Hayes Brown over at ThinkProgress suggests five ways the US can respond to Russia invading Ukraine without going to war.
It’s a brave attempt. But nothing he cites will suffice to get the Russians out of Crimea:
Marco Rubio offers an eight-step program, starting with:
The rest is mostly tilting at windmills: boycott the G-8 and kick Russia out if it doesn’t leave Ukraine (see above), suspend all talks with Russia (that’ll get them, since obviously only they and not we were interested in the subjects we were discussing), propose a tough UN Security Council resolution (which Moscow will veto), expand travel bans (also see above), and don’t confirm Rose Gottemoeller to the arms control job at the State Department (the Russians will certainly squeal over that). This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Marco Rubio calls “decisive action”?
The last is the one that really gets me: push for Georgia to get into NATO. This is a truly bad idea. If there is one saving grace in Ukraine, it is that we don’t have a treaty obligation to go to war with Russia to defend Crimea. But we should right away take on another country that can’t defend itself?
Left and right are shooting blanks so far. Let’s see if the Administration comes up with anything better.
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