President Vladimir Putin is a judo player and he loves to liken foreign policy to judo. When your opponent pushes you, you retreat a while and then, using the opponent’s power, throw him or her down. Thus, Putin took advantage of Mikheil Saakashvili’s faux pas in August 2008 and President Barack Obama’s half-hearted Syria foray in September 2013 with military and political successes. This time he reacted to the belligerent Russophobia of the rightist radicals in Kyiv and those who supported them, enjoying an ephemeral victory. Putin may want to use the same technique in the Eastern Ukraine.
Ideally thinking, some modus vivendi should be devised, so that Ukraine can further proceed on its own as a unique entity in which both EU and Russia (and all WTO members including Japan, of course) will get favorable treatment. The genie of bigotry, greed, hatred, violence and conspiracy should be pushed back into Aladdin’s lamp. Otherwise, Russia will play into the hands of those, who wish to destroy her economy, and at the same time wish to discredit the U.S. government for its introvert policy. In judo you can win with one decisive throw (ippon). But endless power game may turn out to be lethal.
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/d1021/20140322#1395484531
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/d1021/20120102#1325509928
