March 02, 2014 - UKRAINE - Ukraine's new leaders accused neighbor Russia of declaring war, as Kiev mobilized troops and called up military reservists in a rapidly escalating crisis that has raised fears of a conflict.
Amid signs of Russian military intervention in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, Russian generals led their troops to three bases in the region Sunday, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender and hand over their weapons, Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for the Crimean Media Center of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, told CNN. Speaking by phone, he said Russian troops had blocked access to the bases, but added, "There is no open confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian military forces in Crimea" and said Ukrainian troops continue to protect and serve Ukraine. "This is a red alert. This is not a threat. This is actually a declaration of war to my country," Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said. Speaking in a televised address from the parliament building in the capital, Kiev, he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "pull back his military and stick to the international obligations."
"We are on the brink of the disaster."
A sense of escalating crisis in Crimea -- an autonomous region of eastern Ukraine with strong loyalty to neighboring Russia -- swirled with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemning what he called Russia's "incredible act of aggression." Speaking on the CBS program "Face The Nation," Kerry said several foreign powers are looking at economic consequences if Russia does not withdraw its forces. "All of them, every single one of them are prepared to go to the hilt in order to isolate Russia with respect to this invasion," he said. "They're prepared to put sanctions in place, they're prepared to isolate Russia economically." But Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations said his country needs more than diplomatic assistance. "We are to demonstrate that we have our own capacity to protect ourselves ... and we are preparing to defend ourselves," Yuriy Sergeyev said on CNN's "State of the Union." "And nationally, if aggravation is going in that way, when the Russian troops ... are enlarging their quantity with every coming hour ... we will ask for military support and other kinds of support."
WATCH: 'NATO countries unleashed forces of nationalism & fear in Ukraine.
In Brussels, Belgium, NATO ambassadors held an emergency meeting on Ukraine. "What Russia is doing now in Ukraine violates the principles of the U.N. charter," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. He later added that Russia's actions constituted a violation of international law. He called upon Russia to honor its international commitments, to send it military forces back to Russian bases, and to refrain from any further interference in Ukraine. Rasmussen also urged both sides to reach a peaceful resolution through diplomatic talks and suggested that international observers from the United Nations should be sent to Ukraine.
WATCH: Putin defies U.S. warning about Ukraine - Senators Lindsey Graham & Dick Durbin react to the crisis in Ukraine.
Lean to the West, or to Russia?
Ukraine, a nation of 45 million people sandwiched between Europe and Russia's southwestern border, has been plunged into chaos since the ouster a week ago of President Viktor Yanukovych following bloody street protests that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded. Anti-government protests started in late November when Yanukovych spurned a deal with the EU, favoring closer ties with Moscow instead. Ukraine has faced a deepening split, with those in the west generally supporting the interim government and its European Union tilt, while many in the east prefer a Ukraine where Russia casts a long shadow. Nowhere is that feeling more intense than in Crimea, the last big bastion of opposition to the new political leadership. Ukraine suspects Russia of fomenting tension in the autonomous region that might escalate into a bid for separation by its Russian majority. Ukrainian leaders and commentators have compared events in Crimea to what happened in Georgia in 2008. Then, cross-border tensions with Russia exploded into a five-day conflict that saw Russian tanks and troops pour into the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as Georgian cities. Russia and Georgia each blamed the other for starting the conflict.
