Will Putin Send in the Tanks?
By Bill Powell
Filed: 2/20/14 at 11:01 AM | Updated: 2/20/14 at 1:01 PM
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This divide has been at Ukraines core for centuries. Whats unfolding now is nothing less than the violent struggle for a nations soul. To some current and former diplomats, what is surprising is not that Ukraine appears to be coming apart, but that it has taken this long into the post Soviet era for something like this to happen.
At its origins, more than ten centuries ago, what was known as Kievan Russia was, as James Billington wrote in his classic study of Russian culture, closely linked with Western Europethrough trade and intermarriage with every important royal family of Western Christendom.
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What were witnessing now, make no mistake, is the latest chapter of that struggle. And it is one in which Moscow has an important, inherent and obvious advantage: Ukraine matters more to President Vladimir Putin, and Russia, than it does to Barack Obama, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union is the central, disastrous geopolitical fact of Putins life (See Newsweek cover story February 13, Putins Games). And among the new states that were created when the empire imploded, Ukraine was first among equals. It was, as Walter Russell Mead, professor and author at Bard College wrote recently, ``the largest and most important republic within the Soviet Union.
If Putin dreams of reassembling a reasonable facsimile of the Soviet empireand he doesthen, as Russell wrote, ``everything pales beside the battle for Ukraine.
more...
http://www.newsweek.com/will-putin-send-tanks-229631
rdharma
(6,057 posts)Oh, brother!
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)TPTB are going to be milking as much WW3 fearmongering as they can out of this, no matter how implausible such a thing may be. Bank on it!
rdharma
(6,057 posts)The TPTB want to inject these fools with visions of Dolf Lundgren "coming ta' git their gunz"!
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)The Magistrate
(95,247 posts)Putin is not an idiot. A bad man, certainly, but no fool.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Loaded Liberal Dem
(230 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)a.) he doesn't have enough troops for the job, so he'd have to ramp up
b.) he is currently moving in precisely the opposite direction, on a charm offensive
c.) his public opposes it
d.) He needs Ukraine to be stable and functional, like it or not, and he cannot accomplish that by force
cprise
(8,445 posts)IIRC, NATO is constitutionally an anti-Russian organization.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)I'm assuming for purposes of this conversation that we aren't that dumb.