, a few observations are already in order.

What seems to have happened in the Crimea this week is a grotesque imitation of the
Maidan protests that ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from office.
Under the cover of some street protesters, masked self-defense forces with the help of
Ukrainian Berkut—evidently including units responsible for the crackdown in Kiev—
captured government buildings to force a political decision to recognize Yanukovych as
the president of Ukraine. Armed gunmen without identifying insignia captured two
airports (as well as a center for investigative journalism), disrupted communications
with the mainland, and are blocking some Ukrainian military bases on the peninsula.
Early Saturday morning, the Crimean government then requested Russia’s help, as did
Yanukovych, who is now obviously Putin’s puppet. That then let Putin plausibly deny
his actions as an invasion, casting it instead as an internal Ukrainian affair. No shots
have been fired, yet.

If the plan is to install Yanukovych in a Russian-controlled Crimean mini-state, it might

work, for a while. But that does not mean it will be easy. Putin’s imperialist gambit may
turn out to be his Waterloo.

To see why, just open a map. That narrow strip of land tethering northern Crimea to the
Ukrainian mainland, called the Perokop Isthmus, is the peninsula’s lifeline. What’s left
out of most Western analyses of Putin’s brazen military intervention is the Crimea’s
complete economic dependence on the mainland, which provides nearly all of its
electricity and water and about 70 percent of its food.

That’s why the Crimea is even a part of Ukraine. Don’t believe that myth about the
peninsula being a “gift” from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to what was then the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. For laughs, people often add that he did it
when he was drunk. That story was actually concocted during the early 1990s, when
Russia first started making mischief with pro-Russian separatism.

Then, the movement had genuine public support because the collapse of the Soviet
Union left a disgruntled Russian majority on the peninsula, including many military
retirees for whom Crimea was like a Soviet Florida. But the only reason that Crimea
had a Russian majority was because Josef Stalin deported the native Crimean Tatars
en masse to Central Asia after World War II and resettled Russians to replace them.

Crimea suffered terribly during the war. Its transfer from the Russian Soviet republic
to the Ukrainian one made little substantive difference in the totalitarian Communist
state. But it was a completely sober decision for Ukraine to take over the peninsula’s
rebuilding since Moscow was too far away and was mucking the whole thing up. The
Russians that Stalin sent (usually not willingly) came mostly from forested regions.
They knew nothing about agriculture in the dry Crimean steppes that are a natural
extension of southern Ukraine.

Most of the Crimea is basically a desert, with less annual rainfall than Los Angeles. It is
impossible to sustain its 2 million people—including agriculture and the substantial
tourist industry—without Ukrainian water. Current supplies aren’t even enough. In
Sevastopol, home of the Black Sea Fleet, households get water only on certain days.
In fact, on Feb. 19, when snipers were shooting protesters on the streets of Kiev,
Sevastopol applied for $34 million in Western aid (note the irony) to improve its water
and sewer systems.

The Crimea’s dependence on Ukraine for nearly all of it electricity makes it equally
vulnerable to nonviolent retaliation. One suggestion making the rounds of the Ukrainian
Internet is that the mainland, with warning, shut off the power for 15 minutes. It may not
normalize the situation, but it could give Moscow pause. Of course, Russia could
retaliate by cutting off Ukrainian gas supplies, but that would mean cutting off much of
Europe as well. Besides, Ukrainians proved this winter that they aren’t afraid of the
cold, and spring is coming.

So, while Vladimir Putin rattles his sabers, the authorities in Kiev might decide to just
hold tight, for now. If Yanukovych destroyed his own power, he may very well destroy
Putin’s as well. The fugitive ex-president, whose greed extended deep into the
peninsula, isn’t a popular figure there either and any efforts to install him—especially if
they bring real hardship to the locals—may spark a Maidan II.

That’s because the Crimea has changed since the 1990s. After independence, Ukraine
welcomed back the Crimean Tatars. Some 300,000 have returned from exile and their
numbers are growing, with continued migration and birth rates higher than either
Russians or Ukrainians. They strongly oppose any separatism, and they will not go
peacefully into a Russian-controlled, authoritarian “Yanukistan” along the lines of
Transdnistria. Not only are they extremely well organized, they are Muslims with
friends. Representatives from Russia’s Tatarstan region are already supporting them.
Turkey, which controlled the Crimea for much longer than Russia ever did and has
close ties with the Crimean Tatars, is watching. So are Chechen rebels.

The Crimea could explode into bloodshed. To prevent if from happening, maybe
turning off the power for 15 minutes will force a reboot in Putin’s aggressive,
misguided, and ultimately doomed scheme.

Mary Mycio is a Slate contributor. Her most recent book is Doing Bizness: A Nuclear
Thriller, about Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament in the 1990s.
Why Vladimir Putin Needs a Poor,
Aggressive Russia
MARCH 2, 2014 New Republic BY KERMLINRUSSIA

During his entire time as President of Russia, Vladimir Putin has been trying to solve
an unsolvable problem: How to consolidate his personal power, having eliminated all
institutions which limit it, while at the same time achieving economic growth?

During the first stage of his presidency—between 2000 and 2007—he was aided by
skyrocketing natural resource prices. Putin concentrated control of all the largest
companies in the hands of his clan, increased the state’s role in the economy, slashed
political and economic freedoms, and strengthened his personal power. The huge
incoming flow of oil and gas money helped to raise people’s incomes in spite of
everything he did. And, in the minds of many, it formed a false association between
authoritarianism and rising living standards.

In 2008, with the onset of the global economic crisis, economic growth stopped. It
became clear that in order to jump-start it, the country needed to liberalize. Many
believe that Medvedev’s “modernization” was an attempt to find an alternative to
Putin’s vision of Russia’s development. They are mistaken. Medvedev’s modernization
was a false modernization, like a false grill on a car. It was Putin’s attempt to substitute
liberal rhetoric for real liberalization, while not giving up an ounce of real power to
anyone: not to the Parliament, not to the courts, not to local governments, and not even
to Medvedev himself.

It took Putin three years to understand that a dummy engine can’t make a car go. At
the same time it became clear that the goal of doubling the GDP by 2010, which he
had set at the beginning of his term, had not been fulfilled, despite an almost tenfold
increase in the price of oil. Living standards began to fall, and if earlier Russia’s
citizens had been prepared to trade their freedoms for improvements to their quality
of life, in 2011, when it became clear that further improvement was a long ways off,
some citizens demanded their freedoms back. That’s how the protests of 2011-2012
began, culminating in large clashes with police in the center of Moscow a day before
Putin’s inauguration in May 2012.

It was precisely at this moment that Putin sharply altered his strategy of ruling the
country and began to rapidly diverge from the model of a Russian Pinochet—an
authoritarian leader in a country with a relatively free economy—towards a classical
dictatorship, in which people receive orders about what to think, whom to sleep with,
and whom to consider an enemy. Unfortunately, personal power in any country
requires several elements in order to maintain itself: external and internal enemies,
large celebrations demonstrating the unity of the nation, and short, victory-bringing
wars.

If you can’t improve people’s living standards, you can try to give them a sense of
belonging to a great power. Particularly in Russia, where many people pine for the
Soviet era, when poverty and a lack of the most basic freedoms, such as the ability to
leave the country, were compensated by the pride of belonging to a superpower that
can build atomic submarines, launch spaceships, and win at sports.

There’s nothing better than the model of holding large events for a regime defined by
personal power. First of all, the preparation of such events can be done personally,
under emergency conditions: so much the better for securing one’s authority. Second,
your closest friends can reap big profits from the bloated budgets of such events. For
example, Putin’s childhood friend and judo sparring partner Arkady Rotenberg won
about $7.5 billion worth of contracts just from the preparations for the Olympic Games
in Sochi—an amount comparable to the total cost of the Vancouver Games.

After the Olympics, the next “event” is the Crimea, as cynical as that may sound. For
foreign observers this was a surprise, but not for Russians. In the pro-government
media (and in Russia, outlets expressing alternative points of view have been almost
entirely eliminated) the rhetoric of living in a besieged fortress has reigned for a long
time now. Moreover, the archenemies the state points to are not countries with which
Russia has actual territorial disputes, such as China or Japan, but the European Union
and the United States. That is, countries that are culturally close to Russia, but with a
much higher quality of life. Countries which made Russians realize—once they had
seen them with their own eyes—that life in their own country could be very different:
that a law-abiding citizen could live without fear of the police, or that the authorities
could be accountable to their fellow citizens.

Over the last two months, with the intensification of the opposition movement in
Ukraine, the search for internal enemies also became a feature of the Russian
media— a sad and frightening throwback to the Stalin era. People who disagreed with
the authorities became a “fifth column,” and one began to hear justifications of the
repressions of Stalin, who of course “killed a lot of people” but among whose victims
were “real enemies of the Soviet government and accomplices of fascism.” The fact
that, having signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939, Stalin had himself become
an “accomplice of fascism” is delicately omitted in these films and TV shows.

The deployment of troops to the Crimea was not only an opportunity to raise Putin’s
own popularity by pandering to national and imperialist sentiment, but also an
excellent way to crack down on internal enemies. In the midst of these events, Alexei
Navalny, who had won second place in the Moscow mayoral elections just this fall,
was placed under house arrest. He had gotten about 30% of the vote and almost
forced a runoff election. Navalny had become popular by publicizing his anticorruption
investigations in his blog. About a million people read him on some form of social
media. Not surprisingly, one of the conditions of his house arrest is a ban on Internet
use.

The West has already begun to threaten Russia with political and economic isolation,
but this stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of Putin’s power. For example,
Western analysts say that “Russia will not invade Crimea because Russia’s economy is
in bad shape and this would only weaken it further.” They are mistaken. Putin no longer
needs economic growth. He has grasped the contradiction between economic growth
and the consolidation of his own power, and he has made his choice. He understands
very well that in 2011-2012 it was the most economically active and wealthy segments
of the population that protested against him. He understands that millions of
entrepreneurs and workers of the knowledge economy had already emigrated to the
U.S. and European Union during his reign. And he understands that a solution which
simultaneously halts economic growth and strengthens the patriotism of the poorest
segments of the population is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

“Russia will not invade Crimea because there are insufficient medical units within the
army groups which conduct exercises on the border with Ukraine,” write Western
analysts. Once again, this is Western logic, through which it is very difficult to
understand that, in order to secure personal power, gain territory, and confirm
superpower status, the lives of simple soldiers who will die from insufficient medical
care can easily be sacrificed.
The same goes for isolation. Isolation is beneficial to Putin. He would gladly introduce
exit visas, like the U.S.S.R. had, in order to prevent the most active citizens from
traveling to Europe and the United States to see what life is like there. The E.U. and
the U.S. banning Russians from having foreign bank accounts and owning real estate
spares him having to adopt unpopular laws to “de-offshore-ize” the elite. What could be
better for uniting the offended and the humbled around the leader? Economic
sanctions? An excellent way to demonstrate to Russia’s population that the U.S. and
E.U. are enemies who sincerely wish them ill.

Why am I, personally, against the war? Almost every day I see how regular citizens
of my country suffer from a lack of rights and from fear of the government and its
representatives. Despite a lengthy period of economic growth, Russia’s citizens are
still, on the whole, very poor. A decade of boisterous growth has led to fantastic
inequality and stratification because for Putin it is easier to manage two hundred
billionaires who control the entire economy. Which, in turn, creates a lack of
opportunities. I understood a long time ago that democracy, freedom of speech,
local government, and improving the citizens’ quality of life are in direct conflict with
Putin’s desire to endlessly consolidate his own power.

P.S. None of this changes the fact that in the Crimea and in Ukraine’s southeast, there
are real problems concerning the Russian language and people’s self-determination.
And the citizens of these regions also have the right to self-determination through a
referendum. But it must be held not under the watch of Russian soldiers, or Ukrainian
soldiers sent from the new government in Kyiv, but in the presence of a large number
of international observers and journalists—first and foremost, from Russia. Moreover,
the issues of administrative affiliation and language should be solved separately. It is
possible, for example, that the citizens of the Donetsk oblast want to remain part of
Ukraine while speaking, being educated, and doing business in Russian. And any
Ukrainian government should give them this opportunity.

KermlinRussia is a satirical twitter duo that also writes influential columns on politics
and the economy in outlets like Russian Forbes. You can read more about them here.
How U.S. should respond to Russia
By Fareed Zakaria March 2nd, 2014 01:44 PM ET

In a strange act of historical coincidence, it is 60 years ago this week that Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev handed the Crimea over to the Ukraine. It might not have seemed a
big deal in those days – everyone was part of one big, unhappy Soviet Union. But that
act has created today’s geopolitical crisis.

Russia has now made its move. It has essentially detached Crimea from the Ukrainian
government’s control. What remains unclear is what Vladimir Putin wants to do with it.
Incorporate it into Russia? Use it as leverage to negotiate a deal with Ukraine? Both?

In any event, Washington’s response should be clear and forceful. Russia has violated
all kinds of laws and norms, including most crucially, a treaty that it signed with Ukraine
guaranteeing that country’s borders, in return for which Ukraine gave up its nuclear
weapons.

For Washington, for Americans, for people around the world, it would be a terrible
precedent to allow issues like this to be resolved not through diplomacy, but by force. If
Russia could detach parts of neighboring countries with impunity, won’t other great
powers like China decide that they too can act in such ways?

