21 April 2015
When Greece's Alex Tsipras met Russia's Vladimir Putin in Moscow earlier this month, it was grist to the mill for those who see Russia's hand in the war in eastern Ukraine as a Kremlin plot to break up the EU.
They include Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of the acclaimed Bloodlands, who repeated recently on ABC radio his long-held view that, in Ukraine,'The chief fight isn't between Russia and the United States or even between Russia and Ukraine. It's between Russia and the EU.'
This appeals to a view of the EU as a harmless giant, spreading the fruits of democracy and Europe's kinder version of capitalism across the continent in an act of far-sighted selflessness. But what if Europe's most serious security crisis in a generation were a result of Brussels' own flawed policies? To put it another way, does the war in Ukrainerepresent the limits of Western diplomacy or the tragedy of some of its premises?
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