I see no good options from here
While I dislike Putin, and fear that like many another autocrat he enjoys bathing in the tepid waters of epistemic closure, it seems unrealistic to imagine that he was ever going to permit Ukraine (odd, I was brought up to think of it as "The Ukraine") to drift intact into the western orbit. If Subcommandante Marcos and Zombie Hugo Chavez led a popular revolt in Sonora and Chihuahua to throw out the corrupt state governments and reconstitute these along the lines of social and economic justice with a dash of Marxist thought, we'd be restoring order there faster'n you could say "General Pershing."
Russia is going to help itself to as much of Ukraine as it feels like. The more conservative its portions, the less likely it will feel dyspepsia (I read a wonderful line years ago in an account of the origins of the Cold War, to the effect that postwar western statesmen took Stalin's appalling table manners to betoken an insatiable appetite, whereas they were actually early signals of poor digestion). If Putin's smart and not too delusional, he'll content himself with the Crimea, which is certainly the strategic and economic bonbon of the region—much good may it do him.
NATO, and to a lesser extent the EU, advanced eastward far too eagerly (the EU's expansion and integration might each have taken some benefit from a more measured pace, nicht?). Half a decade ago there was talk of admitting Georgia to NATO. Georgia? As well resurrect the Warsaw Pact and admit the Dominican Republic (82nd Airborne and US Marines landing in three...two...one).
Putin's Russia may be an appalling entity, but Obama's USA has yet to recover much of the moral standing this country might barely have been able to claim. I flinched, truly I did, when the otherwise admirable John Kerry said "You just donÂt invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests." Holy projection, Commissioner Gordon! Indeed, as long as we're romping gaily through the precincts and provinces of Wogistan taking out a homegrown Islamist here, a wedding party there, that moral standing is going to remain on a pretty high shelf way above our reach.
cordially,
