Biden channels Khrushchev - updated: http://t.co/w8yq1db6X1 #TCOT pic.twitter.com/UvSNQLgMVi
— The People's Cube (@ThePeoplesCube) March 21, 2014Is Estonia next? In language disturbingly similar to that used by Vladimir Putin before Russia moved into Ukraine, a top Moscow official has now expressed “outrage” over the treatment of ethnic Russians in the former Soviet republic.Keep reading.
Some dismiss these fears as overwrought. We direct them to Mikheil Saakashvili, former president of Georgia, who says that in 2008 “almost every Western politician to whom my government raised concerns in those days said that Russia would not attack and urged us to keep calm and not react to Russian moves.” Today Russian troops still occupy a good slice of Georgia, and the sanctions we imposed in the wake of that invasion were reversed in Obama’s “reset” of US-Russian relations, in hopes our good will would be reciprocated.
We now know how that turned out.
On Thursday, President Obama announced new sanctions directed at 20 individual Russians and a Russian bank. He said he had also signed an executive order giving him the authority to sanction specific areas of the Russian economy as well.
Unfortunately, sanctions amount to little more than a tax on an action that the secretary general of NATO calls “the gravest threat to European security and stability since the end of the Cold War.” The NATO chief says Putin aims to intimidate Russia’s neighbors from seeking closer integration with Europe and the West.
President Obama himself says “we need action.” We agree. There remain many options far short of American boots on the ground, ranging from restoring the promise of missile defense for Eastern Europe to loan guarantees for Ukraine — and the threat of military assistance to Kiev if Putin moves farther than Crimea.
As for Crimea, even Ukraine’s leaders concede it is lost. The question is whether America and Europe have the will to stop further aggression...
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