As I write this post, the parliament in Crimea has just voted to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, to which it belonged until the mid 1950s. The Russian parliament, in turn, is considering legislation to enable it to accept new provinces, an ominous turn to 
be sure. There is a referendum on Crimean secession scheduled for later this month, and the new Ukrainian government is crying foul. So … are we on the brink of a new Crimean War? Charge of the Light Brigade, anyone?
The “Putin is Crazy” narrative is dominating the news cycle here in the United States. I can hear it right now, on the evening news. Even supposed activist liberal shows like Rachel Maddow are playing this as a crisis for which Russia is solely responsible, and strong evidence of Putin’s departure from reality. He’s living in another world, the German premier suggests, and that claim is being hammered home, day after day, on every network, every news channel, every media outlet. One would think no one had ever occupied a square mile of foreign territory before. (Ummm …. Afghanistan? Guam?)
I hate to be the lone dissenting voice on anything, but this thing is obviously spinning out of control, and the potential consequences are enormous. Despite his autocratic tendencies, Putin is not hard to figure out, friends. He doesn’t want another Syria as his next door neighbor. With the ouster of Yanukovych, he sees the potential for civil conflict, possible failure of the central government, etc. Putin sees the United States and Europe as having stoked the opposition, and in all frankness, it’s probably true that we did. We regularly support political movements in other countries to an extent that we would consider unacceptable should another country attempt the same on us. Now we openly support the revolution in Ukraine.
Is is about supporting democracy? Well, that’s certainly not a prerequisite for U.S. support. See Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, etc., etc. In all honesty, I think it would be a really good idea to work towards a diplomatic solution with greater energy. There is a tendency to fall into old cold war habits – a fact that reveals the bankruptcy of our obsession with communism back in the day. It’s really just about great power competition, and that should be considered illegitimate, particularly when so many lives are at stake.
Between us, we still have thousands of nuclear weapons. This is not something to fool around with.
luv u,
jp
The national corporate media conversation on Ukraine seems to center on what we are going to do about it, but the fact is, we are supporting the opposition in that country – likely not because our government has overriding sympathy for them, but because they are acting against Russia’s interests. This is reminiscent of the “conversation” that was had last year over Syria, in which articulate opinion was broadly in favor of American strikes while the vast majority of Americans were against it. Again – Russia is on the other side. (We are, of course, aligned with groups in Syria that are in a de-facto alliance with Al Qaeda-inspired militants.) In our ongoing economic/political campaign against Iran, Russia is also on the other side. Sense a pattern?
We have, under the banner of American Exceptionalism, invaded any number of third-world countries over the past century and a quarter. The results have not been positive. (Just ask them.) Putin and others are approaching us as if conducting an intervention; trying to keep us from repeating the same bad behavior, over and over again. You know you have a problem when it takes Russia and China to talk you down. One can only hope that they succeed. This Syria intervention is just a crazy, bad idea, and one that the president seems very attached to. It’s a kind of madness, executive power, and it’s long since taken hold of old Barry-O.