What concerns me is that we don't understand Putin. He's not a product of a mediated world and has a type of dour peasant honesty that the hyper-mediated, intrigue-seeking west doesn't appreciate (or know how to deal with). He is out of a comic-book era, whilst Obama and Kerry are PR creations, like sitcom actors.

Russia helped with transit and airspace in the Afghan War, Russia saved Libya from airstrikes by negotiating chemical weapon disposal, Russia is suffering from a 400% increase in Afghan poppy production since the Taliban regained power leading to increased rates of heroin addiction, Russia helped the joint Space Station mission, Putin sees that NATO breaks its promises, while claiming the moral high ground. Putin's Chechnya intel could have saved Boston from the bombing.

It seems to my admittedly jaundiced eye that someone thought Putin would invade Crimea and thus provide a reason to further demonise him, but that didn't work as Crimeans saw the writing on the wall and cut loose from Kiev once it became clear that their choice was between two kinds of totalitarianism, the Russian kind that kills journalists, imprisons punk rioters and oligarchs and pretends to be a democracy, against the guys with the flash ties talking about IMF loans designed to indebit generations, also pretending to be a democracy, and loftily preaching that its interests are beyond criticism or judgment, because corporate money rules, baby, in the name of freedom to profit anywhere anytime and austerity forces whole countries to their knees.

The efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq sound to the rest of the world as ludicrously bad faith, making the E-USA protagonists look increasingly impotent as they swagger and preen cluelessly sounding belligerent and enacting sanctions. They know it will take 20 years to build the infrastructure to supply the EU with American Fracked gas, the costs getting it here make the EROI look retarded. So that's a nice dream for the oiligarchs but not remotely realistic in the short to medium term.

So it's not about principle, (ritual lip-flapping notwithstanding), it's not about gas even, which leaves only one possible reason to keep trying to wind Putin up, which is to shock doctrine Ukraine while mouthing platitudes of friendship, and give NATO something to do, being a military organisation it is frothing at the bit to get some battle experience (quicker promotions) and thereby justify its existence.

It is horrifying to see this playing out, at the beginning I was fairly sanguine about anything really threatening to world peace yet now by deductive reasoning it appears that there's a Dr. Strangelove element that wants a hot war, ASAFP.

Because it will fatten a lot of wallets conveniently parked very far away from the battlefield, or to divert world media attention from other issues of equally grave import, such as an upcoming Bankster Bailout to be forced on savers and pensioners, a new Supreme Court decision placing even more political power into the hands of the super-rich perhaps? A dollar crash as China, the BRICS, rebel elements in Europe and Russia opt out of the petro-eurodollar and create a currency basket?

Any or all of the above...?

It was utterly predictable ten years ago that signing longterm European gas contracts with Putin would come to this, but some saw their chance to peel off billions by middlemanning and they created this shituation, selling our security and capital away to enrich Mad Bad Vlad the Impaler.

What could possibly go wrong?

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty