Ukraine's European Revolution?

[Viking]

Sure, he can turn Crimea into another Abkhazia, but does that really serve Russia's interests?  What Putin wants is a complaint government in Kiev under Russian influence. 

I think he knows that ship has sailed and will settle for territory instead.

I still say we (NATO) persuade Ukraine to voluntarily give up Crimea in exchange for fast track NATO membership.  Crimea's Russians will always be a problem for Ukraine; might as well part ways now and reduce the Russian % of the electorate.

Given the demographics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia as well as Khazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia this is a really really really bad idea setting a really really really bad precedent.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Ukraine was a Russian ally up until a month ago.  Hard to place NATO units there.

You probably could have in the Tymoshenko days, if you had been willing to basically do what Putin did to buy Yanukovych, which was well, buy him.

[Jacob]

How long is Putin going to last in Russia? What are theist-Putin scenarios?

[CountDeMoney]

The real reason we can't do shit about Putin is we aren't ready, ever.

Russia's not ready, either.  It took them weeks to scrape together the first echelon units to invade Georgia, and the Georgians still managed to bitch slap them in several engagements before getting overwhelmed by numbers.  This demonstration against the Ukraine is about as ad hoc as you can get.

Ukraine's not Georgia, and if shooting starts, the Russians are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.

[DGuller]

How long is Putin going to last in Russia?

That's a question for his doctors.

[CountDeMoney]

How long is Putin going to last in Russia? What are theist-Putin scenarios?

The man's the ultimate rock star strongman.  He's not going anywhere. 

[OttoVonBismarck]

Part of the reason we've done so poorly with Putin is the West, out of fear of the dreaded "Cold War" is afraid to even really acknowledge Putin is anything but our dearest friend. I don't know that Obama can do much in regard to Ukraine at this point, as always we're just not fast enough or proactive enough in dealing with Putin. But I guess Crimea spinning off into Russian control isn't a great big deal, Russia already had heavy military assets there and it's mostly a Russian region anyway, whatever. Europeans love splintering countries apart anyway so that isn't the biggest deal in the world.

But what Obama can do in response is what Sheilbh said and then some, which basically means acknowledge "yeah, we hate you" and accepting the fact it's time to do bad things to Russia in response to Putin doing bad things. We had bad relations with Russia for most of the 20th century and it wasn't the end of the world. Go back to the G7, I'd ramp up even more serious barriers to Russian business dealings with the U.S. and would massively harm Russian imports coming into the U.S. Punitive tariffs etc. We have a -15bn trade deficit with the Russians so their economy is going to be losing out on a good deal by going at them on trade. I'd also make Russia a pariah country again, no invitations to the fancy events, no pictures with world leaders. If you want to act like the  Soviet Premier, you ought to be treated like him by the West. The fact that Putin does what he does and it causes no negative repercussions for himself or Russia are a major part, I think, of why it's been going on. While I know he has the strong support of a lot of hard nationalist Russians, I think if the West actually started imposing significant negative consequences on Russia he'd lose significant support. Right now he's basically able to paint himself as a respected world leader, hosting the Olympics, getting invites to all the fancy summits etc, we're enabling him.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I guess my thinking is, and maybe I'm wrong--most Russians do not want a return to the Cold War. But if they have Putin empire-building again with none of the negative consequences of the Cold War, why would most Russians have a problem with it? But if it looks like Russia is going to fall economically and diplomatically back into Soviet era conditions because of Putin's empire building I think a lot of his support would erode. Russians have already had a long experience trying to maintain control of an empire that they couldn't manage, once they start to see trouble I think that's going to be forefront in the minds of a lot of Russians. There would have to be an acknowledgement by some, and I think many, of "hey, didn't we do this before and it just made us really poor and backwards?" And unlike the height of the Soviet era, Russians have pretty robust access to outside news, media, obviously the internet etc. The overlords can't just paint every interaction with the west as the evil capitalist pig dogs angling to kill all Russians or whatever. That works with absolute state control like the Soviets came close to having and the North Koreans have, in modern Russia you can't just lie your way out of problems with the West--but so far there have been no problems with the West for the Russians. Instead Putin is doing what he wants while Russian businesses are doing tons of trade with the West and Western countries are investing billions into Russia.

[Iormlund]

Furthermore, such a conflict would cut off the flow of gas to Europe.

Not anymore. There's a direct pipeline through the Baltic that bypasses Eastern Europe entirely.

[CountDeMoney]

Between Dubya making sweet, sweet love to Putin's soul, 9/11 and our neurotic national preoccupation with bombing the holy fuck out of dune coons on monkey bars for over 10 years while ignoring traditional nation-state adversarial international relations, it's sorta tough to reengage in statecraft with players like Putin from a cold start with any real credibility.

And no, most Russians don't want a return to the Cold War.  What they do want, however, is the return of a strong Russia, and an internationally relevant Russia.  Putin feeds that need.

[alfred russel]

It's pretty fucking shameful.  I'd actually support military action if that's required.  If we are going to just stand by while Russia gobbles up countries we may as well pack it in and disband NATO.

Why disband NATO because of something that happens to a country outside of the alliance?

[Razgovory]

The real reason we can't do shit about Putin is we aren't ready, ever.

Russia's not ready, either.  It took them weeks to scrape together the first echelon units to invade Georgia, and the Georgians still managed to bitch slap them in several engagements before getting overwhelmed by numbers.  This demonstration against the Ukraine is about as ad hoc as you can get.

Ukraine's not Georgia, and if shooting starts, the Russians are going to be in for a bit of a surprise.

Why would we expect Ukraine to be able to do anything?  They almost certainly have all the same problems as Russia plus a military that is of questionable reliability.  Russia has already overrun the Crimea and a shot hasn't been fired.

[alfred russel]

Ukraine is not a direct military ally of the United States so you obviously couldn't immediately jump to saying "an attack on Ukraine is an attack on us." However, as President I would state that the memorandum signed between the Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S. when we disarmed Ukrainian nuclear weapons stockpile contained promises by both the United States and Russia to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine. I would say that any military action against Ukraine would be a violation of this agreement, and that as the United States had entered into this agreement with the understanding that Ukrainian territorial integrity and sovereignty would be respected, that Russia violating that entitled Ukraine to extraordinary support from the United States. Namely, since Ukraine had essentially been violated it would be entitled to like compensation in the form of what it had given up: nuclear weapons. I would then offer Ukraine up to 50 nuclear weapons and something akin to the Minuteman III missile (which could hit anywhere in Russia from anywhere in Ukrainian territory) to launch said weapons.

OvB, this is crazy. We didn't give South Korea nuclear weapons when they were invaded, and we didn't give South Vietnam nuclear weapons either. It is literally a nuclear option that dramatically raises the risks of nuclear war and would cause relations with Russia to radically deteriorate (as well as the rest of the world that would see us as madmen).

What we could do is give lots of aid to the Ukraine to ensure that any destabilizing actions by Russia don't succeed in a kind of Berlin airlift scenario.

[Razgovory]

It's pretty fucking shameful.  I'd actually support military action if that's required.  If we are going to just stand by while Russia gobbles up countries we may as well pack it in and disband NATO.

Why disband NATO because of something that happens to a country outside of the alliance?

The point of NATO was that the West could oppose Russian aggression with one voice.  Nobody has an interest in that anymore.  I genuinely wonder if NATO would do something if the Baltics were overrun.

[Iormlund]

Meh. We might be reluctant of getting killed for others in Western Europe, but we do manufacture an absurd amount of modern weapons. Just start sending some to those that will put them to good use. If Putin wants to play this by the Cold War book, why can't we?