{"id":26878,"date":"2014-07-18T07:24:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T11:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26878"},"modified":"2018-01-15T17:21:20","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T22:21:20","slug":"russias-foreign-policy-just-went-over-the-ledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/18\/russias-foreign-policy-just-went-over-the-ledge\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia’s foreign policy just went over the ledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Nichols<\/a> discusses what the destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 means for Russia:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 means: Russia, with Vladimir Putin at the wheel, just drove off the edge of a cliff.<\/p>\n

Now, by this I don\u2019t mean that the United States and the European Union are going to charge in with a new round of sanctions, provide lethal aid to Ukraine, patrol the skies of Ukraine, or anything of that nature. The West didn\u2019t react in time, or with enough resolve, to the initial invasion and partition of Ukraine last spring, and there\u2019s no reason to think our reaction will be any more effective or resolute this time. It would be reassuring to think America and Europe will now fully engage on the problem of Russian aggression, but it\u2019s unlikely.<\/p>\n

As far as Russia\u2019s future is concerned, however, it doesn\u2019t matter. The moment Flight 17 exploded was the moment that Putin\u2019s foreign policy officially went over the ledge, and with it his dreams of restored Russian greatness.<\/p>\n

Until now, Moscow claimed it was protecting the interests of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. That was nonsense right from the start, but it was nonsense the Americans and Europeans decided they could live with, as galling as it was. (Who, after all, protects the rights of Russians in Russia? Certainly not Putin.) The West looked away as Putin seized Crimea, as we conveniently convinced ourselves that this was some odd ethnic quarrel in which we had no say. Now that a civilian airliner has been blown out of the sky by a Russian missile, however, there can be no further denial that Russia is actively pursuing a major proxy war against its neighbor in the center of Europe, and with a brutality that would make the now-departed marshals of the old Soviet high command smile with approval. This is no longer a war on Ukraine, but a war on the entire post-Cold War international order.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Nichols discusses what the destruction of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 means for Russia: Here\u2019s what the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 means: Russia, with Vladimir Putin at the wheel, just drove off the edge of a cliff. Now, by this I don\u2019t mean that the United States and the European Union are going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,28,5,1119],"tags":[123,656,257,726,671],"class_list":["post-26878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-media","category-military","category-russia","tag-aircraft","tag-malaysia","tag-terrorism","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimirputin"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Zw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26879,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26878\/revisions\/26879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}