Putin can’t afford to back down. From the outset his leadership was based on the image of the strong man, crushing the Chechen rebels, going to war with Georgia, and taking no nonsense from opponents on the home front. If you like to appear shirtless, flexing your muscles for the TV news, then it’s best not to let the world see that you’ve gone flabby. Politically, Putin has no backup plan.
Ukrainian political contenders can’t afford to back down. No
one who is serious about winning the May 25th elections can appear
weak on the Crimean question. While Ukraine has no realistic way to prevent the
Russian annexation of Crimea, it also has no politically moderate way to move
past it. Although Crimea is meaningless to the Ukrainian economy and most
Ukrainians never considered it fully “Ukrainian,” it has now become a crucial
political symbol. Politically, Ukraine has no backup plan.
The United States can’t afford to back down. For the U.S.,
this is about Russia, and not Ukraine. The Cold War still casts a long shadow
over U.S. politics, and the reaction of the U.S. to Russian aggression is a
potent political symbol. Already the U.S. discourse is about domestic politics,
about how Ukrainian events will affect the mid-term elections and even the
presidential elections. Politically, the U.S. has no backup plan.
Crimea’s ethnic Russians can’t afford to back down. The ethnic
tensions that have been manufactured in Crimea in the past three weeks cannot
easily be reversed. Ethnic tensions between Russians and Ukrainians were almost
non-existent before the crisis (the relationship of Tatars to both groups is
another question). Now, those tensions have been elevated into violent
confrontations. The wedge that has been driven between the Russian and
Ukrainian population of Crimea means that the perpetrators of the violence cannot
back down. If Crimea remains part of Ukraine, they face punishment. Crimean
Russians have no backup plan.
I just don't see how this ends well.
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