Source: CNN
What's at stake in the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine is not just the future of Crimea, it's the future of international order.
Some weeks ago, Crimea was a remote place, to historians known as the center of a war in the 1850s, while ordinary people would have associated it with some kind of sparkling alcoholic beverage. But suddenly and unexpectedly, Crimea has become a geopolitical hotspot in a conflict between Russia and the West that seems to be straight out of a Cold War playbook.
Moscow has raised the stakes dramatically with a de facto annexation of this region, which is home of an important Russian naval base and inhabited by a population whose majority is oriented towards Russia (while an important minority, among them the Cossacks, is strongly attached to Ukraine).