[Raellus]

I'd really like to see what the NATO intel services' Putin psych profiles. He's pretty smoothly gotten the Crimea without spending hardly any of Russia's blood or treasure and it looks more and more like he could have east Ukraine too if he wanted it badly enough. How badly does he want it?

A smart man would stop while he was ahead. A gambler with delusions of grandeur likely would not. Which one is Putin?

At this point, I'd like to bring up the A-word. Up to this point, NATO has basically shown Putin its entire hand- talk, mostly, and not even very tough talk; at least, not backed up by much. Militarily, there's been a joint U.S.-Poland air exercise and that's it, AFAIK. Targeted sanctions won't hurt Putin, just a few of his lesser cronies by the looks of it. Western Europe seems to want Russian gas more than it wants Crimean/Ukrainian sovereignty. Without wider, deeper sanctions and NATO shifting significant ground forces east (into Poland and the Baltics), there's really nothing there but so-far-idle-threats to keep Russian forces out of East Ukraine. Putin is aware of this. If his eye is still on east Ukraine, he's got to know that his hand is a lot stronger than NATO's.

It really is Munich-style appeasement all over again. And what choice does the West really have? As a pragmatist, I'm not condemning NATO here. It's one thing to resurrect the dirty A-word and look back at the troubling historical lessons of the late 1930s. It's another to decide to fight to stop a bully who has, so far, only demonstrated modest regional aspirations. Does the west have the will to fight for east Ukraine? I don't see public support here in the States, nor did I see any in the UK. Do senior NATO member nations have the financial wherewithal to support a Cold War style conventional military expansion? No. The U.S., at least, has just begun some serious defense cutbacks. Russia, meanwhile, has increased spending on its conventional forces. I just don't see public opinion here supporting a more bellicose (and expensive) position vis-à-vis Russia's recent behavior. There's no big Crimean lobby here in the U.S. (not like the China lobby back during the 1930s). In fact, if any Americans or western Europeans have a vested interest in the long-term outcome of the crisis in Ukraine, it's the folks that have Russian-based investments in their stock portfolios. Are they supporting tough sanctions or credible threats of military intervention? Hell no. Yes, the Baltic states and Poland are probably quite nervous right now but, on their own (i.e. without help from the U.S., UK, and Germany) they couldn't do much to stop the Russians, militarily speaking.

And yes, NATO's senior members have an obligation to assist any NATO member that is attacked but that doesn't guarantee anything. Would the OG NATO nations fulfill that obligation if the Russians rolled into Ukraine. No, Ukraine's not even an EU member. What if Russia attacked Latvia or Lithuania, even accidentally- would NATO use force then? It's not a definite yes. Britain and France had treaty obligations to go to Poland's aid in 1939 but they didn't really. Instead, the world got months of "Sitskrieg" while Poland was partitioned and annexed by Hitler and Stalin. I'm aware that it's not a like-for-like comparison- the point I'm trying to make here is that a treaty is only as good as the willpower and strength required to back it up. I just don't know if NATO has either at the moment.

If NATO moved a couple of heavy divisions into Poland, the message would be clear: "we are willing and able to use force to defend any and all of our signatories". This Crimean crisis started weeks ago and even post-annexation, this hasn't happened. The silence, as they say, is deafening.

The ball is squarely in Putin's court. I just hope Putin doesn't try to overplay his hand. The way things are going right now, I could see east Ukraine as part of the Russian federation a month, a year, a decade from now.