To Die For Tallinn

All week, young toughs in Moscow have besieged the Estonian embassy to harass Ambassador Marina Kaljurand. Her bodyguards had to use a mace-like spray to drive back the thugs, who call Estonia a "fascist country." Estonian diplomats and their families are being pulled out of Moscow and sent home.

Relations between the countries are about to rupture, if the Kremlin does not reign in the bully-boys.

Settling these quarrels is essential to peace in Europe. But the notion that Russian intervention in a Baltic republic should be met by a U.S. declaration of war, or any attack upon a nation with thousands of atomic weapons, is the definition of insanity.

Nor are these the only quarrels we have with Putin's Russia that could explode into full-blown crises. Washington has persuaded the Czech Republic and Poland, two former Warsaw Pact countries, to accept radars and missiles for a U.S. anti-missile system.

We say the missile defense system is directed at Iran. Russians see it as of a piece with the move eastward of NATO and targeted at them. Can we blame them for so thinking, when we responded to their pullout of troops from Central and Eastern Europe by bringing Central and Eastern Europe into a U.S.-led alliance?

If the Russia-baiters in this capital have their way, Ukraine and Georgia will also be brought into NATO. That would commit us to go to war with Russia over control of the Crimean peninsula and the Russian-speaking Donbass of eastern Ukraine, and over the birthplace of Stalin and who should control South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"Moscow would not dare intervene in the Baltic republics!" comes the retort. Perhaps not. But the Russians are now fiercely nationalistic and anti-American. And it is always a mistake for a great power to cede to a minor power the ability to draw it into a great war. Just as it is always a mistake to hand out war guarantees one cannot honor.

In March 1939, Britain gave a war guarantee to Polish colonels who had not requested it, a guarantee Britain had no way of fulfilling. The war that followed cost Britain her empire and Poland 50 years of freedom.

In August 1914, King Albert of Belgium informed King George V that the Kaiser's troops had crossed his border. He invoked a treaty assuring Belgian neutrality that the British had signed -- in 1839!

So, Britain declared war, and 700,000 Brits perished in the Great War that hurled the West onto its present path of self-destruction.

So basically, we would be wrong to go to war over Estonia, just like Britain was wrong to go to war over Poland.

Since Pat wishes the USA had just stayed out of World War II, I think it's pretty safe to say that he never supported NATO to begin with.

The war that followed cost Britain her empire and Poland 50 years of freedom.

What a bizarre statement. Hitler invaded Poland. How exactly would appeasing Hitler have got Poland freer any sooner?

After six years of war Britain was in no position to achieve its goal of freeing Poland from the other massively powerful left-wing state in Europe - and Poland would still be under totalitarian rule today if Reagan (not forgetting Thatcher and John Paul II) hadn't refused to appease the USSR.

I read this without seeing who wrote it. I got to the last few paragraphs of this hysterical screed and thought, “What fool wrote this?”

I scrolled up and saw that it was old Pat Buchanan. I learned a valuable lesson: always find out who’s writing before you invest time reading.

NATO is by no means perfect. I do have hopes that with the right governments in power in the member states things can get better, unlike the UN, where that strategic convergence will never happen. That said, to hell with Putin and his bullying.

LOL!

I can’t tell you how many times I have done the same thing reading a Pat Buchanan column!

Pat the Boob Cannon has his own unique historical interpretations.

The 1839 Treaty of London acknowledged Belgium’s independence, and Kaiser Bill’s great-uncle (among others) guaranteed Belgium’s neutrality. In 1914 the Brits went to war because the Germans violated their word, not because of some guarantee the Brits gave the Belgians.

And in 1939 Britain and France could see how the German annexation plans would be shaping up, after the Germans violated the Munich agreement of the prior year and broke up Chechoslovakia. Of course the Munich Agreement was supposed to ensure “peace in our time”. Apparently Patsy thinks the Brits and French should have just stood aside and let Hitler do what he wanted in Eastern Europe. Patsy reveals himself as a fan of appeasement.

So Pat thinks the joint occupation by Russia and Germany, and the systematic extermination of Polish Catholics and Jews was not something that should be opposed by the civlized world?

He would be better off attacking Roosevelt's attempts to drag the US into World War II than he would raising this as a point supporting his neo-isolationist position.

“Apparently Patsy thinks the Brits and French should have just stood aside and let Hitler do what he wanted in Eastern Europe. Patsy reveals himself as a fan of appeasement.”

I think he just likes dictators and oppression. I think we ought to ship him off the North Korea so he can enjoy his old age.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.