Early in the Ukraine crisis, when the Europeans were working on bringing Ukraine into the EU system and Vladimir Putin
...Second and fourth President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from polonium poisoning. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead...was countering with threats and bribes, one British analyst lamented that "we went to a knife fight with a baguette."
That was three months ago. Life overtakes parody. During the Ukrainian prime minister's visit to Washington last week, his government urgently requested military assistance. The Pentagon refused. It offered instead military ration kits.
Putin mobilizes thousands of troops, artillery, and attack helicopters on Ukraine's borders and Washington counters with baguettes, American-style. One thing we can say for sure in these uncertain times: The invasion of Ukraine will be catered by the United States.
Why did we deny Ukraine weapons? Because in the Barack Obama
Republicans can come along for the ride, but they've got to sit in the back...
--John F.
I was in Vietnam, you knowKerry
Former Senator-for-Life from Massachussetts, self-defined war hero, speaker of French, owner of a
lucky hat,conqueror of Cambodia, and current Secretary of State...
worldview, arming the victim might be taken as a provocation. This kind of mind-bending illogic has marked the administration's response to the whole Crimea affair.
Why, after all, did Obama delay responding to Putin's infiltration, military occupation, and seizure of Crimea in the first place? In order to provide Putin with a path to deescalation, "an off-ramp," the preferred White House phrase.
An off-ramp? Did they actually think that Putin was losing, that his invasion of Crimea was a disaster from which he needed some face-saving way out? It's delusional enough to think that Putin -- in seizing Crimea, threatening eastern Ukraine, destabilizing Kiev, shaking NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Originally it was a mutual defense pact directed against an expansionist Soviet Union. In later years it evolved into a mechanism for picking the American pocket while criticizing the cut of the American pants...
, terrifying America's Eastern European allies, and making the West look utterly helpless -- was actually losing. But to imagine that Putin saw it that way as well and was waiting for American diplomacy to save him from a monumental blunder is totally divorced from reality.riousness, Mr. President.