Ukraine

Here are quotes taken from posts  on two separate blogs that probably best capture the essence of the geographic, economic and political reality as to what's been going on in Ukraine.  I've given you a highlight but there's so much more to each article and I'd urge you to go read both.  The Taki article is worth reading alone for the nugget about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. There's been a lot of talk regarding what the Russians are doing in Ukraine but in the end not much has been done to stop their aggression.  Not much is likely to be done either.  Markets see this.  That's why unless somebody really oversteps we're unlikely to see this develop into a full bore international crisis.

Taki's Magazine:  "Don't Bait the Bears".  

"Russian nature is cruel, as are the people living there. But they defend the land like wild animals defend their young, something the soft Western op-ed writers will never comprehend. For Russians, the farther west into Europe their borders extend, the farther any future Napoleon or Hitler has to travel to reach Moscow. It’s as simple as that. The great George Kennan went on record saying that NATO and the U.S. were making a great mistake in bottling up Russia after the fall of communism. Kennan knew the Russian character better than the know-nothings inside the beltway. And the ludicrous unelected EU bureaucrats who sang a siren song to the Ukrainians only showed what nincompoops they are by egging on anti-Russian sentiments in a country that became the Ukraine only in 1991, having been a batted-about set of provinces until it joined the Soviet Union."

From Vox:  "This is the Speech Obama Would Give on Ukriane if He Were Brutally Honest."

"After careful deliberation, I have determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to bluff crippling sanctions that would only succeed with European support that I'll never get, in order to deter Putin from invading Ukraine again, even though his first invasion was a wild success for him that we will probably never overturn. Even if the European miraculously come through, ordinary Russians will suffer more than Putin ever would, and his authoritarian government will continue its crackdown in free speech and civil liberties basically unimpeded.

If our plan succeeds, Russia will still maintain control of Crimea, and Ukrainians will continue living under the same threat of Russia invasion that has haunted them for centuries, but at least we will have prevented Russia from annexing eastern Ukraine as well. If it fails, America will return to the sidelines of this conflict, which is probably what most Americans want."