Posted on 07/01/2015 7:45:57 AM PDT by annalex
I think much of what is going on is saber-rattling: Putin wants to elevate the temperature to get off with Crimea in exchange for re-admission into the Western economic and political structures. But that can change if a more war-like faction inside the Kremlin prevails. See my 36
Ah, but those treaties were written by white crackas.
Ukraine is currently an economic disaster and I feel terrible for its long suffering people who have had to put up with corrupt leaders. But in my view the underlying geopolitics and economics here is what is driving things, Ukraine has the third largest shale gas reserves in Europe, some off the coast of Crimea, but one in the rebel area of the Donetsk and Kharkiv oblasts. Take a look:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/ukraine-gas-shale-idUSL5E8GGAJY20120516
Just like in Syria this is all about pipelines and energy reserves, trying to keep Europe from becoming dependent on Russian gas.
Kharkiv is not rebel area.
Yes, Putin’s central objective is to prevent post-Maidan Ukraine from prospering. But good news is that the great anti-soviet revolution has taken hold in Ukraine and there is no chance in hell they would go back to the soviet ways of doing things. Precisely because the Russian aggression taught them to think of themselves as a separate nation that has to rely on itself.
If Obama let the Baltic states or Poland be overrun, he may be the subject of a real life "Seven Days in May" event. I think Putin may have some leverage over him, possibly sexual in nature, as the Mafia had on J. Edgar Hoover, but for the American military to stand down if the Russian strongman tries to repeat what Stalin did in 1940 could lead to Obama sharing the fate of Salvador Allende in Chile.
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