Posted on 03/18/2014 7:41:38 PM PDT by goldstategop
In other words, Putin's looking at the 21st century through the cold, wary eyes of a Russian realist, and he sees it differently than Western leaders do.
Take the recent threats of economic sanctions from Europe and the United States. Putin thinks the West will hesitate before imposing crippling sanctions on Russia's economy because of Europe's many financial interests in Moscow. (So far, he's right about that.) And he thinks the West will tire of imposing sanctions before Russia feels any need to back down.
"His message is: We think you've been trampling our interests, and we have a higher threshold for pain than you do," Hill said. She noted that Putin's parents survived the World War II siege of Leningrad, when some Russians ate grass to fend off starvation — an episode Putin once referred to as evidence of his nation's resilience under pressure.
Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their allies hoped threats of sanctions would deter Putin from moving troops into Crimea, but their threats had no effect. They hoped the imposition of limited, "proportional" sanctions might deter Putin from annexing Crimea, but that had no effect either.
What we have here is an asymmetrical problem: It's more important to Putin and his people than it is to the West. For Americans and Western Europeans, Russia's assertion of power is an outrage and a threat to our ideal of an international order, but it's also a long way from home. For Putin, it's the cure for Russia's national resentments and the legacy he wants to leave as president. He's betting that he can outlast any sanctions the West is willing to impose. He could well turn out to be right.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Putin thinks the west will lose interest—and that he can hurt them as much as they hurt Russia. What ever they do to Russia will just make them more stuborn.
If obumbler had any understanding of how to handle Putin and if he had any guts at all, we would immediately without any announcement or discussion, put troops in every one of the countries that border Ukraine and Russia.
Then we would send him a nice message:
“Putin, we love you, really we do. But don’t mess it up.”
Sanctions are like hitting the Bear with toothpicks. They’re an annoyance but not a real threat that would compel Moscow to cut its losses.
If we had a real president, anything about Putin would be on page C27 in our newspapers.
Tell me again why I should care about oligarchs, global bankers, the Ukrainians gold in the hands of the Fed, and the desire by these xxxxxxers to suck us Americans into another war half way around the world that has nothing to do with us.
Time for the Europeans to put their own treasure, and their boys and girls at risk and defend themselves instead of putting it on our tab. Time to walk away and let the bankers get rich and not on our dime nor on our lives.
Everyday the bankers and insiders send a message to the market- fear or optimism and they make billions in advance in the process. Tell me it ain’t so.
That’s the only thing that would deter him.
But Obama will never have the guts to confront Putin on his own terms.
Putin respects strength. He thinks Obama can’t really enforce a red line that would make him stop.
Crimea is Putin’s lesson in - watch me and see exactly how useless your threats and sanctions are. Try me again and see how much you stand to lose.
Not that the West had any real leverage over him in the first place.
Let’s Move! /s
All Putin has to do is turn the gas valves to Europe off for 72 hours.
After the second night of sitting in the dark, Euros will be screaming for the US to stop the sanctions, and Putin knows it.
“Crimea is Putin’s lesson in - watch me and see exactly how useless your threats and sanctions are. Try me again and see how much you stand to lose.”
I wouldn’t go that far....
Many seem to want to tag this as some kind of Cold War-era power grab, and it really isn’t.
Looking at it from Moscow’s view, they have seen real trouble brewing in Ukraine for some time now. They are watching the very same actors (Open Society-NED-USAID) that created civil unrest in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt now at work in Ukraine. (Remember, it was just last year that Putin gave the boot to USAID and the Soros NGO’s operating in Russia.)
They know that the US Embassy in Kiev, and Obama’s hand-picked Assistant Secretary of State for European and European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, were heavily involved in organizing the anti-government protests.
Nuland was even caught ON TAPE by the Russians helping to organize the anti-government protests. In a leaked phone conversation, Nuland was caught red-handed scheming to install Yatsenyuk in the government before President Viktor Yanukovych had even fled Kiev.
(funny how that has never made The Daily Show, or the NBC/ABC/CBS Evening News, eh?)
With all that said, Crimea is critically important to the economic future of Russia, for reasons discussed many times. They likely already had a plan in place, should Ukraine fall to an Anti-Russian Government. And frankly, it would have been irresponsible for them not to.
Here’s a thought and I’m just throwing this out here; pure speculation: Is it possible that Putin has calculated that the West will not do anything about the increasing Islamization of the West and the rise of China and he sees a resurgent Russia as the answer to those problems?
The other thought is that his focus is solely internal.
All of Russia’s actions are based on his read of Obama as a lightweight, limp-wristed, pantywaist with no stomach for hardball, and no tolerance of pain or discomfort.
But it’s not just Putin’s gut that is speaking. I am sure the SVR shrinks have been consulted, and I am damn sure that whatever little secrets Obama has hidden from Americans, their intelligence operators have uncovered, and he will use them if it serves Russia’s interests.
Everywhere in the world, all of America’s most obstinate foes are busy making hay while the sun shines. They’re pushing pieces and carving off territories, both literally and figuratively, that they would never be attempting if there was a real President in the White House.
And they have three years more to enjoy their fun.
“Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the Century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself” (Vladimir Putin, Annual Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, April 25, 2005).
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