(np) Foreign Affairs: Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West's fault

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault

 > ... Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should 
understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers 
are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. 
After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers 
deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less 
on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an 
impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in 
it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on 
many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and 
Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries 
against Russia -- a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made 
crystal clear.

...

There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however -- although it 
would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new 
way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to 
westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between 
NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western 
leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that 
they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean 
that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or 
anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that 
falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.

To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly 
rule out NATO’s expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should 
also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded jointly by 
the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States 
-- a proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a 
prosperous and stable Ukraine on its western flank. And the West should 
considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine. It is 
time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. 
Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders should encourage Ukraine to 
respect minority rights, especially the language rights of its Russian 
speakers.

Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date 
would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would 
undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided 
strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely 
to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises 
a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is 
clearly open to the United States ... <

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