I’m still absorbing all the information I can, and hope to post something at length tomorrow. But this much seems clear to me: Putin has panicked. To initiate a full-scale war with Ukraine, after effectively losing it because of the over-reach and corruption of Yanukovych, opens up scenario after scenario that  no prudent Russian statesman would want to even consider, let alone embrace. That doesn’t mean he won’t continue to over-reach or that we should be irresolute in confronting this aggression; just that we should be clear that the consequences of further escalation will be deeply damaging for his regime – and certainly far graver for him than for the West.

Obama and Putin spoke on the phone last night. Here’s what Leon Aron wishes Obama had said:

Ideally, the conversation would have been one in which the American president was speaking not only for the U.S., but also for…