AVE PUTIN

President Putin's Crimea show was impressive.  Some might be tempted to grin.  I think they are wrong.  The Russians commemorated the incredible sacrifices which they made stoically in WWII and received the Crimean annexation as a too long-delayed "bonus."  The whole operation was done with creative (cynical) flair and the world was reduced to a parterre of hapless onlookers. 

This being said, in doing so Putin ignored all international rules:  the Budapest memorandum, past guarantees given for Ukraine's giving up its nuclear arsenal and, last but not least, the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act.  Everybody knows that the West will not move if East Ukraine gets further destabilized. The EU is divided and the Russian Federation has in Germany a de facto geopolitical and economic co-player, while NATO and the EU seem to be unable to agree "firmly" on anything.  Sanctions hardly bite, notwithstanding what the unconvincing pundits say.

The Russians are good chess players and Putin is a master of the game.  He knows that the West has few options and that Germany and the United Stated do not see eye to eye. He prefers to make sure that China remains on board and is re-calibrating the economic links with Beijing to compensate for possible more tangible (?) negative effects from  new Western sanctions which are expected next week.

NATO should be more than the "poorhouse fair" it has become. To compensate for its structural European deficit and the absence of a credible burden-sharing, an alternative course might well be considered.  Various NATO members should co-operate militarily with countries like the Baltic States and Poland by stationing hardware and exercising joint manoeuvres in a transparent way, with prior warning and consultation ( consolidation > confrontation ). The United States should deliver defensive hardware to the same states.  Meanwhile, Ukraine should be encouraged to signal a modus vivendi model, which reassures Russia, guarantees its existence as a sovereign state and leaves open a path to internal reconciliation, becoming a bridge rather than considering an unacceptable outcome for Moscow.  The American President should leave his ad hoc Wal-Mart appearances and finally deliver a presidential assessment of how Washington sees its relationship with Europe (Russia included). Shunning Putin is no substitute for policy. It is high time to return to creative diplomacy and leave the, by now infamous, "toolbox" in the attic.

These current events are rooted in a long memory and various comments have returned to assumed earlier precedents. They are often misguided insofar as they underestimate the traumas which the Russians have endured since the advent of the Soviet Union.  Some were the result of their own making and cunning, some were inflicted by forces (both internally and externally) out of control.  There have been times (Lenin's return to Russia with German logistical help, Brest, Litovsk, Rapallo, the pre-WWII German/Russian entente, the independence of Austria) when reality's demands overtook logic, and the reminder of those unforeseen developments should serve as a warning. 

The Cold War is a thing of the past.  So was the short-lived American uni-polar world. The globe has become the reverse of the American "in pluribus unum".  One had better adapt if one wants to avoid becoming isolationist and irrelevant. The multiplicity factor requires more involvement, not less. Old arguments have to be stored away and room made for new ideas which might be in flux for an unforeseeable time, since the new galaxy looks more and more like a big bang and less and less like a happy end.