The Russian/Crimean situation has been royally screwed up by Russian oil-dependent European states, and by the feeble U.S. government. Putin is laughing his head off at how weak the West has become.
If they want to stop Russia from overrunning the rest of Ukraine, they have to apply sanctions that will do more than hurt the Russian government and military. Targeted sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian political figures is a joke. Some of the targeted Russians and pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians and generals have no assets to seize in the E.U. or in the U.S. and have no interest in traveling to the Eurozone or to the United States. Can we cut off Internet access to the entire Russian Federation? That would get their attention.
Crimea is a lost cause; the Russian Army is already dug in there. Let the Russians have the Crimea. Ukraine isn’t about to launch a full-scale war against Russia to retake Crimea, but they will fight to keep the Russians out of the rest of Ukraine. We should offer them NATO membership immediately.
This crisis has shown that European nations need to diversify their energy imports in order to preserve their national sovereignty against future Russian aggression. They’re at Russia’s mercy much more than the U.S. is.
I think we should also look at the criticisms that are being leveled at Russia for conducting this “referendum.” They’ve raised the point that we did the same thing in Iraq and in Afghanistan while having our troops in control of both countries. We also recognized Kosovo, almost immediately, after it broke away from what was left of Yugoslavia. We also recognized South Sudan almost immediately. The British held a referendum on the Falkland Islands during last year’s diplomatic flare-up with Argentina. These are valid points that we cannot ignore.
We also cannot ignore the ballot language in Crimea. The question was “Should Crimea join the Russian Federation now, or later?” There was not a “No” option on the ballot. This makes the referendum invalid. Such ballot language in the United States would be challenged in court before the vote was even held. And the language would be thrown out by the court. If the revised language wasn’t submitted for approval in time, there would be no ballot question at that particular upcoming election.
Compare Britain’s Falklands 2013 referendum language from Wikipedia: ….they asked each voter if they supported the continuation of their status as an Overseas Territory of the United Kingdom in view of Argentina's call for negotiations on the islands' sovereignty? Yes or No. A successful No vote would have lead to a second referendum which would lay out more options, including joining Argentina. As it was, 99.8% of Falklands voters decided in favor of staying aligned with Britain, with a 92% turnout rate. Credit to Wikipedia for the important stuff in this paragraph.
The British also allowed international monitors in to make sure the balloting was fair. Russia did not. In fact, there were reports that international observers (UN people, including the Secretary General’s emissary, not international voting observers) had automatic weapons fired over their heads in warning shots to get out and stay out of Crimea.
What we haven’t said yet is that we don’t like how Russia manipulated the vote, and that Russia seems hell-bent on getting their way, at any cost.
The EU, the U.S. and Russia all have valid points. We need to focus on keeping Russia out of the Baltics, Poland and other nations that share a border with Russia. Putin’s empire building must stop in the Crimea.