So what can be done? Well, for starters President Obama should cancel entirely his
attendenace at the G-8 summit to be held in Sochi in June. He should try to persuade
the other major powers to follow suit. Russia’s membership in the G-8 should be
suspended. Remember, the G-8 was created to recognize that post-Soviet Russia was
behaving like an honorable member of the international community, not a rogue state.
If the behavior has changed, Russia’s status should also change.

Militarily there is less that can be done. After all, Russia’s military budget is about 18
times that of Ukraine. But NATO should restart talks on providing assurances to
countries like Poland – including perhaps building the missile defense system that was
abandoned.

In economic terms, Washington and the EU should consider the only sanctions that
would be effective: ones targeted specifically at individuals who could be held
responsible for these acts of aggression against Ukraine.

Washington cannot do much to stop Vladimir Putin as he creates facts on the ground in
Crimea. But step back and consider what a strategic disaster this is for him. Ukraine
has slipped out of his orbit and most of the population there is going to be hostile to
Russia for generations. Countries like Poland that had eased up relations with Moscow
will now view it with great suspicion. All European countries will put their relations with
Russia under review. Even China will surely oppose the brazen violation of national
sovereignty, something Beijing is always concerned about. Within Russia people have
seen that Putin is terrified of a democracy movement and will brutally oppose it, not
really the image he wants to present.

So Putin gets Crimea, which is only 60 percent Russian. Parts of it will be deeply
hostile to this Russian takeover – including the population of Crimean Tartars, who are
Muslim and getting radicalized. Remember, Crimea is in the Northern Caucasus, the
area where Russia has been battling a ferocious Muslim insurgency.

So even as he lines up one more piece – or half piece – on his chessboard, Putin will
find that the price he has paid for it will be quite high.
Spell out the consequences for Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine
By Washington Post Editorial Board, Published: March 2, 2014

IT TOOK Vladimir Putin less than a day to trample on President Obama’s warning
against a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. On Saturday, the Russian president
orchestrated a unanimous vote by his rubber-stamp upper house of parliament
authorizing invasion not just of the Crimean peninsula — where thousands of Russian
troops are already deployed — but of all of Ukraine.

The United States now faces a naked act of armed aggression in the center of Europe
by a Russian regime that is signaling its intent to steamroller this U.S. president and his
allies. Mr. Obama must demonstrate that can’t be done.

Mr. Obama’s first response on Saturday was to spend 90 minutes on the phone with
Mr. Putin. According to the White House, the president offered the Russian ruler
peaceful ways to pursue his interests in Ukraine, including the dispatch of international
observers to monitor treatment of Russian speakers and internationally-mediated talks
with the Ukrainian government.

It’s reasonable to offer Mr. Putin a face-saving way out of the crisis he has triggered.
But Mr. Obama needs to be prepared for the very real possibility that, as in his
previous invasion of Georgia, Mr. Putin will ignore international condemnations and
press ahead.

Mr. Obama has been vague about the consequences of continued Russian aggression.
Saturday’s statement spoke only of the suspension of U.S. participation in preparatory
meetings for an upcoming G-8 summit in Sochi. Mr. Obama should make clear that its
aggression will comprehensively damage all aspects of Russia’s relations with the
United States.

Such a policy would start with cancellation of Mr. Obama’s attendance at the Sochi
summit and suspension of talks with Russia on trade issues. Mr. Obama should
convoke a meeting of the seven industrial democracies that excludes Russia. Mr. Putin
should get the message that he will henceforth be a pariah to the democratic world.

Mr. Obama should make clear that he will no longer shrink from applying sanctions to
Russian leaders and businesses complicit in aggression or human rights violations. An
expanded list of Russian officials subject to visa denials and asset freezes that was
drawn up by the State Department late last year should be immediately approved by
the White House. Russian officials in the chain of command of the Ukraine invasion, as
well as Russian companies and banks operating in Crimea, should be the next targets
of financial sanctions.

The most powerful non-military tool the United States possesses is exclusion from its
banking system. Mr. Obama should make clear that if Russia does not retreat from
Ukraine, it will expose itself to this sanction, which could sink its financial system.
Russia’s economy, unlike that of the Soviet Union, is heavily dependent on Western
trade and investment. It must be made clear to the Kremlin that the Ukraine invasion
will put that at risk.

Many in the West did not believe Mr. Putin would dare attempt a military intervention in
Ukraine because of the steep potential consequences. That the Russian ruler plunged
ahead shows that he doubts Western leaders will respond forcefully. If he does not
quickly retreat, the United States must prove him wrong.
Russia watchers say military manoeuvre
was long in the making
FT March 2, 2014 6:49 pm
By Kathrin Hille in
Moscow

“You don’t whip up a military manoeuvre with 150,000 troops just like that. You don’t
ship 2,000 air assault troops with all their equipment in a jiffy,” says Johan Lybeck, an
economist who served as a military intelligence officer specialising in Russia in the
Swedish armed forces during the cold war. “Note also that the Russian Black Sea Fleet
has received support from the Baltic Fleet and after all it takes a few days to steam
from there to here. This was all planned to take place just after the end of the Olympics
in Sochi.”

When unidentified armed men seized the building of the regional parliament in Crimea
last week, there was little understanding what was happening.

Only on Saturday morning did Moscow make things official. The government said it had
assured Sergey Aksyonov, the Russia-friendly new regional prime minister appointed
by the gunman-guarded parliament, of its support. Russia said he had asked for help
following an attempt by gunmen sent from Kiev to seize the region’s interior ministry,
an incident which local police and residents said never happened. Mr Putin swiftly
proceeded to ask – and receive – parliamentary authorisation for deploying troops in
Ukraine.

Meanwhile, groups of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine organised protests against

the central government.

Sources familiar with the Russian security services and military believe that FSB
agents have been working in Ukrainian cities for at least several weeks to prepare for
what played out over this last weekend.

“They probably played a role in setting up some of those pro-Russian militias in

Crimea, and they certainly had a big hand in organising the pro-Russian
demonstrations and anti-Maidan rallies,” says a foreign diplomat in Moscow who
handles his country’s liaison with the Russian security services.

He also believes that Russian agents participated in the Maidan demonstrations – both
on the side of the protesters and among the Berkut, Ukraine’s riot police, to facilitate an
escalation of events.

Foreign intelligence officials now lean towards the theory that Mr Putin decided even
before the Olympics to remove Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich from power as
he had come to believe the former leader would eventually ruin Ukraine’s economy and
could not be trusted to keep Kiev in Russia’s sphere of influence.

The Berkut played a significant part in bringing Mr Yanukovich down because a bloody
crackdown on protesters late last year helped harden demonstrators’ resolve and their
outrage with the president.

“Infiltrating and controlling the Berkut would have been a typical FSB job,” says Mr
Lybeck, the former military intelligence officer turned economist. After Ukraine’s new
government disbanded the riot police, Berkut officers went to Crimea, where the
Russian Consulate started giving them Russian passports.
With this force in place and pro-Russian militias milling around in Crimea, military
special forces then moved to seize key assets including the parliament building and the
region’s two main airports, opening the doors for the paratroopers.

All this was flanked by an aggressive disinformation campaign which appears aimed at
justifying a military intervention and goes far beyond the normal practices of Russian
state media. In this light, some Russian journalists have started questioning Mr Putin’s
decision before the Olympics to replace two respected state media heads with loyalists.

Russian foreign policy officials say the option of using military force against Ukraine
was on the table in internal discussions early on, but a fight within the administration
over the final decision was raging until a few days ago.

“The indications that the security services started to actively meddle in Ukraine even
before this decision had been made show us that the balance between liberals and
siloviki [Putin hardliners] has long been lost,” says a European diplomat.

Mr Putin has long been known to surround himself with fellow security services
veterans. Senior officials such as the head of the presidential administration Sergei
Ivanov, and the head of state oil company Rosneft Igor Sechin are former KGB men.

“One reason Putin decided to go down this path is that they made the assessment that
there will not be a real reaction from the west,” said Ariel Cohen, a Russia specialist at
the Heritage Foundation, on Dozhd, the independent Russian television channel.
Lawmakers call for suspension of Russia
from G8, swift action against Putin
CNN's Dana Davidsen March 2nd, 2014 11:26 AM ET

(CNN) – As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, with Russian troops moving into the
Crimean peninsula on Saturday, U.S. lawmakers are pushing for decisive action
against Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the violence in the region and respect
Ukraine's independence.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Sens. Dick Durbin, the second-
ranking Democrat, and Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, made the
case for congressional sanctions and a suspension of Russian membership in the G8
and G20.

Obama's warning

Graham, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said there needs to be
more than threats coming from the White House, and called President Barack Obama
“weak and indecisive” on matters of foreign policy.

"No. 1, stop going on television and trying to threaten thugs and dictators - it is not your
strong suit. Every time the President goes on national television and threatens Putin or
someone like Putin, everybody’s eyes roll, including mine,” Graham said.

"How about this: Suspend Russian membership in the G8 and the G20, at least for a
year, starting right now. And for every day they stay in the Crimea, add to the
suspension. Do something,” he added.

Durbin, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, defended Obama's calls for
Putin to pull back Russian forces in Crimea, an autonomous region of eastern Ukraine
with strong loyalty to neighboring Russia, and agreed that suspending Russian
membership in the G8 is "the right thing to do."

In a 90-minute phone call with Putin over the weekend, Obama condemned the
Russian leader's actions in Crimea, saying that Putin is in violation of international law,
according to the White House. The White House said it would suspend participation in
preparatory meetings for the G8 summit that will bring world leaders together in June in
Sochi, Russia.

“The U.S. calls on Russia to de-escalate tensions by withdrawing its forces back to
bases in Crimea and to refrain from any interference elsewhere in Ukraine,” according
to the White House statement. Senior White House officials say the administration is
considering a wide range of possible economic and diplomatic measures against
Russia.

Durbin: U.S. needs to ‘draw a line’

International pressure on Russia mounted as leaders from the EU and the UK joined
an international outcry over the escalation of violence in the region. On the domestic
front, Durbin and Graham said that there are actions Congress can take to show Putin
his use of military force is unacceptable.

"We've got to make it clear to Putin that if there are Russian-speaking people on the soil
of another nation, that doesn't give him license to invade, to protect them when
there is no obvious threat against them,” Durbin said. "What Congress has to do, what
the Senate has to do quickly is a resolution condemning what Putin has done.”

The Illinois Democrat said that Russia's "charm offensive," dumping billions of dollars
into the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, has done little to redefine the nation's
image among Western nations.

"That Sochi charm offensive died on the streets of Sevastopol (Ukraine) when he
moved in thousands of troops days after the closing ceremony. He is trying to have it
both ways," Durbin said. "We've got to make him feel like there is a price to pay for this
kind of conduct."

Graham said the U.S. needs to make clear to countries surrounding Russia its resolve
to take action against Putin and accelerate the admission of neighboring countries, like
Georgia and Moldova, into NATO.

"I would like to create a democratic noose around Putin's Russia," Graham

said. Graham: 'Iranians are watching'

How the U.S. handles the situation developing in Russia is key to the Obama
administration's credibility in other international crises like the ongoing negotiations
over Iran's nuclear program, he said.

"The Iranians are watching. If we do not decisively push back and make them weaker
and all of our friends in the region stronger, the Iranians are going to misunderstand,
yet again, (that) we mean it regarding their nuclear program," Graham said.

Iran is in the process of rolling back parts of its nuclear program in exchange for relief
from sanctions as a part of a temporary agreement to curb the country's nuclear
ambitions appears. Talks between international leaders continue to forge a long-term
agreement.

"So much is at stake," Graham added. "Putin is on the wrong side of history. He is on
the wrong side of the law. Make him pay a price. The Ukrainian people are dying for
their freedom - I hope we will stand with them."
Putin's move could be costly to U.S.,
Middle
East
By Aaron David Miller, Sun March 2, 2014 CNN

Editor's note: Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a Middle East negotiator in
Democratic and Republican administrations.

(CNN) -- Ukrainian sovereignty won't be the only casualty of Russian President

Vladimir Putin's efforts to assert Russian influence and interest in Crimea.

It's still far too early to calibrate how this crisis will play out and what its consequences
will be -- but it's a fair bet that whether it ends in a Putin victory, defeat, or draw, it's
going to make a difficult situation in the Middle East even more complicated.

Whether Putin wins or loses in Ukraine, the odds that Russia could be a reliable
partner for the U.S. have decreased dramatically. And this only reinforces the painfully
obvious: When it comes to the core issues facing the U.S. in the Middle East, the U.S.
must focus on outcomes, not solutions, and be very sober about what it might do to
contribute to them.

Russia's friends

As go Putin's fortunes, so go those of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However the

crisis turns out, with one possible exception, the Syrian regime is likely to benefit. And
that exception is the highly unlikely contingency that Putin is so weakened from a
botched policy in Ukraine or an uncharacteristically bold response from the United
States and the West that he is permanently damaged and diminished, or removed
from power. Not likely.

The possibility that events in Ukraine will leave Putin victorious will only buck up al-
Assad further and demonstrate that Russian street cred is rising. After all, in
September, Putin masterfully intervened and used diplomacy to stay a U.S. military
response against al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Now Putin appears to be standing up to the international community and ready to use
force to protect Russia's interests in Ukraine. He's clearly not prepared to do that for
Syria. But victories for Russia, particularly in the face of the West's empty rhetoric and
red lines, can only reinforce al-Assad's conviction that he's betting on the right ally.

