IS RUSSIAN INTERVENTION DEJA VU OR SOMETHING NEW? By Jiri and Leni Valenta, 8/28/2014

While President Obama is engaged in Carter-esque, zig-zagging over military action against ISIS the Islamic, fascist organization with global ambitions, we are now also facing the other source of threat to world peace.  With Kiev winning over the separatists in the Eastern Ukraine, Putin has decided to ramp up its slow motion intervention on the banks of the Azov Sea.  At the same time, five U.S. banks have been hacked.  Is this a Russian warning?  Or response to what Russia´s see as economic warfare against its country?

To a Western historian this is déjà vu.  One recalls the 1956 Suez crisis when Great Britain, France an Israel intervened in Egypt´s Suez canal as a response to its nationalization by, Egypt.  Weeks before the U.S. presidential elections, President Dwight Eisenhower disagreed with the intervention and refused to join it.  As the Suez crisis escalated, the White House detachment provided Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev with strategic window of opportunity for Russia´s invasion of Hungary.   First the Russians withdrew all its border forces and negotiated with Hungary.  Then they came back and invaded.  

 There are significant differences between the Hungarian and the Ukrainian crisis.  Putin may just seek an upper hand in future negotiations.   We don´t yet know.   On April 21 we proposed in the Kyiv Post, the Ukraine should be provided with arms by NATO.   Russia likes low cost invasions and their own calculations have historically included who is likely to fight back.   We assume there is presently some NATO undercover arms  being provided to the Ukraine, but we cannot be sure. 

 A week ago, in The National Interest, and on our jvlv.net website, we proposed that Obama link the crisis in the Ukraine to the one in the Middle East.  We should put pressure on the Ukrainians to negotiate with Russia on the autonomy of the Ukraine, and at the same time, try to include the Russians in our battle against ISIS if that is possible.  For many months, we have proposed a summit between Putin and Obama with the single agenda of the Ukraine and terrorism. 

Curiously or not, the intervention comes on the heels of negotiations between Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Petrochenko, a movement we favored in our article.  Now, once again, we have the diversion of a Middle East crisis, with our president´s even more egregious lack of resolution on what to do with both crises.    But one thing is crystal.  Our president´s zigzagging, and preoccupation with domestic policies like the Ferguson issue, is detrimental to his handling of foreign policy.  He must turn from golf to governance, focus on both these crises and their linkages, and encourage both Russia and the Ukraine to negotiate a lasting peace.

 Sadly, in 1956, we had a respected warrior as president, Dwight Eisenhower, who had presided over the liberation of Europe and who was feared by his adversaries.  Unfortunately, we now have a man whose primary preoccupation is domestic crises, and whose weakness and indecision in foreign policy is obvious.   Can he yet rise to the occasion?   

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