Ankara warns Moscow it may close Bosphorus for Russian ships

Bsanna News ^ | 2014-03-18

[Always A Marine]

NATO might not want to go to war with Russia but for damn sure Russia doesn’t care about going to war with NATO.

I don't think anybody wants to go to war, Russia included. But I think NATO miscalculated badly when it assured Russia that it wouldn't advance into former Soviet territories as long as Russia withdrew its troops from them -- and then took in 12 new Baltic and Eastern European nations as full-fledged treaty members between 1999 and 2009.

The Western backed coup in Ukraine was the last straw for Moscow. If the new, anti-Russian government in Kiev were to join NATO, the Western alliance would hold a solid territory extending through Poland to two shores of the Black Sea -- an untenable strategic situation for Russia and a clear signal that NATO had become more than just a defensive alliance. Faced with losing its warm water port at Sevastopol and its airbases and other critical military infrastructure in Crimea, Russia moved quickly to secure the peninsula before NATO could move in. Putin would have been derelict as a leader if he had failed to do so.

I don't believe Russia has any desire to seize the whole of Ukraine. The western half of Ukraine is hostile to Russia and more naturally aligned with Poland, and I doubt Russia wants to fight a perpetual war to suppress it. But the western half of Ukraine is heavily Russian and naturally aligned with Moscow, so I do expect Russia to occupy and "free" that region from Kiev and join it to the Russian Federation. That would give Russia broader access to the north shore of the Black Sea and a buffer to the Kiev regime.

Do I like this? No. But I do understand why it is happening and why it will happen. The world is not a courtroom, and nations do not bank their security on the presumed or transient virtues of their adversaries. NATO overplayed its hand through wholesale expansion onto Russia's doorstep, and now Moscow is doing what it believes it has to do.

[Always A Marine]

Anschluss or Sudetenland, your choice of which this could be.

I don't think Ukraine is analogous to either Austria or Sudetenland, though the "common heritage" rationale is similar. I see a greater parallel with Poland, where the Allies drew their final line in an indefensible position and were promptly routed. The West is powerless to stop Russia in Ukraine, and should not forfeit its credibility with empty words and threats.