Replies

I hear what you're saying and see your POV, I just don't see the sense in the West pretending it's so much different than a lot of what the West has done. Did we go into Iraq and kick the bastards out then turn it over to Iran or did we change the alignment of that country? To me, once you start tossing explosives around whether it's for alignment or in support of freedom is just a lot of word games. You commit your forces to support an outcome that's advantageous to your own goals. Call it what you like.

"The progress toward pluralism and rule of law in RF of the past 20 years has been reversed . . ."

I'll tell my pal Ivan that and he'll get a real laugh. Hey, I have Russian friends who have moved here and have family still in Russia. They'd go back and forth a good bit and I'm sure would like to know where they should have been looking for the past few decades to see that pluralism and rule of law. According to them things are better the last five or six years than ever because there are fewer people above the law than there were before Putin was in charge.

My son has been dating a Ukrainian girl and she and her family think the crowd we're now championing are just bought and paid for stooges of the EU. They didn't like the guy that fled, either. The main thing for them is that they don't like or want in power anyone that has Russian parents or grandparents.

Talking with them, I have a feeling there's a "pure Ukrainian" vs "Russian Ukrainian" clash or civil war brewing and being prepared for within the Ukraine. If so, I'm sure both the West and Putin know all about it being inevitable.

In that case, Putin just moved to protect the Crimea before the EU moves to protect the gas pipelines which gives him a major edge when the peace talks start. The West won't have the Crimea to use as a carrot on a stick when the borders are drawn.

Like I say, JMHO and thinking on various angles. I just sure don't see the much difference between a few things the US and EU have done in the past few decades and what Putin is doing now.

Regards

The progress in Russia was in the distance passed from the mentality that was the USSR. Chiefly that was in the freedom of speech, honesty about history, ability to travel, economic opportunity, howbeit meager. That post-soviet Russia did not build a rule of law is very true, and perhaps that is what has doomed it. Putin, I think, had a correct intuition that criminality was to be curbed, but being a Soviet man, he understood his mission as building an autocracy. The truth is that no matter how many oligarchs he puts behind bars, a society where the parliament votes 100% for an act of aggression that violates the countries' treaties with its neighbor does not have a rule of law.

One does not have to admire American geopolitical behavior to condemn this. There were some lines that we did not cross: we did not violate treaties; we did not fight for territory; we responded to perceived -- sometime wrongly perceived -- threats. We also honestly tried to build nations where - we now understand -- they cannot be built. We "took up the white man's burden". That is the difference between American imperialism and Russian aggression. We nevertheless acted in a way that allowed a dishonest or uninformed observer to point to our behavior in Iraq and Libya as an excuse of his own aggression. That was unwise; but RF is an aggressor in Ukraine just the same.