from the cuban missile crisis and two steps from war. why war? why war? there s clamor in europe and washington to move nato troops to the polish, west ukrainian border. this is an option being considered. two days ago, nato aircraft landed on polish airfields. i don t know what that means. if we, the west, move nato troops to that border, i am guessing, educating guessing, putin will send the 150,000 troops he was practicing last week, into southern and eastern ukraine. that will be the cuban missile crisis plus, and you know how close we came to war. therefore, your point in your lead, is how do we get people to sit down and let me say one thing about this. putin doesn t trust or like obama. he thinks he s weak, irresolute and doesn t keep his word. putin trusts merkel, the chancellor of germany.
look at the situation from russian eyes. in 1991, moscow gave up its 75-year-old soviet empire. it also gave up large parts of its 300-year-old russian empire, including ukraine. since then, its historical rival, nato, has expanded closer and closer to moscow s borders and then the west encouraged ukrainians to take to the streets and depose their president who had close ties to moscow. none of this excuses aggression or justifies putin s response, but if we re going to find a political solution in ukraine that will stick, we need to recognize that issues at stake are not personal, and that they are larger than obama s weakness and putin s paranoia. let s get started.
it s tough to know what would have happened in an alternative universe. imagine that we still had putin around in charge of russia but imagine he faced a different president, one who was tough, aggressive no compunctions about invading countries. oh wait, we ran that experiment in 2008. putin faced george w. bush, a president who had invaded afghanistan and iraq for good measure, in the latter case, defying massive international pressure and opposition, and yet, putin invaded georgia. and not as he did this time in a stealthy way with soldiers who were already there who switched their uniforms, he sent in russian tanks, roaring into georgia, and without any referendums, simply annexed two pieces of that country. does this prove that bush was a wimp after all? it doesn t. there has been some very good and careful scholarship by daryl press and jonathan mercer, among others, that looks at historical cases to figure out whether having a reputation for
then the olympics reminds us of the agony of defeat. but is failure actually good for you? that s what a new book says. i will talk to its author. finally, i will bring you back to crimea, to the valley of the shadow of death. if you know the poem, the charge of the light brigade you will want to see these early war photos. but first, here s my take. inevitably, the crisis in ukraine has been discussed in washington, largely through the lens of political polarization. it seems like any and every topic is fodder for partisan dis putt, even the weather. especially the weather. many republicans arguing that vladimir putin intervened in crimea because of president obama s weakness. putin saw that obama didn t want to go to war in syria, for example, and this emboldened putin. well who knows, right?
can i interrupt you? is it we crossed the line or the people of georgia and ukraine crossed it by wanting to be associated with the west? polls show chrystia is wrong. polls repeatedly have shown ukrainians are divided by this, the polls come up 43, 43 and the rest don t know. the point i would like to ask everybody and the president of the united states, does russia have any legitimate interest? is russia right in any way in its narrative? we have two conflicting narratives of how we came to this crisis. putin wants us to go back to february 21st when the deal brokered by the u.n. foreign ministers was destroyed in the streets. but we can t turn history back. but he says that s where we need to talk. if we do that, i think negotiations can begin and i can imagine an outcome that would avoid war. steve, resolve this for us. history of ukraine/russia.