The Maidan was a real revolution, not a coup. The idea that the Ukrainians were passive CIA pawns is nothing more than neo-colonial prejudice. Watch the Winter on Fire Netflix documentary if you have any doubts.
The Ukrainians have very clearly said they want no US troops, only the tools to win.
In our post-1918 world of empire demolition, there only three last men left standing:
1. Russia's land-based colonial empire.
2. China's hybrid land and barely maritime colonial empire.
3. The planetary maritime American empire.
The two world wars tell you that, in a contest between land-based and maritime empires, the land-based lose. Russia and China are the Nokia and Blackberry of empire-building because they insist on direct rule and submission (ask Hong Kong, the Uighurs, Tibetans, Tatars, Chechens, Dagestanis, Yakuts, Karelians....). The US model, by leaving direct sovereignty and membership choice to those who join its (relatively) free trade and collective security umbrella, is the innovative iPhone of empire.
EU countries understand that there is no true sovereignty that's not shared because the minimum efficient scale of sovereignty and security is far higher than that of most nation states. The institutional West, which = the geographic West + Japan, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, has figured out that American hegemony is part of this package. Once the other last two imperial men left standing are inevitably defeated the EU will insist on redrafting the deal, reducing American hegemony.
The fiscal-military state and its bond market invented by the Dutch is the modern model of empire that defeated the Spanish empire. The English copied it and the Americans copied the copy, modifying it to exercise only indirect sovereignty through a planetary central bank, global reserve currency, energy independent industrial policy and guarantee of freedom of navigation and market access (how else does China get Persian Gulf oil?).
When Ukrainian civil society in November 2013 revolted against Yanukovych's puppet pivot to Putin's Eurasian Union, despite the parliament voting 85% for an EU association agreement, the Ukrainians knew where their prosperous democratic future lay--not with Putin's mafia with a flag kleptocracy. One look inside Yanukovych's villa tells you why.
