Outside the Beltway

What Else Did You Expect?

Dave Schuler · Friday, April 11, 2014 · 3 comments

Over at FP Edward Lozansky, echoing things I’ve written here, explains how the Ukraine situation looks from the Russian perspective:

For the last 20-odd years, every Russian leader — from Gorbachev and Yeltsin, to Medvedev and Putin — kept sending strong signals to Washington and Brussels about their desire to become an important part of the Western security and economic architecture, only to be obnoxiously rebuffed by American and EU leaders. The West, in its victor’s arrogance, looked down on Russia like a high and mighty lord does on a poor relation. Oddly enough, Ukrainians — who, when all is said and done, are not all that different from their Russian cousins — were warmly welcomed at every imaginable Western agency as bona fide Europeans, not at all like those barbarians in Moscow.

He also catalogues a start of the list of things on which no progress can be made without Russian cooperation:

For the sake of brevity, let us just name the first 10, without further elaboration: international terrorism, nuclear nonproliferation, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea, drug trafficking, developing the Arctic region, continued space exploration, and global warming. None of these challenges can be met by American might alone. The list can be extended almost indefinitely, as practically in any field — from agriculture to nuclear energy to missile defense — both the United States and Russia can benefit from close cooperation.

Read the whole thing.