Escalating crisis
At Ukraine's Perevalnoye base, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the regional capital of Simferopol, a CNN team saw more than 100 troops -- not Ukrainian and dressed in green with no identifiable insignia -- deployed around its perimeter, as well as a dozen or so vehicles. Some 15 Ukrainian soldiers were on guard while civilians, both pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine protesters, stood on each side of the road. A 66-year-old man named Nikolai Petukhov marched up to the entrance of the military facility carrying a Russian flag. He told CNN that he hoped Putin would facilitate democratic elections in Ukraine. When asked whether he thinks Crimea should be part of Russia or Ukraine, he said, "If you look at it logically, it should be part of Russia." It is not an unpopular feeling there as 58% of the 2,033,000 residents of Crimea identified themselves as Russian in a 2001 census. In Simferopol, men dressed in both civilian and camouflage gear and wearing red armbands were seen on the streets. There was also a major change in Ukraine's military. A day after being named the head of Ukraine's navy, Rear Adm. Denis Berezovsky on Sunday declared his loyalty to the pro-Russian, autonomous Crimea government and disavowed Ukraine's new leaders. Berezovsky, who was appointed Saturday by interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov, said from Sevastopol on the Black Sea that he will not submit to any orders from Kiev. He was quickly suspended and replaced by another rear admiral, the Defense Ministry in Kiev said in a written statement. These scenes come one day after Putin obtained permission from his parliament to use military force to protect Russian citizens in Ukraine, spurning Western pleas not to intervene.
Putin cited in his request a threat posed to Russian citizens and military personnel based in southern Crimea. Ukrainian officials have vehemently denied Putin's claim. At a Ukrainian parliamentary meeting Sunday, acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyuh said Ukraine does not have the military force to resist Russia, according to two parliamentary members present at the session. Tenyuh called for talks to resolve the crisis with Russia, they said. The Ukrainian National Security Council has ordered the mobilization of troops and the Defense Ministry was calling for reservists to register to be on standby if needed, a senior Ukrainian official, Andriy Parubiy, said. In Kiev, thousands of people rallied in the central Independence Square, cradle of Ukraine's three-month anti-government protests that led to Yanukovych's ouster last week. The crowd held up signs reading "Crimea, we are with you" and "Putin, hands off Ukraine." In Moscow, about 50 protesters were detained outside a Defense Ministry building, a Moscow police spokesman said. According to a tweet from the official Russian government account Sunday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev discussed the crisis in Ukraine in a telephone call with Yatsenyuk. According to a second tweet, Medvedev said Russia is interested in maintaining stable and friendly relations with Ukraine but reserves the right to protect the legitimate interests of its citizens and military personnel stationed in Crimea.
WATCH: Cold War II - Former US ambassador to Russia John Beyrle and Jill Dougherty discuss foreign policy implications of the Ukraine crisis?
Western governments worried
The crisis set off alarm bells in the West. In discussions over the weekend with Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama "made clear that Russia's continued violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would negatively impact Russia's standing in the international community," according to a statement released by the White House. Fareed Zakaria: How U.S. should respond According to the Kremlin, Putin told Obama that Russia reserves the right to defend its interests in the Crimea region and the Russian-speaking people who live there. Obama met Sunday with his national security team and was scheduled to call U.S. allies afterward, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Though Earnest didn't specify who Obama would speak with, the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron said the two would talk. Cameron also planned to talk with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Britain's Foreign Minister William Hague on Sunday arrived in Kiev where he will meet with Ukraine leaders. Canada recalled its ambassador to Moscow, while the United States and Britain announced they will suspend participation in preparatory meetings this week ahead of the G8 summit that will bring world leaders together in June in Sochi, Russia. France said it made the same decision. - CNN.
WATCH: Crimean Crucible.
Now Ukraine has emerged as a test of Obama’s argument that, far from weakening American power, he has enhanced it through smarter diplomacy, stronger alliances and a realism untainted by the ideology that guided his predecessor. It will be a hard argument for him to make, analysts say. A president who has made clear to the American public that the “tide of war is receding” has also made clear to foreign leaders, including opportunists in Russia, that he has no appetite for a new one. What is left is a vacuum once filled, at least in part, by the possibility of American force. “If you are effectively taking the stick option off the table, then what are you left with?” said Andrew C. Kuchins, who heads the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I don’t think that Obama and his people really understand how others in the world are viewing his policies.”
Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly — and comprehensively — as Obama’s warning Friday night to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The former community organizer and the former Cold Warrior share the barest of common interests, and their relationship has been defined far more by the vastly different ways they see everything from gay rights to history’s legacy. Obama called Putin on Saturday and expressed “deep concern over Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is a breach of international law,” the White House said. From a White House podium late Friday, Obama told the Russian government that “there will be costs” for any military foray into Ukraine, including the semiautonomous region of Crimea, a strategically important peninsula on the Black Sea. Within hours, Putin asked the Russian parliament for approval to send forces into Ukraine. The vote endorsing his request was unanimous, Obama’s warning drowned out by lawmakers’ rousing rendition of Russia’s national anthem at the end of the session. Russian troops now control the Crimean Peninsula.
President’s quandary
There are rarely good — or obvious — options in such a crisis. But the position Obama is in, confronting a brazenly defiant Russia and with few ways to meaningfully enforce his threat, has been years in the making. It is the product of his record in office and of the way he understands the period in which he is governing, at home and abroad. At the core of his quandary is the question that has arisen in White House debates over the Afghan withdrawal, the intervention in Libya and the conflict in Syria — how to end more than a dozen years of American war and maintain a credible military threat to protect U.S. interests. The signal Obama has sent — popular among his domestic political base, unsettling at times to U.S. allies — has been one of deep reluctance to use the heavily burdened American military, even when doing so would meet the criteria he has laid out. He did so most notably in the aftermath of the U.S.-led intervention in Libya nearly three years ago. But Obama’s rejection of U.S. military involvement in Syria’s civil war, in which 140,000 people have died since he first called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down, is the leading example of his second term. So, too, is the Pentagon budget proposal outlined this past week that would cut the size of the army to pre-2001 levels. Inside the West Wing, there are two certainties that color any debate over intervention: that the country is exhausted by war and that the end of the longest of its post-Sept. 11 conflicts is less than a year away. Together they present a high bar for the use of military force. Ukraine has challenged administration officials — and Obama’s assessment of the world — again.
WATCH: Ukraine's Navy chief swears allegiance to Crimea.
At a North American summit meeting in Mexico last month, Obama said, “Our approach as the United States is not to see these as some Cold War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.” But Putin’s quick move to a war footing suggests a different view — one in which, particularly in Russia’s back yard, the Cold War rivalry Putin was raised on is thriving. The Russian president has made restoring his country’s international prestige the overarching goal of his foreign policy, and he has embraced military force as the means to do so. As Russia’s prime minister in the late summer of 2008, he was considered the chief proponent of Russia’s military advance into Georgia, another former Soviet republic with a segment of the population nostalgic for Russian rule. Obama, by contrast, made clear that a new emphasis on American values, after what were perceived as the excesses of the George W. Bush administration, would be his approach to rehabilitating U.S. stature overseas. Those two outlooks have clashed repeatedly — in big and small ways — over the years. Obama took office with a different Russian as president, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s choice to succeed him in 2008. Medvedev, like Obama, was a lawyer by training, and also like Obama he did not believe the Cold War rivalry between the two countries should define today’s relationship.
The Obama administration began the “reset” with Russia — a policy that, in essence, sought to emphasize areas such as nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism, trade and Iran’s nuclear program as shared interests worth cooperation. But despite some successes, including a new arms-control treaty, the reset never quite reduced the rivalry. When Putin returned to office in 2012, so, too, did an outlook fundamentally at odds with Obama’s.
