Ukraine ... and the five myths about the crisis

Below a little of what  Aaron David Miller of Woodrow Wilson Intl Center for Scholars has to say on the Ukraine situation:

Five myths about the Ukraine crisis  
....In the past week, I've heard people I admire and respect talk about Crimea as Munich and Putin as Hitler. Twain wrote that history doesn't repeat; it rhymes. But those rhythmic patterns aren't evident here, either....

We don't have to like the Putin government in Russia, or Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's in Iran, to recognize that the magnitude of the threat is different. To compare them to Hitler is to urge the United States into a game that we don't want to play and can't win.
As best I can figure, Putin is a clever and easily riled Russian nationalist who presides over what remains of an empire whose time has come and gone. He lives in reality, not in some megalomaniacal world. But he is prepared to assert Russia's interests in spheres where it matters, and to block the West's intrusion into those areas as best he can. Russia is his "ideology." 

And on Ukraine, history and proximity give him cards to play.
This man isn't a fanatic. Money, pleasure and power are too important to him. Any leader who is willing to be photographed shirtless on a horse, like some cover of Men's Health magazine, isn't going to shoot himself in the head or take cyanide in a bunker. This guy is way too hip (Russian style) and attached to the good life to be Hitler. And given Russia's own suffering at the hands of the Nazis, saying he is just makes matters worse.........

....This urban legend that because of Benghazi and the "red line" affair in Syria, Putin was compelled to do something in Ukraine that he wouldn't have done had Obama acted differently, is absurd. The administration's foreign policy has often resembled a blend between a Marx Brothers movie and the Three Stooges. But on this one the charge is absurd, as is the notion that somehow Obama could have stopped him.

When the Soviet Union invaded Hungary in 1956, there was no U.S. military response; ditto in 1968 when the Soviets put down Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Sometimes, geography really is destiny. Russia believed its vital interests in Ukraine were threatened and it had the means, will, and proximity to act on them. And it's about time we faced up to it.....