Posted on 03/18/2014 8:53:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Vladimir Putin seems to have lost touch with reality, Angela Merkel reportedly told Barack Obama after speaking with the Russian president. He is "in another world."
"I agree with what Angela Merkel said ... that he is in another world," said Madeleine Albright, "It doesn't make any sense."
John Kerry made his contribution to the bonkers theory by implying that Putin was channeling Napoleon: "You don't just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext."
Now that Putin has taken Crimea without firing a shot, and 95 percent of a Crimean electorate voted Sunday to reunite with Russia, do his decisions still appear irrational?
Was it not predictable that Russia, a great power that had just seen its neighbor yanked out of Russia's orbit by a U.S.-backed coup in Kiev, would move to protect a strategic position on the Black Sea she has held for two centuries?
Zbigniew Brzezinski suggests that Putin is out to recreate the czarist empire. Others say Putin wants to recreate the Soviet Union and Soviet Empire.
But why would Russia, today being bled in secessionist wars by Muslim terrorists in the North Caucasus provinces of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, want to invade and reannex giant Kazakhstan, or any other Muslim republic of the old USSR, which would ensure jihadist intervention and endless war?
If we Americans want out of Afghanistan, why would Putin want to go back into Uzbekistan? Why would he want to annex Western Ukraine where hatred of Russia dates back to the forced famine of the Stalin era?
To invade and occupy all of Ukraine would mean endless costs in blood and money for Moscow, the enmity of Europe, and the hostility of the United States. For what end would Russia, its population shrinking by half a million every year, want to put Russian soldiers back in Warsaw?
But if Putin is not a Russian imperialist out to re-establish Russian rule over non-Russian peoples, who and what is he?
In the estimation of this writer, Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.
Consider the world Putin saw, from his vantage point, when he took power after the Boris Yeltsin decade.
He saw a Mother Russia that had been looted by oligarchs abetted by Western crony capitalists, including Americans. He saw millions of ethnic Russians left behind, stranded, from the Baltic states to Kazakhstan.
He saw a United States that had deceived Russia with its pledge not to move NATO into Eastern Europe if the Red Army would move out, and then exploited Russia's withdrawal to bring NATO onto her front porch.
Had the neocons gotten their way, not only the Warsaw Pact nations of Central and Eastern Europe, but five of 15 republics of the USSR, including Ukraine and Georgia, would have been brought into a NATO alliance created to contain and, if need be, fight Russia.
What benefits have we derived from having Estonia and Latvia as NATO allies that justify losing Russia as the friend and partner Ronald Reagan had made by the end of the Cold War?
We lost Russia, but got Rumania as an ally? Who is irrational here?
Cannot we Americans, who, with our Monroe Doctrine, declared the entire Western Hemisphere off limits to the European empires -- "Stay on your side of the Atlantic!" -- understand how a Russian nationalist like Putin might react to U.S. F-16s and ABMs in the eastern Baltic?
In 1999, we bombed Serbia for 78 days, ignoring the protests of a Russia that had gone to war for Serbia in 1914. We exploited a Security Council resolution authorizing us to go to the aid of endangered Libyans in Benghazi to launch a war and bring down the Libyan regime.
We have given military aid to Syrian rebels and called for the ouster of a Syrian regime that has been Russia's ally for decades.
At the end of the Cold War, writes ex-ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, 80 percent of Russia's people had a favorable opinion of the USA. A decade later, 80 percent of Russians were anti-American.
That was before Putin, whose approval is now at 72 percent because he is perceived as having stood up to the Americans and answered our Kiev coup with his Crimean counter coup.
America and Russia are on a collision course today over a matter -- whose flag will fly over what parts of Ukraine -- no Cold War president, from Truman to Reagan, would have considered any of our business.
If the people of Eastern Ukraine wish to formalize their historic, cultural and ethnic ties to Russia, and the people of Western Ukraine wish to sever all ties to Moscow and join the European Union, why not settle this politically, diplomatically and democratically, at a ballot box?
From Rocky to Napolean...Goodness...
Yep.
Putin is the only one acting with any rationality in
europe right now. He’s a Russian leader following Russian interests for Russian people. None of this multi-culti nonsense.
Crimea was traditionally part of Russia thus it contains I high percentage of ethnic Russians. It has a number of oil and gas lines running through it, and most importantly it contains Russia’s only warm water port and access to the Baltic. Given that nobody is going to stop him, why would Putin not annex Crimea? It is the most rational thing in the world.
I remember stealing another kid’s candy when I was little.
Was it irational? Yes, it was.
But at the end of the day I had all the other kid’s candy.
Pat is so frigging stuck in the 80s it isn’t funny. He passed being relevant decades ago. It’s really pathetic.
And that is the moral to this story...it escapes them all.
What is he wrong about with this article?
He doesn’t always make sense, but I must say, I find little to disagree with Pat here.
I agree with Pat on this. Too many Conservatives on this forum and elsewhere are reading Putin wrongly. Putin is a nationalist who is doing what he could to protect Russia, against the hypocritical Europeans/Americans.
John Kerry made his contribution to the bonkers theory by implying that Putin was channeling Napoleon: “You don’t just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.”
Well, he just did. What are *you* going to do about it, Ensign Band-aid?
Besides, have you seen the uniforms on the palace guard? (On Drudge now.) Very tsarist.
You are exactly right. Putin is winning decisively, as a result. And will continue to win decisively, because half of the rest of the world is caught up in a fantasy world where sanctions and harshly worded letters of condemnation can trump facts on the ground. The other half of the world can’t see how the world has changed, and are so blinded by paranoia that they cannot see the obvious truth in what you say — he may be a very good tactician and therefore difficult to predict, but his underlying motives are simple and plain to see.
I agree with Pat on this. Too many Conservatives on this forum and elsewhere are reading Putin wrongly. Putin is a nationalist who is doing what he could to protect Russia, against the hypocritical Europeans/Americans.
You’re right.
Did you hear Pat on Hannity yesterday? Basically saying that all Obama had to do was take the long view and wait Putin out and let the US outspend Russia? Horsesh!t. We can’t outspend anybody unless it’s for the leeches in this country, period.
Classical Russian history, decades old relations and actions, and imagined actions this country could take are and old man’s dreams. Putting Obama now in context with anything historical, or recently historical about Russia is ludicrous. Further, to ask if Putin is irrational in the face of it given our impotent and incompetent leadership is ludicrous in my opinion.
Bingo.
Completely rational.
And we have nothing. But to be fair, even at our strongest militarily there would have been little we could do about this without risking WW3 and Crimea is not worth WW3
My guess is that 10 years from now Russia is going to look a lot like the USSR, with only Poland and Czechoslovakia being in play
I’m not a Pat B fan, but I can’t find fault with his analysis in this piece.
Like him or not, Pat Buchanan’s analysis are usually ( not always, but usually), well argued.
Sound to me like Putin is just adopting 21st century US foreign policy to me, not Napoleon. Oh no, its okay for US to do it, but not Russia
I think you haven’t a clue.
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