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Making Russia Pay? – It’s Not So Simple
Veterans Today
… by Zabiullah Rashidi
Who is really threatening who?
WASHINGTON — President Obama has warned Russia that “there will be costs” for a military intervention in Ukraine.
But the United States has few palatable options for imposing such costs, and recent history has shown that when it considers its interests at stake, Russia has been willing to pay the price.
Even before President Vladimir V. Putin on Saturday publicly declared his intent to send Russian troops into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, Mr. Obama and his team were already discussing how to respond.
They talked about canceling the president’s trip to a summit meeting in Russia in June, shelving a possible trade agreement, kicking Moscow out of the Group of 8 or moving American warships to the region. That is the same menu of actions that was offered to President George W. Bush in 2008, when Russia went to war with Georgia, another balky former Soviet republic.
Yet the costs imposed at that time proved only marginally effective and short-lived. Russia stopped its advance but nearly six years later has never fully lived up to the terms of the cease-fire it signed. And whatever penalty it paid at the time evidently has not deterred it from again muscling a neighbor.
“The question is: Are those costs big enough to cause Russia not to take advantage of the situation in the Crimea? That’s the $64,000 question,” said Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, a retired Army officer who served as defense attaché in the American Embassy in Moscow and now, as a Harvard scholar, leads a group of former Russian and American officials in back-channel talks.
Mr. Obama announced the first direct response after a 90-minute telephone call with Mr. Putin on Saturday as he suspended preparations for the G-8 summit meeting in Russia in June. The White House said that “Russia’s continued violation of international law will lead to greater political and economic isolation.”
Russians are used to massive doses of pain as are Ukrainians…Americans have grown flabby and soft as are western Europeans, so when the chips are down the West is going to realize that the Ukraine is an economic basket case not worth the cost. We’ll see who pays…