The cur­rent Ukraine cri­sis is seri­ous and threat­en­ing, so much so that some com­men­ta­tors even com­pare it to the Cuban mis­sile cri­sis of 1962.

The world ... regards the United States as a 'pariah state' and 'the greatest threat to world peace,' with no competitor even close in the polls. But what does the world know?

Colum­nist Thanas­sis Cam­ba­n­is sum­ma­rizes the core issue suc­cinct­ly in The Boston Globe: “[Pres­i­dent Vladimir V.] Putin’s annex­a­tion of the Crimea is a break in the order that Amer­i­ca and its allies have come to rely on since the end of the Cold War — name­ly, one in which major pow­ers only inter­vene mil­i­tar­i­ly when they have an inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus on their side, or fail­ing that, when they’re not cross­ing a rival pow­er’s red lines.”

This era’s most extreme inter­na­tion­al crime, the Unit­ed States-Unit­ed King­dom inva­sion of Iraq, was there­fore not a break in world order — because, after fail­ing to gain inter­na­tion­al sup­port, the aggres­sors did­n’t cross Russ­ian or Chi­nese red lines.

In con­trast, Putin’s takeover of the Crimea and his ambi­tions in Ukraine cross Amer­i­can red lines.

There­fore ​“Oba­ma is focused on iso­lat­ing Putin’s Rus­sia by cut­ting off its eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal ties to the out­side world, lim­it­ing its expan­sion­ist ambi­tions in its own neigh­bor­hood and effec­tive­ly mak­ing it a pari­ah state,” Peter Bak­er reports in The New York Times.

Amer­i­can red lines, in short, are firm­ly placed at Rus­si­a’s bor­ders. There­fore Russ­ian ambi­tions ​“in its own neigh­bor­hood” vio­late world order and cre­ate crises.

The point gen­er­al­izes. Oth­er coun­tries are some­times allowed to have red lines — at their bor­ders (where the Unit­ed States’ red lines are also locat­ed). But not Iraq, for exam­ple. Or Iran, which the U.S. con­tin­u­al­ly threat­ens with attack (“no options are off the table”).

Such threats vio­late not only the Unit­ed Nations Char­ter but also the Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Rus­sia that the Unit­ed States just signed. The res­o­lu­tion opened by stress­ing the U.N. Char­ter ban on ​“the threat or use of force” in inter­na­tion­al affairs.

The Cuban mis­sile cri­sis also sharply revealed the great pow­ers’ red lines. The world came per­ilous­ly close to nuclear war when Pres­i­dent Kennedy reject­ed Pre­mier Khrushchev’s offer to end the cri­sis by simul­ta­ne­ous pub­lic with­draw­al of Sovi­et mis­siles from Cuba and Amer­i­can mis­siles from Turkey. (The U.S. mis­siles were already sched­uled to be replaced by far more lethal Polaris sub­marines, part of the mas­sive sys­tem threat­en­ing Rus­si­a’s destruction.)

In this case too, the Unit­ed States’ red lines were at Rus­si­a’s bor­ders, and that was accept­ed on all sides.

The U.S. inva­sion of Indochi­na, like the inva­sion of Iraq, crossed no red lines, nor have many oth­er U.S. depre­da­tions world­wide. To repeat the cru­cial point: Adver­saries are some­times per­mit­ted to have red lines, but at their bor­ders, where Amer­i­ca’s red lines are also locat­ed. If an adver­sary has ​“expan­sion­ist ambi­tions in its own neigh­bor­hood,” cross­ing U.S. red lines, the world faces a crisis.

In the cur­rent issue of the Har­vard-MIT jour­nal Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Yuen Foong Khong explains that there is a ​“long (and bipar­ti­san) tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can strate­gic think­ing: Suc­ces­sive admin­is­tra­tions have empha­sized that a vital inter­est of the Unit­ed States is to pre­vent a hos­tile hege­mon from dom­i­nat­ing any of the major regions of the world.”

Fur­ther­more, it is gen­er­al­ly agreed that the Unit­ed States must ​“main­tain its pre­dom­i­nance,” because ​“it is U.S. hege­mo­ny that has upheld region­al peace and sta­bil­i­ty” — the lat­ter a term of art refer­ring to sub­or­di­na­tion to U.S. demands.

