In my opinion, none of this Ukrainian stuff would've happened if American penalty specialist Oshie hadn't won that ice hockey game against the Russians single-handedly. You could see then in Putin's face that someone would pay.
There were only three things I had learned at school about the Crimean Peninsula and so I went to Wikipedia, the plagiarist's best friend, to refresh my memory about the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Yalta Conference, and the balaclava (which I stopped wearing long ago).
Now that the Ukraine wants to join the German-controlled and German-financed European Union, I want to know, "Why didn't they stay with them right from the start?" ☺
On a serious note, Russia’s annexation of Crimea is the most dangerous geopolitical event of the post-Cold War era, and perhaps since the Cuban Missile crisis. The US looks weaker and weaker, and gets less and less respect internationally. The US-Russia confrontation is taking place under the critical gaze of the leaders of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Hizballah in Lebanon.
What they are seeing is an American president who is backing off a commitment to US allies for the second time in eight months. They remember his U-turn last August on US military intervention for the removal of Syrian President Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons. They also see Washington shying off from Russia's clear and present use of military force and therefore concluding that Washington is not a reliable partner for safeguarding their national security.
The Middle East governments and groups which opted to cooperate recently with Vladimir Putin – Damascus, Tehran, Hizballah and Egypt – are ending up on the strong side of the regional equation. Others such as Turkey and Qatar are squirming.
American weakness on the global front has strengthened the Iranian-Syrian bloc and its ties with Hizballah. Assad is going nowhere.
Putin standing behind Iran is a serious obstacle to a negotiated and acceptable comprehensive agreement with Iran, just as the international EU- and US-led bid for a political resolution of the Syrian conflict foundered last month, and now is unlikely to ever be revisited.
Putin is stuck now; he cannot easily de-escalate. What will come next? Will the vital Russian gas supplies to the EU be disrupted?
We live in interesting times!
