{"id":1730,"date":"2014-04-28T14:15:07","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T21:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2014-04-28T14:15:07","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T21:15:07","slug":"russia-ukraine-and-whats-next-overseas-conversations-hughhewitt-com-04-26-14","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/2014\/04\/28\/russia-ukraine-and-whats-next-overseas-conversations-hughhewitt-com-04-26-14\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia, Ukraine and What\u2019s Next: Overseas Conversations | HughHewitt.com | 04.26.14"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the month since I last filed a column, I have traveled overseas, as well as within the U.S.\u00a0 In the course of these visits, I have taken in presentations by and had private discussions with a number of current and former players from both the senior and staff levels of a number of friendly governments.\u00a0 The topic: Russia, Ukraine and what\u2019s next. Most of these discussions were on an off the record or not for attribution basis, so, as I often do in this space, this report will be vague about the particular speakers and their countries:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In similar language, I heard more than once that Russia\u2019s seizure of the Crimea and move into eastern Ukraine and the West\u2019s non-response blew up the entire concept of international law as it has existed since the end of the Second World War. For the first time since the war, one European country has seized territory from another.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Some noted the parallel between Russian president Vladimir Putin\u2019s speech to the Russian parliament during the Crimean action (in which he claimed the right and intent to protect Russians in other countries) and Hitler\u2019s statements when Germany moved on Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, a parallel that has, of course, been widely noted here, as well.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What is more, several noted, the same arguments Putin used to justify moving into Ukraine could be used for almost any European country moving into any other.\u00a0 There has been a tremendous mingling of populations in Europe over the last 75 years, particularly the last twenty.\u00a0 Russian populations are everywhere \u2013 but so, too, are populations from every country in every other country, including in Russia.\u00a0 In Europe after the First World War the matching of ethnic and national identities may have made sense.\u00a0 No longer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>President Obama\u2019s red line with Syria came up repeatedly. Putin noted Mr. Obama\u2019s bold talk and timid action.\u00a0 The U.S. president\u2019s failure to follow through gave the Russian president confidence that he could move with impunity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>It was noted that the preparatory troop movements for invading the Crimea began on the first night of the Olympics, I think I heard right, during the opening ceremonies. \u00a0This was news to me.\u00a0 I had a flash of Michael Corleone\u2019s men taking care of business even as their chief was at his child\u2019s baptism renouncing the devil and all his works.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The view was expressed that Russia doesn\u2019t want to annex eastern Ukraine.\u00a0 The cost and difficulties of taking and holding so much at least partially hostile territory would make such a move unpalatable.\u00a0 It is enough to have the region under Russian domination.\u00a0 Putin\u2019s immediate objective is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a successful country.\u00a0 The new government might have moved to eradicate corruption and start the county\u2019s economic engine.\u00a0 It might have succeeded. \u00a0If so, the bordering areas of Russia would have demanded something of the same.\u00a0 Putin was acting from weakness, not strength.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Indeed, one of these experts said the concern we should have is not how a strong and expansionist Russia would behave but how a weak and expansionist one would.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Putin\u2019s next targets?\u00a0 There was considerable discussion of the Baltics.\u00a0 Estonia and Latvia were repeatedly mentioned.\u00a0 Not so much Lithuania, though one pointed out that Lithuania has a significant Russian population, moved in as part of Stalin\u2019s occupation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>But if Putin moves into Baltics and NATO does not respond, what then?\u00a0 Putin\u2019s big objective in all these moves, I heard, is to break up NATO, as NATO failure to defend Baltic members would surely do.\u00a0 Some claimed that Putin has said so directly.\u00a0 American columnist George Will made news last month saying that NATO dissolution was the Russian leader\u2019s objective.\u00a0 Several of these overseas sources have reached the same conclusion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>What leverage does the United States have?\u00a0 Insert troops and position military equipment in Poland and the Baltics, some insisted \u2014 and one thing more.\u00a0 Shale gas is killing Russia.\u00a0 The U.S. should flood the global markets with natural gas.\u00a0 Shale gas is a major weapon, perhaps the major weapon, that Putin fears most.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>But the administration shows no sign of moving in this direction, part of why one remarked, I don\u2019t understand the thinking in this administration.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, it was noted that far from being bold, Putin is a cautious man.\u00a0 He will test.\u00a0 He will probe.\u00a0 If he encounters resistance, he will pull back.\u00a0 So the U.S. needs to show resolve.\u00a0 A little more displays of determination and truly uncrossable lines and a little less rhetoric would go a long way.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>I was reminded of former Estonian president Mark Laar\u2019s comments at a conference I attended in 2009 and recalled in the last column before the break (<a href=\"http:\/\/bit.ly\/1dwRflw\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/bit.ly\/1dwRflw<\/a>): \u201cHe argued that the Soviet Union would have fallen in 1953 with the East German uprising or in 1956 with the Hungarian one. \u00a0Both times, he said, rebellions had started in the other nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltic. \u00a0But with no help from the West, they could not succeed. The difference in the years before the Soviet collapse, he added, was leadership.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the month since I last filed a column, I have traveled overseas, as well as within the U.S.\u00a0 In the course of these visits, I have taken in presentations by and had private discussions with a number of current and former players from both the senior and staff levels of a number of friendly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[79,12,188,204],"class_list":["post-1730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-global-issues","tag-foreign-policy","tag-hugh-hewitt","tag-putin","tag-ukraine"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1730"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1731,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1730\/revisions\/1731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}