A Putin win -- maintaining significant Russian influence in Ukraine that clearly

undermines Ukraine's sovereignty -- will leave Russia stronger and more dependable
as a partner and ally in the eyes of al-Assad and, probably, Iran.

Although Iran is not nearly as dependent on Moscow as al-Assad is, Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei looks at the crisis and sees Russian resolve in the face of a
feeble West. The hardliners in Tehran will draw their own conclusions about their
margin for maneuver in maintaining nuclear weapons aspirations.

Russia has never been as allergic as America to the possibility that Iran will become a
nuclear threshold weapons state. Iran will cut its own deal with America on the nuclear
issue if it gets the right terms, regardless of what Putin thinks. But given the long odds
against a comprehensive accord, should diplomacy fail, Tehran will likely be able to
count on Russia to block punitive action in the U.N. Security Council and discourage
the use of U.S. military force.

A Putin defeat in Ukraine won't help matters in the Middle East much either, unless the
crisis somehow delivers a knockout blow to Putin.

A chastened Putin would probably be even more ornery and recalcitrant about
cooperating with the international community on Middle Eastern issues.

But either way, the Russians are determined to frustrate U.S. solutions to Middle
Eastern problems that seem like a Pax Americana and exclude Moscow. The reaction
to the West's efforts -- to meddle in what Putin believes is Russia's sphere of influence
and to oppose Moscow -- will create a mini-Cold War that could, for the remainder of
the Obama administration and probably beyond, freeze productive U.S.-Russian
cooperation across the board.

Small powers are watching

Beyond this, should Russia manage to have its way in Ukraine, smaller powers will
take notice, particularly those nations whose interests can be at odds with the West
and the U.S.

Russia is not a small power. But it is standing up to America and the West. And for
the true smaller powers, how "big" reacts when faced with a challenge from "small"
can be instructive. And the Syrians, Iranians and North Koreans will pay attention to
the West's resolve. It can't be a good thing if Russia acts in Ukraine without cost and
consequence.

Israel isn't a friend of Russia nor an adversary of the U.S. But the Israelis have already
seen what U.S. words mean when it comes to their own determination to continue
settlement policy, and to U.S. threats to use military force in Syria, or even against Iran.
And they have concluded that words mean very little.

The Saudis have reached many of the same conclusions about the Obama
administration's willingness to say what it means -- and more important, act upon what
it says.

America's image

Over the years, America has gotten into trouble when the issue of protecting its
credibility is the be-all and end-all, in defiance of common sense and wise policy.

Credibility comes from believability -- when a president speaks of policy, he will make
good on his words, if need be.

If there is is no cost or consequence for saying no to the U.S., then Washington will
have zero street cred. At the same time, if the U.S. tries to maintain credibility by doing
dumb or stupid things, or by overreaching, it undermines what it's attempting to protect.

The Obama administration's street cred is very low. Everyone says no to the U.S.,
seemingly without consequence: al-Assad; Putin; Afghanistan's President Hamid
Karzai; North Korean leader Kim Jong-un; Iraq's President Nuri al-Maliki. It seems the
U.S. even gets "yes, buts" from friends and allies like Israeli President Benjamin
Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Partly this comes from the U.S. setting expectations too high; misreading the way the
world actually is; underestimating how determined smaller powers can be; and it comes
from the reality that America doesn't control the world now and never did.

We have a very risk-averse president who's focused more on domestic affairs than
foreign policy. And he is a leader more committed to improving the middle class as his
legacy than he is to the Middle East and its insoluble troubles.

That president is facing a crisis in Ukraine, where geography, history, and proximity
favor Putin and leave Washington with a weaker hand. Perhaps some face-saving win-
win can be devised. But if not -- and perhaps unfairly, because Obama's options are
bad ones -- America will again be judged a weak and feckless power.

As for the Middle East, regardless of how Ukraine goes, the President's fortunes will
remain more or less the same: The U.S. will remain shackled with a Putin who is no
friend and stuck in a region it can neither repair nor leave.
McCain Tells Obama How to Punish Putin
World News 03.01.14

In an exclusive interview, Senator John McCain identifies several ways the U.S. could
respond to Vladimir Putin’s decision to move Russian troops into Ukraine.

President Obama promised Friday there would be “costs” if Russia moved troops into
Ukraine, but he didn’t specify what those costs might be. Sen. John McCain has
several suggestions for Obama, including the sanctioning of high-level Russian
officials; restarting missile defense plans in Eastern Europe; and bringing Georgia, a
former Soviet republic, into NATO. McCain plans to push from the Congressional side,
he told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview Saturday evening.

McCain wants the administration to expand its threat to pull out of the G8 Summit in
Sochi scheduled for June. That limited move is unlikely to convince Putin to give up his
control of Crimea, where Russia has its 15,000-man strong Black Sea Fleet and where
unmarked but Russian-controlled paramilitary troops control the two main airports.

“I think Obama’s threat is laughable,” McCain said. “But I think we ought to do it and
every other international gathering of leaders, because the one thing that Putin enjoys
is strutting on the international stage.”

McCain added that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- who inaugurated the
Obama administration’s “reset” of relations with Russia in 2009 -- had totally misjudged
Russia.“I think it’s very clear that this whole operation took this administration and the
intelligence community by surprise, but it shouldn’t have.”

“Of course she got it wrong,” said McCain. “She believed that somehow there would be
a reset with a guy who was a KGB colonel who always had ambitions to restore the
Russian empire. That’s what this is all about.”

Next, McCain wants the administration to more broadly apply a law that enables the
U.S. government to sanction Russian officials guilty of human rights violations. The
Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law and Accountability Act, which Obama signed into law in
2012, has so far only been used against low-level Russian officials. But McCain said
that if top Russian officials were involved in the decision to send troops into Ukraine,
they should be added to the list as well, which would subject them to visa bans, asset
freezes, and international scorn.

“We must consider legislation to respond to this,” McCain said. “The Magnitsky bill can
be expanded for holding people responsible for these acts of aggression.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking Republican Bob Corker also called
Saturday for targeted sanctions against senior Russian officials. McCain said additional
economic sanctions against Russia writ large were also called for.

After that, McCain wants the Obama administration to reverse its decision to scuttle
missile defense plans for Eastern Europe, plans that Putin objected to strongly. The
Obama administration claimed that its decision to scrap the plans was not a
concession to Russia, but it came at a time when Obama wanted to work with
Russia on further reducing nuclear-weapon stockpiles. Such cooperation now seems
farfetched.

Lastly, McCain argues that the Obama administration should work with NATO to speed
up the process through which Georgia (invaded by Russia in 2008) could move
towards joining the defense alliance. It’s an unlikely move, but Georgia has been
seeking an interim step called MAP status. But that effort has been hampered by the
fact that Russia occupies two Georgian territories. Ukraine, which voluntarily withdrew
from NATO consideration years ago, might now have more incentive to join the
alliance, McCain said.

McCain stresses that there is no U.S. military option for responding to Russian
aggression in Ukraine, nor should there be. NATO response is not a viable option, and
the Ukrainians can’t fight the Russians on their own, he said.

“The reality is that they do not have the military capability to stand up to Russia. That’s
just a fact. I’m sure they know that,” he said.

McCain is also amazed at what he sees as the Obama administration’s total lack of
foresight that Russia would have moved troops into Ukraine. As of Thursday evening,
U.S. intelligence officials were saying they saw no evidence that Russia was planning a
military intervention in Ukraine. On Friday morning, Secretary of State John Kerry said
he had received assurances from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Moscow
would not do anything that could even be misconstrued as a military intervention.

“Kerry’s statement was laugh out loud ridiculous, if it wasn’t so serious,” said McCain.
“This is prima facie evidence of the delusional attitude that the administration had
toward Vladimir Putin.”

By Friday afternoon, President Obama was warning Putin publicly to withdraw his
forces from Ukraine. (Director of National Intelligence James Clapper held a classified
briefing for senators on the situation the same day.) Saturday morning, top members of
Obama’s national security team met at the White House to consider policy options for
Ukraine. Obama did not attend, but Clapper, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey were seen leaving the White
House following the meeting.

“I think it’s very clear that this whole operation took this administration and the
intelligence community by surprise, but it shouldn’t have,” said McCain.

The White House put out a statement Saturday afternoon reading out Obama’s 90-
minute phone call with Putin on Ukraine from Saturday. The White House statement
didn’t specify any “costs” for Russia besides suspending preparatory meetings for the
G8 summit in Sochi.

“President Obama made clear that Russia’s continued violation of Ukraine’s

sovereignty and territorial integrity would negatively impact Russia’s standing in the
international community,” the White House said. “Going forward, Russia’s continued
violation of international law will lead to greater political and economic isolation.”

McCain said Obama has not spoken out strongly enough against Russian behavior.

“He should publicly condemn this behavior which is worthy of the gangster label,” he
said. “This is a page out of the old Soviet playbook. Send your paramilitary troops and
FSB and foment disorder. And then of course the Russians will say they have to come
in and restore order. It’s the old playbook, the old KGB Colonel Putin at work again.”
Putin Goes to War
March 1, 2014 The New Yorker
Posted by David Remnick,
editor

Vladimir Putin, the Russian President and autocrat, had a plan for the winter of 2014: to
reassert his country’s power a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He
thought that he would achieve this by building an Olympic wonderland on the Black
Sea for fifty-one billion dollars and putting on a dazzling television show. It turns out
that he will finish the season in a more ruthless fashion, by invading a peninsula on the
Black Sea and putting on quite a different show—a demonstration war that could
splinter a sovereign country and turn very bloody, very quickly.

Sergei Parkhomenko, a journalist and pro-democracy activist who was recently

detained by the police in Moscow, described the scenario taking shape as “Afghanistan
2.” He recalled, for Slon.ru, an independent Russian news site, how the Soviet Union
invaded Afghanistan, in 1979, under the pretext of helping a “fraternal” ally in Kabul; to
Parkhomenko, Putin’s decision to couch his military action as the “protection” of
Russians living in Crimea is an equally transparent pretext. The same goes for the
decorous way in which Putin, on Saturday, “requested” the Russian legislature’s
authorization for the use of Russian troops in Ukraine until “the socio-political situation
is normalized.” The legislature, which has all the independence of an organ grinder’s
monkey, voted its unanimous assent.

Other critics of Putin’s military maneuvers in Ukraine used different, but no less
ominous, historical analogies. Some compared the arrival of Russian troops in
Simferopol to the way that the Kremlin, in 2008, took advantage of Georgia’s reckless
bid to retake South Ossetia and then muscled its tiny neighbor, eventually waging a
war that ended with Russia taking control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

In a recent Letter from Sochi, I tried to describe Putin’s motivations: his resentment of
Western triumphalism and American power, after 1991; his paranoia that Washington
is somehow behind every event in the world that he finds threatening, including the
recent events in Kiev; his confidence that the U.S. and Europe are nonetheless weak,
unlikely to respond to his swagger because they need his help in Syria and Iran; his
increasingly vivid nationalist-conservative ideology, which relies, not least, on the
elevation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been so brutally suppressed
during most of the Soviet period, as a quasi-state religion supplying the government
with its moral force.

Obama and Putin spoke on the phone today for an hour and a half. The White House
and Kremlin accounts of the call add up to what was clearly the equivalent of an angry
standoff: lectures, counter-lectures, intimations of threats, intimations of counter-
threats. But the leverage, for now, is all with Moscow.

The legislators in the Russian parliament today parroted those features of modern
Putinism. In order to justify the invasion of the Crimean peninsula, they repeatedly cited
the threat of Ukrainian “fascists” in Kiev helping Russia’s enemies. They repeatedly
echoed the need to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine—a theme consonant with the
Kremlin’s rhetoric about Russians everywhere, including the Baltic States. But there
was, of course, not one word about the sovereignty of Ukraine, which has been
independent since the fall of the Soviet Union, in December, 1991.
If this is the logic of the Russian invasion, the military incursion is unlikely to stop in
Crimea: nearly all of eastern Ukraine is Russian-speaking. Russia defines its interests
far beyond its Black Sea fleet and the Crimean peninsula.
Marina Korolyova, the deputy editor of the liberal radio station Echo of Moscow, told
Slon.ru, “I am the daughter of a military officer who went in with the troops that invaded
Czechoslovakia, in 1968. Today’s decision of the President and the Federation
Council—I feel the pain personally. It is shameful. Shameful.”

It is worth noting that, in Moscow, the modern dissident movement was born in 1968,
when four brave protesters went to Red Square and unfurled a banner denouncing the
invasion of Prague. Those demonstrators are the heroes of, among other young
Russians, the members of the punk band Pussy Riot. This is something that Putin also
grasps very well. At the same time that he is planning his vengeful military operation
against the new Ukrainian leadership, he has been cracking down harder on his
opponents in Moscow. Alexey Navalny, who is best known for his well-publicized
investigations into state corruption and for his role in anti-Kremlin demonstrations two
years ago, has now been placed under house arrest. Navalny, who won twenty-seven
per cent of the vote in a recent Moscow mayoral ballot, is barred from using the
Internet, his principal means of communication and dissidence. The period of Olympic
mercy has come to an end.

It’s also worth noting that, in 1968, Moscow was reacting to the “threat” of the Prague
Spring and to ideological liberalization in Eastern Europe; in 1979, the Kremlin
leadership was reacting to the upheavals in Kabul. The rationale now is far flimsier,
even in Moscow’s own terms. The people of the Crimean peninsula were hardly under
threat by “fascist gangs” from Kiev. In the east, cities like Donetsk and Kharkov had
also been quiet, though that may already be changing. That’s the advantage of Putin’s
state-controlled television and his pocket legislature; you can create any reality and
pass any edict.

