The premise is flawed.
Why do we need to negotiate with Putin? We have no dog in the Ukraine fight. Lithuania is different because it is NATO. Negotiation is not involved. There must be action. Obama is encumbered by ideology that will prevent action outside of lawyerly worded balderdash.
Action, Putin’s actions, trump the niceties of idealized diplomacy.
Thanks as usual for your clear summation versus the propaganda of both sides.
“The premise is flawed.
Why do we need to negotiate with Putin? We have no dog in the Ukraine fight. Lithuania is different because it is NATO. Negotiation is not involved. There must be action. Obama is encumbered by ideology that will prevent action outside of lawyerly worded balderdash.
Action, Putin’s actions, trump the niceties of idealized diplomacy.”
I agree that we have no dog in the Ukraine fight, but not just because Ukraine is not a NATO member state. There is nothing that can happen in Ukraine that has any impact upon the national security of the United States.
What concerns me is that the original purpose of NATO has been inflated away by the additions of 12 new members in 1998 and 2004. Our original promise to go to war in defense of West Germany, Holland, Italy or Great Britain has expanded to include death pacts with Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia and Poland, among others. Are we really willing to die for those counties? NO WAY!
The brutal truth is that NATO has morphed from a defensive treaty against possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe into an offensive alliance that followed retreating Russian armies to the borders of Russia itself. Having planted NATO's flag and based its troops, planes and ships along Russia's western borders, we are now meddling with Russia's neighbors on its strategic Black Sea borders. Since the Monroe Doctrine was declared in 1823, we have opposed such outside meddling in our entire hemisphere; why are we now so intent on destabilizing Russia's borders?