Ukraine: Crimea Vote Is Foregone Conclusion
Updated: 7:54am UK, Saturday 15 March 2014
By Sam Kiley, Foreign Affairs Editor
Someone in the Russian ministry of foreign affairs has a sense of humour.
"Lavrov and Kerry. Hope they will be back" was the caption attached to a photograph of the two grandees taking the air in a private garden within Regent's Park.
The US Secretary of State and the Russian foreign minister need not have bothered to return to Winfield House, the American ambassador's London residence.
Their session produced nothing but a reiteration of their original positions.
The US and the West wants Russia out of the Crimea and talks to start between Moscow and Kiev.
Russia wants Crimea - or, officially, it wants the people of Crimea to exercise self determination as expressed through a referendum on Sunday on whether to secede from Ukraine.
The results on Sunday might as well be announced today. They will show an overwhelming majority in favour of returning the Crimea to Russian rule.
The West has said the plebiscite is illegal. It will have no standing in international law, and is being conducted under duress - given that there are an estimated 20,000 Russian troops now in possession of the peninsular.
The key, as Mr Kerry suggested, was whether or not Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, decides to absorb the Crimea. If he does not, there is some hope that Russia can avoid economic sanctions.
But if he does not, Mr Kerry warned, then there is the danger of a complete re-set of Russia's relationship with the rest of the world. The Kremlin will have torn up the international law book and thwarted the conventions that have underpinned international affairs since World War II.
That may be true in principal.
But this is the real world, where Putin knows the game is one of Real Politik.
He knows that, so long as he does not go to war with Ukraine the West, the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), will huff and puff but they won't blow any houses down over Ukraine.
The Baltic states are nervous. They see today's events as a rely of the Soviet invasion of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia in 1940. They fear they may be next.
They won't be. They're part of Nato and article five of the treaty that established the military alliance guarantees an "all for one and one for all" defence pact.
A European official summed up the truth of what is unfolding, in terms of international affairs.
"You should see my in-tray. Syria, Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Nigeria, the Maghreb. These are bigger problems, real problems that we have to face. Crimea is simply not that far up the real agenda," the official said.
Why not?
Because Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, the West believes. Syria is a human catastrophe that threatens to engulf the region, and Europe is under threat from al Qaeda inspired terrorists that could emerge from anywhere from Iraq to Algeria.
Europe and the US will indeed impose some sanctions on Putin's cronies and some industries if the Kremlin opts to bring the Crimea back under Mother Russia's skirts.
There is talk of sanctions extending as far as those imposed on Iran.
But this won't happen because Russia is key to solving some of the more dramatic issues of the day. Notably Iran, a close Russian ally, and Syria, which is both an Iranian vassal and a Russian client.
The Iranian nuclear issue and international terrorism have become a western obsession.
Terrorism, though, is a tactical not a strategic problem.
Russia's latest muscle moves have exposed the danger of the West's tactical focus in the face of Putin's strategy. That is no joke.
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