Deescalation through escalation is so illogical it suggests a type of insanity. Inciting global thermonuclear war fits the definition of "a danger to himself and others" better than anything else could.

The ARTICLES AUTHOR clearly “believes” Russia provoked the current crises; citing it can only ENCOURAGE that “belief” in others.

It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of opportunity missed by invading Iraq: Even MY reaction to 911 was essentially “Go get the SOBs, George!” and that was less than a year after his brother stealing the 2000 election had me literally down on my knees praying for mercy. Even pacificist Amerosceptic FRANCES response was to pledge any and all aid we needed. Invading a COMPLETELY UNINVOLVED nation was, in addition to an inexcusably stupid waste of lives and resources, an epic and tragic betrayal of restored GLOBAL trust in America that had been steadily eroding since the CIA first began toppling democratically elected governments in the early 1950s.

All that said, it is conceivable the Baltics, Ukraine and Georgia are free agents capable of making their OWN decisions independent of whatever the US, EU, Russia or any foreign entity wants. It requires no idiot to compare EU and Russian living standards and civil liberties, then conclude the former is a far more appealing partner. Russias per capita GDP is lower than ANY Baltic States, and HALF that of the EU even after admitting its less prosperous Eastern European members. As previously noted, Poland has become to Western Europe what Mexico is to the US, except EU membership obviates the need of employment visas and customs duties.

If Moscow can have an anti-nuclear shield there is no reason the US cannot. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine was “promised” NATO membership either; Ukraine has not even applied, and Georgia only recently did so around the time of Russias invasion. It is reasonable to suggest that application prompted that invasion (though less so if also insisting Georgia attacked Russia first) but, once again, is Georgia not entitled to self-determination, or is it simply relegated to permanent status as a satellite of Russia, NATO or whoever proves strong/sly enough to subjugate it?

Strategically, ALL NATO borders are synonymous; if it were 1980 and we were debating the USSR we would NOT be debating THAT at all. Russia had no ironclad mutual defense treaty with Iraq (just many arms sales dating back to the height of the Cold War; most military vehicles littering the Highway of Death in 1991 were Soviet-made.) The US DOES have such treaties with the Baltics, Norway and Sweden, ALL of whose airspace Russian COMBAT craft have REPEATEDLY VIOLATED. Not recon craft flown NEAR borders, but fighters and NUCLEAR-CAPABLE BOMBERS flown ACROSS borders.

Russia has done nothing we have not? The US sent diplomats and cash to Ukraine: Russia sent TANKS AND ARTILLERY. How many times has Obama publicly threatened NUCLEAR LAUNCHES to get Putin or ANYONE to submit? Because Putin routinely makes such omnicidal public threats, and show no sign of ceasing (just the opposite.)

Abkhazia and South Ossetia were GEORGIAS in the first place, hence use of the term “REGAIN” rather than “gain”; deploying its own military to its own territory is not “attacking Russia” except in the minds of the Tsars and KGB. Citing Bushs violation of international law in no way excused Putins, as Sarkozy most likely told him. Bush was a SOB so Putin gets to be a SOB too? That’s not an argument to ignore Russias ongoing aggression, but an argument against “electing” a CIA scion OR KGB officer to lead a nation.

Again, we sent diplomats; Putin sent the Red Army. If Euromaidan and the Orange Revolution were US black ops, why was an Asst. Secy. of State “coordinating” (or rather, making suggestions and deliberating the best immediate US response) from another country instead of CIA officers giving COMMANDS on the ground? Ollie North certainly did not “coordinate:” He told people to do things, and they did.

All Nuland did was make a crude candid comment that the US would decide its RESPONSE to Euromaidan independent of the EU, understandable given that Western Europe has spent a century (so far…) fellating every military dictator that gives it the chance, in the bizarre belief growing genocide is somehow “less violent” than war to contain and end it. Any doubt even the Holocaust was not enough to teach Europe WW IIs counterlesson to WW Is vanished when the US and UK had to end Miloševićs MULTIPLE genocides IN Europe because Europe itself refused. But admitting we must RESPOND to events with the understanding Europe has the moral and physical courage of a wet noodle in no way makes us INSTIGATOR of those events.

If that was meddling, in what Bizarro World is Russias response "reticence"? If invasion and willingness to NUKE any successful resistance is "reticence" then "actual" aggression would kill us all.

MULTIPLE genocides forfeits all right to the sovereignty card. Just because Russia has been Serbias best pal since before Serbia started the FIRST World War does not excuse Milošević nor current Russian attempts to start the THIRD: It is just a reminder Russia NEARLY DID SO IN KOSOVO when it secretly sent troops to seize Pristina and its UN “allies” only found out when NATO peacekeepers arrived to discover an armed military presence waiting. Russia might have avoided the whole issue and saved millions of lives had it deployed those troops soon enough to halt Serbias genocide of Croatians, or Serbias genocide of Bosnians, or Serbias genocide of Albanians.