I spoke with Georgy Kasianov, the head of the Academy of Science’s department of
contemporary Ukrainian history and politics, in Kiev. “It’s a war,” he said. “The Russian
troops are quite openly out on the streets [in Crimea], capturing public buildings and
military outposts. And it’s likely all a part of a larger plan for other places: Odessa,
Nikolayev, Kherson. And they’ll use the same technique. Some Russian-speaking
citizens will appear, put up a Russian flag, and make appeals that they want help and
referendums, and so on.” This is already happening in Donetsk and Kharkov.

“They are doing this like it is a commonplace,” Kasianov went on. “I can’t speak for four
million people, but clearly everyone in Kiev is against this. But the Ukrainian leadership
is absolutely helpless. The Army is not ready for this. And, after the violence in Kiev,
the special forces are disoriented.”

Just a few days ago, this horrendous scenario of invasion and war, no matter how
limited, seemed the farthest thing from nearly everyone’s mind in either Ukraine or
Russia, much less the West. As it happens so often in these situations—from Tahrir
Square to Taksim Square to Maidan Square—people were taken up with the thrill of
uprising. After Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev, the coverage moved to what one might call
the “golden toilet” stage of things, that moment when the freedom-hungry crowds
discover the fallen leader’s arrangements and bountiful holdings—the golden bathroom
fixtures; the paintings and the tapestries; the secret mistress; the lurid bedrooms and
freezers stocked with sweetmeats; the surveillance videos and secret transcripts; the
global real-estate holdings; the foreign bank accounts; the fleets of cars, yachts, and
airplanes; the bad taste, the unknown cruelties.

The English-language Kyiv Post published a classic in the genre when it reported how
journalists arriving at the “inner sanctum” of the mansion where Yanukovych had lived
in splendor discovered that he had been cohabiting not with his wife of four decades
but, rather, with—and try not to faint—a younger woman. It “appears” that Yanukovych
had been living there with a spa owner named Lyubov (which means “love”) Polezhay.
“The woman evidently loves dogs and owns a white Pomeranian spitz that was seen in
the surveillance camera’s footage of Yanukovych leaving” the mansion.

But that was trivia. Masha Lipman, my colleague in Moscow, sketched out in stark and
prescient terms some of the challenges facing Ukraine, ranging from the divisions
within the country to the prospect of what Putin might do rather than “lose” Ukraine.

Putin’s reaction exceeded our worst expectations. These next days and weeks in
Ukraine are bound to be frightening, and worse. There is not only the threat of
widening Russian military force. The new Ukrainian leadership is worse than weak. It
is unstable. It faces the burden of legitimacy. Yanukovych was spectacularly corrupt,
and he opened fire on his own people. He was also elected to his office and brought
low by an uprising, not the ballot; he made that point on Friday, in a press
conference in Rostov on Don, in Russia, saying that he had never really been
deposed. Ukraine has already experienced revolutionary disappointment. The
Orange Revolution, in 2004, failed to establish stable democratic institutions and
economic justice. This is one reason that Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Prime
Minister, newly released from prison, is not likely the future of Ukraine. How can
Ukraine possibly move quickly to national elections, as it must to resolve the issue of
legitimacy, while another country has troops on its territory?

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a liberal Russian politician who no longer holds office, said that the
events were not only dangerous for Ukraine but ominous for Russia and the man
behind them. “It’s quite likely that this will be fatal for the regime and catastrophic for
Russia,” he told Slon.ru. “It just looks as if they have taken leave of their senses.”
Crimea, the Tinderbox
By CHARLES KINGMARCH 1, 2014 NY Times

WASHINGTON — The Russian military intervention in Ukraine’s autonomous republic

of Crimea has brought relations between the United States and Russia to their lowest
level in a quarter century. It has transgressed the sovereignty of one of the most
populous countries in Europe, violated the terms of a diplomatic agreement to respect
Ukraine’s borders, and placed Russia on a war footing with one of the few states in
the post-Soviet world that has managed to hold multiple free elections. It is a military
operation that is unsanctioned by any international body, wholly open-ended, and
blessed only by the Russian Parliament.

Crimea is routinely described as “pro-Russian,” given that an estimated 58 percent

of the population of two million is ethnic Russian, with another 24 percent Ukrainian
and 12 percent Crimean Tatar. Many of its inhabitants, regardless of ethnicity, are
actually Russian citizens or dual-passport holders. But the picture is even more
complicated. A vital naval base run by another country, a community of patriotic
military retirees, a multiethnic patchwork, a weak state and competing national
mythologies — that mixture is why a Crimean conflict has long been the nightmare
scenario in the former Soviet Union and now represents the gravest crisis in Europe
since the end of the Cold War.

But that is also the reason all sides must tread carefully. Affirmations about territorial
integrity and cries of foreign invasion are empty mantras at a moment when a major
European country — unbuilt by a string of fatuous governments and now further
destabilized from abroad — has ceased to exist as a functionally unified state. NATO
cannot possibly extend security guarantees to a government that does not control its
own territory. Yet even in the midst of a standoff, Russia and the West have a clear
common interest: forestalling a civil war in the heart of Europe.

If you were able to make your way through the closed airspace, past the demonstrators
and Russian-run checkpoints, you could visit a spot that symbolizes why Crimea
matters. The Cathedral of St. Vladimir rests on a small hill on Crimea’s southwestern
coast. The church is a modern creation, gilded and graceless, but it stands on an
auspicious site: the place where, it is thought, Vladimir adopted Christianity in 988 as
the state religion of his principality, Rus.

To Russians, Vladimir is the first national saint and the truest progenitor of the modern
Russian state. To Ukrainians, he is Volodymyr the Great, founder of the Slavic
civilization that would eventually flourish farther north, in medieval Kiev. His church
overlooks the expansive ruins of Chersonesus, an ancient Greek settlement that is
one of modern Ukraine’s most convincing claims to continuous membership in the
Western world.

Just around the headland is Sevastopol, the protected port and naval base where
Tolstoy once served on the ramparts. During the Second World War, it was besieged
and leveled by German bombers despite a heroic stand by the Soviet Army and
partisans. It remained the seat of the Soviet Black Sea fleet after the war, and when the
Soviet Union disappeared, the Russian and Ukrainian navies divided up the ships and
berths. For generations, sailors and marines have returned from sea to retire in the
city’s leafy neighborhoods.

An hour’s car ride away is Yalta, where czars vacationed and Chekhov wrote “The
Cherry Orchard.” An hour farther is Stary Krym with its centuries-old mosque and the
splendid palace at Bakhchisarai — two of the principal historical sites of the Crimean
Tatars, the Muslim community that ruled Crimea for centuries before the Russians
arrived. In 1783, when Catherine the Great wrested control from the Tatar khan and the
Ottoman Turks, hundreds of thousands of Tatars fled the advancing Russian armies. A
century and a half later, in 1944, those who remained behind were scooped up by
Stalin and deported to Central Asia. Their children and grandchildren eventually
returned to their ancient lands and now fly the blue Tatar flag, with its distinctive cattle-
brand seal, alongside Ukrainian and Russian ones in the crowds of clashing protesters
who have come into the streets of Sevastopol, Simferopol and other cities.

Has Crimea also now become a Sudetenland? Or is it just a Grenada? Some

Western commentators have already suggested the former, comparing President
Vladimir V. Putin’s dispatch of Russian forces to Hitler’s 1938 annexation of German-
populated parts of Czechoslovakia. In his 90-minute telephone call with President
Obama on Saturday, Mr. Putin used a novel justification for his country’s attack on a
neighboring state: protecting the interests of both Russian citizens and “compatriots”
— code not just for ethnic Russians but for anyone with a political or cultural
disposition toward Russia.

In the parallel universe of the Russian media, the preemptive and humanitarian nature
of the operation gets pride of place. The ouster of Ukraine’s former president, Viktor F.
Yanukovych, was a takeover by militant “ultranationalists,” Mr. Putin declared, and
Ukraine was slipping toward widespread disorder. That line resonates at home. In a
poll carried out in late February by the independent, Moscow-based Levada Center, 43
percent of Russians called the overthrow of Mr. Yanukovych a violent coup and 23
percent labeled the developing situation a civil war. A plurality of respondents saw the
entire affair as an orchestrated attempt by the West to draw Ukraine into its geopolitical
orbit.

This interpretive frame may be hard to understand, but some things are not wrong just
because Russians happen to believe them. Russian news crews were covering a real
story in Ukraine: the chaotic dismantling of a legally sanctioned government, the quick
breakdown of an agreed framework for new elections, and the creeping transformation
of political disputes into ethnic ones.

All of this points to the chief opportunity as well as the chief danger for Mr. Putin.
The Crimean affair is a grand experiment in Mr. Putin’s strategy of equivalence:
countering every criticism of his government’s behavior with a page from the West’s
own playbook. If his government has a guiding ideology, it is not the concept of
restoring the old Soviet Union. It is rather his commitment to exposing what Russian
politicians routinely call the “double standards” of American and European foreign
policy and revealing the hidden workings of raison d’état — the hardnosed and
pragmatic calculation of interests that average citizens from Moscow to Beijing to
New Delhi actually believe drives the policies of all great powers.

The United States typically interprets its own actions through the lens of its principles.
It reads the principles of other countries from their behavior. In most instances that
leads to precisely the hypocrisies that Russia, China and other countries find so easy
to condemn.

But Crimea is different, and the results are potentially disastrous. With rival militias now
forming on the peninsula and the Russian flag flying over government buildings in parts
of southeastern Ukraine, the immediate task of diplomacy is to rescue Ukraine from the
consequences of its accidental revolution.

First, the European Union, the United States, and Russia must all agree that the
principal goal is to prevent greater violence. The Ukrainian government must block
armed groups from traveling to Crimea from other parts of Ukraine, just as Russia must
halt the formation of pro-Russian militias in Crimea and beyond. Rather than returning
to base, as President Obama has demanded, Russia must use the current disposition
of Russian forces to police the very situation they have created. Any confirmed transfer
of arms to civilians or non-uniformed soldiers from Russian stores should be treated as
a violation of the United Nations charter.

Second, European and American officials must be clear on the reasons why the
international community should band together to condemn Russian actions. It is not
because of the violation of national sovereignty — a concept imperfectly defended by
Americans and Europeans in recent years — but because Mr. Putin’s reserving the
right to protect the “Russian-speaking population” of Ukraine is an affront to the basis
of international order. Not even the alleged ultranationalists who Mr. Putin claims now
control the Ukrainian government have tried to export their uprising to Ukrainian
speakers in Poland, Moldova, or Romania, or indeed Russia itself. It is Mr. Putin who
has made ethnic nationalism a defining element of foreign policy.

Russia was in fact a pioneer of the idea that, in the jargon of international affairs, is
now called R2P: the responsibility to protect. Under Czar Nicholas I, Russia asserted
its right to guarantee the lives and fortunes of Orthodox Christians inside the territory of
its chief strategic rival, the Ottoman Empire. In 1853 Russia launched a preemptive
attack on the Ottomans, sending its fleet out of Sevastopol harbor to sink Ottoman
ships across the Black Sea. Britain, France and other allies stepped in to respond to
the unprovoked attack. The result was called the Crimean War, a conflict that, as every
Russian schoolchild knows, Russia lost.

The future of Ukraine is now no longer about Kiev’s Independence Square, democracy
in Ukraine or European integration. It is about how to preserve a vision of Europe —
and, indeed, of the world — where countries give up the idea that people who speak a
language we understand are the only ones worth protecting.
Why Russia No Longer Fears the West
BEN JUDAH March 02, 2014

The West is blinking in disbelief – Vladimir Putin just invaded Ukraine. German
diplomats, French Eurocrats and American pundits are all stunned. Why has Russia
chosen to gamble its trillion-dollar ties with the West?

Western leaders are stunned because they haven’t realized Russia’s owners no longer
respect Europeans the way they once did after the Cold War. Russia thinks the West is
no longer a crusading alliance. Russia thinks the West is now all about the money.

Putin’s henchmen know this personally. Russia’s rulers have been buying up Europe
for years. They have mansions and luxury flats from London’s West End to France’s
Cote d’Azure. Their children are safe at British boarding and Swiss finishing schools.
And their money is squirrelled away in Austrian banks and British tax havens.

Putin’s inner circle no longer fear the European establishment. They once imagined
them all in MI6. Now they know better. They have seen firsthand how obsequious
Western aristocrats and corporate tycoons suddenly turn when their billions come into
play. They now view them as hypocrites—the same European elites who help them
hide their fortunes.

Once Russia’s powerful listened when European embassies issued statements

denouncing the baroque corruption of Russian state companies. But no more. Because
they know full well it is European bankers, businessmen and lawyers who do the dirty
work for them placing the proceeds of corruption in hideouts from the Dutch Antilles to
the British Virgin Islands.

We are not talking big money. But very big money. None other than Putin’s Central
Bank has estimated that two thirds of the $56 billion exiting Russia in 2012 might be
traceable to illegal activities. Crimes like kickbacks, drug money or tax fraud. This is the
money that posh English bankers are rolling out the red carpet for in London.

Behind European corruption, Russia sees American weakness. The Kremlin does not
believe European countries – with the exception of Germany – are truly independent of
the United States. They see them as client states that Washington could force now, as
it once did in the Cold War, not to do such business with the Kremlin.