‘Reset’ roadblocks
Just months after his election, Putin declined to attend the Group of Eight meeting at Camp David, serving an early public warning to Obama that partnership was not a top priority. At a G-8 meeting the following year in Northern Ireland, Obama and Putin met and made no headway toward resolving differences over Assad’s leadership of Syria. The two exchanged an awkward back-and-forth over Putin’s passion for martial arts before the Russian leader summed up the meeting: “Our opinions do not coincide,” he said. A few months later, Putin granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose disclosure of the country’s vast eavesdropping program severely complicated U.S. diplomacy. Obama had asked for Snowden’s return. In response, Obama canceled a scheduled meeting in Moscow with Putin after the Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg last summer. The two met instead on the summit’s sidelines, again failing to resolve differences over Syria. It was Obama’s threat of a military strike, after the Syrian government’s second chemical attack crossed what Obama had called a “red line,” that prompted Putin to pressure Assad into concessions. The result was an agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, a process that is proceeding haltingly. Since then, though, the relationship has again foundered on issues that expose the vastly different ways the two leaders see the world and their own political interests. After Russia’s legislature passed anti-gay legislation, Obama included openly gay former athletes in the U.S. delegation to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
New barbarities in Syria’s civil war — and the near-collapse of a nascent peace process — have drawn sharper criticism from U.S. officials of Putin, who is continuing to arm Assad’s forces. How Obama intends to prevent a Putin military push into Ukraine is complicated by the fact that, whatever action he takes, he does not want to jeopardize Russian cooperation on rolling back Iran’s nuclear program or completing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Economic sanctions are a possibility. But that decision is largely in the hands of the European Union, given that its economic ties to Russia, particularly as a source of energy, are far greater than those of the United States. The most immediate threat that has surfaced: Obama could skip the G-8 meeting scheduled for June in Sochi, a day’s drive from Crimea. “If you want to take a symbolic step and deploy U.S. Navy ships closer to Crimea, that would, I think, make a difference in Russia’s calculations,” Kuchins said. “The problem with that is, are we really credible? Would we really risk a military conflict with Russia over Crimea-Ukraine? That’s the fundamental question in Washington and in Brussels we need to be asking ourselves.” - Washington Post.
Amid signs of Russian military intervention in Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, Russian generals led their troops to three bases in the region Sunday, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender and hand over their weapons, Vladislav Seleznyov, spokesman for the Crimean Media Center of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, told CNN. Speaking by phone, he said Russian troops had blocked access to the bases, but added, "There is no open confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian military forces in Crimea" and said Ukrainian troops continue to protect and serve Ukraine. "This is a red alert. This is not a threat. This is actually a declaration of war to my country," Ukrainian interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said. Speaking in a televised address from the parliament building in the capital, Kiev, he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to "pull back his military and stick to the international obligations."
"We are on the brink of the disaster."
A sense of escalating crisis in Crimea -- an autonomous region of eastern Ukraine with strong loyalty to neighboring Russia -- swirled with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemning what he called Russia's "incredible act of aggression." Speaking on the CBS program "Face The Nation," Kerry said several foreign powers are looking at economic consequences if Russia does not withdraw its forces. "All of them, every single one of them are prepared to go to the hilt in order to isolate Russia with respect to this invasion," he said. "They're prepared to put sanctions in place, they're prepared to isolate Russia economically." But Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations said his country needs more than diplomatic assistance. "We are to demonstrate that we have our own capacity to protect ourselves ... and we are preparing to defend ourselves," Yuriy Sergeyev said on CNN's "State of the Union." "And nationally, if aggravation is going in that way, when the Russian troops ... are enlarging their quantity with every coming hour ... we will ask for military support and other kinds of support."
WATCH: 'NATO countries unleashed forces of nationalism & fear in Ukraine.
In Brussels, Belgium, NATO ambassadors held an emergency meeting on Ukraine. "What Russia is doing now in Ukraine violates the principles of the U.N. charter," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told reporters. He later added that Russia's actions constituted a violation of international law. He called upon Russia to honor its international commitments, to send it military forces back to Russian bases, and to refrain from any further interference in Ukraine. Rasmussen also urged both sides to reach a peaceful resolution through diplomatic talks and suggested that international observers from the United Nations should be sent to Ukraine.
WATCH: Putin defies U.S. warning about Ukraine - Senators Lindsey Graham & Dick Durbin react to the crisis in Ukraine.
Lean to the West, or to Russia?
