SmG Battlefire Wrote:Really? Name one country that can lead NATO in this? The United States is the reason why NATO is very powerful. Huge amount of equipment and money is invested from the US. Russia itself fears that the US will get hugely involved. Sanctions wont to a thing. All Russia has to do is close all economic support to Ukraine and Ukraine becomes broken.
Exactly, but the EU's hesitance is what inevitably will lead to the US heading NATO into ukraine when the sanctions fail.
This is a conflict about Russia not loosing it's sphere of influence to the EU in the slavic areas. Russia is not afraid of conflict with NATO because he's got nothing to loose, if he fails to win the conflict, he looses Ukranian influence. If he fights the conflict and wins, he keeps it. If he does nothing and allows the new government to abandon ties with russia and create alliances with their western neighbors, he also looses.
His obvious choice would be to ignore domestic and economic sanctions because they wont hold in the long run. That is why he is threatening now to seize American and European assets in both russia and ukraine if they enact sanctions. It's mere provocation, a conflict with the EU works out better for him in the long run.
In reality it's a Catch 22 for
us, not Russia. If we militarily intervene in Ukraine we give Putin the excuse to invade the rest of the ukraine, but if we do nothing then A) we can loose political ties with the new Ukrainian government in the event they do survive a russian takeover, and B) just that, doing absolutely nothing would inevitably lead to Putin placing Yushchenko back into power, and Sanctions and other non-violent threats will be ignored and escalate the situation further towards war.
