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>Ukraine would have become a full NATO member, the Crimea need not be under de-facto Russian control if everybody had kept their heads cool. The losers are the

>Ukraine would have become a full NATO member, the Crimea need not be under de-facto Russian control if everybody had kept their heads cool. The losers are the Ukrainian people and to some extent the Russian populace now dealing with all kinds of sanctions. What are you talking about? The West did show the very restraint that you're advocating, and the result is the situation now. Or are you suggesting that the Ukrainian people should just have accepted their lot to be ruled by Russian puppets? Just put their heads down and obey. There are those of us in this world who would rather die than surrender to such tyranny.

jacquesm 11y ago
No, the West did what they could to make Ukraine a NATO member / EU member without the intention to actually move forward with this because of the situation with Russia if Russia would object in any meaningful way. And they did (surprise!). (The EU was never fully united on getting Ukraine to join anyway, it was just power politics and division being sown, see also: Turkey.) The time for restraint was before making promises that would not be kept. It's not as if we haven't seen this kind of behavior before either. There was a time when Ukraine could have been made a memberstate of the EU and a full NATO member, but since then the times have changed and that window has closed. Part of this was the EU wasting time they didn't have and part of it was Ukraine internal politics. If Yanukovich would have played ball in 2010 it might have gone off without a hitch but all the delays and the new nationalism wave in Russia (and the Russian destabilization of the Crimea in response to that very bid) made this a plan that was bound to fail. Note that that was a democratic and (eventually) uncontested election and that 'the people of Ukraine' did not exactly sat there and held their hands in joint misery. They simply decided that at the time. See: http://www.bbc.com/news/10229626 http://www.bbc.com/news/10229626 if you don't believe me. Tymoshenko messed that up royally. Which is a pity because it would have been a good thing to get this behind us but you can't make a move like that on half-baked plans and promises, it would have taken some considerable risk taking and contingency planning to do in the first place and with the Russians - belatedly - figuring out what was at stake it was a little late to do this half-assed. If we really wanted to do this we're in fact well over a decade late, back when Russia was internally very much in turmoil this would have been a much bigger possibility. So no, the 'very restraint' that I'm advocating has nothing to do with making empty promises in the hope that it would all go without any backlash from Russia. Dumb.

jacquesm 11y ago

No, the West did what they could to make Ukraine a NATO member / EU member without the intention to actually move forward with this because of the situation with Russia if Russia would object in any meaningful way. And they did (surprise!). (The EU was never fully united on getting Ukraine to join anyway, it was just power politics and division being sown, see also: Turkey.) The time for restraint was before making promises that would not be kept. It's not as if we haven't seen this kind of behavior before either. There was a time when Ukraine could have been made a memberstate of the EU and a full NATO member, but since then the times have changed and that window has closed. Part of this was the EU wasting time they didn't have and part of it was Ukraine internal politics. If Yanukovich would have played ball in 2010 it might have gone off without a hitch but all the delays and the new nationalism wave in Russia (and the Russian destabilization of the Crimea in response to that very bid) made this a plan that was bound to fail. Note that that was a democratic and (eventually) uncontested election and that 'the people of Ukraine' did not exactly sat there and held their hands in joint misery. They simply decided that at the time. See: http://www.bbc.com/news/10229626 http://www.bbc.com/news/10229626 if you don't believe me. Tymoshenko messed that up royally. Which is a pity because it would have been a good thing to get this behind us but you can't make a move like that on half-baked plans and promises, it would have taken some considerable risk taking and contingency planning to do in the first place and with the Russians - belatedly - figuring out what was at stake it was a little late to do this half-assed. If we really wanted to do this we're in fact well over a decade late, back when Russia was internally very much in turmoil this would have been a much bigger possibility. So no, the 'very restraint' that I'm advocating has nothing to do with making empty promises in the hope that it would all go without any backlash from Russia. Dumb.