ANOTHER ANSCHLUSS IN CRIMEA

“… US neocons who have played a key role in engineering the coup in Kiev and this crisis… ” Many Americans have trouble understanding modern Russia or leader Vladimir Putin. That’s in good part because they have little or no understanding of Russia’s history or geopolitics. “The Soviets Union will return” I wrote in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR deprived the Russian imperium of a third of its territory, almost half its people and much of its world power. A similar disaster for Russia occurred in 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Defeated by the German-Austrian-Bulgarian-Turkish Central Powers in World War I and racked by revolution, Lenin’s new Bolshevik regime bowed to German demands to hand over the Baltic states and allow Ukraine to become independent. As soon as Josef Stalin consolidated power, he began undoing the Brest-Litovsk surrender. The Baltic states, Ukraine, the southern Caucasus and parts of “Greater Romania” were reoccupied. Half of Poland again fell under Russian control.

And the Winner in Ukraine Is…China

    Here we go again. The Obama administration, confronted with a foreign-policy crisis, is flailing. This time it isn’t Syria, but Ukraine. The Crimea’s March 16 referendum looms larger each day, but U.S. officials…