You've completly changed my mind now, thanks!

U-S-A! U-S-A!

No more propaganda pics? You could re-paste the same, no?
Very constructive answer too...

Well, several things:

1. The US has no meaningful military options here. It does not have enough army that is not in either rotating to or in Iraq/Afghanistan to stand with the Russian Army, and it certainly does not have the logistical infrastructure to put it into the Ukraine to fight a Russian military that is already there. While the US Navy is significantly superior to the Russian Navy, that won't win the war. Air supremacy will be extremely hard to acheive, so they can't execute a bombing campaign as they have done elsewhere. The rest of NATO is not much better, though France and Germany probably could muster up something, if they were inclined.

2. A shooting war with Russia, although likely devastating to Russia, would go badly for the US as well. Russia is one of the very few (arguably the only) nations than can project military power to the US mainland. They are the only non-allied nation with a significant blue water navy, a significant submarine force, and one of the few that also have intercontinental ballistic missiles. Further, Russia has spent the last decade refining their military technology to deal with the American air tactics they have been watching, and have two new generations of antiair missile technology the US hasn't seen. This would be a very bad option.

3. Such a conflict would represent the first direct conflict between two nuclear powers. This is a deeply hairy proposition.

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To the other question, it's not quite clear that Putin is Hitler, and we should be conscious of overlearning the lessons of Munich. Avoidance of appeasement is not a virture in and of itself. And the practical facts are that while a military intervention might be more emotionally satisfying, it's not really a move on the table. The move for the rest of the west is economic pressure. The EU and US are each much larger economic zones than Russia, and freezing Russia out of their markets, and those aligned with them, will do a lot of damage to Russia. (and likely crater the ruble. Again.) Though not immediate, this will do more to destabilize Putin's support than a direct confrontation. And it also has the advantage of being something the US and NATO can actually do.

There on my door step Alaska is back in the Russian empire

I'm sorry, but regarding your post above, I just need to point out that a major Russian news source has just quoted Putin as saying today:
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140304/188...to-Crimea.html

So according to Putin, the Supreme Commander of Russian Forces, these are just a rag-tag group of local milita-men. I guess you won't argue with Putin or a major Russian news source?

Source.

So I assume that Putin will have no objection if the Ukraine sends in a squadron of tanks backed up by a few NATO jets and wipes out these militias?

I quote again Merkel's comments that he seems to "be in his own world" and "lost touch with reality"

So if these are local militia men then people will know who they are, there are plenty of photos floating around; names, addresses and so forth??

Thinking a bit "out of the box" (and maybe out of touch with reality ), it seems to me that the Russians real issue is not wanting to lose their Black sea military bases in Crimea. I doubt that they really care if the Ukraine move a bit towards Europe since it is a basket case in any event.

Why wouldn't the Ukrainians just offer to sell the Crimea to Russia (it was Russian until the 1950's if I am not mistaken and is populated by mostly Russians). The Ukrainians could ask that their foreign and commercial debt to Russia be forgiven (several Billion $) and get a 10 year deal on cheap gas.

Everyone gets to go home and "claim victory".

Comments?

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Do or do not, there is no try(ing). Yoda

Send your resume to Merkel or Kerry . Best solution I heard. Keep it up

Yanukovich was doing something like that in December it seems. But I don't think Ukrainians were too happy about selling their country off to pay debts, soon you'll have no country left. I guess if the US sold Alaska back to the Russians, they could cut their debt down too, but I can't see that happening either.

...but hey, now Russia gets it for free, that's better than paying I guess.

http://english.pravda.ru/news/busine..._investment-0/

You obviously don't have the same criteria as Moscow. Ukraine is easy to deal with, whoever is in power:
- Any power in Kiev is corruptable, because a) that's how business with EU investors is done in the east anyway and b) currupting is another way of saying hello to both russian and ukrainian businessmen non stop since independence.
- Strategically, the key is the front line NATO/Russia, Crimea and Caucasus are on the same line there.


Crimea is a big deal to Moscow, Kiev is a little sister. Changing political line in Kiev won't change this relationship to Russia one bit. Different partis will deal differently with said situation, that's all. You all have forgotten how easy Timoshenko got friendly to Moscow after her rhetorical war speeches for years. She at least did not let herself be manipulated by the racist far right... no so sure about this new Kiev government. Time will show, but starting with abolishing Russian as second national language kind of shows the way.

EDIT: I wrote that February the 24th.

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Es wird nichts ausgelassen, um mich hier herauszuekeln. Ein Lehrbuch. False accusations and attacks continue. There is no stopping righteous people when they are wrong.

I'm polishing up my bunker downstairs just in case.

It would take WEEKS for us to clean out the s**t we have in ours.

Ethnic Russians only make up just over half of the population, the other half will be mightly pissed off that they have to move, especially the Tartars.

It worked in Cyprus.

Is the Crimea that important? Sevastapol and the Naval base are super important but Russia already owns those.

You've seen how important the totally unknown tiny apparently insignificant Abkhazie and South Ossitia were to Russia, so imagine the obvious Crimea in the middle pg the Black Sea...

There wont be any war... lets face it... no one has cash to go to war...

Maybe the best option should be to pacifically divide the country, and thats it...

Bullets may not have been fired in anything other than a harmless deterrent, but, if this is to believed, the bits are firing with good aim.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/03...yber_conflict/