Crimea and punishment

The Ukraine/Crimea fiasco will not blow up into a big-time regional war. It will simply continue, in a somewhat different vein, the ethnic divisions and antipathies that have been standard for hundreds of years.

Russia will occupy the Crimea; I doubt they'll push it beyond that. Vladimir Putin will probably release a few peace doves to the Ukrainian hotheads, make enough concessions to get them to simmer down for the time being. The enmities will continue until further notice, which won't come anytime soon, but the world will move on to gape at the next crisis.

Not that there won't be bad consequences from this confrontation, and not only for the unfortunate souls in Ukraine. It will cement Putin's reputation, not least in his own mind, of being a master political gamesman. The reputation is probably exaggerated, but Obammy's pathetic warnings and mental vacancy make the Russian strongman look like Machiavelli in comparison.

Yet it isn't only our pen-and-phone King of Kings who has been shown up as a dunce. Or even the various manipulators whispering in his ear. It is the whole empty, doomed U.S. foreign policy since President Reagan -- a policy based on concession, elocution, and ignorance of the madness prevailing in many patches of the world -- and the response of sending in the U.S. military to kill jihadists and try to build nations where there have never been nations, only tribes.

The world is getting a good laugh at the expense of the business-as-usual EU and the United States in full paper tiger mode.