crisis. so the administration has stayed one step ahead. most recently it's been the charge that war could be imminent, which is a way of saying we've got lots of warning indicators that russia is at a point that if they were -- if they wanted to launch a war they could, and i think this has been an attempt to wrong foot vladimir putin. at the end of the day, again, though, he will have to decide what price he's willing to pay, but in the meantime i think it's a very creative use of what seems to be extraordinarily good intrusive intelligence. >> you've got 30 or 40 seconds, richard. at the end of the day do you regard putin as a rational actor, or is ukraine for him an emotional issue? >> that's the 64,000 ruble question here, fareed. the question i have, is he like khrushchev in 1962 who ultimately backed down at the