Putin Goes to War in Crimea
This is a must read in order to understand Putin’s motivations behind yesterday’s invasion of Crimea. If you remember anything about the Soviet mentality during the Cold War, a lot of this should ring very familiar.
Money quote:
In a recent Letter from Sochi, I tried to describe Putin’s motivations: his resentment of Western triumphalism and American power, after 1991; his paranoia that Washington is somehow behind every event in the world that he finds threatening, including the recent events in Kiev; his confidence that the U.S. and Europe are nonetheless weak, unlikely to respond to his swagger because they need his help in Syria and Iran; his increasingly vivid nationalist-conservative ideology, which relies, not least, on the elevation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been so brutally suppressed during most of the Soviet period, as a quasi-state religion supplying the government with its moral force.
The “Letter from Sochi” link is an important read, too.
Bottom line, Putin is playing hardball, and any counter threats from Obama or anyone else are going in one ear and out the other.