The way to eliminate Putin - it has a name no one dares use now.......

The current crisis in Crimea  if "played" right could be the final straw and do what West have been trying to do for centuries, starting with Napoleon, and bring Russia to heel and then let them become a partner with  Western modernity.  Nowadays no one requires Russian servitude, all the West requires is Russia adopt rule of law, universal rights, and democracy.  That is "all".  This is more of a security concern than idealism. And if one has even a sorta passing regard for universal rights, then it is what Russians want as well.

Now, Putin and Russia are one and the same.  Russia is suffering the same ole same ole Eastern disease of insisting on a despotic near religious, certainly larger than life, leader.  This is the ancient Eastern approach of power, and seems to be a disease of the East.  Note how Diocletian was a republican in a sense but then he moved to Split, founded the Eastern Roman Empire and become a God like figure, in fact he did become a God.   This desire of a leader in the East to become the "Great Man" is obviously firmly back in place now in Russia and in the past had eased West at times even getting as far as Germany with Hitler before easing back to now just the Russian borders. 

 it is Eastern as shown by China and down to Singapore and off and on in Korea and Japan.  The Great Leader.  Father.

The setting in UKR is very interesting and to some degree, but not at all as much, the same in Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Romania.   The culture has one pillar based on Death and the understanding how much death man can inflict on man.  East Germany also understands this.  But then as you go further West the culture no longer has Death as a core tenet but one of progress and redemption and individual achievement. In the West, myth or not, it is the individual that matters and in the East it is the state or collective almost always personified in the Great Leader-God.

In this land of death - what Tim Snyder calls "Bloodlands"  - and the  title of his book - there is a constant sense of the impermanence, or potential of  swift end of even best plans and aspiration.  I sense Poland has pulled out of this to some degree and the Baltics following.  Europe has been relieved of the main cause of this culture which has been Germany - "keep Russia out, Germany down, and Americans in" - but as we have discussed there have been some problems of late  as Germany is starting to "get up", but at least to date it is not hard power but soft power and finance that is raising them up.  But the culture of death has left Europe.  

In Eastern Europe it is still there because the other major cause of this culture, Russia, is still empowered though greatly curtailed in terms of the global impact since Stalin.  However this Crimea emergency shows they still have the ability, though  maybe not to invade the West,  to keep pumping the death culture into parts of Eastern Europe.

This death culture of Russia must end.  

And in many ways it is a very literal "death culture", Russia is being destroyed from within:

And to my view the only way to end it is to draw permanent borders around Russia first, then contain - a final continuation of the Kennan plan - and  then the Russian people will shed their deadly fatalism and seek democracy.  I think the only reason Russians seek and support such neo-satanic folks like Putin is they are imbued with fatalism that life can change so horribly and drastically one needs the "Strong Man".

So to secure borders we must respect the integrity of Russia.  Latvia and Estonia showed that Russia will not go down the Sudetenland path where Russia colonists were pushed into a country to break up its ethnic domain - sort of a reverse ethnic cleansing - as though they feinted hard at the Baltics and even conducted cyber warfare, they were backed down from Estonia and Latvia, mainly due to those countries' NATO membership.  So Putin will not go into East UKR or that area just north of the Dnieper delta even though there are a majority of Russians as long as the "true" Russian borders are sanctified.  

That means the absolutely unequivocal status of Crimea being Russian is acknowledged.  

Putin blew it by taking Crimea, for if he left it there but under protest with UKR,  he had a powerful way to keep UKR completely NATO free.  But he did not, and the writing is on the wall based on Estonia and Latvia experience that UKR, once shed of Crimea "trap", must join and will join NATO.

Then with the borders agreed to by Russia, immediately NATO forces move into UKR.

Then we can start to work on Russia, using all the myriad ways to now pierce the Russian border. Ideas cannot be embargoed.  And, assuming to bring a Romantic Fukuyama  'end of history" dialectic to Russia is good (I think so) -  the way is clear for the  bringing of Russia once and for all into the West, something Peter the Great started but has constantly been attacked by recidivists and been constantly pushed back to the East, then West - and so on until it is now "Eastern".

We first guarantee Russia borders by agreeing to stringent security deals, even to the point the USA will assist Russia if their borders are in the slightest challenged or if they suffer a cataclysmic event like a terrorist event.  Then we move in for the "kill".  

We open USA and perhaps EU markets to Russia on a asymmetrical free trade basis, at first seemingly at great disadvantage to the West and huge advantage to Russia.  They will pounce on this, likely with glee. 

We basically "buy off" the oligarchs.  We offer great ease and even financing for Russian students to the US colleges, we allow passage for all the Russian navy, we offer near instant Green Cards and visas for any Russian that can show means.  We absorb and absorb all Russian excess capacity and then some as we pay top dollar for goods such that they start to hold back those good from Russians themselves.  We give give give to Russia.  

We force Russians to examine inwards, to look to themselves and start to reread  Chekhov and discourage the fatalism of Dostoevsky.  We open our borders to all artists and athletes.  And keep them looking forcing Russia via largess to look inwards.  To face the bizarre mortality rates, the gutting of their lives by drugs and vodka, the crass brutal kleptocracy.   We force them to look inwards by giving them a secure border and then largesse upon largesse upon largesse.  We give give give.  We show there is another pathway, a way of objective individual truth versus social structure "science" or fascist national glory, so as  to find meaning in life.  

We break the cynicism and worship of death.   

Putin and Russia have a secret, that they are desperate to contain.  That secret is that Russia is a very weak and ineffective country in terms of projection of power and ability to execute organized plans. Sochi was a huge failure and so obviously shrill with empty stands and a setting that looks like it will crumble by July.  And it cost 1/2 the Russian annual military budget.  I imagine Russia is broke now.  It is my belief that Ukraine could destroy Russia on the battlefield, not just because Russia military is deprived of its traditional battle NCOs and senior leaders, who were Ukrainians schooled in Afghanistan - but because their equipment is decrepit, military morale is non existent.  when you have moved the mortality rate of your average soldier down 10 years while you were in power - you will find they have no morale, no reason to fight.

I think in most current history analysis there is always a huge error going down, a cynicism, that the local barber or shopkeeper or worker is just too damn stupid to know what is good for themselves and their family.  I see this as elitist and very similar in vein to colonialism.

Now if you look at all the above,  rock solid security around Russia combined with largess to encourage change and evolution to a Fukuyama dialectic, which Obama is sorta stating now and all liberal pundits claiming in one way or another for one part of this approach  or another - you really have:

Bush Doctrine