Sanctimonious bleating regarding Crimea.

I am not impressed by the sanctimonious bleating of Pres. Obama, Secy. of State Kerry (a poseur if there ever was one), alongside  P.M. Cameron and Foreign Secy. Hague (another poseur - whose unctuous voice makes me long for ear plugs) regarding the Russian "invasion" of Crimea.

One could easily forget that the U.S.A. has sponsored regime change in Chile, Panama and Grenada (to name a few):  regime change to suit our "national interest".

Or that the United Kingdom and the United States have (with others) invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and thereby caused more problems than we could ever have solved.

Or that Obama has no respect for territorial integrity as he plays his real life video games in the deployment of murderous weapons from his toys "the drones".

OF course it's none of the above  (tongue firmly in cheek). We in the west are masters at hypocrisy in foreign policy

It was not for nothing that the U.K. was described as "Perfidious Albion".

(read this for fun  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/Albion )

It's not that I view Vladimir Putin as a latter day boy scout who wants nothing more that to sit around an international camp fire singing "Kumbaya" and roasting marshmallows.

I suspect that he is as cynical and devious as they come. 

But above all I see him as a classic Russian nationalist. ever wary of western encroachments on the Russian sphere of interest. ( Russia has at least twice been invaded from the west  - Napoleon and Hit-er.  Lord knows when the U.K. was last invaded, and the most recent land invasion n of the U.S.A. was in 1812!).

The West's  (NATO and the European Community) flirtation with Ukraine might well have been seen as provocative in  the Kremlin.

None of what I have said is intended to be an endorsement of Russian thinking or of the Russian military presence in Crimea.

But I cannot view the world in the simplistic terms which assert:

1. "NATO, the E.C, and the U.S.A. "super white hats".

2.  The protestors in Kiev "fairly decent white hats"

3. President Viktor Yanukovych "grey hat"

4. President Vladimir Putin  "utterly black hat".


I may of course be very wrong, but "you pays your money and you takes your
choice"

"Your choice" may be to read this article from "The Atlantic". (Thanks to Richard Floyd for the tip off  on this.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116810/putin-declares-war-ukraine-why-and-what-next