John Judis has an interesting interview with Dmitri Simes, the president of the Center for the National Interest, on the situation in Ukraine. In it, Simes castigates the Obama administraiton for their thoughtless handling of the protests in Ukraine:
Now, I understand that we favored the rebels. And I also again have to say that looking at Yanukovych, he clearly was unsavory, and unpopular, and inept, and I can understand why we would not do anything to promote his questionable legitimacy. But we have to realize, that as we were applying this pressure on the Ukrainian political process to promote those we favor, we clearly were rocking the political boat in Ukraine, a country deeply divided, a country with different religions, different histories, different ethnicities. And it was that process of rocking the boat that led to the outcome have seen. That is not to justify what Putin has done, that is not to say that the Russians are entitled to use their troops on the territory of another state. But let me say this: any Russian wrongdoings should not be used as an alibi for the incompetence of the Obama administration. European and American steps that contributed to this unfortunate outcome, and quite remarkably, nobody in this administration even seems to have been thinking about what the consequences of their previous actions could be. That's how we got to our current predicament.
This kind of thoughtless poking of the hornet's nest only to whirl around in outrage and confusion when getting stung seems to be a recurring habit in Washington.
