There are many within the government, particularly among those, who have served under the Clinton administration, who think, that Putin’s adventurism will not stop with the Crimea, in fact they feel that that was only a testing of the waters, so to speak.
What is happening, is perhaps, a beginning to a road to further reconquest of other places in the east Ukraine, and finally a complete re-domination and re-
occupation of the whole of Ukraine. But wait, they
say, it will not stop there, and there may be further areas where re-occupation will occur, particularily in the states of Latvia and Lithuania, where too, there
are sizeable Russian populations, some greater than
25% of the population, who would welcome a Russian dominated government. A particular dangerous situation could occur in the Baltics, where
the West would have to guarantee the sovereignty of
countries with Nato membership.
Another coincidental fact is the the sharp inrease in
Russia’s spending on defense. This debate was taken
up again in the context of the question, whether the West should adhere to the request by the Ukraine government for advanced weapons, particularly field
anti tank ground missiles. Russia has been observed
sending large amounts of materiel into the Ukraine separatists hands, and there is a growing realization that an imbalance may give further proof to Putin
that the West is indecisive on the issue, giving him
the initiative to escalate his program.
What occured to me, is
that Russia is just too big and dangerous of a
country, and a direct involvement is quite apparently avoided by NATO and the West at all costs. Is there a predictable outcome? Is the vastly superior
economy of the West guarantee, that the new
Capitalists may ultimately reject any return to social-communist approaches to their governance, or, are they pretty well locked into it, ensuring that the
potential damage to their economies will be determined by their perception of how the economic sanctions in place will effect their geo-political outlook?
Does a political economic reality subsist under the supposed designs by Putin or, is he only staging ad hoc tests of international power play and fortitude?