Return of the Evil Empire

[Benton D Struckcheon]

4. Just about all of that is wrong,

but the last bit, about driving a wedge between Berlin and Moscow, is ridiculous. Mostly, Putin alternately annoys and amuses. He's not major, and he certainly doesn't rise to the level that anyone would even bother to think about driving a wedge between Berlin and Moscow, at least not before this mess.
One more time: no one was worrying about Russia. The US did minimal trade with Russia prior to this, and will do even less now. China was what was on Obama's mind. The Pivot to Asia. All this did was derail that. There was zero interest in the US in Russia or what it was doing, other than with the tussle we had last year re the Syria chemical weapons. Asia was and still is what worries the US, because China is the real rising power. Russia is just a stupid nuisance.
It's now a nuisance that has to be dealt with, so yeah, they'll put a new base, or two or three, east of where the ones that exist now are. The idea will be to put Russia in a box where it can't bother anyone, so they can go back to dealing with where the US's long term interests lie.
Putin was probably upset he was being treated as the insignificant factor he is. As far as the US is concerned, he can go back to getting custom made suits with five buttons on the sleeve (totally bizarre ostentation) and bothering Belarus and Kazakhstan over their noises about becoming more independent of Moscow. Ukraine will be settled somehow. China will treat Russia as a minor junior partner, useful for rattling the West from time to time. Crimea will rot, bereft of tourists except for the Russian ones whose holidays will be subsidized so as to cover up Moscow's embarrassment at the otherwise empty beaches. Europe will go back to a more or less normal relationship with them, but the level of investment will drop to minimal, since no businessman in his right mind wants to deal with the risk Russia now presents. Doubtless that will be spun as some sort of horrible Western conspiracy against the long-suffering Putin. The US will forget it exists, except when it decides to try to make itself more important than it is, but that will be less annoying over time as the world gets rid of its dependence on fossil fuels and Russia goes from being obsolete to being completely and utterly irrelevant.