Ukraine, a nation of 45 million people sandwiched between Europe and Russia's southwestern border, has been plunged into chaos since the ouster a week ago of President Viktor Yanukovych following bloody street protests that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded. Anti-government protests started in late November when Yanukovych spurned a deal with the EU, favoring closer ties with Moscow instead. Ukraine has faced a deepening split, with those in the west generally supporting the interim government and its European Union tilt, while many in the east prefer a Ukraine where Russia casts a long shadow. Nowhere is that feeling more intense than in Crimea, the last big bastion of opposition to the new political leadership. Ukraine suspects Russia of fomenting tension in the autonomous region that might escalate into a bid for separation by its Russian majority. Ukrainian leaders and commentators have compared events in Crimea to what happened in Georgia in 2008. Then, cross-border tensions with Russia exploded into a five-day conflict that saw Russian tanks and troops pour into the breakaway territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, as well as Georgian cities. Russia and Georgia each blamed the other for starting the conflict.
Escalating crisis
At Ukraine's Perevalnoye base, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the regional capital of Simferopol, a CNN team saw more than 100 troops -- not Ukrainian and dressed in green with no identifiable insignia -- deployed around its perimeter, as well as a dozen or so vehicles. Some 15 Ukrainian soldiers were on guard while civilians, both pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine protesters, stood on each side of the road. A 66-year-old man named Nikolai Petukhov marched up to the entrance of the military facility carrying a Russian flag. He told CNN that he hoped Putin would facilitate democratic elections in Ukraine. When asked whether he thinks Crimea should be part of Russia or Ukraine, he said, "If you look at it logically, it should be part of Russia." It is not an unpopular feeling there as 58% of the 2,033,000 residents of Crimea identified themselves as Russian in a 2001 census. In Simferopol, men dressed in both civilian and camouflage gear and wearing red armbands were seen on the streets. There was also a major change in Ukraine's military. A day after being named the head of Ukraine's navy, Rear Adm. Denis Berezovsky on Sunday declared his loyalty to the pro-Russian, autonomous Crimea government and disavowed Ukraine's new leaders. Berezovsky, who was appointed Saturday by interim Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov, said from Sevastopol on the Black Sea that he will not submit to any orders from Kiev. He was quickly suspended and replaced by another rear admiral, the Defense Ministry in Kiev said in a written statement. These scenes come one day after Putin obtained permission from his parliament to use military force to protect Russian citizens in Ukraine, spurning Western pleas not to intervene.
Putin cited in his request a threat posed to Russian citizens and military personnel based in southern Crimea. Ukrainian officials have vehemently denied Putin's claim. At a Ukrainian parliamentary meeting Sunday, acting Defense Minister Ihor Tenyuh said Ukraine does not have the military force to resist Russia, according to two parliamentary members present at the session. Tenyuh called for talks to resolve the crisis with Russia, they said. The Ukrainian National Security Council has ordered the mobilization of troops and the Defense Ministry was calling for reservists to register to be on standby if needed, a senior Ukrainian official, Andriy Parubiy, said. In Kiev, thousands of people rallied in the central Independence Square, cradle of Ukraine's three-month anti-government protests that led to Yanukovych's ouster last week. The crowd held up signs reading "Crimea, we are with you" and "Putin, hands off Ukraine." In Moscow, about 50 protesters were detained outside a Defense Ministry building, a Moscow police spokesman said. According to a tweet from the official Russian government account Sunday, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev discussed the crisis in Ukraine in a telephone call with Yatsenyuk. According to a second tweet, Medvedev said Russia is interested in maintaining stable and friendly relations with Ukraine but reserves the right to protect the legitimate interests of its citizens and military personnel stationed in Crimea.
WATCH: Cold War II - Former US ambassador to Russia John Beyrle and Jill Dougherty discuss foreign policy implications of the Ukraine crisis?
