‘Ukraine today is new Balkans’

Ukraine is on the frontline of Russia v US superpower tensions, while a major naval base there makes it the bottom line underlying this confrontation, Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent, told RT.

Richard Sakwa: Putin describes the things in his speech that he told about on March 18. There is a mixture of two things going on at the moment. There is the enlargement of the EU which in the past was considered fairly benign. What happened is its mixture with the development of the Euro-Atlantic partnership, NATO. Ukraine today is the new Balkans. During the WWI it was these superpower tensions over the Balkans. Today it’s Ukraine in the frontline. And indeed, there is one significant difference, because the Balkans didn’t really have any major naval bases, so this is clearly the bottom line underlying this confrontation - at the moment is concern not so much as President Putin said.

Sevastopol doesn’t have the strategic significance it used to have clearly closed oceans, missiles, etc. Nevertheless, it’s fundamentally important and as Russia has been concerned about since the mid-1990s, NATO is perceived as a major strategic threat. Ultimately, what has to happen in the light of the 4-party talks with Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU, there has to be a sense of a new security order being discussed for Europe in which NATO enlargement or NATO existence has to take into account very substantively Russia’s security concerns and it also affects missile defense of course, which has been the bone of contention for many years as well.

Maybe Obama will let Putin use his mustache when he is done with it.

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Obama has a mustache? I thought he had a beard. And why in the name of all things would Putin want to use Michelle?

We are so easily distracted, conditioned by decades of struggle against an enemy that no longer exists. While the European Union solidifies its socialist grip on Europe, we are led to believe that the real threat is a partially recovering Russia whose power is only a shadow of its former Soviet past. Anyone who listens to Daniel Hannan and Neil Farage should recognize that the real threat of tyranny comes from the unelected bureaucrats in Brussels who now rule by treaty above the constitutions of the EU's member states. The formerly sovereign nations of Europe, with their parliaments, courts and armies now subordinated to Brussels, will be powerless to halt the rise of next strongman. It is this threat that prompted English MEP Godfrey Bloom to shout "Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer!" at the anti-democratic German MEP Martin Schulz -- and that was four years ago.

It is now the European Union which is on the offensive against Russia for the purpose of economic dominance, and we Americans are now mindlessly dancing to war drums pounded in Brussels and Strasbourg. How else does one explain the encircling advance of a once-defensive alliance to the western and southern borders of Russia itself? We are the muscle in this economic war for European dominance, and we continue to bankrupt ourselves for the benefit of others. America is being played.

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