Ruffians landed from a helicopter? Vladimir, I understand what you’re doing, but this is absurd. Your average, or above-average, paramilitary doesn’t have access to that sort of transportation or expertise. It makes you look bad.
As far as the US goes—I’m less concerned than most, despite the Munich analogies. Here’s a future history analogy—in 20 years, with our current open borders, a big chunk of one of our southwestern states may declare their independence from the US and preference for Mexico. I would hope we’d react strongly, and if we did, that we’d be upset enough and determined enough that the Russians would recognize the futility of interfering across an intervening ocean.
The reverse is our position now—reckless expansion of NATO to territories it wasn’t really willing to fight to defend, and where it was to overextended and weak to defend. Our power is not limitless, especially with the steady cuts to our military. Neither is our obligation to shoulder the heavy lifting for Europe in exchange for their sending token expeditions to Iraq and other US-dominated actions.
The man the Ukrainians threw out was democratically elected. We are supporting the side that overthrew the legitimate government. They said he was corrupt. Should we have really sided with either side?
Crimea was given to the Ukraine by Khrushchev to entice them to join the USSR. From what I understand, the majority in East Ukraine are Russian speaking and so is the Crimea. The overthrown government recognized the Russian language, the new government said Russian would no longer be acceptable to conduct business.