MA Candidate in International Affairs, Boston University
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| Kerry and Lavrov face off |
Recently my fellow graduate
student at BU and editor of this blog Vicky wrote an excellent piece on
Russia’s invasion of Crimea. While a self-admitted non-expert on Europe or the
Former Soviet Union her piece has some excellent analysis and is well worth the
read. However as someone who aspires to be an expert on Russia and the Former
Soviet Union I wanted to add my 2 cents partly as rebuttal but mostly to inform
especially considering our media’s awful coverage. In many ways Vicky and I
agree on the many of the United States foreign policy failures and problems in President
Obama’s second term. I agree with Vicky’s Meta analysis, our grand strategy is
non-existent and the second term National Security process is a disaster. I
blame much of this on Obama’s poor second term national security team which
possess few independent strategic thinkers.
What many are accurately
calling Europe’s most dangerous crisis since the Cold War is a direct result of
issues unsettled after the end of that particular “War”. This process along
with recent blunders by the EU in particular, but also the United States and
Russia, has brought us to this point. For this article I do not comment on
these wider international relations issues but analyze the interests of Russia
in initiating the Crimean crisis and the potential Western response.
