[Berlin_Freeper]

"we can now pull the plug on Russia and Putin in a very controlled manner," say officials in Berlin.

[Pollster1]

Don't be silly. "The Cold War's been over for twenty years."
- Barack Hussein Obama

[McGruff]

Thanks to Ukraine.

[gdani]

Cold War strategies never left Russia’s playbook (despite what Putin’s fan club here thinks).

[lavaroise]

Cold War ... hahaha.. people are so funny. Russia is still fighting WWII ...

[Resolute Conservative]

Russians don’t take a dump without a plan...

[caveat emptor]

Now the situation has changed. Russia is becoming a lonely pariah without alliances or military might, other than its nuclear weapons. And without any other easy means of achieving its objectives, I am afraid that the Kremlin will constantly try to prove it is just crazy enough to use its nuclear weapons. In short, Russia is turning into a second North Korea, only much, much larger, and far more dangerous.

And the author can expect a bullet to the head or worse for his scathing criticism of this unrepentant Chekist.

[Aqua225]

Putin is playing a game, and he is doing it at a level at least 1 step above Obama. Obama is smart with voters, but dumb at world politics and influence.

The chance to regain the Ukraine is wasted at this point. If we had honored our pact of protection at the time all this went down, then we could have left Putin in his winter home in Russia.

Now, that’s not so easy. Russia will now be providing gas to not only Europe, but China as well. People tend to respect those who help them keep warm in the winter. Between the green movement and anti-nuclear movement in Germany, Europe has been stripped of any semblance of energy independence. They can’t burn coal, and they can’t build reactors, so they have to have Russian gas to keep warm.

The only thing Europe can hope for at this point is that enough people die from a fuel embargo at some point in the future, that the green movement is crushed, such that reactors and coal plants make a revival. That is a pretty morbid kind of hope. Additionally, Putin will not be dumb and allow it to get that bad. But he will parley that dependence into political strength. We will not be able to depend on our European allies in the coming years.

Basically, in allowing Ukraine to unfold as it has, Obama’s team has guaranteed that Europe is no longer in our pocket. In my mind, the only option that the USA has at this point is isolationism, at least to the extent of our own hemisphere of the planet, because our money and influence is quickly growing unwelcome in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.