When Russia sees Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal outbidding each other to be
Russia’s best business partner inside the EU (in return for no mention of human rights),
they see America’s control over Europe slowly dissolving.

Back in Moscow, Russia’s hears American weakness out of Embassy Moscow. Once
upon a time the Kremlin feared a foreign adventure might trigger Cold War economic
sanctions where it hurts: export bans on key parts for its oil industry, even being cut out
of its access to the Western banking sector. No more.

Russia sees an America distracted: Putin’s Ukrainian gambit was a shock to the U.S.
foreign policy establishment. They prefer talking about China, or participating in Israeli-
Palestinian peace talks. Russia sees an America vulnerable: in Afghanistan, in Syria
and on Iran—a United States that desperately needs Russian support to continue
shipping its supplies, host any peace conference or enforce its sanctions.

Moscow is not nervous. Russia’s elites have exposed themselves in a gigantic manner
– everything they hold dear is now locked up in European properties and bank
accounts. Theoretically, this makes them vulnerable. The EU could, with a sudden rush
of money-laundering investigations and visa bans, cut them off from their wealth. But,
time and time again, they have watched European governments balk at passing
anything remotely similar to the U.S. Magnitsky Act, which bars a handful of criminal-
officials from entering the United States.

All this has made Putin confident, very confident – confident that European elites are
more concerned about making money than standing up to him. The evidence is there.
After Russia’s strike force reached the outskirts of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, in 2008,
there were statements and bluster, but not a squeak about Russia’s billions. After
Russia’s opposition were thrown into show trials, there were concerned letters from the
European Union, but again silence about Russia’s billions.

The Kremlin thinks it knows Europe’s dirty secret now. The Kremlin thinks it has the
European establishment down to a tee. The grim men who run Putin’s Russia see them
like latter-day Soviet politicians. Back in the 1980s, the USSR talked about international
Marxism but no longer believed it. Brussels today, Russia believes, talks about human
rights but no longer believes in it. Europe is really run by an elite with the morality of the
hedge fund: Make money at all costs and move it offshore.

Ben Judah is author of Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In And Out Of Love With
Vladimir Puti
Memo to Putin: if you break it you own it
FT March 1, 2014 10:46 pm By Eugene Rumer
Pulling apart a country is a lot easier than putting it back together, writes Eugene
Rumer

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request for a Russian-style War Powers resolution
to use Russian troops in Ukraine has put him on the brink of a direct military
intervention in Ukraine

It is also the one step that many in the West, as well as some in Russia, had hoped he
was too pragmatic to take. One can still wish that the resolution is just another step on
the escalation ladder, and that Putin the pragmatist does not intend to launch full-scale
military invasion of Ukraine. But that would be old thinking. We need to rethink our
understanding of Putin’s pragmatism now that he has taken ownership of the situation
and positioned himself to plunge deeper into the crisis.

Even a few days ago, the idea of Russian troops marching into Ukraine seemed like a
nightmare scenario unlikely to happen. Surely, we thought, Putin is too rational a
politician keenly aware of the risks – military, economic, reputational – to invade
Ukraine; Putin would not want to get involved in the mess that Ukrainian politics has
become because he and Yanukovych famously do not get along. He knows that even
in the Russian-leaning Crimea there are more than 200,000 Crimean Tatars who are
opposed to Crimean separatism and want to remain in Ukraine. Putin would not want
another Cold War-like confrontation with the West, when the Russian economy is
slowing to a crawl, and when he has been warned sternly against interfering in Ukraine.

No doubt, Putin is aware of all that. But he appears to follow a different logic. He has
lost Ukraine before. During the “Orange revolution” of 2004, Moscow heavy-handed
interference backfired and mobilised millions of Ukrainians to choose the path of reform
and pursuit of integration with the West. In 2013, Ukraine saw the repeat of that
scenario, when Moscow again turned the heat on Kyiv not to sign the Association
Agreement with the European Union. Pressured by Moscow, Yanukovych backed away
from the deal, but in doing so triggered another revolution. Evidently, Putin is not
prepared to lose Ukraine again, especially after he has made it the cornerstone of his
foreign policy to bring the former Soviet states back to Russia’s orbit and bet a $22
billion aid package to hold on to Yanukovych and Ukraine.

Putin may not be able to keep Ukraine, but he can keep it from joining the West. He
may not need to invade it if a combination of a special forces-type action like the one
in Crimea and Russian-inspired domestic turmoil in Russian-leaning cities such as
Kharkiv and Donetsk is enough to sink his hooks deeper into Ukraine. It is a
dangerous game, but Putin seems to think that a broken Ukraine is better than an
independent Ukraine.

What about the risks – military, economic, reputational? The stern warnings from
Washington and other Western capitals to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity contained no concrete indication of what the West might do. The West seems
to cling to the fiction that Ukraine’s sovereignty has not been violated despite reports of
Russian military planes ferrying troops to Crimea.

Putin has seen it all before. “To begin to repair its relations with the United States and
Europe and other nations and to begin restoring its place in the world, Russia must
respect the freedom of its neighbours,” said President George W Bush as Russian
troops crushed the Georgian army in August 2008. “Russian aggression must not go
unanswered, and .. . its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations
with the United States,” warned Vice-president Dick Cheney. In July 2009, President
Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met in Moscow to inaugurate the
“reset.”

As to economic risks, Putin is prepared to handle them with half a trillion dollars in
foreign currency reserves, some $200bn in reserve funds, and the price of oil likely
to spike as it often does at times of international tensions. After two decades of
discussions with foreign governments about attracting more foreign investments to
Russia, Putin probably knows that governments have little say in private companies’
investment decisions. Trade embargoes, financial sanctions – the West could not
agree on those during the Cold War, and Putin probably thinks these are even less
likely now.

The greatest risk Putin is facing is military. He probably is not worried about NATO’s
response. But he has positioned himself to intervene in Ukraine, and having raised the
stakes may have a hard time backing away. Militarily, the task of sinking Russian
hooks into Ukraine or breaking it is simple. The task of putting it back together and
putting down the crisis will be much harder if it continues to escalate and real fighting
breaks out between Kyiv’s forces and the separatists. Putin may yet find out what
many others found out before him – that breaking a country is a lot easier than putting
it back together.

The writer served most recently as the National Intelligence Officer for Russia and
Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council in Washington.
The crisis in Crimea could lead the world
into a second cold war
Dmitri Trenin - The Guardian Sunday 2 March 2014 07.04 GMT

The Kremlin believes the west has been instrumental in the unrest in Ukraine – and will
take its revenge

This is perhaps the most dangerous point in Europe's history since the end of the cold
war. Direct confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian forces will draw in the United
States, one way or another. While there is still time, it's extremely important to
understand what each party involved is aiming for.

Over the last 10 days, Moscow has been unpleasantly surprised several times. First,
when Ukraine's then president, Viktor Yanukovych, halted an operation which would
have cleared his opponents from the positions they occupied in central Kiev. Given
the clear order, the Berkut riot police were closing in on the Maidan – the protest
movement, named after Kiev's Independence Square, whose leaders were
desperately calling for a truce, – but suddenly the Berkut advance was stopped.
Instead, Yanukovych invited the opposition for negotiations. The second surprise
came when the negotiations turned into talks about Yanukovych's concessions, with
the participation of three European Union foreign ministers.

The agreement, signed on 21 February, was a delayed capitulation by Yanukovych –

who had been seen triumphant only a couple of days earlier. An even bigger surprise
was the rejection of these capitulation terms by the radicals, and the opposition
supporting Yanukovych's immediate resignation. Finally, the German, Polish and
French governments, who had just witnessed the Kiev accord, raised no objection to
the just-signed agreement being scrapped within hours.

Russia, whose representative had been invited to witness the signing of the 21
February document, but who wisely refused to co-sign it, was incensed. What Moscow
saw on 21-22 February was a coup d'état in Kiev. This development led to a
fundamental reassessment of Russian policy in Ukraine, and vis-à-vis the West.

Viewing the February revolution in Kiev as a coup engineered by Ukrainian radical

nationalists from the west of the country – assisted by Europe and the United States –
the Kremlin believed Russia's important interests were directly affected. First, Russian
president Vladimir Putin's plans of economic integration in the post-Soviet space would
have to do without Ukraine. Second, the fact that radical nationalist components were
among the beneficiaries of the Kiev revolution left no doubt about Ukraine's future
foreign and security policy and its domestic policies.

The Association Agreement with the EU, whose signature was suspended by
Yanukovych in November 2013, would now be signed, putting Ukraine, in principle, on
track to long-term integration with the EU. More ominously, the new Ukrainian
government would revoke the 2010 law on the country's non-aligned status and seek a
Nato Membership Action Plan, or MAP. (It was the issue of MAP which materially
contributed to the 2008 war between Russia and Georgia). In domestic terms, the
triumph of western Ukrainian nationalists threatened discrimination against the Russian
language, including in the largely Russophone eastern and southern regions, and a
separation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Moscow Patriarchate. The new
official Ukrainian narrative, it was feared in Moscow, would change from the post-
Soviet "Ukraine is not Russia" to something like "Ukraine in opposition to Russia".
Moscow has always been thoughtless, lazy and incoherent in its strategy towards an
independent Ukraine. It preferred instead to focus on specific interests:
denuclearisation; the Black Sea fleet; gas transit and prices; and the like. During the
early days of the present crisis, it remained largely passive. Now, things are changing
at breakneck speed. With the delicate balance in the Ukrainian polity and society
which had existed since the break-up of the USSR no more, Russia has begun to act,
decisively, even rashly. Again, there is hardly a master strategy in sight, but some key
elements are becoming evident.

Russia is now seeking to insulate the Crimean peninsula from the rest of Ukraine – to
prevent clashes between Kiev's military or police forces or Ukrainian nationalist
paramilitary groups, on the one hand, and the locals, on the other, as well as to
neutralise the Ukrainian police and military forces permanently deployed in Crimea.
Moscow has given political, economic and military support to the local, pro-Russian
elements who never accepted Ukraine's ownership of Crimea, which was transferred
from Moscow's to Kiev's administration in 1954. Moscow now has two options: a
confederacy between Crimea and Ukraine and Crimea's full integration into the
Russian Federation (a relevant law is being adjusted to allow this).

With regard to eastern and southern Ukraine, Russia will seek to support those
elements who resent western Ukrainian rule in Kiev. Rather than favouring their
secession, Moscow is likely to support Ukraine's decentralisation up to federalisation,
which would neutralise the threat of a unified anti-Russian Ukraine within Nato. The
effectiveness of Russia's efforts to mobilise opposition to Kiev in the east and south will
depend on the levels of wisdom and tolerance by the new authorities in Kiev. In the
worst case, a unified Ukraine may not survive.

With regard to Kiev, Moscow has balked at recognising the "coup" which many
Russian state-run media and officials call "fascist" or "neo-Nazi" – a reference to the
collaboration between western Ukrainian nationalists and Adolf Hitler during the
second world war. Russia has not recognised the provisional government and is only
maintaining "working contacts" with Ukrainian officials. To poke Kiev in the eye,
Russia gave the ousted President Yanukovych personal protection on its own territory,
and organised his press conference in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don on Friday.
The lack of legitimate authority – the Russians say the Rada, the Ukrainian
parliament, is acting under pressure from the Maidan – gives Moscow a freedom to
act in "lawless" and "rudderless" Ukraine.

Unlike in 2008 in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow decided not to wait for the first
shot being fired before intervening: prevention, it now evidently believes, is better than
counter-attack. As in 2008, however, recognition of a breakaway region by Moscow –
this time, Crimea – may become the legal basis for a Russian military presence in the
area beyond the terms of the 1997 Russo-Ukrainian treaty governing the status of the
Black Sea fleet. This is unlikely to be a passing moment in Russian-western relations.

In Moscow, there is a growing fatigue with the west, with the EU and the United States.
Their role in Ukraine is believed to be particularly obnoxious: imposing on Ukraine a
choice between the EU and Russia that it could not afford; supporting the opposition
against an elected government; turning a blind eye to right-wing radical descendants of
wartime Nazi collaborators; siding with the opposition to pressure the government into
submission; finally, condoning an unconstitutional regime change. The Kremlin is yet
again convinced of the truth of the famous maxim of Alexander III, that Russia has only
two friends in the world, its army and its navy. Both now defend its interests in Crimea.
The Crimea crisis will not pass soon. Kiev is unlikely to agree to Crimea's secession,
even if backed by clear popular will: this would be discounted because of the "foreign
occupation" of the peninsula. The crisis is also expanding to include other players,
notably the United States. So far, there has been no military confrontation between
Russian and Ukrainian forces, but if they clash, this will not be a repeat of the five-day
war in the South Caucasus, as in 2008. The conflict will be longer and bloodier, with
security in Europe put at its highest risk in a quarter century.

Even if there is no war, the Crimea crisis is likely to alter fundamentally relations
between Russia and the west and lead to changes in the global power balance, with
Russia now in open competition with the United States and the European Union in the
new eastern Europe. If this happens, a second round of the cold war may ensue as a
punishment for leaving many issues unsolved – such as Ukraine's internal cohesion,
the special position of Crimea, or the situation of Russian ethnics in the newly
independent states; but, above all, leaving unresolved Russia's integration within the
Euro-Atlantic community. Russia will no doubt pay a high price for its apparent decision
to "defend its own" and "put things right", but others will have to pay their share, too.

Dmitri Trenin is director of the Carnegie Moscow Centre.

