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Taking Crimea is one thing. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania are part of NATO. Attack one and you have instant war with 70% of Europe all over your ass. Attack one and you attack all. US and Obama have nothing to do with it. Europe will act with or without Obama and the US.
This simple fact seems to escape many posters here.
Estonia is a NATO country, so invasion of Estonia would mean NATO and US would be drawn to war.
No, it means the official mouthpiece of NATO - John Kerry - will be drawn into making hollow threats about "serious consequences" and "19th Century chess" or something else equally vapid to the rest of us, but positively brilliant in his own mind and that of his boss.
Now, Putin would have to do a serious Hitlerian series of historical gymnastics to make even the slimmest case for why Estonia is really Russia, since the actual history of Estonia says something entirely different. But he got Georgia and Crimea without any hassle, and expansion requires expanding. Estonia is a great economic target, and were I an imperialist with that much of Asia under my control, an economy that could use a shot in the arm and some stability, and nobody to stop me...yeah, I'd have always been tracking Estonia in my longer range sights.
And he has nobody to stop him. Sanctions vs the country that supplies 30-40% of Europe's fossil fuel/NG needs won't work. Freezing bank accounts of rich Russians won't work either. In America, you might be able to scare an oligarch to death with threats of freezing their money, figuring they'll go to the political leadership on their payroll and get things straightened out. But Putin, ex-KGB thug, would most likely handle even veiled threats from the moneyed class of Russia than a feckless weasel like Obama would. Methinks both Putin and those rich Russians being pinched right now understand that all too well.
Putin will "stop" when someone stops him, and not one second before. Threatening to tell the teacher on him after recess isn't going to stop this particular bully. Nope, a serious rap in the beak is what will stop him, but right now, we have literally no cause to deliver such rap to the beak, which both Putin and Obama know full well. Ukraine is on deck, then Ukraine's immediate neighbors, then the rest of the EU, and so on and so on, long before the US gets to the plate.
Understand folks, Putin is revealing the absolute absurdity of things like NATO and almost all of Europe either totally outsourcing their defense needs to the US, or counting on the US military so much that they could lower their per capita defense spending to essentially glorified militia levels.None of the ex-USSR nations has built up much of a military that could even mount a few days worth of opposition to a serious Russian military action, because the whole "EU/euro let's all be glorious welfare states with lots of vacation and free wine/cheese and everyone will just stop being bad guys because this is more fun!" theory sounds great so long as nobody like a Putin ever comes along, and really sounds great to Americans and Europeans who think the whole is as lazy and materialistic as they are, but it was always folly, and history is the best teacher of that.
I don't know that Putin will take Estonia or anything past his newly minted province of Crimea, but we all know he would love to, that he won't see much opposition if he does, and the last 30 years of welfare state excess while almost totally ignoring defense needs across the entire EU will come back to haunt the world.
No, it means the official mouthpiece of NATO - John Kerry - will be drawn into making hollow threats about "serious consequences" and "19th Century chess" or something else equally vapid to the rest of us, but positively brilliant in his own mind and that of his boss.
Count me among the millions of enlightened people in this country who don't give damn about Conservative perspective on what Putin is doing.
Uh; it ain't just "conservatives" who are mad at Russia and Crimea; even many "libs" are bent over that too.
I'm def NOT a "lib" kind of liberal and I'M Ok with letting Russia have Crimea back since it WAS "Russia" 60 years ago and the old USSR transferred title of that land TO Ukraine. Tho if Putin tries to take the rest of the Ukraine, then he needs to be put in his place.
Estonia: OTOH; Russia needs to just stuff it and back off.
A military treaty between nations that guarantees we'll come to each others aid should a military need arise. That's what is supposed to be. What is turns out to be is most of Europe having skeleton crew military capability because they have the US as big brother, leaving them free to divert military/defense spending to their welfare states, leaving them less well protected while fattening and pacifying their own people. From a media hypocrisy perspective, NATO means the US is at the world's beck and call to be policeman, but is chastised and hated for being the world's policeman, and is damned if they do, damned if they don't.
Europe outsourced their defense to us after WW II. Somewhere around 1991, the fall of the USSR convinced them that anything resembling hostility, be it actual war, proxy aggressions, or just saber rattling, was très gauche and Americans were backwards savages and cowboys. Obama, the leader, grew up hearing about his country being backwards savages, so he adopted Euro thinking about military backed diplomacy as some quaint relic of uneducated troglodytes. Putin, meanwhile, grew up on a steady diet of KGB power and Russian nationalism. If it wasn't him, it was going to be someone else soon enough.
NATO in its current state is a deeply flawed model, and most flawed for the US it most counts on. Putin is revealing all those flaws.
Look, I am not putting this on Obama, minus the need to shut up and let Ukraine and Europe go to bat for themselves, because he didn't make NATO a reality, and he didn't guide the last 40 years of wildly misguided thinking on most of Europe's part. He's just the guy at the helm right now that needs to tell Europe "you guys handle the small stuff, and if he blitzkriegs Poland, maybe we'll notice."
NATO in its current state is a deeply flawed model, and most flawed for the US it most counts on. Putin is revealing all those flaws.
Putin has not invaded a NATO country yet, so he has not revealed anything about NATO. If he invaded a NATO country and NATO did nothing, then he would have revealed a flaw.
I hope he isn't arrogant enough to move against Estonia, not only because I do not want to see another war.
I don't know if anyone here has been to Estonia, but it is a very lovely country, and times have been tough enough for them. I would like to see them have some peace and prosperity.
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