Michele Kearney's Snuffysmith's Blog

Crimea, Credibility, and Intervention

Mar 02, 2014 05:56 pm | Paul R. Pillar

Paul R. Pillar

The Crimean crisis has energized those who wallow in a conventional wisdom that, as Fareed Zakaria noted last week, had already become a familiar theme on the opinion pages. This is the theme that the United States is in retreat, that it is insufficiently assertive, and that this lack of assertiveness is having awful consequences around the world. The crisis is tailor-made to encourage such wallowing, involving as it does a use of armed forces by the successor to the old Cold War adversary. So no time has been wasted by those who complain that soft U.S. policies have brought things in Ukraine to this juncture and who cry for more U.S. assertiveness in response, including saber-rattling with U.S. armed forces.
read morehttp://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/crimea-credibility-intervention-9987