At first it was baffling. There seems no upside for Putin. He risks crippling sanctions and nasty diplomatic problems for years to come from the rest of the world, not to mention the real risk of civil war in the Ukraine that would be hideously expensive and tax his relatively small military – it’s no “Red Army”.
So.. why. you ask, is he doing this? Substitute “Bush” for “Putin” and you’ll have your answer.
The news this morning had Angela Merkel saying Vlad’s lost his marbles, on an endless loop, and I began to wonder how Pravda covered Iraq…and then I realized, holy fuck, this was us ten years ago.
America should be asking itself: When we decided to be the world’s policeman and go into Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya (albeit with NATO on those last two), did we think that it would stop there? Did we believe that Russia (and I’m sure, China soon) won’t harbor similar ambitions but will more directly use their might for their direct benefit? It would be one thing if we had a consistent rule: If a government is slaughtering its people, the rest of the world has to stop it, and a country’s leadership should be decided by internationally monitored elections. We could at least argue that position regardless of national interest, but yeah we gave up all the high moral ground with Iraq.
We just need to go to our highlight reel from the Chimpy years: calling a government “illegitimate” because we don’t like its leader and then bombing the country back to the stone age while racing toward the capital, etc. It is kind of awkward (and oh so boring), watching John Kerry tell Russia that they can’t just invade a country simply because they want to – I hope Russia doesn’t have cable teevee or the internets or soundbites to replay in response.
In any case, we should just give them Dick Cheney.