Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer said the Obama administration is unwise to take a possible NATO military response off the table in Ukraine Tuesday on Special Report.
"What if there's a full scale invasion all the way to Kiev, are you going to do nothing?" he asked.
The FNC analyst said the least the United States ought to do is offer Poland military exercises and send Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey to the other Baltic NATO nations, sending Russia the message those states will be protected.
In reaction to Secretary of State John Kerry's comments that Russian President Vladimir Putin's provocations in Ukraine are not "21st century" major nation behavior, Krauthammer reacted incredulously, noting the phenomenon of international imperialism is nothing new.
"It's as if everything that happened before, meaning nations taking over other nations, expanding, seeking dominance as Russia obviously is, is old history and it changed on the first of January in the year 2000," he added.
"I don't understand what it is exactly about the world that has changed. But they imagine that there are norms that are self reinforcing, that the Russians are not obeying, and somehow that is impossible in the world. But it's not, it's happened."
Full remarks:
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I think that's unwise to take everything off the table. Look, what if there is a full scale invasion all the way to Kiev, are you going to do nothing? I mean, the least that we should be doing now is having, offering the Poles exercises on the ground, sending the chairman of the joint chiefs into the Baltic states which are scared to death, they have large Russian populations for joint exercises as a way to demonstrate that at least the countries inside of NATO are going to be protected militarily. And on the other fronts, I mean Kerry acts as if what we have had here is a breach of international decorum. He says, you know, you take over a country. "This is not 21st century major nation behavior." Like you know, this is indecorous. In fact, there is something about the number of our century that obsesses him and it's as if everything that happened before, meaning nations taking over other nations, expanding, seeking dominance as Russia obviously is, is old history and it changed on the first of January in the year 2000. I don't understand what it is exactly about the world that has changed. But they imagine that there are norms that are self reinforcing, that the Russians are not obeying, and somehow that is impossible in the world. But it's not, it's happened.
Full panel: