Brent Scowcroft Center Nonresident Senior Fellow James Joyner writes for The Hill on the crisis in Crimea:
Coming of political age during the Reagan era, I was predisposed to view the Kremlin as the seat of the Evil Empire. Despite the heady days of perestroika and glasnost kicking off while I was an undergraduate, I remained distrustful. As a young Army officer stationed in Germany at the tail end of the Cold War, I was ready to take on the Red Army at the Fulda Gap. A quarter century later, I scoffed at the Obama administration’s “reset” with Russia, seeing it–correctly as it turned out–as a fool’s errand. I even defended Mitt Romney’s much-derided assertion that Russia was America’s “number one geopolitical foe.”
I was therefore dismayed but not particularly surprised when Russian troops moved into the Crimea in a blatant act of aggression. It’s yet another reminder that Russia is not part of the West and does not share our values or interests.