Replies

Some of the steps Coats is proposing are largely symbolic: One provision would tell the Government Printing Office it “may not print any map, document, record, or other paper of the United States portraying or otherwise indicating Crimea as part of the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Let's ask one simple question. Who is going to use US maps of Russia/Ukraine? Russians? Ukrainians? I don't think so; they can print their own maps, in their own languages. This leaves US citizens as primary users of those maps.

Now, what group of US citizens is likely to need those maps? Hot dog vendors from NYC? Plumbers in Idaho? Not likely. It would be the Pentagon; the State Department; major MSM. Don't they need to know what is really the situation on the ground, as opposed to the fantasy of politicians? What would happen if a US ship gets permission from Ukraine to enter its waters and then proceeds to Crimea, since that is marked on their maps as Ukraine? (Well, it will be stopped by the Russian Coast Guard, and the US Captain will be given a lecture in geography :-)

None of that is helpful. The situation has changed, and the best one can do is to acknowledge the change. Perhaps one can work to reverse the change... but there is no support for it in Crimea, and there is no desire among Ukrainians to go and die to get Crimea back. (It doesn't benefit an average Ukrainian in any way.) There is only one group of people in Ukraine who'd like Crimea back, and that is the current government. However they are frightened by today's events in Eastern Ukraine; they can't afford time to worry about Crimea if they have some (slim) chance of losing Donetsk. Putin may make a deal with them: they forget about Crimea, and he allows them to have Eastern Ukraine (for now.) This will leave only EU and the USA among those who are insisting that Crimea ought to be returned... even after the actual parties of the conflict reached an agreement. That would be very strange, since neither EU nor the USA have any standing in this matter.

There is yet another issue to consider. Russian capitals were being steadily exported from Russia since 1995. This was not well received in Kremlin, but not much could be done. But now Obama and EU gave him a great gift: the sanctions (which do nothing, in reality) demonstrated to every Russian businessman that their money in the West are hostage to whims of Western politicians. What will happen now? Here is one example. Sanctions were applied to one Russian bank (Bank Rossiya.) That bank then closed all their accounts in New York and declared that they are going to operate only with Russian Rouble instead, strengthening it as an international settlement currency. What sanctions are you talking about here, Obama? It's great news to Putin. Not only export of capital will be reduced, but now he can pay for more and more imports with the Rouble that he controls.

~There is yet another issue to consider. Russian capitals were being steadily exported from Russia since 1995. This was not well received in Kremlin, but not much could be done. But now Obama and EU gave him a great gift: the sanctions (which do nothing, in reality) demonstrated to every Russian businessman that their money in the West are hostage to whims of Western politicians. What will happen now? Here is one example. Sanctions were applied to one Russian bank (Bank Rossiya.) That bank then closed all their accounts in New York and declared that they are going to operate only with Russian Rouble instead, strengthening it as an international settlement currency. What sanctions are you talking about here, Obama? It’s great news to Putin. Not only export of capital will be reduced, but now he can pay for more and more imports with the Rouble that he controls.~

True. I thought from this angle since the very beginning of this crisis.