It is anyone's guess will the West respond successfully to Russia's action and the disturbance and problems that it manages to make inside the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, as there is no real way to predict things. Putin is a very smart and experienced politician, unlike some of the leaders in the West lately, which has often led to situation where Putin will outmaneuver them easily. Gradually, this has started to create problems, tensions, and a gap between the Western countries, which is becoming an ever growing concern each year. But it is not just Putin and Russia, the bigger problems is actually that the West has lost the cohesion that it had, and there is a very large political division between two large and strong fractions, which is the basis for all the internal problems, while Putin is just playing smartly and exploiting that. The ramifications of this situation, if it continues in the same direction will probably be division into two or more separate blocks,even with a chance to become competition and opponents.
