This week, Hillary Clinton said that she hopes there isn’t “another Cold War” over Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but that’s “primarily up to Putin.” (Though, as Frank Rich argues, that would entail reviving the Soviet Union.) President Obama has not weighed in on that specific point, but he did say on Wednesday that “we do not need to trigger an actual war with Russia.” “We are not going to be getting into a military excursion in Ukraine,” the president told NBC’s San Diego affiliate, KNSD. “What we are going to do is mobilize all of our diplomatic resources to make sure that we’ve got a strong international coalition that sends a clear message, which is that Ukraine should decide their destiny.” He added that U.S. engaging Russia militarily “would not be appropriate, and would not be good for Ukraine either.” So WWIII is off the table, for now at least.
