Politico Brussels Playbook
Either U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken loves locked-down Brussels Town even more than Brad Pitt, or something’s up. America’s Francophone foreign minister touches down today in the European capital for the second time in just a few weeks, amid reports Russian forces are amassing along the Ukrainian border.....
With the U.S. government reporting that tens of thousands of Russian troops are pushing up on the Ukrainian border, Blinken will be joined in Brussels today by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Will he meet Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who will be in town for
a meeting at NATO?
“The secretary should have an opportunity to see him perhaps later in Brussels,” said Department of State European and Eurasian Affairs Acting Assistant Secretary Philip Reeker in a press briefing ahead of the trip. The aim is de-escalation, but if Russia acts aggressively, “there will be consequences,” he said without elaborating further......
Some diplomats were surprised to see Blinken heading back into town after his visit
last month, but Reeker stressed the reason for the visit was simply coordination..... “You cannot consult and coordinate enough in diplomacy,” Reeker insisted.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, just about everything, as Sarah Lain, a Kyiv-based associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), lays out in this op-ed.
“There is a fine line between deterrence and what is interpreted as offensive action,” Lain writes. “Everyone is watching what Russia might do, without much of a plan as to what the response would be, should it escalate significantly. This also adds to the unpredictability.”...