More than 90 percent of Crimeans vote to rejoin Russia, and Russia gets ready to annex Crimea. The West protests the legal status of the referendum with threats of sanctions. Here in the U.S., we have short memories, having forgotten how Texas, New Mexico and California were “annexed” from Mexico.
Then, we didn’t even wait for a vote.
Republican war drums are rolling as they accuse the president of not getting tough on Russia. Statements by former Secretary of State Condi Rice suggest that she is ready to be in the front rank as we march on to the Kremlin. After all, Napoleon and HItler demonstrated how simple it is to attack Russia.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, has also blown his trumpet in stating, regarding Ukraine, that we have a “weak and indecisive president” who “invites aggression.”
He must know that there is nothing militarily that any American president could or would have done to deter Putin in this situation. President Eisenhower stood by during the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956. So did President Johnson during the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
In 1962, Republicans and senior military leaders wanted to challenge Russia with an invasion of Cuba during that missile crisis. Fortunately, a cooler headed President Kennedy stayed at the helm.
I think we can rely on President Obama to manage this crisis with appropriate measures before the war trumpets sound for real.
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A lot of points I’d like to address in this article, so sorry if
this is a bit of a ramble…
You’re correct that nothing Obama could’ve done would have prevented Russia from annexing the Crimea a few weeks ago. But I don’t think our response so far has been very impressive. It’s not all Obama’s fault. We need Europe with us. They need Russia’s oil and natural gas. About the only thing we really need them for is to get back and forth from the International Space Station. Europe is clearly not willing at this point to punish or threaten Russia significantly.
I worry that our lackluster response will deter other enemies. Osama bin Laden carried out many attacks against us in the 90’s with very little repercussion. It only emboldened him to hit us harder on 9/11. He didn’t think he’d face the kind of response that Bush and the rest of the world was willing to undertake.
In 2008 Russia seized pieces of Georgia. Today it has seized the Crimea. Tomorrow it will take something else.
We didn’t stop the Soviets in Hungary or Czechoslavakia. And guess what, they went after another country, Afghanistan in ’79. Fortunatly we were smart enough to stop them there. If we hadn’t turned our back on the Afghans after the Soviet Union collapsed, things could’ve turned out much differently in that country.
This crisis in the Crimea is going to have big implications down the road for us if we don’t show some serious backbone.
I also don’t think it’s very fair of the author to bring up our annexation of TX, NM, and CA. That was the 19th century. The US and much of the world has evolved since then. Clearly Russia has not.
If Russia wants to annex the Crimea and the full populations of both countries approve of it, then so be it. I’m sure some financial package (free energy or something close to it) could be arranged to sweeten it for Kiev. But the way Russia has gone about it is all wrong. Just because other countries, including the US, have done some similar territorial annexactions over the centuries, doesn’t mean we should accept military conquests today or in the future.
The Bush responses
A few more successes like the Bush invasions, and the US will be bankrupt, not to mention the lives lost.
That dominos argument is what got us into Vietnam. We were too stupid to realize the Vietnamese hated and feared the Chinese and would have resisted more incursions.
IMO the ‘serious backbone” comment is too silly for comment.
Manifest Destiny
Every Russian school child is aware of our annexation of Texas, California, etc, and sees no problem with acquiring all those Russians in tiny Crimea. Hypocrisy reigns in the West.