Western governments worried
The crisis set off alarm bells in the West. In discussions over the weekend with Putin, U.S. President Barack Obama "made clear that Russia's continued violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity would negatively impact Russia's standing in the international community," according to a statement released by the White House. Fareed Zakaria: How U.S. should respond According to the Kremlin, Putin told Obama that Russia reserves the right to defend its interests in the Crimea region and the Russian-speaking people who live there. Obama met Sunday with his national security team and was scheduled to call U.S. allies afterward, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. Though Earnest didn't specify who Obama would speak with, the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron said the two would talk. Cameron also planned to talk with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Britain's Foreign Minister William Hague on Sunday arrived in Kiev where he will meet with Ukraine leaders. Canada recalled its ambassador to Moscow, while the United States and Britain announced they will suspend participation in preparatory meetings this week ahead of the G8 summit that will bring world leaders together in June in Sochi, Russia. France said it made the same decision. - CNN.
Ukraine Crisis Tests Obama's Foreign Policy On Diplomacy Over Military Force.
For much of his time in office, President Obama has been accused by a mix of conservative hawks and liberal interventionists of overseeing a dangerous retreat from the world at a time when American influence is needed most. The once-hopeful Arab Spring has staggered into civil war and military coup. China is stepping up territorial claims in the waters off East Asia. Longtime allies in Europe and in the Persian Gulf are worried by the inconsistency of a president who came to office promising the end of the United States’ post-Sept. 11 wars.WATCH: Crimean Crucible.
Now Ukraine has emerged as a test of Obama’s argument that, far from weakening American power, he has enhanced it through smarter diplomacy, stronger alliances and a realism untainted by the ideology that guided his predecessor. It will be a hard argument for him to make, analysts say. A president who has made clear to the American public that the “tide of war is receding” has also made clear to foreign leaders, including opportunists in Russia, that he has no appetite for a new one. What is left is a vacuum once filled, at least in part, by the possibility of American force. “If you are effectively taking the stick option off the table, then what are you left with?” said Andrew C. Kuchins, who heads the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I don’t think that Obama and his people really understand how others in the world are viewing his policies.”
Rarely has a threat from a U.S. president been dismissed as quickly — and comprehensively — as Obama’s warning Friday night to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The former community organizer and the former Cold Warrior share the barest of common interests, and their relationship has been defined far more by the vastly different ways they see everything from gay rights to history’s legacy. Obama called Putin on Saturday and expressed “deep concern over Russia’s clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, which is a breach of international law,” the White House said. From a White House podium late Friday, Obama told the Russian government that “there will be costs” for any military foray into Ukraine, including the semiautonomous region of Crimea, a strategically important peninsula on the Black Sea. Within hours, Putin asked the Russian parliament for approval to send forces into Ukraine. The vote endorsing his request was unanimous, Obama’s warning drowned out by lawmakers’ rousing rendition of Russia’s national anthem at the end of the session. Russian troops now control the Crimean Peninsula.
President’s quandary
There are rarely good — or obvious — options in such a crisis. But the position Obama is in, confronting a brazenly defiant Russia and with few ways to meaningfully enforce his threat, has been years in the making. It is the product of his record in office and of the way he understands the period in which he is governing, at home and abroad. At the core of his quandary is the question that has arisen in White House debates over the Afghan withdrawal, the intervention in Libya and the conflict in Syria — how to end more than a dozen years of American war and maintain a credible military threat to protect U.S. interests. The signal Obama has sent — popular among his domestic political base, unsettling at times to U.S. allies — has been one of deep reluctance to use the heavily burdened American military, even when doing so would meet the criteria he has laid out. He did so most notably in the aftermath of the U.S.-led intervention in Libya nearly three years ago. But Obama’s rejection of U.S. military involvement in Syria’s civil war, in which 140,000 people have died since he first called on President Bashar al-Assad to step down, is the leading example of his second term. So, too, is the Pentagon budget proposal outlined this past week that would cut the size of the army to pre-2001 levels. Inside the West Wing, there are two certainties that color any debate over intervention: that the country is exhausted by war and that the end of the longest of its post-Sept. 11 conflicts is less than a year away. Together they present a high bar for the use of military force. Ukraine has challenged administration officials — and Obama’s assessment of the world — again.
