Secretary of State John Kerry Not Up To The Job

Brie eating, French speaking, kept man, Secretary of State John Kerry is not tough enough to be Secretary of State.   Kerry recently failed to strike a deal with his counter part, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to get the Russians to pull out of the Crimea.  Both Kerry and Obama apparently never took any world history classes.  The Crimea and more importantly the Russian Naval Base at Sevastopol have been part of Russia for decades.  Even the rest of the Ukraine has traditionally been part of Russia.   The Russian Orthodox Church emanates from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.  About half of the Ukraine is Russian oriented practicing the Orthodox faith.   The other half is Roman Catholic more like Poland.  Vladamir Putin, the quasi dictator of Russia, is not pulling out of the Crimea any time soon.   The only question is, will he  also move to annex the half of the Ukraine that is more Russian in nature. 

Imposing sanctions on Russia will do little to stop Putin from pursing the same path pursued by both Czars and Communist Commissars for about 500 years.   The Crimea is Russia’s warm water port to access the Mediterranean and trade beyond.  It will be annexed to the Russian Federation.  This discussion is now about the rest of the Ukraine, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and other former Soviet territories that have no interest in being part of Russia again.   Keep in mind that all of these countries have Russian natives living in them.   Putin could use the same logic to annex these countries as he is using to annex the Crimea.   The only way to stop him is raw power not more talking and “negotiations”. 

Obama should immediately authorized the installation of the missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic that he canceled as soon as he was elected to “reset” our relationship with the Russians, without getting anything in return.  Putin would have just seen this as weakness, not a gesture of goodwill.  The United States must become energy independent as soon as possible so that we can ship oil and liquefied natural gas to Europe to blunt Russia’s influence as their major source of energy.   This would do more to damage Russia and Putin that anything else we could do.  Finally, it makes sense for NATO to include the other former territories of the Soviet Union as members of NATO to deter Putin.  The Russians only understand raw power.  The time for more words is over.