Transatlantic Relations Program Nonresident Senior Fellow Adrian Karatnycky writes for the New Republic on President Obama’s comments that what happens in Ukraine does not pose a direct threat to the United States:
“We do very little trade with Ukraine and, geopolitically … what happens in Ukraine doesn’t pose a direct threat to us,” President Barack Obama declared, almost offhandedly, last Saturday.
His assertion was not made at a major foreign policy forum. It was made in a private home in Baltimore at one in an endless string of political fundraisers, where high income swells pay big money for the novelty of later telling their friends they rubbed shoulders with the president and maybe got to pose a question to the commander-in-chief.
The president’s remark about Ukraine’s place in the geopolitical order was not widely reported. But what he said sent shockwaves through a late-night dinner I attended in Kiev last Saturday, where several hundred European, U.S., and Ukrainian government officials, businessmen, and experts, as well as the EU’s top leaders, were gathered for a major conference on Ukraine’s future.