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One-hundred and ninety-nine years ago, President James Monroe promised in his “Seventh Annual Message” of December 2, 1823, that in return for the European powers staying out of the Americas,“Our policy in regard to Europe … [will remain] not to interfere in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the legitimate government for us; [and] to cultivate friendly relations with it.”That part always goes unmentioned, doesn’t it?But imagine if the shoe was on the other foot, in, say, Canada: What if the Russians, after having won the Cold War, had begun incorporating all of Latin America into their Warsaw Pact military alliance, and then even used neo-Nazis to do a street putsch against the government in Ottawa, overthrowing it, threatened to kick the United States out of its naval bases in Alaska, and then helped the new regime launch a war against the people of Vancouver, B.C. for refusing to recognize the new coup junta, and all while threatening to overthrow the government in Washington D.C. next?Washington D.C. next?Right. The U.S. would invade Canada and probably nuke Moscow. Those crazy, liberty-hating Russians though? – especially that Vladimir Putin, the supposedly most dangerous, freedom-hating psychopath on the planet? Well, they’ll just have to learn to get used to it. The Americans act as though there is nothing he could ever or would ever do about it.Speaking of which, I highly recommend you-all look up and check out the clip of Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose on the old Stephen Colbert show on February 24, 2014, bragging about the Kiev coup two days before; about how easy it was and how we’re stealing this important strategic asset away from Russia while Putin is distracted with the Sochi Olympics so he can’t do anything about it. Rose explains that Ukraine is formerly part of “the old Soviet bloc,” and that, “It’s basically Robin to Russia’s Batman. And the challenge here is to try to attract it to the West, to get it to flip sides.”