A UN envoy was accosted and pushed around by paramilitary forces in Crimea today until he left the country running scared. This is the resounding victory of the UN in such cases.
Oh, and John Kerry and President Obama threatened that there might be, um, sanctions or something (?). (CNN called these "strong statements". Ha, ha? Is that a joke or something?)
Whatever your political philosophy, I would think that the truth is still the truth, no matter how inconvenient it is for your policy choices; and while I am not a hawk, nor do I desire war, there is one thing that is obviously true historically, and that is the fact that there is only one way that works in situations like this against belligerent nations: a strong show of overwhelming military force and a willingness to use it. That's how JFK triumphed in the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how Reagan helped usher in the end of the Cold War. Different men of differing political philosophies, but both of them recognized the same thing, which is that you have to stand up to bullies or they will keep pushing further and further and further until they go too far and things get out of hand. I can't believe how all the experts, government officials and news people have seemed to forget this lesson so quickly, but apparently they have, and if they don't wake up soon, the world is likely to become a far more dangerous and threatening place as a result. (Sorry, hippies: I know you want peace, and so do I, but peace is only possible when the good guys stand up to the bad guys and make it clear that they cannot get away with pushing others around with threats of violence.)
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As we all (ought to) know, the "Charge of the Light Brigade" was a disastrous historical military blunder of a cavalry charge carried out by the British during the Crimean War. And the ineffectual diplomatic stuff everyone seems to be halfheartedly trying in lieu of doing the one thing that would actually work (a flex of military might and a Mexican standoff in the Black Sea region, that is) makes me think of the same type of wasteful, self-defeating tactic as that long-ago horse-charge into infamy. But hey, at least the cavalry charge got an epic poem and an Errol Flynn movie out of it to glorify the disaster. (I wonder if someone will make a heroic movie someday glorifying the failed diplomacy here? That might be fun.)
This is the Charge of the Light Brigade (the fact that it was a humiliating loss to a Russian adversary in Crimea makes it an especially appropriate reference for the current situation):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_of_the_Light_Brigade
