Should the US focus on the "counter-attack" against Russia (like sanctioning and cutting diplomatic ties), invite the actual Ukrainian government to EU/NATO or should the US sparkle tension in Kazakhstan and Belarus, in order to inflict further geopolitical isolation to Russia?
Here's the problem:
Economics.
Because the U.S. left the Gold Standard a long time ago, and has been relying upon OPEC to reinforce the international value of Treasury Bonds (Federal Reserve bank notes) - we are in a bit of a bind. We can't actually impose heavy sanctions on Russia.
Our economy is entirely dependent upon countries like Russia, China, etc buying U.S. treasury bonds so that they can do business with OPEC. This is also why Russia has been so adamant about controlling Europe's supply of Natural Gas and other hydrocarbon fuels.
Russia and China are committing to economic war against the U.S. And we were -not- ready for it.
The best thing we can do is to start drilling and pursuing practical energy sources that can keep our European allies minimally dependent upon Russia, economically. That will give Russia less military freedom over the Baltic, Balkan, and Croatian regions.
Here is how it would play out if Russia were to invade, say, Bosnia - Bosnia would plea to NATO for support. That support would be given - but Russia would sanction natural gas. Without the ability to supply natural gas - people would start to shift toward the practical outlook. Life wasn't so bad under Russia, before - and it's yet another war being fueled by the foreign super-powers that always seem to find a reason to blow things up in Eastern Europe.
Their will to be independent begins to falter. Those who truly seek the lifestyle of the West tend to migrate out of the region, and those who don't care or who were not all that opposed to Russia's influence remain behind. Good Morning, Vietnam.
As such - we have to be very careful how and where we get involved. Our currency is very fragile at the moment, and we do not have the reserves to even begin to back up the -printed- values. That doesn't include vault values (or 'vault cash') manufactured through umpteen thousand iterations of fractional reserve banking.
My advice would be to open up the military to accepting foreign contracts for defense. If other countries want our assistance - they can contract our services (or if business interests wish to have us intervene in a region - they can contract us to do so). I have an entire restructuring of the military based around this concept where the U.S. federal government only pays for a reserve force and training - the rest is left up to officers O6 and above (Colonel in the ground forces, Captain in the Navy) to manage their commands and bid on contract service. When an officer accepts a contract and assigns people to it - they are paid for their time as if they were active duty, and then they return to a reserve status until assigned to another contract.
High speed, low drag. Put officers in charge of their command's finances (meaning they actually get money and can choose to spend or save it - not "use it or lose it" models), and you'll see the cost of maintaining a force the size of ours fall through the floor (easily 30% of our defense budget is simply wasted because of stupid - another 20% goes to redundant or misguided projects - and probably another 10% could be saved by more efficient use of equipment and manpower).
Defense is one of the things America does exceptionally well. Further, a lot of Americans are good at heart and believe in doing the right thing (not to say that other nations don't - but a lot of foreigners are taken aback by the willingness of our people to give of ourselves for the sake of others). There are a lot of places where we could go and do good - but we need to let market factors guide our foreign policy - rather than this schizophrenic nonsense we have today (that gets us in trouble).
Arguably - we could simply do away with more than a reserve force and simply let PMCs run free - but that might be a bit much for people to wrap their heads around.
Regardless... Russia is controlling this game. We don't have the right people in office to take control of this one and start acting instead of reacting. Russia is going to corner us into a war (or the posturing for it) - and it's going to break our currency. The man is not a fool, and turnabout is fair play.
