top o' the mornin'® 4/17/2014

[earendel]

It probably won't surprise most people to learn that I listen to NPR. I was doing so on Monday afternoon and I heard something on a program called "The Takeaway" that bothered me greatly. They were interviewing a professor from some university who had just written a book about power politics. He was asked about the situation in Ukraine and he came right out and said that it was the fault of the U.S. that all this was happening. His rationale was that NATO, led by the U.S., was trying to expand to the "doorstep" of Russia and that was something the Russians could not tolerate. He went on to say that if we had been content to leave Ukraine as a "buffer" between NATO and Russia, none of this would be heppening. The interviewer asked him if the Baltic states and Poland could equally be considered to be "on Russia's doorstep". He replied that those countries were "absorbed" into NATO when Russia was relatively weak, but that the situation has changed.

Now while I will grant that there may be some in Ukraine who would have preferred to remain with Russia, it's been 20 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union and now all of a sudden this is happening. I don't think you can "blame it on NATO". I think the fault rests with Putin, who envisions a new Russian Empire.

[Bob Juch]

It's bread and circuses. The Russian economy is in the toilet and this is just a distraction.