The following is from Karen Dawisha’s “Putin’s Kleptocracy, Who Owns Russia?”:
“[Viktor] Talnov was a member of the Leningrad and then St. Petersburg legislature and a trained psychologist and wrote a psychological study of Putin, whom he knew, in which concluded that Putin had two key characteristics: a very high tolerance for risk and an ability to make close friendship with influential and forceful patrons who were able to ‘extract’ him from any difficulties.”
One does not want to deal head on with someone like Putin; rather, it is better to use go-betweens as President Barack Obama has been doing. This avoids personal animosity and provides the Russian with time for sober reflection.
Also, it is important to avoid the circumstances whereby Putin will take a dangerous gamble. His rashness could do long term harm to European relationships, driving a long term wedge between Russia and the West. (Russia’s more sensible long term better interests should be to become party of the EU and NATO.) That is where sanctions come in.
Slowly but certainly they are strangling the Russian economy. Soon there will be popular discontent rather than adulation for Putin’s aggressive policies.
Meanwhile our NATO allies are recognizing Putin’s extreme danger and may take steps to improve their defenses and response time.
We should not risk a show down with Putin; rather, we should gradually grind him down.
Does Russian spend a trillion dollars a year on defense, have military in 150 countries, wage wars of aggression in the Middle East, lie about weapons of mass destruction in other countries, sponsor coup d’etats in countries thousands of miles away from their borders, etc? I can go on.
If Russia had sponsored a coup in Canada, got a pro-Russia regime installed in Ottawa with a government wanting to join in military alliance with them, just what does anyone suppose the U.S. response would be? So please just stop about Ukraine, the eastern peoples of that country have as much right to self determination as any other minority within a country.
The U.S. sponsored rebellion and then bombed Serbia into submission so Kosovo could become part of a greater Albania, if Russians in Eastern Ukraine want to be part of Russia or just be left alone by Kiev so be it.
The Ukrainian government should stop firing heavy artillery on civilians like they have been doing for the last year. The U.S. is once again pursuing a self-serving policy wherein they think the ends justify the means but all it really means is more refugees, more deaths. That is the U.S. legacy in the Middle East and now it wants the same in Eastern Europe. The only people who believe this nonsense are the U.S. politicians who keep repeating the same lies over and over.
Anonymous: What BS.
Since the Russians never allowed internationally observed fair elections we do not know what the people of eastern Ukraine want but we do know Russians, not eastern Ukrainians do most of the fighting and that heavy weapons from Russia have been brought in. We do know that Putin is an extremely corrupt leader in an extremely corrupt country with an extremely corrupt legal system.
Putin would not have been able to be a leader of any western country since the political systems of the west are more evolved and would not tolerate the kind of leadership. So why would the people of Ukraine, a country plagued with corruption, want to move closer to the more corrupt and poverty stricken Russia as compared to the much less corrupt and richer west?