Europe Doesn't Want to Lead Against Russia

Yesterday Hillary Clinton gave more of a response to the shootdown of MH17 than President Obama did, but it wasn’t much of a response. Asked what America ought to do about Russian hardware and perhaps more being used to shoot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine, Clinton shrugged it off. “Europeans should be the ones to take the lead on this,” she said.

Fair enough. But we’re still on the hook. Most of the victims on the flight were Dutch citizens. The Netherlands is a charter member of NATO, joining it when it was formed in 1949. An attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all NATO allies.

Germany is a NATO member, has the largest economy in Europe and thus, it’s the leader of Europe. But its chancellor doesn’t want to lead against Russia.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the shooting down of a passenger plane over rebel-held territory in Ukraine will not on its own trigger additional European sanctions against Russia.

Merkel called for an impartial probe of the downing of the Malaysian plane and put the onus on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the pro-Kremlin uprising in eastern Ukraine.

“Events have shown that the priority has to be on a political solution and that it is especially Russia’s responsibility for what is going on in Ukraine right now,” Merkel told reporters in Berlin today.

The black boxes from MH17 went to Russia. The Russian proxies who shot it down are reportedly keeping press and investigators away from the site. The intent of both actions is obvious: Scrub the site of any remains of the missile that brought the plane down, and create confusion over what actually destroyed the plane in the air.

Unless massive pressure is brought to bear on Russia by the United States, Germany, the UK and our other allies especially NATO, along with Malaysia, there will be no impartial investigation of MH17. Ever.