U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia on May 14, 2019. [State Department photo by Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain]
There is no crisis. If there actually was a crisis, Washington and NATO would be doing more to get ready than to make token troop deployments.
The Russian position is also difficult to understand. The Russians see a crisis because Washington did not agree to keep Ukraine out of NATO and not to expand NATO further. But this is just a face-saving refusal. In actual fact, Russia made it extremely clear that Russia would not permit NATO membership for Ukraine. Washington got the message and has no intention of putting Ukraine in NATO. Washington is saving face by claiming a right it will never dare use. Already Washington has moved Ukraine’s NATO membership to the distant future. In other words, it is merely a possibility in some distant future. Ukraine knows she is abandoned by the West and will make a deal with Russia.
Russia has overwhelming military superiority in Europe. The Kremlin does not need any agreements and could not trust them if it had them. All the Kremlin needs to do is to state publicly that Russia would consider NATO membership for Ukraine a declaration of war and would take the necessary action to end the threat. Privately, the Kremlin needs to tell Poland and Romania that the American missile bases on their territory have to leave. Period. No discussion. It can be done as quietly and in as face-saving a manner as desired, but they do have to go.
Russia will have obtained her goal, and the Baltics and the rest will have understood the message.
Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades.
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