'Small war in Crimea; nobody hurt'.

The news is all ‘Ukraine and Putin’; Wikipedia must have had record hits as the chattering classes became overnight pundits on the Crimea, and Major-General Armchair  pontificates with Jon Snow.

 

Are we on the brink of WW3? Nope. Is there going to be war? Nope. Is Putin going to annexe the Crimea? Nope?

 

Is the West going to do anything about it? Nope.

 

Sanctions? Hardly, when EU trade with Russia is worth $460 billion (US trade with Russia is only a tenth of this). The EU has a heavy energy-dependency on Russia; Russia is Germany’s largest trading partner and there are 6000 German firms operating there; FDI between UK and Russia is huge; billions of dollars are invested in Russian business and industry by GM, Ford, Boeing, BP, the leading European vehicle manufacturers. Russia has the world’s largest energy  reserves, and a foreign exchange stash of $500 billion.

 

None of the chatteratti seems to have worked out what is going on.

 

But it’s simple. It’s the old ploy of when in trouble at home, stir up trouble abroad.

 

Putin is amassing a lot of discontent. He heads a coterie of about 1000 mostly ex-KGB who have got their fingers poked deep into the cookie jar. They have mega-apartments in the most expensive neighbourhoods in London and elsewhere. They live the life of the uber-privileged. And the people are getting very fed-up with it; fed-up with the looting of GAZPROM; fed-up with one of the most miserable standards of living in the developed world despite Russia being the 4^th biggest economy on a Ppp basis.

 

They dislike being in a kleptocracy, a gangster state where there is no justice, no rule of law, rigged elections and corrupt politicians, and Putin has no intention of being another Saddam or Assad.

 

And Putin holds pretty well all the cards.

 

No-one is going to start another major war in a far-away country of which we know little, so force is out.

 

The West has huge commercial interests in Russia, so sanctions are out.

 

So apart from gestures and hand-wringing the West won’t and can’t do a damn thing.