re: #86 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

I think the State department would have a difficulty in recognizing the new Ukrainian government as valid. State, like lawyers, is as concerned with precedent and process as anything else. Ukraine has scheduled presidential elections but not parliamentary ones.

Other than that, I don’t see anything in Brzezinski’s plan to avoid war and military confrontation. Some oddballs are focusing on the ‘prepare NATO forces’ part as though that’s the most substantial thing he said, but he’s mostly focused, as a good diplomat should be, on avoiding war. He doesn’t, for example, even call for a return of the Crimea to the Ukraine. He says that Russia may very well get the Crimea.

His judicious and sober language is a long way from people puffing up their chests and calling for ‘getting tough’.

in the end, my guess is that this is going to end with Russia signing some kind of hundred-year, one dollar lease with the Ukrainians for access to the port in Crimea. Because Putin has actually driven himself right into a massive clusterfuck here. Anyone who comes away from this thinking Putin is a genius has never seen a chess player blow his load in an attack, only to have to resign after discovering there just isn’t anything at the end of the sacrificial onslaught.