That is only analogous to Ukraine if one accepts Putins claims Ukrainians are committing genocide against Russians and/or Jews. The same Ukrainians we are repeatedly told ARE Russians ethnically, culturally and in all ways; they are piling their near-kin in mass graves for speaking a slightly different dialect. Though ACTUAL victims of this alleged genocide are surprisingly hard to find given that they are a primary casus belli for the Russian troops occupying the sites of their deaths; perhaps the Red Army just loads those corpses into the same incinerators used to hide their own slain soldiers from inquisitive families back home.

Fair enough as far as they go, but 1) it has been a long time since a different US strong-armed those countries in a VERY different Cold War environment so that 2) our recent efforts were solely to clean up messes we MADE in the first place and 3) the Cold War CIA is hardly a model for legal or moral behavior: It probably murdered its OWN president.

What did we militarily force on Sudan? Our Latin American history is a mess, sure, but that just goes back to “the Cold War CIA is neither a legal nor moral model for anyone.”

We have allies who have stuck by us and vice versa; Russia has none: Why is that? Let us not confuse VOLUNTARY alliance nor even hegemony with imperialism.

YES: He is the one invading multiple nations, threatening to invade still more, and sending combat aircraft into the airspace (and at least one NUCLEAR MISSILE sub into the territorial waters) of yet more. He is the one trumping up charges of Nazi genocide against every target he can find, while threatening a NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST if anyone dares try to stop him.

Instead of asking why the US is “fomenting revolution”—even when it is NOT—the better question is why virtually ALL Russias western neighbors are rushing into NATO and/or the EU as fast as they can draft the applications. Again, the US did not even WANT Poland and the rest in NATO: The APPLICANTS talked the EU into it, and it convinced the US. Perhaps it would have been better had we held to our rejection, but the past two decades or Russian foreign policy (and that IS what this is, whatever Russian imperialists claim) underscore why the former SSRs (i.e. NOT the US) were so insistent.

Then he should learn to read a map, because unless the US/NATO/EU absorb Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China he is a long way from being “encircled.” It is hard to surround a country as large as any TWO others COMBINED. Sure, Kazakhstan is in the Partnership for Peace but, as you note, so is Russia itself; they are also both in the CIS, and TWO Asian economic unions, one of which also includes Russia, so there is little chance of it joining any European ones. China is FAR closer to Russia than the US; if Putin is worried about any nuclear arsenal on his border he should worry about the worlds third largest one LIVING there. “Encirclement” sounds much like “lebensraum,” with even less factual basis.

Why do western Ukrainians hate their “fellow Russians” so much? Because the US and EU make them?

Odd; a year—a WEEK—ago that flowchart was ignorant hysteria: Russia was just reasserting itself in its ancient province of Ukraine (and Georgia, and Moldova) but would NEVER invade ANY NATO nation. Now it is contemplating JUST THAT, but that is only reasonable and just, especially since the Baltics are all guilty of NONEXISTENT Nazi genocide (although if we are accepting Nazi genocide candidates, the nationalist threatening to nuke the world unless allowed to re-repress multiple neighboring ethnicities and states is a good one.)

I stand by what else I said then: If Putin stops at Ukraine that probably IS where it will stop, because Europe has no will, the US no means and neither any legal duty to defend Ukraine—but if he invades Poland or ANY Baltic—OR SCANDINAVIAN—country it probably means WW III. Russian apologists can blame “capitalist imperialism” for that all day long, but that will not make the planet any less a lifeless cinder.

As for when it all started: When the Walls fall confirmed long held Soviet military and party hardliners "belief" glasnost and perestroika were not just ideologically treason, but mortal weaknesses the West must exploit. When Putin was frantically burning KGB files in East Berlin and wiring Moscow for instructions only to ominously note "Moscow is silent" in his diary. The GOP conceit is that Reagan resuming the arms race and bankrupting the Soviets while incidentally bankrupting the US won the Cold War, but the reality is glasnost and an incompetent East German public relations officer did that by announcing East Berliners had permission to dismantle the Wall. Gorbachev was already moving toward Soviet democracy, but that prompted the Kremlin coup, and when the dust settled both Gorbachev AND the hardliners were gone.

Except the hardliners were never gone, just in the wilderness where Gorbachev put them and from whence their first attempt to emerge sent the Soviet Union. But that did not last long; soon, the man who prevented the Kremlins coup by siding with Gorbachev was derided as a dishonest drunk and a former KGB officer back in charge. Now Putin is completing the job he began by reversing democratic and civil liberties reforms: Making Gorbachev a failure by dispensing with the quaint false notion of regional self-determination, and restoring the Soviet borders at the expense of resuming the Cold War.

Pray Putin stops at Ukraine, because if the EU bails on the Baltics at the expense of abolishing NATO it is open season on every last one of them: NONE can withstand Russia alone, and their collective "military" has neither the integration nor capacity to do much better. The fate of Imperial Russian neighbors with no means to resist conquest is, as it long has been, all too obvious. Then again, perhaps life absent a US bodyguard is the only way Europe CAN learn war is NEVER obsolete.