2-3-2014 02.30 Here's US Secretary of State John Kerry's statement on Ukraine in full:

The United States condemns the Russian Federation's invasion and occupation of
Ukrainian territory, and its violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity
in full contravention of Russia’s obligations under the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final
Act, its 1997 military basing agreement with Ukraine, and the 1994 Budapest
Memorandum. This action is a threat to the peace and security of Ukraine, and the
wider region.
I spoke with President Turchynov this morning to assure him he had the strong support
of the United States and commend the new government for showing the utmost restraint
in the face of the clear and present danger to the integrity of their state, and the assaults
on their sovereignty. We also urge that the Government of Ukraine continue to make
clear, as it has from throughout this crisis, its commitment to protect the rights of all
Ukrainians and uphold its international obligations.
As President Obama has said, we call for Russia to withdraw its forces back to bases,
refrain from interference elsewhere in Ukraine, and support international mediation to
address any legitimate issues regarding the protection of minority rights or security.
From day one, we've made clear that we recognize and respect Russia’s ties to Ukraine
and its concerns about treatment of ethnic Russians. But these concerns can and must
be addressed in a way that does not violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial
integrity, by directly engaging the Government of Ukraine.
Unless immediate and concrete steps are taken by Russia to deescalate tensions, the
effect on U.S.-Russian relations and on Russia’s international standing will be
profound.
I convened a call this afternoon with my counterparts from around the world, to
coordinate on next steps. We were unified in our assessment and will work closely
together to support Ukraine and its people at this historic hour.
In the coming days, emergency consultations will commence in the UN Security
Council, the North Atlantic Council, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe in defense of the underlying principles critical to the maintenance of
international peace and security. We continue to believe in the importance of an
international presence from the UN or OSCE to gather facts, monitor for violations or
abuses and help protect rights. As a leading member of both organizations, Russia can
actively participate and make sure its interests are taken into account.
The people of Ukraine want nothing more than the right to define their own future –
peacefully, politically and in stability. They must have the international community’s
full support at this vital moment. The United States stands with them, as we have for 22
years, in seeing their rights restored.
How to understand Putin's Ukraine strategy
By Leon Aron, Special to CNN March 1st, 2014

Editor's note: Leon Aron is resident scholar and director of Russian Studies at the
American Enterprise Institute. The views expressed are his own.

To understand what motivates Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukrainian crisis
and how he will proceed, we have to recall two key things about his strategy and his
tactics.

First, Russian foreign policy – whether under Brezhnev, Yeltsin, Putin or anyone after
him – is informed by three imperatives: Russia as a nuclear superpower, Russia as the
world’s great power, and Russia as the central power in the post-Soviet geopolitical
space. And a power that is political, economic, cultural, diplomatic and most certainly
military.

What differs from one Russian political regime to another is interpretation and
implementation, that is, the policies that support these objectives. Putin’s have been far
more assertive and at times riskier than those of his predecessors. The nuclear
“superpowership” has been translated into a vehement opposition to missile defense in
Europe. Russia as a great power has been defined largely in opposition to the U.S. and
the West in general. And the centrality of Russia in the post-Soviet space has been re-
interpreted as dominance and hegemony.

Ukraine’s European breakout – caused by Putin’s first major political blunder in openly
and heavy handedly betting on ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and
thus escalating the issue from corruption and thievery to Ukraine’s sovereignty – is
hugely important to Putin’s Russia. Why? Because it has dealt a very heavy, perhaps
fatal, blow to not one but two elements of the Russian geostrategic triad as defined by
Putin: to the "great power" pillar (the West has won in the Ukraine!), and to Russia's
hegemony in the post-Soviet space.

From Moscow’s point of view, the double whammy must be mitigated – or better yet
reversed – before the consequences become irrevocable and the geopolitical map of
Eurasia permanently redrawn. As a result, for as long as the eye can see, containment,
de-stabilization and, if possible, derailment of the Europe-bound Ukraine will be by far
the most important objective of Russian foreign (as well domestic) policy.

As to the tactics, in his effectively 14 years in power, Putin has been very lucky both in
his domestic and foreign endeavors, in part because of objective factors (when he took
over as acting president in 1999, a barrel of crude averaged around $17 a barrel) and
in large measure because his opponents, at home and abroad, were politically or
economically handicapped.

As a result, Putin has trusted his luck and his smarts while counting on his opponents'
weaknesses. This means he has operated in accordance with Napoleon’s principle: On
s’engage and puis on voit, which I would translate as “First get into a fight, and then
decides what to do."

And that is how he has proceeded thus far, gradually escalating the pressure on
Ukraine, seeing what works and what does not, pausing and looking over his
shoulder at the response from the West, primarily the U.S. From the expression of
concern for the safety of ethnic Russians in Ukraine (which proved ineffective), to the
questioning of the legitimacy of the Ukrainian government, to the introduction of
forces in the Crimea, to his “request” to the Federation Council of the Russian
parliament for the “use” of troops in Ukraine. In accordance with his tactical habits,
Putin will likely stop
now and assess the reaction. A full-scale invasion and occupation of Crimea is
therefore likely to be next – unless the response from the “West” proves effective.

What will that response be? We know (and so surely does Putin) that the U.S. is not
going to go to war over Ukraine. Yet even with the military option off the table, the U.S.
still has quite a few diplomatic and economic tools at its disposal, to be deployed
publicly and, most crucially, privately.

The U.S. and its allies also must keep in mind that most, if not all, of these measures
are aimed not only at Putin but at the elites around him and at the Russian public at
large. Dominant though he is, Putin is not Stalin or Brezhnev. Russia is not the Soviet
Union, the Iron Curtain is gone – the internet exists and public opinion matters.

The West’s steps are not difficult to divine. To begin, in the public domain, separate
statements and phone calls to Putin by U.S. allies would be replaced by a joint
statement from the heads of state of NATO and EU countries warning about the
“consequences” of a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Such a statement should stress that
Russia risks isolating itself from the world – economically, politically, culturally – with
disastrous results for the people of the Russian Federation.

These “consequences” may have been spelled out in President Obama’s private call
to Putin (with an understanding that what is private today may become public
tomorrow). Ideally, the conversation would have been one in which the American
president was speaking not only for the U.S., but also for NATO and the EU. The
president is likely to have pointed out that the risks would involve Russia's
membership in the G-8, the safety of financial and other assets of the Russian elite
which are located outside of Russia, as well as the ability of the members of this elite
and their families to visit, live or study in the U.S. and the EU. In addition, Moscow's
behavior could trigger new export controls, which given its dependence on Western
technology, particularly in the oil and gas sector as well as in the food industry, could
have a very negative impact on the Russian economy.

Alongside these measures, the U.S. and its allies might also provide – publicly and in
private – a few face-saving devices for Russia, such as guarantees that the Russian-
speaking Ukrainians will be free from harassment or discrimination of any kind; an
introduction of U.N. peacemaking forces in Crimea to protect the political rights of all
Crimeans, and the reaffirmation of the pre-existing “special status” of Crimea within
Ukraine, as well as the continuation of the pre-existing Russian sovereignty of the
leased naval base in Sevastopol.

Given the size of the hole that the Ukrainian revolution has torn in the fabric of Russia’s
geopolitics, these measures may not stop Russia from attempting to reverse the crisis.
But they will certainly convey the increasing costs of the course in which the Kremlin
seems to be embarking, and possibly provide a way out without losing face.
Making Russia Pay? It’s Not So Simple
By PETER BAKERMARCH 1, 2014 NY Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama has warned Russia that “there will be costs” for a
military intervention in Ukraine. But the United States has few palatable options for
imposing such costs, and recent history has shown that when it considers its interests
at stake, Russia has been willing to absorb any such fallout.

Even before President Vladimir V. Putin on Saturday made his first public gesture
toward ordering Russian troops into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, Mr. Obama and
his team were already discussing how to respond. They talked about canceling the
president’s trip to a summit meeting in Russia in June, shelving a possible trade
agreement, kicking Moscow out of the Group of 8 or moving American warships to
the region.

That is the same menu of actions that was offered to President George W. Bush in
2008 when Russia went to war with Georgia, another balky former Soviet republic. Yet
the costs imposed at that time proved only marginally effective and short-lived. Russia
stopped its advance but nearly six years later has never fully lived up to the terms of
the cease-fire it signed. And whatever penalty it paid at the time evidently has not
deterred it from again muscling a neighbor.

“The question is: are those costs big enough to cause Russia not to take advantage
of the situation in the Crimea? That’s the $64,000 question,” said Brig. Gen. Kevin
Ryan, a retired Army officer who served as defense attaché in the American
Embassy in Moscow and now, as a Harvard scholar, leads a group of former Russian
and American officials in back-channel talks.

Mr. Putin has already demonstrated that the most obvious cost, to its international
reputation, would not stop him from what Ukraine is calling an invasion of Crimea and
what United States officials, at least privately, are calling a military intervention. Having
just hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi, he must have realized he was all but
throwing away seven years and $50 billion of effort to polish Russia’s image.

Before issuing any orders, Mr. Putin certainly expected condemnations and diplomatic
protests from the United States and Europe, and he calculated that they did not
outweigh what he sees as a threat to Russia’s historical interest in Ukraine, which was
ruled by Moscow until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and where it still has a
major military base.

Finding more compelling levers to influence his decision-making will be a challenge for
Mr. Obama and the European allies. Mr. Obama has seen repeatedly that warnings
often do not discourage autocratic rulers from taking violent action, as when Syria
crossed the president’s “red line” by using chemical weapons in its civil war.

Russia is an even tougher country to pressure, too powerful even in the post-Soviet
age to rattle with stern lectures or shows of military force, and too rich in resources to
squeeze economically in the short term. With a veto on the United Nations Security
Council, it need not worry about the world body. And as the primary source of natural
gas to much of Europe, it holds a trump card over many American allies.

Mr. Obama is under bipartisan pressure to take action to stop Mr. Putin. A dozen
senators from both parties wrote him a letter Friday arguing that “the U.S. should make
use of the tools at its disposal,” including targeted sanctions and asset seizure.
“Now is the time for U.S. leadership,” said one of those senators, Marco Rubio,
Republican of Florida. “The U.S. and the European Union should take meaningful
measures to demonstrate to the Russian government that military action against
Ukraine is intolerable and will carry significant consequences for Moscow.”

None of the senators, however, outlined ideas not already on the table in the Situation
Room. And besides, Mr. Obama needs Russian support in the midst of critical talks
over Syria’s civil war and Iran’s nuclear program.

“What can we do?” asked Fiona Hill, a Brookings Institution scholar who was the
government’s top intelligence officer on Russia during the Georgia war when Mr. Putin
deflected Western agitation. “We’ll talk about sanctions. We’ll talk about red lines. We’ll
basically drive ourselves into a frenzy. And he’ll stand back and just watch it. He just
knows that none of the rest of us want a war.”

James F. Jeffrey was Mr. Bush’s deputy national security adviser in August 2008 and
the first to inform him that Russian troops were moving into Georgia in response to
what the Kremlin called Georgian aggression against the pro-Moscow separatist
republic of South Ossetia. As it happened, the clash also took place at Olympic time;
Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin were both in Beijing for the Summer Games.

Mr. Bush confronted Mr. Putin in Beijing to no avail and then responded by ordering
American ships to the region and providing a military transport to return home Georgian
troops on duty in Iraq. He sent humanitarian aid on a military aircraft on the assumption
that Russia would be loath to attack the capital of Tbilisi with American military
personnel present. Mr. Bush also suspended a pending civilian nuclear agreement, and
NATO suspended military contacts.

“We did a lot but in the end there was not that much that you could do,” Mr. Jeffrey
recalled.

Inside the Bush administration, there was discussion of more robust action, like
bombing the Roki Tunnel to block Russian advances or providing Georgia with
Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bristled at what she
called the “chest beating” and the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, urged
the president to poll his team to see if anyone actually recommended putting
American troops on the ground.

None did, and Mr. Bush was not willing to risk further escalation. While Russia
stopped short of moving into Tbilisi, it achieved its goal by securing the effective
independence of South Ossetia and another pro-Russian republic, Abkhazia, while
leaving troops in areas it was supposed to evacuate under a cease-fire. Within a year
or so, Russia’s diplomatic isolation was over. Mr. Obama took office and tried to
improve relations. NATO resumed military contacts in 2009 and the United States
revived the civilian nuclear agreement in 2010.

Mr. Jeffrey, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Mr. Obama
should now respond assertively by suggesting that NATO deploy forces to the Polish-
Ukrainian border not to intervene in Crimea but to draw a line. “There’s nothing we can
do to save Ukraine at this point,” he said. “All we can do is save the alliance.”

Others like Mr. Ryan warn that military movements could backfire by misleading
Ukrainians into thinking the West might come to their rescue and so inadvertently
encourage them to be more provocative with Russia at their peril, much as Georgia
was. Ms. Hill, who also co-authored the recent book, “Mr. Putin,” said the Russian
leader may simply wait out the West, slowly establishing facts on the ground that are
hard to reverse. “Time,” she said, “is on his side.”
Putin's War in Crimea Could Soon Spread
to Eastern Ukraine
And nobody—not the U.S., not NATO—can
stop him
MARCH 1, 2014 BY JULIA IOFFE @juliaioffe

Vladimir Putin has asked the Federation Council—the upper chamber of Russia's
dummy parliament—to authorize the use of force not just in Crimea, but "on Ukraine's
territory until the socio-political situation is normalized." And though American spies
and the Washington Post categorically ruled this out just days ago, this was not entirely
unexpected. The situation is changing rapidly, but here are some initial thoughts.

