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

[rich]

somewhat similar bind the West finds itself in Iraq/Syria--continued belief
and support for more moderate elements fighting the Assad regime which has
been a dismal failure. Isis goes on its merry way. What now, if supporting
Assad is the lesser of two evils? All we've engineered is a major policy
disaster.


rich


On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 7:12 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <
lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

>
> 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 ... <
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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