The crisis in Ukraine continues to be in the center of attention in the Western media sources. Two articles have appeared recently which represent two opposite poles of views on Russia and American-Russian politics.
A piece by Anne Applebaum entitled "Can the West find the energy to deter Russia?" appeared yesterday in the Washington Post.
"Yes, it’s true that sanctions feel quite satisfying — think of all of those fat-fingered men who can no longer use their Visa cards at the Rolex shop — and that some very unpleasant people are on the lists. It’s also true that sanctions have genuinely made international markets jittery about doing business with Russia, not least because they have shown that Russia is now run by people who don’t care anymore about international markets, or at least not as much as they care about territorial expansion. But no, even if we put 500 people on the lists, or 5,000, sanctions aren’t the solution to the existential challenge that Russia has thrown at Europe and the international legal system," Applebaum writes.
Urging to rethink its military strategies, Applebaum hopes that the recent events in Ukraine "will belatedly wake up the slumbering foreign ministries of the West to the news that they have a long-term problem, and that it requires long-term solutions." "...we could also begin to think even more strategically about the threat to both the eastern and the western halves of Europe that is posed by Russian influence on international energy markets in general, and on European natural gas pipelines in particular," Applebaum writes.
A different viewpoint is expressed in an article by Stephen Cohen and Katrina vanden Heuvel, "Cold War Against Russia—Without Debate." The authors lament the unilateral position of the U.S. Congress on launching a new cold war against Russia and on their disregard for details in the crisis.
"No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War—its epicenter on Russia’s borders; undertaken amid inflammatory American, Russian and Ukrainian media misinformation; and unfolding without the stabilizing practices that prevented disasters during the preceding Cold War—may be even more perilous. It will almost certainly result in a new nuclear arms race, a prospect made worse by Obama’s provocative public assertion that “our conventional forces are significantly superior to the Russians’,” and possibly an actual war with Russia triggered by Ukraine’s looming civil war. (NATO and Russian forces are already mobilizing on the country’s western and eastern borders, while the US-backed Kiev government is warning of a 'third world war,'" the article reads.
Speaking about the crisis in Ukraine the authors ask: "Both sides in the confrontation, the West and Russia, have legitimate grievances. Does this mean, however, that the American establishment’s account of recent events should not be questioned?"