Why is Putin doing this? Because he can. That's it, that's all you need to know. The
situation in Kiev—in which people representing one half of the country (the Ukrainian-
speaking west) took power to some extent at the expense of the Russian-speaking
east—created the perfect opportunity for Moscow to divide and conquer. As soon as
the revolution in Kiev happened, there was an unhappy rumbling in the Crimea, which
has a large Russian population and is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. It was a
small rumbling, but just big enough for Russia to exploit. And when such an opportunity
presents itself, one would be foolish not to take it, especially if one's name is Vladimir
Putin.

We didn't think Putin would do this. Why, exactly? This has often puzzled me about
Western analysis of Russia. It is often predicated on wholly Western logic: surely,
Russia won't invade [Georgia, Ukraine, whoever's next] because war is costly and the
Russian economy isn't doing well and surely Putin doesn't want another hit to an
already weak ruble; because Russia doesn't need to conquer Crimea if Crimea is
going to secede on its own; Russia will not want to risk the geopolitical isolation, and
"what's really in it for Russia?"—stop. Russia, or, more accurately, Putin, sees the
world according to his own logic, and the logic goes like this: it is better to be feared
than loved, it is better to be overly strong than to risk appearing weak, and Russia
was, is, and will be an empire with an eternal appetite for expansion. And it will gather
whatever spurious reasons it needs to insulate itself territorially from what it still
perceives to be a large and growing NATO threat. Trying to harness Russia with our
own logic just makes us miss Putin's next steps.

Pessimism always wins. One of the reasons I left my correspondent's post in

Moscow was because Russia, despite all the foam on the water, is ultimately a very
boring place. Unfortunately, all you really need to do to seem clairvoyant about the
place is to be an utter pessimist. Will Vladimir Putin allow the ostensibly liberal
Dmitry Medvedev to have a second term? Not a chance. There are protests in the
streets of Moscow. Will Putin crackdown? Yup. There's rumbling in the Crimea, will
Putin take advantage and take the Crimean peninsula? You betcha. And you know
why being a pessimist is the best way to predict outcomes in Russia? Because Putin
and those around him are, fundamentally, terminal pessimists. They truly believe
that there is an American conspiracy afoot to topple Putin, that Russian liberals are
traitors corrupted by and loyal to the West, they truly believe that, should free and
fair elections be held in Russia, their countrymen would elect bloodthirsty fascists,
rather than democratic liberals. To a large extent, Putin really believes that he is the
one man standing between Russia and the yawning void. Putin's Kremlin is dark and
scary, and, ultimately, very boring.
Remember the U.N.? Russia loves the U.N. Anytime the U.S. or Europe want to do
anything on the world stage, Russia pipes up, demanding the issue be taken to the
U.N. for the inevitable Russian veto. As Steven Lee Meyers, Moscow correspondent for
the New York Times, pointed out, Russia does not seem to even remember that the
institution exists today. Ditto for all that talk of "political solutions" and "diplomatic
solutions" and "dialogue" we heard about in Syria. In other words, what we are seeing
today—Russia's unilateral declaration of war—is the clearest statement yet of Russia's
actual position: Putin empathizes with Bashar al-Assad as a fellow leader holding his
country back from the brink and doing the dirty work that needs to be done to
accomplish that, and the U.N. is just a convenient mechanism for keeping nay-sayers
with large armies at bay.

As I wrote earlier this month, Russia, like the U.S., projects its own mindset onto the
rest of the world. So when you hear Putin and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and
the talking heads on Russia Today crowing about American cynicism and
machinations, well, keep in mind whom they're really talking about.

Speaking of America. Today's meeting of the Federation Council was an incredible

sight to behold. Man after Soviet-looking man mounted the podium to deliver a short
diatribe against...you name it. Against Ukrainian fascism, against Swedes, and, most of
all, against America. One would think that it wasn't the illegitimate government in Kiev
occupying Russian Crimea—which, lordy lord, if we're going to get ethnic, let's recall
who originally lived there—but the 82nd Airborne. The vice speaker of the Council even
demanded recalling the Russian ambassador to Washington. America was amazingly,
fantastically behind events in Kiev and proved utterly inept at influencing them, and yet
none of that seemed to matter. America, the old foe, was everywhere, its fat capitalist
fingers in every Slavic pie. Watching the Federation Council, where few of the speakers
seemed to be under the age of 60, I couldn't escape the feeling that this was an
opportunity for Russia not just to take back some land it's long considered its rightful
own, but to settle all scores and to tie up all loose ends. You know, while they're at it.

Double standards. This is another howl you often hear rending the skies over Moscow:
Western double standards. But let's get real for a second. We've spoken already about
the U.N., but what about the holy Russian mantra of non-interference in a nation's
internal affairs? When it comes to Syria, to take a most recent example, the fight
between Assad and the rebels is something only the Syrians can sort out. Ditto every
other country in the world—unless it's in Russia's backyard, where Russia still
experiences phantom limb syndrome. The internal issues of former Soviet republics,
you see, are not truly internal issues of sovereign nations. This is because, by Stalin's
very conscious design and very deliberate border drawing and population movement,
most former Soviet republics are ethnic hodgepodges. So Ukraine has a sizable
Russian population. Ditto Estonia, ditto Georgia, ditto Kazakhstan. And, according to
Putin's unspoken doctrine, anywhere Russian citizens are determined to be at risk,
Mother Moscow can intercede with force on their behalf.

In other, blunter words, Russian ethnicity and citizenship trump national sovereignty. At
the very least, they provide a convenient pretext for territorial expansion, as they did in
South Ossetia and Abkhazia, where Russia was also ostensibly protecting Russian
citizens—also newly minted for the occasion. Just this week, for instance, Russia
introduced a law to make it easier for Ukrainians to get Russian citizenship—you know,
to give Russia someone to protect.

Russia manufactured this crisis to create a pretext for a land-grab. There are now
protests swinging Russian flags and hailing Russia's glory not just in Crimea but all
over the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. I was just in Donetsk, Yanukovich's
hometown, on Monday. It was calm, calmer than calm. There were a couple dozen
people guarding the Lenin statue in the center of the city from vandals, but that was
it. A muckety-muck in the city's administration told me, "If they send new people in to
replace us, we'll leave peacefully, we won't try to hang on." The same was the case
in Simferopol, in Crimea. And then, out of nowhere, men with unmarked uniforms
were
taking over government buildings and airports, and huge demonstrations were pumping
on town squares all over the regions. The Kremlin often refers to "a well-organized
informational war" when their enemies broadcast something they don't like on repeat.
And now, looking at the alarmist, blanket coverage on Russian television—now all loyal
to the Kremlin—about fascists and radicals staging a coup in Kiev, it's hard to think of a
better term. This was indeed a well-organized informational war.

Neither America nor NATO can stop this. They've shown they won't in Georgia,
because nobody wants to start a war with nuclear-armed Russia, and rightly so. So
while Washington and Brussels huff and puff about lines and sovereignty and
diplomacy, Russia will do what it needs to do and there's not a thing we can do
about it.

Russia's next target is eastern Ukraine. Because pessimism conquers all, don't bet that
Putin is going to stop once he wrests Crimea from Kiev's orbit. Eastern, Russian-
speaking Ukraine—and all its heavy industry—is looking pretty good right now. And if
you're thinking "Why would Putin take eastern Ukraine?," well, you haven't been
reading very carefully.
Krauthammer on Ukraine: 'Everybody is
shocked by the weakness of Obama's
statement'
Published February 28, 2014 • FoxNews.com

Charles Krauthammer told viewers Friday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that
President Obama's statement on the latest Ukraine developments showed "weakness,"
and implied that "we're not really going to do anything" about the political upheaval in
Ukraine.

On Friday, armed men, allegedly Russian military forces, entered the Crimea region
and took control of two airports. President Obama then delivered a message from the
White House briefing room, saying he was "deeply concerned" by the reports and that
"there will be costs" for any military intervention in Ukraine, though he declined to
specify what those costs might be.

Krauthammer, however, said the president's statement failed to make strong waves.

"The Ukrainians, and I think everybody, is shocked by the weakness of Obama's

statement," he said. "What he's saying is, we're not really going to do anything."

Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist and a Fox News contributor, said Russia will
interpret Obama's remarks as complacency.

"He said, any violation of Ukrainian territory is destabilizing, and that's not in Russia's
interest. He is instructing Putin on what's in Russia's interest?" Krauthammer said. "I
can assure you, Putin has calculated his calculated his own interests, and he's
calculated that detaching Crimea from Ukraine and making it, essentially, a colony of
Russia, is in Russia's interest - because he knows he has nothing to fear from the
west, because it's not led by anybody. It used to be led by the United States."
Obama on Ukraine: The U.S. is 'deeply concerned'
Obama's statement on the latest Ukraine developments
February 28, 2014

Good afternoon, everybody.

Over the last several days, the United States has been responding to events as they
unfold in Ukraine. Throughout this crisis, we have been very clear about one
fundamental principle: The Ukrainian people deserve the opportunity to determine their
own future. Together with our European allies, we have urged an end to the violence
and encouraged Ukrainians to pursue a course in which they stabilize their country,
forge a broad-based government and move to elections this spring.

I also spoke several days ago with President Putin, and my administration has been in
daily communication with Russian officials, and we've made clear that they can be part
of an international community’s effort to support the stability and success of a united
Ukraine going forward, which is not only in the interest of The people of Ukraine and
the international community, but also in Russia’s interest.

However, we are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the
Russian Federation inside of Ukraine. Russia has a historic relationship with Ukraine,
including cultural and economic ties, and a military facility in Crimea, but any violation
of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be deeply destabilizing, which
is not in the interest of Ukraine, Russia, or Europe.

*It would represent a profound interference in matters that must be determined by the
Ukrainian people. It would be a clear violence [violation]of Russia’s commitment to
respect the independence and sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, and of international
laws. And just days after the world came to Russia for the Olympic Games, it would
invite the condemnation of nations around the world. And indeed, the United States will
stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any
military intervention in Ukraine.

The events of the past several months remind us of how difficult democracy can be in a
country with deep divisions. But the Ukrainian people have also reminded us that
human beings have a universal right to determine their own future.

Right now, the situation remains very fluid. Vice President Biden just spoke with Prime
Minister - the Prime Minister of Ukraine to assure him that in this difficult moment the
United States supports his government’s efforts and stands for the sovereignty,
territorial integrity and democratic future of Ukraine. I also commend the Ukrainian
government’s restraint and its commitment to uphold its international obligations.

We will continue to coordinate closely with our European allies. We will continue to
communicate directly with the Russian government. And we will continue to keep all of
you in the press corps and the American people informed as events develop.

Thanks very much.

NATO Needs to Move Now on Crimea
Action may provoke -- but so does doing nothing.
BY Admiral James Stavridis (Ret) FOREIGN POLICY MARCH 1, 2014

Now that Vladimir Putin's Olympics are over, his gaze has turned inexorably to what
he clearly regards as the premier foreign policy priority of the Russian Federation:
retaining determinative influence -- if not full control -- over Ukraine.

He went to the Russian parliament to formally request permission for what he has
already done -- send troops into Ukraine -- and it approved the move. News reports
indicate the Russian military has seized Crimea. This is a volatile, dangerous situation
without foreign intervention; and his behavior is reckless. Like a chess player leaning
forward, his moves are sweeping the board.

What is NATO's move?

The United States has responded strongly through normal diplomatic channels, with
Secretary of State John Kerry calling this an action with "grave consequences" --
freighted language in the world of diplomacy. The president and secretary of defense
have echoed this, and further condemnation will no doubt be forthcoming.

Certainly the shadow of recent Russian activity in Georgia, including the invasion and
creation of the "independent" states of Abkhazia and Ossetia, looms over the situation,
as does Russian activity in Transnistria. Will Crimea be next?

All of this, of course, is magnified by the strategic importance to Russia of the Black
Sea port and the presence of a significant part of their fleet and its guaranteed access
to the Mediterranean and the Levant.

Hopefully, there can be high-level diplomatic discussions at the United Nations,

European Union, and other international organizations that will lead to full territorial
integrity of the sovereign state of Ukraine. And the state of the Russian Black Sea fleet
has to be sensibly resolved, as do important trading and energy relations. The hope is
that cooler heads will prevail.

However, hope is not a strategy, and therefore further action should be considered.
Planning is vital to laying out options to decision makers, and NATO's military planners
should have a busy weekend at least.

This is a classic case of a situation where the United States should be working in lock
step with our allies around the world, but especially our European friends and most
notably the 28 members of the NATO alliance.

NATO should call an immediate emergency session and weigh its options in the
political, diplomatic, economic, and military dimensions.

