Obama needs to take advantage of Russia's weakness - Western expert
Kyiv, September 12 (PolitNavigator, Victoria Litovchenko) – Harvard University Professor Niall Fergusson believes that “Europe did not look enough” and made mistakes that made the conflict in Donbass possible.
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“Whatever it was, Europe didn’t finish watching. Europe made mistakes. They thought that they and Yanukovych had agreed on everything. The Europeans were quite naive; they lacked strategic vision. Putin took the EU more seriously than the EU took itself. It was not about Ukraine joining the EU, but about it remaining separate from Europe,” Fergusson said during the 11th Yalta European Strategy meeting.
“The United States could immediately take military measures to discourage Russia. There were opportunities in the Black Sea, naval, in the Baltic region that President Obama decided not to use. And this gave the worst possible option for the West, allowing the annexation of Crimea and eliminating the Budapest Memorandum. The Russian position was weak, but we did not take advantage of it. Obama needs to pay attention to how to take advantage of the relative weakness of the Russian position in order to achieve a stable situation in Ukraine,” Fergusson said.
In his opinion, Obama made a mistake when he said that the United States “is no longer acting as the world’s policeman, and the Russians have drawn their own conclusions from this.”
“It’s bad not to have a strategic concept. The lack of a concept is the worst thing that can happen,” he emphasized.
Obama needs to take advantage of Russia's weakness, says Western expert