listen. she outlined that russians will move and the likely target is ukraine. and the likely target, the russians were going to move back the last 15 years is ukraine. can i bring kimberly into this. my other issue is the danger of embracing a messenger at the expense of the message. people like obama because he was cooler and the squares who were palin and mitt, were mocked even if they were right. it came down to a popularity contest. let s tally up the votes who wins for prom queen and king. that s not what life is about. we became ill-equipped and unprepared for a situation like this. they can laugh and say all the stupid things they want about mitt and sarah palin, but at least they haven t been humiliated internationally and domestically how many times by russia? whether it was about the syria complex, about snowden, the ukraine, all of this. look at the mess we have to deal with right now. there s also a strange thing that happened yesterday on the sunday shows. secreta
i don t think he sees it any other way, or honestly that he feels insecure in his position. i think he feels this is his destiny, that he s entitled, that this is his course of action and he s not uncertain about it and he ll do whatever it takes to get and achieve what he wants. what do you think, bob? what can he achieve? this is the current situation. the interim government which called an election for may 25th, including the former government, they have agreed they would leave the russians alone and let them have their port in the crimea. they have agreed they would abide by the accords in place when ukraine established the relationship with europe. from putin s standpoint, ukraine going to the european union is a deadly thing because it s the end of his goal of trying to put the old ussr together. the last thing i ll say, how in the world, if they re agreeing to let the russians have the crimean ports and they elect a president, what s russia s argument going to be then? thi
america. you can t get any less ambivalent than we are about the world. it s a combination of isolation on the left and right. we want to turn out the lights and pretend we re not home. right now we re in a state where we have to see a resurgence of a very nationalistic leader out of necessity because no one seems to listen to us. and i don t know if that s good or bad. i think it might be good. what are your thoughts on that? i think this is a bad situation. a tipping point in many respects because this is just more of putin asserting himself. he is the bad guy. he is the bully here. he s the one in violation, but unfortuna unfortunately, i m not very optimistic about a kind of sanctions we might put forward or, you know, removal from the g-8, because i think russia and putin will find a way to go around it. he s been very successful at doing that. look, i want to be optimistic. glass half full and all that, but a little sprinkle of reality in there.
with, you re going to take the legs out of our own financial banking system. that s what we did with osama bin laden s lieutenants. that s one of the ways the treasury department was able to track people down. because they were holding american prisoners. i want to get to something else, bob, you said about the rushzs and how they re trying to shape this. they have their own pr needs. greg, let s get your take on it. when russia says they re doing this out of respect of rule of law and out of human rights and the ability for people to live the way they want to live, if you re in russia and you hear that, you re probably more sympathetic to russia than the ukrainians. well, that s all russians hear, propaganda. they don t have a free press. they have no idea what s going on. the big concern to me is that putin has one thought in his mind. and one thought only. that is power. we have a president right now that s preoccupied with a plethora of issues in which none of them are prio
hoping to be able to make also. so, the crimean region is a semiautonomous region. they have their own parliament set up. also, the region is very friendly to the russians. more so than they are the ukrainian people. this is going to be unpopular. would it be the worst thing in the world if the crimean region went to russia? ukraine stayed whole, and all of the trade that went through ukrainians from russia into eastern europe and the rest of europe stayed the same? then you have all those baltic states who are feeling pressure as well, and they don t feel secure in their democracy. they feel like they re next. so many people have given their lives to have a strong democracy there. i think that i see your point, and i thing that s the one that russia will make to moldova and other places in the region, and then putin is actually then able to amass more power. except i think eric is right on a point here. it does sound like we re weak.