In the military sphere, these include ordering the Supreme Headquarters, Allied
Powers Europe (SHAPE), led by U.S. General Phil Breedlove, to conduct prudent
planning and present options in response to the situation. While such planning
should be left to the current commanders and military experts, some ideas to
consider would include:
• Increasing all intelligence-gathering functions through satellite, Predator
unmanned vehicles, and especially cyber.
 • Using the NATO-Ukrainian Council and existing military partnerships with the
Ukrainian military to share information, intelligence, and situational awareness
with authorities in Kiev.
 Providing advice to Ukrainian armed forces to prepare and position themselves
in the event of further conflict.
 Developing NATO contingency plans to react to full-scale invasion of Ukraine
and to a partial invasion likely of Crimea. NATO contingency planning can be
cumbersome, but in Libya it moved quickly.
 Assigning one of the NATO Joint Force Commands (either Naples, Italy, or
Brunsum, Netherlands) into direct overwatch of the situation.
 Standing up NATO crisis centers to full manning, especially at SHAPE and the
relevant Joint Force Command.
 Ensuring that the Land and Maritime Component Commands (Northwood in
the United Kingdom and Izmir, Turkey, respectively) are conducting prudent
planning in their areas of expertise and feeding their analysis to the Joint Force
Command.
 Bringing the NATO Response Force, a 25,000 man sea, air, land, special forces
capability to a higher state of alert.
 Convening allies with cyber-capabilities (this is not a NATO specialty) to
consider options -- at a minimum to defend Ukraine if it is attacked in this
domain (as Georgia was).
 Sailing NATO maritime forces into the Black Sea and setting up contingency
plans for their use.

Many will consider any level of NATO involvement provocative and potentially
inflammatory. Unfortunately, the stakes are high and the Russians are moving. Sitting
idle, without at least looking at options, is a mistake for NATO and would itself
constitute a signal to Putin -- one that he would welcome.
Ukraine, Syria, Iran -- America isn't leading
from behind, it's being left behind
By K.T. McFarland/ Published February 28, 2014/ FoxNews.com

The Obama administration is looking a lot like the Carter administration. Only worse.

Russia, flush with new-found wealth from oil exports, expands its military reach and
political influence abroad. A war-weary America slashes defense spending and retreats
from the world. The president embarks on a massive government-subsidized program
to develop alternative energy to replace fossil fuels.

Pundits cluck about America in retreat, and point to the rise of an Asian economic
superpower. That’s the world circa 1976, but it sounds like quotes ripped from today’s
headlines.

History has a way of repeating itself, or to quote the great Yogi Bera, it’s déjà vu all
over again. The Obama administration is looking a lot like the Carter administration.
Only worse.

President Obama may think the Cold War is over, as dated as yesteryear’s fashions.
But President Putin thinks it’s game on, and Russia is winning. And there is ample
evidence to support his claim.

I can’t wait for the pictures from the next Obama-Putin meet-up. It will be in June in
Sochi, where President Obama would NOT go for the Olympics, but has to go for the
G-8 summit.

In the past, Putin has looked bored, picking lint off his sleeve while Obama droned on.

This time he’ll no doubt have a smirk on his face: he’s got Snowden safely ensconced
in Moscow, he’s calling the shots in Syria, he’s taken America’s place with Egypt, and
Europe is addicted to his natural gas.

His budget is in surplus and his coffers flush with oil revenues.

His military is moving into regions the Americans are retreating from.

He’s even sending warships to Cuba.

Putin has a lot to smile about.

The Obama administration, in contrast, has presided over a series of foreign policy
disasters. "Leading from behind" has resulted in the predictable outcome: the guys up
front no longer look over their shoulders for orders. America isn’t leading from behind,
it’s being left behind.

Our allies no longer trust us, and our adversaries no longer fear us. We’ve alienated
Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling our missile shield agreements.

We didn’t even figure in the Ukraine negotiations. The Europeans are mad at us for
spying on them.

We’ve lost two wars, not on the field of battle in Afghanistan and Iraq but in the
corridors of power in Washington, Baghdad and Kabul. Even President Karzai, a guy
we created, is pushing us around.
In the Middle East, we’ve managed to alienate historic allies like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi
Arabia and Israel.

We’ve negotiated a deal with Iran which allows them to keep their nuclear facilities
while we lift sanctions and their economy booms. They will soon have plenty of extra
cash to pay for terrorists, cyberattacks and WMD.

Japan and South Korea doubt our reliability as treaty partners.

The Chinese are taking advantage of America’s weakness to make claims to the South
and East China seas.

Even that nuclear weapon toting, pipsqueak North Korean boy-president taunts
America with videos of Obama burning.

But all is not lost. America has a way of reinventing itself just as things seem darkest.
That will be as true in the next few years as it was 35 years ago. This time American
ingenuity, entrepreneurialism and abundant natural resources will lead the way with a
new energy industry that will dwarf anything in Russia or the Middle East.

By 2020 America will be THE energy superpower on the planet. We will no longer
export billions of dollars to import oil from countries that hate us.

We will no longer be embroiled in Arab civil wars that have commanded our presence
for decades.

Cheap oil and natural gas will bring manufacturing back to America and we will make
things again and unemployment will vanish. Not only will we be energy independent,
we will be energy exporters to countries like China, India and Japan. And the inevitable
lower oil and gas prices will bankrupt Russia.

So Mr. Putin, smirk all you want for now. You may think the Cold War is back on and
you’re winning. But it won’t last.

And don’t worry America. We survived Jimmy Carter and we will survive Barack
Obama. Only one questions remains....who is the next Ronald Reagan?

Kathleen "K.T." McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of
FoxNews.com's "DefCon 3." She served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford
and Reagan administrations. She was an aide to Dr. Henry Kissinger at the White
House, and in 1984 Ms. McFarland wrote Secretary of Defense Weinberger's
groundbreaking "Principles of War " speech. She received the Defense Department's
highest civilian award for her work in the Reagan administration.
America’s Global Retreat
Niall Ferguson 02/23/2014

Never mind the Fed's taper, it's the U.S. geopolitical taper that is stirring world anxiety.
From Ukraine to Syria to the Pacific, a hands-off foreign policy invites more trouble.

Since former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke uttered the word "taper" in
June 2013, emerging-market stocks and currencies have taken a beating. It is not clear
why talk of (thus far) modest reductions in the Fed's large-scale asset-purchase
program should have had such big repercussions outside the United States. The best
economic explanation is that capital has been flowing out of emerging markets in
anticipation of future rises in U.S. interest rates, of which the taper is a harbinger. While
plausible, that cannot be the whole story.

For it is not only U.S. monetary policy that is being tapered. Even more significant is
the "geopolitical taper." By this I mean the fundamental shift we are witnessing in the
national-security strategy of the U.S.—and like the Fed's tapering, this one also means
big repercussions for the world. To see the geopolitical taper at work, consider
President Obama's comment Wednesday on the horrific killings of protesters in the
Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The president said: "There will be consequences if people step
over the line."

No one took that warning seriously—Ukrainian government snipers kept on killing

people in Independence Square regardless. The world remembers the red line that
Mr. Obama once drew over the use of chemical weapons in Syria . . . and then
ignored once the line had been crossed. The compromise deal reached on Friday in
Ukraine calling for early elections and a coalition government may or may not spell
the end of the crisis. In any case, the negotiations were conducted without concern
for Mr. Obama.

The origins of America's geopolitical taper as a strategy can be traced to the confused
foreign-policy decisions of the president's first term. The easy part to understand was
that Mr. Obama wanted out of Iraq and to leave behind the minimum of U.S.
commitments. Less easy to understand was his policy in Afghanistan. After an internal
administration struggle, the result in 2009 was a classic bureaucratic compromise:
There was a "surge" of additional troops, accompanied by a commitment to begin
withdrawing before the last of these troops had even arrived.

Having passively watched when the Iranian people rose up against their theocratic
rulers beginning in 2009, the president was caught off balance by the misnamed "Arab
Spring." The vague blandishments of his Cairo speech that year offered no hint of how
he would respond when crowds thronged Tahrir Square in 2011 calling for the ouster of
a longtime U.S. ally, the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

Mr. Obama backed the government led by Mohammed Morsi, after the Muslim
Brotherhood won the 2012 elections. Then the president backed the military coup
against Mr. Morsi last year. On Libya, Mr. Obama took a back seat in an international
effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, but was apparently not in the vehicle at all
when the American mission at Benghazi came under fatal attack in 2012.

Syria has been one of the great fiascos of post-World War II American foreign policy.
When President Obama might have intervened effectively, he hesitated. When he did
intervene, it was ineffectual. The Free Syrian Army of rebels fighting against the regime
of Bashar Assad has not been given sufficient assistance to hold together, much less
to defeat the forces loyal to Assad. The president's non-threat to launch airstrikes—if
Congress agreed—handed the initiative to Russia. Last year's Russian-brokered
agreement to get Assad to hand over his chemical weapons is being honored only in
the breach, as Secretary of State John Kerry admitted last week.

The result of this U.S. inaction is a disaster. At a minimum, 130,000 Syrian civilians
have been killed and nine million driven from their homes by forces loyal to the tyrant.
At least 11,000 people have been tortured to death. Hundreds of thousands are
besieged, their supplies of food and medicine cut off, as bombs and shells rain down.

Worse, the Syrian civil war has escalated into a sectarian proxy war between Sunni
and Shiite Muslims, with jihadist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and
the Nusra Front fighting against Assad, while the Shiite Hezbollah and the Iranian Quds
Force fight for him. Meanwhile, a flood of refugees from Syria and the free movement
of militants is helping to destabilize neighboring states like Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
The situation in Iraq is especially dire. Violence is escalating, especially in Anbar
province. According to Iraq Body Count, a British-based nongovernmental organization,
9,475 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2013, compared with 10,130 in 2008.

The scale of the strategic U.S. failure is best seen in the statistics for total fatalities in
the region the Bush administration called the "Greater Middle East"—essentially the
swath of mainly Muslim countries stretching from Morocco to Pakistan. In 2013,
according to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, more than 75,000 people
died as a result of armed conflict in this region or as a result of terrorism originating
there, the highest number since the IISS Armed Conflict database began in 1998. Back
then, the Greater Middle East accounted for 38% of conflict-related deaths in the world;
last year it was 78%.

Mr. Obama's supporters like nothing better than to portray him as the peacemaker to
George W. Bush's warmonger. But it is now almost certain that more people have
died violent deaths in the Greater Middle East during this presidency than during the
last one.

In a January interview with the New Yorker magazine, the president said something
truly stunning. "I don't really even need George Kennan right now," he asserted,
referring to the late American diplomat and historian whose insights informed the
foreign policy of presidents from Franklin Roosevelt on. Yet what Mr. Obama went on
to say about his self-assembled strategy for the Middle East makes it clear that a
George Kennan is exactly what he needs: someone with the regional expertise and
experience to craft a credible strategy for the U.S., as Kennan did when he proposed
the "containment" of the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.

So what exactly is the president's strategy? "It would be profoundly in the interest of
citizens throughout the region if Sunnis and Shiites weren't intent on killing each
other," the president explained in the New Yorker. "And although it would not solve the
entire problem, if we were able to get Iran to operate in a responsible fashion . . . you
could see an equilibrium developing between Sunni, or predominantly Sunni, Gulf
states and Iran."

Moreover, he continued, if only "the Palestinian issue" could be "unwound," then

another "new equilibrium" could be created, allowing Israel to "enter into even an
informal alliance with at least normalized diplomatic relations" with the Sunni states.
The president has evidently been reading up about international relations and has
reached the chapter on the "balance of power." The trouble with his analysis is that it
does not explain why any of the interested parties should sign up for his balancing act.

As Nixon-era Secretary of State Henry Kissinger argued more than half a century ago in
his book "A World Restored," balance is not a naturally occurring phenomenon. "The
balance of power only limits the scope of aggression but does not prevent it," Dr.
Kissinger wrote. "The balance of power is the classic expression of the lesson of
history that no order is safe without physical safeguards against aggression."

What that implied in the 19th century was that Britain was the "balancer"—the
superpower that retained the option to intervene in Europe to preserve balance. The
problem with the current U.S. geopolitical taper is that President Obama is not willing to
play that role in the Middle East today. In his ignominious call to inaction on Syria in
September, he explicitly said it: "America is not the world's policeman."

But balance without an enforcer is almost inconceivable. Iran remains a revolutionary

power; it has no serious intention of giving up its nuclear-arms program; the talks in
Vienna are a sham. Both sides in the escalating regional "Clash of Sects"—Shiite and
Sunni—have an incentive to increase their aggression because they see hegemony in
a post-American Middle East as an attainable goal.

The geopolitical taper is a multifaceted phenomenon. For domestic political as well as

fiscal reasons, this administration is presiding over deep cuts in military spending. No
doubt the Pentagon's budget is in many respects bloated. But, as Philip Zelikow has
recently argued, the cuts are taking place without any clear agreement on what the
country's future military needs are.

Thus far, the U.S. "pivot" from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific region, announced in
2012, is the nearest this administration has come to a grand strategy. But such a shift
of resources makes no sense if it leaves the former region ablaze and merely adds to
tension in the latter. A serious strategy would surely make some attempt to establish
linkage between the Far East and the Middle East. It is the Chinese, not the
Americans, who are becoming increasingly dependent on Middle Eastern oil. Yet all the
pivot achieved was to arouse suspicion in Beijing that some kind of "containment" of
China is being contemplated.

Maybe, on reflection, it is not a Kennan that Mr. Obama needs, but a Kissinger. "The
attainment of peace is not as easy as the desire for it," Dr. Kissinger once observed.
"Those ages which in retrospect seem most peaceful were least in search of peace.
Those whose quest for it seems unending appear least able to achieve tranquillity.
Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective
. . . the international system has been at the mercy of [its] most ruthless member."

Those are words this president, at a time when there is much ruthlessness abroad in
the world, would do well to ponder.

Mr. Ferguson is a history professor at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford

University's Hoover Institution. His most recent book is "The Great Degeneration"
(Penguin Press, 2013).