Posted on 02/10/2022 1:14:56 PM PST by whyilovetexas111
There is a cause to the Ukraine crisis that isn’t much talked about.
China needs food. Ukraine has great soil.
In 2013 China made a deal with Putin’s local stooge to lease 9% of Ukraine’s farmland indefinitely.
Selling the nation to China was one of the core reasons the people of Ukraine rose up in 2014. China still wants that land, and is using Putin to get it.
There was a path there. America’s other defeated rivals (UK, Germany, Japan) made the deal to give up their global ambitions in exchange for the support and protection of the USA.
In the 1990s there was a path to a similar relationship with Russia, but various screw ups on both sides sent Russia into an alliance with China instead.
...is not seriously considered even now. Before 2014, when the Russian military aggression started, it was as likely as Vatican joining NATO. Each of these countries had been knocking on NATO's doors for years before they were let in. There's a good reason for that and no, it's not a global, neocon, nazi military complex conspiracy.
“Summed up, brilliantly”
Neocon conspiracy ?
Baloney. Show a source for that insane comment that Russia was EVER offered NATO membership and declined. For extra credit, show where they rejected it because they wanted be in charge.
LOL
Khrushchev was not born in Ukraine. He was born in Kalinovka Russia.
He grew up in Yuzovka which became Stalino and is now Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. He made his bones in Ukraine before and during The Great Patriotic War which is why most think he was Ukranian by birth.
Yeah, sure. And you flew a Pegasus Unicorn to work this morning.
“.....
The idea of Russia’s joining NATO is actually decades old. Mikhail Gorbachev proposed it in 1990, and President Putin reportedly proposed it to President Clinton. Thus, the obstacle to Russia’s membership in NATO appears to be NATO. But NATO may be willing, indeed eager, to accept Russia now given that it has shored up membership of several countries that feel threatened by Russia. In joining NATO, Russia would be pledging to defend their independence from any other nation including itself.
.....”
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/591036-invite-russia-to-join-nato
Dumb idea but it’s been proposed.
NATO units present form is obsolete.
Typo
“..NATO units present form is obsolete. ...”
Should read ‘NATO in its present form is obsolete.
What Russia (well Putin’s government anyway) wants is to take it over.
Not much “realism” in that article.
Russia has been told on more than one occasion that they need only file the application to join NATO. Yeltsin and Putin himself have apparently had these discussions, though nothing formal.
The problem is that in order to join, you must demonstrate that your country is free and doesn't torture and murder people for no reason.
Russia is a country where journalists still get two bullets in the skull on Putin's birthday after reporting things the regime doesn't like, or where people get tossed off of buildings, or else--as they did in Soviet times--locked up in insane asylums.
Russia wanted to skip the "free elections" and "don't murder people" requirement and just be given a leadership role on the grounds that they are a "great power" and "do not join coalitions, they lead them."
It's not NATO that is stopping Russia from applying for NATO membership. Membership is open to any country that is willing to apply and which can demonstrate that they are a free country, not a dictatorship.
agreed.
A properly built US/Russia alliance could have easily kept China in check and from gaining the power they have.
Preach.
Those thinking that a Russian/Chinese alliance wasn't inevitable are fooling themselves. Russia has chosen allies like China, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, etc., for the very simple reason that these are all gangster states and Russia is a gangster state.
And before people state, "but Russia sees itself as Western, and is PRO-Christian now!" No it's not. Only 7% of the population even attends church once a month. Russia targets non-ROC churches for a wide variety of discrimination and harassment. The Russian Orthodox Church has card carrying KGB Priests in charge of it, such as Archbishop Kirill--recently getting medals from Putin--despite his history as a KGB agent spreading Liberation Theology through the World Council of Churches.
A certain subset of conservatives, eager for water in the desert, have taken Russian propaganda aimed at the right-wing at face value without bothering to check beneath the veneer.
Russians regard the ancestor of the Russian state to be the Kievan Rus, that was an early medieval kingdom, and from which the name Russia is derived. It was dependent on trade with the Byzantine Empire and began to decline as the Byzantines declined. The Mongols finished off the Rus. So, the Russians feel an emotional/patriotic attachment to Ukraine as part of the Rus.
