We have an elite that lives in its own virtual-reality world circumscribed by a failed ideology, unable to learn from its past mistakes (or even to admit that they were mistakes) and condemned to repeat the same blunders again and again....What we will get in Ukraine, I might add, is something like what we got in Egypt... Ukraine isn't quite Egypt (it exports rather than imports food), but its economy is busted, and the West has sent the IMF in once again. That's a formula for chaos. Putin won't take over Donetsk or Karkhov. He doesn't have to. He'll wait for the West to make an unspeakable mess of Ukraine and then do whatever he wants.
Just fifteen years ago America was the world's only hyperpower. Now we're flailing. You can't simply lose that kind of power. You can only dumb it away.