Thursday, March 06, 2014

With Enemies Like These, Who Needs Friends?

Putin's chances for getting away with his seizure of Crimea probably rest on the inability of the Europeans to display any signs of having a spine.

Huh:

The Ukrainian crisis has sent European leaders scurrying to find responses to Russia's aggression. But so far, they seem more confused over what to do than they are united. One reason for the confusion is that many EU member states have close trade ties with Moscow and are loathe to jeopardize them by slapping punitive sanctions on Moscow. In the meantime, the scramble over what to do is producing some notable moments: from threats, to backpedaling, to even some embarrassments.

Russia counts on Europe to do nothing effective.

That's probably a good bet based on how the European Union investigated the Russo-Georgian War of 2008 and concluded that Georgia shares responsibility with Russia for starting the war.

So far, the only sign of Western Europe noticing the invasion involves an American decision to send 6 more F-15s to Lithuania to reinforce our 4-plane detachment already there. And we are increasing training with the Poles which would increase the capacity for Poland to receive NATO aircraft reinforcements in a crisis. So Poland and Lithuania (and Estonia and Latvia) get a bit of reassurance in this tense atmosphere.

Yet Russia simultaneously swears they fear NATO leading a European charge into Holy Mother Russia.