As commenter OldSkeptic points out, Russia has now called up reserves:

“Russia’s Defence Ministry plans to call up military reservists across the country for two months of training exercises on new weapons, news agency Interfax reported on Friday.

Moscow has previously used such exercises to boost troop numbers on its border with Ukraine. There are concerns in the West that Russian forces could intervene in the conflict between the Kiev’s government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The exercises were planned last November, the defense ministry said, and will last from August until October.”

I have covered the Ukrainian crisis closely since it began for a reason: the real antagonists: Russia and the US, with NATO as an American proxy, are nuclear armed.  Let us review:

  • The Ukraine was part of Russia for about 200 years.
  • Crimea is Russia’s most important naval port.
  • The Maidan protests overthrew a government which, whatever you think of it, was democratically elected.  The Maidan protests were heavily backed by US money and aid.
  • The Russian deal with the Ukraine was far more generous than the EU/IMF deal, which requires cutting pensions in half and likely doubling gas prices, if the gas supplies continue at all. Russia, on the other hand, offered subsidized gas and a fifteen billion dollar loan at nominal prices.
  • While there are those in Crimea who did not want to join Russia, I am aware of no convincing evidence that a supermajority did not wish to. The referendum was somewhat coercive and produced results in line with the last referendum in the region.
  • The rebellion in the East and the South is in regions where the strongest economic ties are with Russia.  While I have seen no polls indicating majority support for the rebels, I have also seen no polls indicating majority support for the Kiev government.
  • Ukraine is very close to Moscow.  Moscow is not defendable, in war, if enemy forces are in Ukraine.
  • It is American doctrine that Russia without Ukraine is not a European Empire; with it, it is.

In 2008, during the Georgian war, I wrote that the next flashpoint would be Crimea.  The experts sneered at that: it could never happen, Russia and the EU had nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing it.

The EU is, as Old Skeptic points out, however, not in the driver’s seat.  The US is, and NATO is, and NATO is currently led by a hawk.  What Merkel, or Germany, think is irrelevant  unless they are willing to threaten to leave NATO and follow through if necessary.  While Mark From Ireland has pointed out that there are signs of German and European realignment away from the US, they seem to be signs that will take years to develop to actual estrangement.  The current leaders, like Merkel, are of a generation which grew up under American hegemony. While many balked at Iraq, it will be far harder for them to refuse to act if NATO, including Britain and the US, goes to war.

It would take an incredibly brave leader to say no if NATO mobilizes to help Ukraine in light Russian regular forces.

The question, then, is whether Russian regular forces will be needed, or used.

We have, meanwhile, sanctions. So far they have amounted to not much, though they will increase financing costs.  However threats of greater sanctions continue, and slowly the strength of the sanctions has been increased.

I don’t know if OldSkeptic is right, and the plan is to force Russia into a humiliating retreat in the face of sanctions, with the use of military force ok’d to break Russia.  I actually doubt it, because it would be insane.

You don’t risk a shooting war with a nuclear armed state like Russia, who has enough nuclear weapons not just to destroy the US and Europe, but the world, multiple times over; and which has second strike capability which NATO cannot credibly expect to take out.  If either side starts losing and resorts to nukes, things can get out of hand very, very quickly.

But something being insane, or boneheadedly stupid does not mean it won’t happen: if Iraq or Syria (and the rise of ISIS) has not taught us this, nothing will.  American leaders are ideologues, drunk with power, who believe they rule the world and everyone else must bow.  Putin tweaked them hard over both Snowden and Syria, and they have worked since the fall of the USSR to move NATO right to Russia’s borders, something George Bush Sr. promised they wouldn’t do.

Russia feels itself under threat.  The military believes it cannot defend Russia from NATO if NATO is in the Ukraine, and notes also the constant moving up of anti-missile defense, closer and closer to its border; something it believes is meant to degrade its nuclear deterrent (it is, how well it will work is another question.  My suspicion is “not nearly well enough”.)

There is West’s sanction threats have been all stick: there is no upside to Russia buckling to the sanction threats, all they get back is the status quo.  Going forward, Russia having given in to sanctions once, they would have no independent policy the West could not veto by threatening them again.

So how does this play out?

I don’t know.  I do know that the people in charge in America, Britain and NATO are stupid, mad-drunk with power, and ideologues who believe in American primacy at any cost.  I do know that Russia believes it faces a potentially existential threat, and that Putin personally could not survive a humiliating capitulation.  And by not survive I mean he would probably wind up, personally, dead.  Russian leaders like Putin rarely leave office except in a casket.

This confrontation is over Russia claiming some right to interfere in territory it ruled for about two centuries.  Longer than the US has ruled most of its territory, I might note.  If the West can interfere in practically any country in the world, the Russians see no reason why they don’t have the right to interfere in their sphere of influence.

This is not, necessarily, to say that Russia should have the right to interfere with other countries, but given the West’s record of invasions, occupations and coups, it is simply laughable hypocrisy to make any claims that this is about territorial integrity of Westphalian states.

Please.

So if it is happening, it is happening for a reason.  To bring Ukraine into the Western fold, to force Russia to bow, and to show the world that even a power like Russia, with nuclear weapons and a huge arsenal, was forced to bow.

As much as the Gaza assault is an endless series of war crimes, and tragic, the greatest danger in the world today is in the Ukraine.  We are closer to nuclear war than we have been since the early 1980s when the Russian leadership was crazed by fear by US deployment of first strike missiles to Europe.

I will suggest, simply, that NATO needs to be disbanded.  The Europeans should simply step outside of it and put together their own military.  They can defend themselves from Russia if it comes to it (it won’t if they don’t poke Russia repeatedly with sticks).  They have a nuclear deterrent (I’m talking France here, not the UK, who probably can’t even use their nukes without American approval, and whose leadership are complete poodles for DC) and can build more if they so desire.

It’s time for Europe to grow back up, take responsibility for their own defense and future, and stop allowing America to drive the world to war, the brink of war, and possibly nuclear armaggedon.  As for the Ukraine, the Russian proposal of keeping it together, minus Crimea, but with a decentralized structure, and out of any Western alliance is entirely reasonable.

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