Lviv/Lvov is a different story. It was part of the Hapsburg Empire but was ethnically Polish. When Poland gained independence it was part of Poland. But British and French diplomats redrawing the map of Europe after WWI invented the "Curzon Line" as part of the new, independent Poland's boundary. They put Lvov on the Russian side. They later amended the Curzon Line to put Lvov back in Poland, but the damage had been done.
After Poland was created, the Soviets attacked, hoping to dominate Poland as Russia did before the War. It backfired. Poland won the war and conquered territory it had not been awarded.
Stalin and Hitler partitioned Poland in the Molotov/Ribbentrop Treaty, Stalin getting everything East of the Curzon Line, including Lvov. He never gave it back.
But, the story is more complicated. After the Mongols were pushed back, the medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania ruled Western Ukraine and Kiev. Lithuania merged with the Kingdom of Poland and Western Ukraine was part of Mitteleuropa for centuries. Russia took Kiev, but not parts West.
During the Napoleonic Wars, Poland was the subject of another of the corrupt bargains that have bedeviled the country. Russia, Austria and Prussia agreed on the Partitions of Poland. Russia got the lions share, including Western Ukraine. Lvov went to Austria. Poland disappeared from the map for two centuries.
It is true that at the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt and Churchill tried to persuade Stalin to give Lvov back to postwar Poland. However, at the time of Yalta the Russians had conquered all of Poland and almost all of Eastern Europe. They were 40 miles from Berlin. The Americans and Brits had no bargaining power on this point.
As we know, the Soviet Union created the fiction that it was nothing more than a union of independent republics. Lvov/Lviv went to the Ukraine republic. At the time, the commies had no idea that one day the Union would be dissolved and those republics really would be independent.
So, the bottom line is that Western Ukraine and Kiev really were part of the West for centuries. Eastern Ukraine was taken in war by the Russians from the Turks and Tatars. Very different histories and the people have very different mindsets.
Remarkably, in recent years many in Eastern Ukraine seems to have acquired a taste for living in a country that while very corrupt is more free and Western looking than Putin's Russia ruled as an authoritarian state by a dictator for life.
“Why does Ukraine matter?”
How the independent, sovereign, democratic nation of Ukraine ranks:
1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;
2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;
2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves);
2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);
2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;
3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)
4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;
7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)
Ukraine is an agricultural country:
1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;
3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world’s volume);
1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;
2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;
3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;
4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;
5th largest rye producer in the world;
5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);
8th place in the world in wheat exports;
9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;
16th place in the world in cheese exports.
Ukraine can meet the food needs of 600 million people.
Ukraine is an industrialized country:
1st in Europe in ammonia production;
2-е Europe’s and 4th largest natural gas pipeline system in the world (142.5 bln cubic meters of gas throughput capacity in the EU);
3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;
3rd place in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);
3rd place in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;
3rd largest iron exporter in the world
4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;
4th world’s largest manufacturer of rocket launchers;
4th place in the world in clay exports
4th place in the world in titanium exports
8th place in the world in exports of ores and concentrates;
9th place in the world in exports of defence industry products;
10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).
Source: Andriy Futey
Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Ukrainian World Congress - Свiтовий Конґрес Українців
The mistake of the US and Western Europe lay in our failure -- and perhaps our inability -- to assist Russia's reformers in developing and implementing a program that would effectively build a modern, democratic nation out of the rubble left by the collapse of Soviet Communism. This failure has fundamental causes beyond our own lack of wisdom.
A family friend who is a recent, high profile Cuban defector who also studied in the USSR is deeply pessimistic about Cuba's near term prospects for becoming a free country. In his view, Communism has so degraded the character of the Cuban people that they will take decades to redevelop the moral qualities required to govern themselves as a free people.
After seven decades of Communism, the Russians were in far worse shape. Unlike the occupied nations of Central Europe, Russia had no memory of and private values and culture of freedom to provide a ready basis for a post-Communist free society.
Perhaps, in the long view of history, Putin's regime will end up being a transition, with Russia eventually becoming a modern, democratic nation. In the meanwhile though, they will be a menace, with Putin's corrupt and thuggish regime being a dead end that is at odds with Russia's best interests and likely future.
Wow. I did not expect this to strike such a nerve but the debate is good to see!
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