What should be done about Russia and Ukraine?

[The Traveler]

132. You have to answer this question before you can answer that question

How much is it worth to you, in terms of human lives and national treasure? k

In this situation, the most committed wins. For a great many reasons, many of them rooted in regional history, Russia views the Ukraine as a vital piece of territory. With it under their control, they become players in Eurasia. With it under someone else's control, they become vulnerable. That is the perception of Russian military thinkers, and history makes it difficult to argue with their rationale.

So we can presume, due to its perceived importance to Russia, that the level of Russian commitment is high, particularly among Russian military leadership. From that we can infer they are willing to pay a high price.

Are we? Probably not. So that leaves us with economic sanctions ... and Russia has already found in China a source of support that helps undermine the effectiveness of that.

The post Cold War "New World Order" thus faces a crisis, and it is one that I think was inevitable once the US decided to break the rules and invade Iraq on a set of false pretexts. That deed motivated, and indeed enabled, the formation of partnerships to resist the brutal enforcement of PNAC's vaunted "benign hegemony". Those partnerships, of which BRICs is just one example, have been ripening for a while. None of our economic institutions, nor any of our military preparations, presume a large and well financed bloc of opposition. But that is indeed what we face.

I believe Ukraine is gone, a dead end. We need to be rethinking our policies in terms of a new reality. To the chagrin of the neo-cons, history has clearly resumed. The dream of a unipolar world turned out to be delusion. We need to give up on that idea now.

Trav