Why the U.S. does nothing in Ukraine .
a snippet from the Danger Room blog on Washington Post’s site. The whole article is worth reading
Russia is … a declining challenger (by its own standards) that offers the United States a … policy course of maintaining the status quo and waiting to negotiate later from a position of greater strength. If Obama believes that Russia has internal structural contradictions (resource-dominated economy) and is externally at its peak, then he finds himself roughly in the same position as Dwight Eisenhower roughly 60 years ago: confident of prevailing in a long war or arms racing against an adversary with internal structural contradictions (command economy), but wary of entering into short-term conflicts close to Russia. Just as Eisenhower failed to intervene in Hungary in 1956, Obama is failing to intervene decisively in Ukraine and giving Russia a fight at the latter’s time and place of choosing.
What is it about the Russians? Generation after generation, from the Tsars to Putin, they get these third rate hustlers to lead them and then act like they are being cheated of greatness. No wonder they have such a great sense of humor.