re: Russia's history with the Crimea Region

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1. Get the Europeans to get serious about tough economic sanctions on Russia to include energy.

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How would this work? That is, it there sufficient volume of natural gas from other sources to replace the European embargoed Russian natural gas?

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you really need to revise your reading list. you know, learn about treaties, international relations, etc.

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Which treaties are you referring to? Treaties have been broken, re-written, and broken again hundreds of times throughout the course of history. And international relations with whom?

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I'm honestly not sure. And I know it's going to be the hardest to accomplish. I don't think it would happen.

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Here are the numbers from 2007, doubt it's changed much:

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In 2007, the European Union imported from Russia 185 million tonnes of crude oil, which accounted for 32.6% of total oil import, and 100.7 million tonnes of oil equivalent of natural gas, which accounted 38.7% of total gas import

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They don't want to sanction because they can't.

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Europe seems perfectly fine with what Russia is doing.

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And that's an idiotic statement.

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Which treaties are you referring to? Treaties have been broken, re-written, and broken again hundreds of times throughout the course of history. And international relations with whom?

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Do you even know what you're arguing?

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I can tell this discussion will be useless. You're arguing from a preconceived position.

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Remember that he's the guy that argued that Hispanics and ethnic-Mexicans are "the same thing" and non-interventionalism cause WWII

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Europe seems perfectly fine with what Russia is doing.



And that's an idiotic statement.

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Don't be a dick. Maybe "perfectly fine" was a bad choice of words. How's this?

I have a very low confidence that Europe's leaders will enact any meaningful sanctions against Russia.

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I have a very low confidence that Europe's leaders will enact any meaningful sanctions against Russia.

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Honestly what could they do economically sanction?

Russia's top 5 exports

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Crude Petroleum (36%), Refined Petroleum (17%), Petroleum Gas (13%), Coal Briquettes (2.6%), and Raw Aluminium (1.5%

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Europe still needs that oil and gas, they can't get it elsewhere in a hurry.

That's what would hurt Russia, if the Euro's could stop importing Oil and Gas, but they can't.

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So if the only thing that could hurt Russia is to stop buy O&G, and Europe can't because they need Russia's O&G, and Putin knows that Europe needs his O&G, what possible ramifications could he possibly be afraid of?

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There lies the dilemma. The US and Europe could freeze private Russian assets.

They also could be removed from treaty organizations but those are being blocked.

Europe stands to be truly hurt from the US acting unilaterally. If Obama does the wrong thing and causes Russia to lock down it's exports it would be devastating to Europe in the short run, but obviously would hurt Russia as well since they need to export.

It's a lot more complex than just saying, just sanction them economically. And it's easy to say that Europe is letting Russia do what it wants and doesn't care.

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I realize that. I just didn't type everything out in my post because I'm lazy. Sanctions are the toughest thing to enact here. I have doubts about how much Putin cares much about the G8 at this point.

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There isn't much Putin is afraid of at this point and that's the main issue.

Where does the US draw the real line? Where does Europe draw the real line?

Russia militarily isn't even close to the US and that's the main reason Putin doesn't run roughshod over the former Soviet areas IMO.

I doubt Putin goes further than the Crimea unless he is engaged by outside forces.

Another main issue here is the Budapest Memorandum in regards to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Ukraine gave up their nukes, which was 3rd largest at the time. Pretty unreal. In return they got security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine as well as those of Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Well the US is claiming that Russia violated this memorandum, Russia is claiming that since there was a coup that the memorandum no longer applies to ANY part of Ukraine.

Russia is justifying further movement into Ukraine actually.

It's messy, and could certainly get worse in a hurry, but I doubt it goes that far.