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| High stakes chess game |
How can President Obama and his European allies counter Putin's opening gambit of this chess game? And how can the United States and the EU roll back what Putin has pulled off so far?
The US Obama Administration and the EU can-not and must-not confront Russia militarily -- it would be suicide in today's nuclear age.
At this point it looks like actions from the West against Russia, over the long term, will come in a form where it will hurt Russia and President Putin's popularity at home the most - economics.
But not everyone agrees that this scenario is the best course of action - certainly not the Republicans in the US, or for that matter, the conservative right-wingers in Britain.
US Republican Sen. John McCain - presently one of the the least popular senators in the US of those surveyed by the Public Policy Polling, with low marks from members of his own party, independents and Democrats, is among the Republican's loudest critics of the Obama Administration foreign policy.
He directly blamed President Obama's "incompetent" foreign policy for inviting the crisis in Ukraine and recently told a pro-Israel group that the president has repeatedly failed to demonstrate American strength in the face of adversaries.
McCain was not the only Republican to criticize the Administration's handling of the crisis.Many other GOP critics just about tripped over each others feet to attack Obama.
On Sunday March 2, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., even went as far as to tell CNN in an interview, "we have a weak and indecisive president whom invites aggression.".
As an independent congressman remarked afterwards, "this kind of rhetoric by the Republicans can basically be qualified as that of five year old's playing with marbles and one suddenly throwing a tantrum."
To put some perspective as to the causes of what is happening in Ukraine, and why Obama and Putin are now having to negotiate and play a game of chess, requires us to turn back the clock to when the Soviet Union (USSR) formally ceased to exist on 26 December 1991.
From that date onward, the United States has relentlessly pursued a strategy of encircling Russia, just as it has with other perceived enemies like China and Iran.
At the same time, the US also increased its military capability in Europe after it brought an additional 12 countries from central Europe, all of them formerly allied with Moscow, into the already existing NATO alliance. This in fact has now brought US military power and might directly on Russia’s borders.
Apart from facing the issue of encirclement President Putin probably also had a few other sleepless nights after he compared US military spending, which is 40% of the worlds total military spending, to that of his own country, which is only 5.5% of the total global military spending.
Let's face it and be realistic, Russia is now basically between "a rock and a hard place" and that is not a good place for them or anyone else to be in.
Obviously there are no angels on either side - but for this issue is to be resolved everyone has to take a step back, look at the bigger picture, calm down and reach a negotiated diplomatic solution.
EU-Digest 
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