I wish Blogger expanded postings automatically so the casual reader would see comments. Since they don't, I'll keep posting comments manually when they're really good. This one is from our guest resident scholar in international affairs, Hamlet:
I think the answer to this question depends on what the scale of the violence is and where the source of the violence is. It really depends on who starts it and what form it takes.
Kuchma would be foolhardy to instigate the masses, and there is no way to see Russia brazenly rolling tanks into Kiev. There would be easier ways to bring the military into this story that would not galvanize the ever important public opinion.
Perhaps the violence will start with a Yushchenko supporter targeting part of the political infrastructure. This isn't too unthinkable. It could be as benign as a building vandalized, or as bad as an assassination attempt (poison seems to be a preferred method here ;) ). Or, perhaps Russian spesnatz will don some orange clothing and stage this themselves to look like a violent uprising so that Kuchma can 'ask' Putin to intervene. This doesn't sound too far-fetched either!
As long as the Russian military incursion is presented to the world as something that the Ukrainian government asked for then NATO would not become involved. A further scenario would be that the Ukrainian military backs Yushchenko and proclaims themselves the army of the sovereign republic of the Ukraine. Then they could pose the Russian military intervention as an attack on their sovereignty and hope to draw in NATO that way. However, Putin would simply set up an opposing Eastern Ukrainian army proclaiming the same thing, this stymieing NATO into inaction. Only with a protracted war with clear human rights abuses (Chechnya, anyone?) would the West be spurred to intervene.
America's ethics are easy to model. Provide the greatest amount of good while incurring the least amount of cost (hey, it is just how the MBA types running our country think). A war between Ukraine and Russia? What could possibly at stake for the West? Pride, or ideals? I'm afraid we let the Balkans claim those antiquated concepts as victims and we haven't seen them since.
Would Kerry Throw Us To The Wolves?
Go to factcheck.org regularly to keep track of what you can believe about what the candidates say - which isn't much at all. But at least it tells you what their plans actually are.
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