The Beltway hawks want to defeat Putin, depicted as a new Hitler by Hillary Clinton, to punish the Russian leader who put a stop to the oligarch looting spree of the 1990s that had sent Russia into a death spiral. Their dream: humiliating Putin, setting off “freedom” demonstrations in Moscow, perhaps a civil war to bring Putin down.
Why, one must ask, is this an American interest? Why would we want chaos in a state which possesses 8,000 nuclear weapons? If the neocons and neoliberals got their way and Putin is defeated and falls, who then assumes power? Or does Russia break into warring fiefdoms with various warlords vying for control? And in this scenario, who, if anyone, commands Moscow’s nuclear arsenal? Is this really the future—with all its attendant uncertainty, desperation, and humiliation—Americans want to see? Truly it is hard to imagine anything more stupid or shortsighted.
I don't talk a lot about foreign policy because it doesn't interest me that much. Monitoring what's going on is about as interesting as reading the police blotter in the local newspaper. It's simply a matter of different gangs fighting with one another to improve their territory and market share. Nationalist sentiment is nothing more than wearing gang colors. It's primitive and uninteresting, but unfortunately, you have to deal with it if you live in a neighborhood controlled by gangs, and we all do.
So when it comes to foreign policy, we shouldn't look at our own US policy as motivated by anything differently than defending its market share. I honestly believe that at this time in our national development we are collectively incapable of anything better than enlightened self interest. I doubt we are even capable of the enlightened part. Whenever the US gets idealistic about foreign policy, it almost always makes things far worse, especially for the people we insist we want to help. We are collectively incapable of doing the right thing, even if it's clear what the right thing is to do, and usually it's not. Never trust anyone who professes to be an idealist in foreign policy; he is either a charlatan or a dangerous fool. The bottom line is that our shrewder gang leaders realize that they don't have any market share in this part of the world to protect, and that they should leave it alone. It's not noble, but it's sane, and when genuine nobility is not a possibility, sanity should be embraced.
So I am all for the Ukraine getting a higher level of self-determination than it had under the Russian puppet Yanukovych, but maybe the price for getting it is the Ukraine's giving up the Crimea--and, though possible, less likely--some of its eastern borderlands occupied mostly by Russian gangsters. It's a decent tradeoff--give up territory inhabited mostly by people who don't wear your colors in exchange for control over your own still extensive territory.
That's what the terms of the negotiations should be about now, but I doubt that's how the Ukrainians see it. Too bad. Regardless, it's, first, the Ukraine's business, and, second, the European Union's, and the US role should be simply to stand on the sidelines and support any decision these parties come up with that promises sanity, stability, and as much self determination for the concerned parties as seems practicable given the political realities.
We're approaching the centenary of the beginning of WWI. It started because a Serbian gangster took out a rival Austrian capo. The Austrian gang moved to retaliate, and the Russians mobilized to protect its market share in the Balkans, and this started the chain reaction that led to thirty years that were among the most horrific in European if not world history. It should have stayed between Austria and Russia without everyone else getting in the act. It may have led to disaster for one or the other, but it would have been a limited disaster. The same goes here.
Putin is a silly, strutting gamecock, but while he's a threat to his immediate neighbors, he's not a threat to world order. Not even remotely in the way that a major military conflict in this region would be. That's why it's important for the West not to listen to our own strutting gamecocks like McCain, Graham, NRO, and the gangsters on FOX. These fools are nuisances that need to be prudently managed and contained, but not to be taken more seriously than they deserve.