[gaslucas1]

yep. Crimea, half a world away from you, conquered 300 years ago by Russians, and populated by Russians continuously since then, voted to leave the Ukraine, a country that didn't exist 25 years ago, to join Russia who created and populated her Because the people in Crimea thought that Russia can offer higher wages, cheaper energy and better pensions. And there is that stuff about Crimeans and Russians being both Russians, who speak Russian.... A language that the parliament of liberated Ukraine tried to proscribe. Scary, indeed. if the US had McCain in the presidency, then the US and Russia would have exchanged a couple thousand nukes right now.

[agere_contra]

If McCain had been President then the U.S. would already be a significant exporter of Natural Gas and be breaking GazProm’s monopoly in Europe.

Russia’s pathologies are amplified because it is an extraction economy with a captive market. If America had elected the party of “drill baby drill” things would be very different today.

That’s assuming just LNG export. American ingenuity and the removal of political barriers to pipeline construction would open up more of the world to cheap pipelined gas - which would dramatically undercut Gazprom’s current prices.

Even if we regard the Crimea as a benign secession - we wouldn’t now be worrying about a possible move into East Ukraine if Palin had been on the winning side.