WATCH: Ukraine's Navy chief swears allegiance to Crimea.
At a North American summit meeting in Mexico last month, Obama said, “Our approach as the United States is not to see these as some Cold War chessboard in which we’re in competition with Russia.” But Putin’s quick move to a war footing suggests a different view — one in which, particularly in Russia’s back yard, the Cold War rivalry Putin was raised on is thriving. The Russian president has made restoring his country’s international prestige the overarching goal of his foreign policy, and he has embraced military force as the means to do so. As Russia’s prime minister in the late summer of 2008, he was considered the chief proponent of Russia’s military advance into Georgia, another former Soviet republic with a segment of the population nostalgic for Russian rule. Obama, by contrast, made clear that a new emphasis on American values, after what were perceived as the excesses of the George W. Bush administration, would be his approach to rehabilitating U.S. stature overseas. Those two outlooks have clashed repeatedly — in big and small ways — over the years. Obama took office with a different Russian as president, Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s choice to succeed him in 2008. Medvedev, like Obama, was a lawyer by training, and also like Obama he did not believe the Cold War rivalry between the two countries should define today’s relationship.
The Obama administration began the “reset” with Russia — a policy that, in essence, sought to emphasize areas such as nuclear nonproliferation, counterterrorism, trade and Iran’s nuclear program as shared interests worth cooperation. But despite some successes, including a new arms-control treaty, the reset never quite reduced the rivalry. When Putin returned to office in 2012, so, too, did an outlook fundamentally at odds with Obama’s.
‘Reset’ roadblocks
Just months after his election, Putin declined to attend the Group of Eight meeting at Camp David, serving an early public warning to Obama that partnership was not a top priority. At a G-8 meeting the following year in Northern Ireland, Obama and Putin met and made no headway toward resolving differences over Assad’s leadership of Syria. The two exchanged an awkward back-and-forth over Putin’s passion for martial arts before the Russian leader summed up the meeting: “Our opinions do not coincide,” he said. A few months later, Putin granted asylum to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose disclosure of the country’s vast eavesdropping program severely complicated U.S. diplomacy. Obama had asked for Snowden’s return. In response, Obama canceled a scheduled meeting in Moscow with Putin after the Group of 20 meeting in St. Petersburg last summer. The two met instead on the summit’s sidelines, again failing to resolve differences over Syria. It was Obama’s threat of a military strike, after the Syrian government’s second chemical attack crossed what Obama had called a “red line,” that prompted Putin to pressure Assad into concessions. The result was an agreement to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, a process that is proceeding haltingly. Since then, though, the relationship has again foundered on issues that expose the vastly different ways the two leaders see the world and their own political interests. After Russia’s legislature passed anti-gay legislation, Obama included openly gay former athletes in the U.S. delegation to the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
New barbarities in Syria’s civil war — and the near-collapse of a nascent peace process — have drawn sharper criticism from U.S. officials of Putin, who is continuing to arm Assad’s forces. How Obama intends to prevent a Putin military push into Ukraine is complicated by the fact that, whatever action he takes, he does not want to jeopardize Russian cooperation on rolling back Iran’s nuclear program or completing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Economic sanctions are a possibility. But that decision is largely in the hands of the European Union, given that its economic ties to Russia, particularly as a source of energy, are far greater than those of the United States. The most immediate threat that has surfaced: Obama could skip the G-8 meeting scheduled for June in Sochi, a day’s drive from Crimea. “If you want to take a symbolic step and deploy U.S. Navy ships closer to Crimea, that would, I think, make a difference in Russia’s calculations,” Kuchins said. “The problem with that is, are we really credible? Would we really risk a military conflict with Russia over Crimea-Ukraine? That’s the fundamental question in Washington and in Brussels we need to be asking ourselves.” - Washington Post.
