Peninsular Peril

The votes have been cast (by those who didn't boycott the referendum) and Crimea has seceded from Ukraine and wants to go back to Russia. I regard this as a done deal as will any realistic observer, despite the protestations of illegitimacy from Western leaders.

That most people living there would prefer to go with Russia is obvious, even if the fact that Putin continues to gather Russians continues to elude people looking for motivation. It is known that Putin continues to use the immediate recognition of Kosovo after we'd bombed the Serbs out of there as licence to annex his own "self-determining" majority areas back to the Rodina, but not acknowledged by most of the media, let alone Western politicians.

So what? Sure, some people will be unhappy, and Ukraine is out some income from Sevastopol rental to the Russians, but what does that mean to anyone else? Ukraine has had a sequence of corrupt governments since independence from the USSR and I sure as shit don't want to get dragged into another war in Europe. Certainly not over an Anschluss like this, and I see the geopolitical cost to North America to be nil from the Crimea changing hands. The damage from puffing up and making vague threats of sanctions against Russia is potentially great.

A lot of people really didn't like G.W. Bush, but most of them were either lefties for whom realpolitik-clueless Obama can do no wrong, or people GW decided to take some action against, like, say, the late Saddam Hussein. One thing which definitively separates Bush II and Obama is that nobody who counts takes the latter seriously. Even in a no-win situation like the invasion of Georgia by Russia in 2008, Bush made a point of having American assets in the capital (Tbilisi) to present the Russians with an unspoken "red line". It must be noticed that as sub-optimal as things may have turned out for Georgia, the Russians took the hint and pulled most of the way back.

The lost Georgian territory is a lesson to them not to poke the bear, no matter if you're provoked. The lesson to us is (again) Talk - Action = Zero, Action - Talk = >Zero. I don't know what "we" would do if Russia had another crack at Georgia right now, but somebody had better be taking some proactive steps to dissuade Putin from cooking something up in Eastern Ukraine to take that also. After that? Belarus? The Baltic States?

The Balts have less to fear, and more potential European support than Ukraine due to ethnic/national/cultural connections to Europe vice Russia. I may have read The Clash of Civilizations too much, but birds of a feather do flock together and it makes sense to me to draw our lines along those natural fault lines.

I keep talking about action, so what should be done? In practice I don't see a lot of potential for the sort of thing that I think would send the right message, but if Europe still had any armies, it'd be a good time to start scheduling boots-on-the-ground joint exercises with what's left of Ukraine and put some bases in the Baltic States. Physical assets, preferably those which can shoot back, will do the job. Putin doesn't want a war as it's not in his interest to lose more than he'd gain. He will walk into as many places with a Russian majority population as he is permitted to, sanctions be damned.

Whatever. For my money, the next flashpoint is Donetsk, but it's not exactly crystal ball territory to come up with that. This is NOT a fait accompli but if Putin pushes for it he has enough support on the ground to pull it off in some fashion if there is no physical response from "our side". As long as Obama/Kerry are running the US show and the Europeans are beholden to Russia for their heating fuel, it's Putin's geographical and demographic prize to gain, and Ukraine's to lose.