Sunday, March 2, 2014

Is this Another “Munich Conference” from the EU?


With Vladimir Putin sending troops into the Crimea, the obvious question is what will the EU do?  The US can do nothing because Mr. Obama’s foreign policy, which went through a period of apologizing to foreign potentates as part of his mania with decolonization, then moved to making bold threats that were not carried out in Libya, to being outmaneuvered by Syria, to settling on chunking cruise missiles at suspected terrorists, is now if full-blown free fall.  Political leaders throughout the world do not take him or the US seriously.  This leaves the EU as the only potential force that can halt Putin’s conquest of the Crimea and the realization of a 400+ year Russian dream – access to a warm-water port.  The big question is, of course, will the EU allow itself to be outmaneuvered once again by bogus claims of national self-determination.  One dictator successfully used this ploy to get the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.  The question is whether or not the leaders of the EU will allow this naked aggression against a sovereign state to continue or will they find a convenient excuse to extricate themselves so they don’t have to reveal that they cannot project their force beyond their borders?  If I were a betting man, I’d start exchanging my Ukrainian hryvnia for Russian rubles.