As it hap­pens, the world thinks dif­fer­ent­ly and regards the Unit­ed States as a ​“pari­ah state” and ​“the great­est threat to world peace,” with no com­peti­tor even close in the polls. But what does the world know?

Khong’s arti­cle con­cerns the cri­sis in Asia, caused by the rise of Chi­na, which is mov­ing toward ​“eco­nom­ic pri­ma­cy in Asia” and, like Rus­sia, has ​“expan­sion­ist ambi­tions in its own neigh­bor­hood,” thus cross­ing Amer­i­can red lines.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s recent Asia trip was to affirm the ​“long (and bipar­ti­san) tra­di­tion,” in diplo­mat­ic language.

The near-uni­ver­sal West­ern con­dem­na­tion of Putin includes cit­ing the ​“emo­tion­al address” in which he com­plained bit­ter­ly that the U.S. and its allies had ​“cheat­ed us again and again, made deci­sions behind our back, pre­sent­ing us with com­plet­ed facts with the expan­sion of NATO in the East, with the deploy­ment of mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture at our bor­ders. They always told us the same thing: ​‘Well, this does­n’t involve you.’ “

Putin’s com­plaints are fac­tu­al­ly accu­rate. When Pres­i­dent Gor­bachev accept­ed the uni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many as part of NATO — an aston­ish­ing con­ces­sion in the light of his­to­ry — there was a quid pro quo. Wash­ing­ton agreed that NATO would not move ​“one inch east­ward,” refer­ring to East Germany.

The promise was imme­di­ate­ly bro­ken, and when Gor­bachev com­plained, he was instruct­ed that it was only a ver­bal promise, so with­out force.

Pres­i­dent Clin­ton pro­ceed­ed to expand NATO much far­ther to the east, to Rus­si­a’s bor­ders. Today there are calls to extend NATO even to Ukraine, deep into the his­toric Russ­ian ​“neigh­bor­hood.” But it ​“does­n’t involve” the Rus­sians, because its respon­si­bil­i­ty to ​“uphold peace and sta­bil­i­ty” requires that Amer­i­can red lines are at Rus­si­a’s borders.

Rus­si­a’s annex­a­tion of Crimea was an ille­gal act, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law and spe­cif­ic treaties. It’s not easy to find any­thing com­pa­ra­ble in recent years — the Iraq inva­sion is a vast­ly greater crime.

But one com­pa­ra­ble exam­ple comes to mind: U.S. con­trol of Guan­tanamo Bay in south­east­ern Cuba. Guan­tanamo was wrest­ed from Cuba at gun­point in 1903 and not relin­quished despite Cuba’s demands ever since it attained inde­pen­dence in 1959.

To be sure, Rus­sia has a far stronger case. Even apart from strong inter­nal sup­port for the annex­a­tion, Crimea is his­tor­i­cal­ly Russ­ian; it has Rus­si­a’s only warm-water port, the home of Rus­si­a’s fleet; and has enor­mous strate­gic sig­nif­i­cance. The Unit­ed States has no claim at all to Guan­tanamo, oth­er than its monop­oly of force.

One rea­son why the Unit­ed States refus­es to return Guan­tanamo to Cuba, pre­sum­ably, is that this is a major har­bor and Amer­i­can con­trol of the region severe­ly ham­pers Cuban devel­op­ment. That has been a major U.S. pol­i­cy goal for 50 years, includ­ing large-scale ter­ror and eco­nom­ic war­fare.

The Unit­ed States claims that it is shocked by Cuban human rights vio­la­tions, over­look­ing the fact that the worst such vio­la­tions are in Guan­tanamo; that valid charges against Cuba do not begin to com­pare with reg­u­lar prac­tices among Wash­ing­ton’s Latin Amer­i­can clients; and that Cuba has been under severe, unremit­ting U.S. attack since its independence.

But none of this cross­es any­one’s red lines or caus­es a cri­sis. It falls into the cat­e­go­ry of the U.S. inva­sions of Indochi­na and Iraq, the reg­u­lar over­throw of par­lia­men­tary regimes and instal­la­tion of vicious dic­ta­tor­ships, and our hideous record of oth­er exer­cis­es of ​“uphold­ing peace and stability.”