As Kevin Drum notes, the best advice Barack Obama is getting on what to do about Crimea is stuff like, "Obama must rally the world, push the Europeans and negotiate with the Russians." Yeah, great advice.
I am reminded of something that happened several times during Writers Guild strikes. I've been through thousands of them. Okay, it just seems like thousands but they often start like this. Our side (the good guys, the WGA) goes in with its list of demands. The other side (the bad guys, the producers) say, "We're not going to listen to your demands. Here's our one-and-only, take-it-or-leave-it offer." And then they give us this really lousy offer full of rollbacks and reduced rights and they walk out of the conference room and refuse to participate in further bargaining. This gives us but two choices: Accept the crappy deal or go on strike. There is no other real third choice.
So we go on strike and some of our members are very angry we are on strike. Some of our members are angry if the Guild decides to use a different brand of paper towel in the men's room at Guild Headquarters. But some are really angry we're on strike and I always find myself talking to someone who blames our leadership and says —
HIM: Our committee should get in there and negotiate!
ME: The producers refuse to negotiate.
HIM: Then we should insist they negotiate.
ME: The producers refuse to negotiate.
HIM: Then we should get in there and be real tough and demand they negotiate.
ME: The only weapon we have against them is to strike.
HIM: Don't strike! Negotiate! Demand they negotiate! If I were on that committee, I could force them to negotiate!
ME: How would you do that?
HIM: By being tougher than they are!
Eventually, I expect Obama or someone on his behalf will negotiate with the Russians…but you can't force them to have those discussions and the mere fact that they sit down to negotiate doesn't mean we're going to get a satisfactory result.
On the other hand, Putin is probably a lot easier to dicker with than the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.