UKRAINE & WASHINGTON DECISION-MAKING

Daily Beast.  U.S. intelligence said Putin would not invade the Ukraine--it sounds like American intelligence is as ignorant as it was before 9/11.  The reason:  the Soviet foreign minister told Secretary of State Kerrey that Russia would honor Ukraine's "territorial integrity". 

Nonetheless, until Friday, no one anticipated a Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory."Nobody thought Putin was going to invade last night,” one Senate aide who works closely on the Ukraine crisis. “He has the G8 summit in Sochi coming up, no one really saw this kind of thing coming." This source also stressed that events are still moving quickly on the ground. “There is still a question about whether this is Russian troops coming across the border or Russian troops moving around the installations in Crimea.”

It seems like a lot of assumptions are being made by Washington.  (And no one seems to remember the 2008 Russian move on Georgia).  And the Obama administration was still "formulating options and hoping for the best."  (Underlining mine)  A dose of realpolitik is needed in the administration.

Michael Barone has come up with an interesting list of 7 options that the administration could use.  He also refers to Walter Russell Mead's comment.

Mead makes the point that the pundits who predicted until Saturday that Russia would not move into Ukraine are solipsists -- they assume that Putin sees the world as they do and will act as they would. That would indeed be nice. But Putin doesn't see the world they way we -- Obama supporters and Obama critics -- do. We are told we should not mourn the transformation of a unipolar world into a multipolar world. It's just selfish to want to see the United States as the world's leading power. But the alternative is between a unipolar world and a zeropolar world, in which aggressive actors like Putin's Russia, the mullahs' Iran and Syria's Assad can inflict tyranny, suffering and death to millions--and no one can stop or (preferably) deter them.

Mead has a very critical assessment of administration foreign policy.

Anthony Codevilla interprets the events in the Ukraine more broadly, noting the weakness of the American military.  And it is not just Russia that is threatening American interests, but China is as well.  Obama has said "there will be costs," but what kind of leverage does he really have?  No one fears America anymore.

And Josh Rogin at the the Daily Beast wonders if any of Obama's plans will work.

But Simon Shuster in Time believes it is Putin who will be backing down. His popularity has slipped in Russia and there will be economic problems.  There is not upside for Putin in this invasion.