How Should the US Respond to Russia?

[PosterChild]

... Russia has violated all kinds of laws and norms, including most crucially, a treaty that it signed with Ukraine guaranteeing that country’s borders, in return for which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons... it would be a terrible precedent to allow issues like this to be resolved not through diplomacy, but by force. If Russia could detach parts of neighboring countries with impunity, won’t other great powers like China decide that they too can act in such ways...

How Should the US Respond to Russia?

[Warpy]

1. Unless you want to die of radiation poisoning

you'll have to settle for an anemic trade sanction response.

[Cleita]

2. Yes if it must be war, a Cold War is preferable to a Hot one.

Truman and Eisenhower knew that.

[PosterChild]

4. We've done this before...

...back in the day when the nukes were a much more of a real threat. Remember Solidarity?

So Putin gets Crimea, which is only 60 percent Russian. Parts of it will be deeply hostile to this Russian takeover – including the population of Crimean Tartars, who are Muslim and getting radicalized. Remember, Crimea is in the Northern Caucasus, the area where Russia has been battling a ferocious Muslim insurgency.

Look for some of the Crimean Tartars to be rebranded as "freedom fighters". And that they will be.

[jberryhill]

3. Avoiding eye contact and not sitting with them at lunch

[PosterChild]

5. I think the Eastren Ukrain will be...

...staring them down, not avoiding eye contact.

[RobertEarl]

6. Gitmo! n/t

[Ash_F]

7. Probably work with them to mediate a truce.

When a country is so polarized straight down ethnic lines, there needs to be reform.