It's quiet simple really. Russia is protecting her strategic interests in a region that is historically as close to Russia as anywhere on the planet. Should we expect her to do anything less? Well clearly we did, which is why the biggest issue in Ukraine is the utter failure of EU/US strategic policy and subsequent diplomacy.
Brussels was offered an option by Moscow months back to put together a joint bailout package for the Ukrainian economy. Brussels should have taken it. Instead we ended up with Ukraine being asked to make a zero sum choice about whether it turns towards either the EU or Russia. An utterly ludicrous choice for a country with such a large ethnic Russian population and strong cultural, strategic and economic ties to Russia.
The second mistake that the EU/US made was the immediate backing they gave for the leaders of the coup that over threw the elected president Viktor Yanukovych. More sinister than that are reports that US NGO's and EU/US security agencies played a role in stoking up the violence on the streets that led up to the revolt. By all accounts there are some very undesirable folks in the new interim Ukrainian government including far right neo-Nazi's.
It's clear that Russia has moved decisively to protect her national interests and upset a lot of the world in the process. The US follows the same principal itself every week when it launches drone strikes into Pakistan or Yemen with absolutely no mandate from the UN. So who are they to start preaching to Russia about respect for international law? We all remember the illegal war in Iraq and how NATO clearly over stepped its UN mandate in Lybia. But, this is not about who has the moral high ground. It is about how our senior politicians act strategically and how they anticipate the impact of their actions and likely counter actions by others. In the case of Ukraine the EU/US political class has been shown to be utterly clueless.
So where do we go from here? A return to the cold war? A trade war that would hurt the EU as much as it hurts Russia? A potential military confrontation between two nuclear powers? STOP! Let's get real.
The EU needs a healthy working relationship with Russia, who afterall is its largest neighbour. However, it also needs to accept that Russia has its own legitimate national interests, can be expected to follow them, and has a limit to how far it is prepared to be pushed by the west when it comes to what it sees as its strategic interests.
We need to get real, forget the sanctions and start to engage with Russia on the development of a joint plan to support economic development in Ukraine moving forward that enables the country to leverage ties with both east and west.
We should absolutely avoid any return to military build ups associated with the cold war period. This is the wet dream of the industrial military complex. It is also a road that leads absolutely nowhere good.
Ultimately, the EU needs to reassess its ties with the US. Currently, Brussels acts too much like Washington's puppet. While a strong transalantic relationship is crucial, the EU's strategic interests are different to the US and it simply does not make sense for us to continously have a single joined up approach, particularly when that approach is predominantly defined by the US.
One very good reason why we should avoid any military conflict with Russia is the obvious fact that their women are just so fucking hot! We need to make love, not war!
So get it together folks. Let's have a sensible approach to working with Russia and acknowledge the fact that they are a major power with their own strategic interests that differ from ours. This is not bad, its just reality. Let's be conscious of that and make sensible strategic choices that advance our interests while not threatening the Russians.
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