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Your Top 10 Questions About the World's Biggest Problems Answered

Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard, writing his regular blog column on FP goes out on what some might see as out on a limb to address the 10 top questions about the world's present biggest problems.   For instance, No. 1: Will there be a deal on Ukraine?

"The crisis in Ukraine has been a colossal failure of analysis and of diplomacy, with plenty of blame to share on all aides. The main victims, alas, have been the unfortunate Ukrainian people. As I've written before, I think the United States and the West played a key role in causing the crisis, mostly by failing to anticipate that Russia was going to respond forcefully and vigorously to what its leaders regarded as a gradual attempt to incorporate Ukraine into the West. One need not approve of Russia's response to recognize that the United States should have seen it coming and thought more carefully about our interests and objectives beforehand.

Since the collapse of the Yanukovych government, the United States and its allies have followed the usual playbook: ramping up sanctions and waiting for Moscow to cave and give us everything we want. Unfortunately, this view fails to recognize that Russia does have valid reasons to care about its border areas and still has cards to play. Sanctions are clearly hurting, but Putin probably anticipated them and has been willing to pay the price. In the meantime, sanctions aren't helping the sputtering European economy (see below), and Ukraine itself is going from bad to worse.

So my question is: Will someone get serious about real diplomacy, and make Putin an offer he's unlikely to refuse? Instead of building more bases in Eastern Europe, the United States and its allies should be working to craft a deal that guarantees Ukraine's status as an independent and neutral buffer state. And that would mean making an iron-clad declaration that Ukraine will not be part of NATO. (Just because many Ukrainians want to join doesn't mean NATO has to let them.) Recent proposals for a deal lack that essential ingredient and aren't going to solve the crisis"

Read the other 9 questions here.


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