Posted on 09/25/2022 3:58:12 PM PDT by AndyJackson
What is Britain’s interest in Ukraine? Why are we shovelling weapons and equipment into that country, despite the fact that our national budget is stretched to bursting and our own armed forces have for many years been starved of money, men and kit?
If we were a proper open society, surely this question would be asked all the time. But it is not. So I am asking it now, as the Ukraine war threatens to ignite the whole of Europe and has already brought us closer to actual nuclear warfare than we have ever been.
I ask as a British patriot, whose main concern, above all things, is the ‘safety, honour and welfare of this realm’ (as the old Articles of War say).
I would not shirk a necessary fight, or desert an ally. But why are we stoking this war instead of trying to bring about peace?
This would once have been a perfectly normal British view. Margaret Thatcher was far from keen on Ukrainian nationalism.
On June 9 1990, Mrs Thatcher (still then in power) spoke to what was then the Ukrainian provincial assembly in Kiev.
She briskly batted away a question about opening a British embassy in that city. This, she explained, was as likely as Britain opening an embassy in California or Quebec.
‘I can see you are trying to get me involved in your politics!’ she scolded her questioner, adding: ‘Embassies are only for countries which have full national status.
'Therefore, we have ambassadorial diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, with the United States, with Canada, with Australia.
'We do not have embassies for California, for Quebec, for states in Australia.’
Once upon a time, the Americans, likewise, would have stayed out of it.
On August 1 1991, President George H W Bush delivered an oration which would later become known derisively (among American hawks) as ‘The Chicken Kiev Speech’.
Bush was not keen on an independent Ukraine. He told what was still Ukraine’s Soviet puppet parliament, ‘I come here to tell you: We support the struggle in this great country for democracy and economic reform.
'In Moscow, I outlined our approach. We will support those in the centre and the republics who pursue freedom, democracy and economic liberty.’
But when he used the phrase ‘this great country’ he was talking about the Soviet Union, not Ukraine.
He expected (and wanted) the USSR to continue to exist. During his visit he had refused to meet campaigners for Ukrainian independence.
After praising the reforms of the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he warned against independence if it only changed a distant despot for a local one, suggesting that this was the outcome he feared.
What the Western democracies had wanted was a reformed, free version of the old Soviet Union.
They had never expected or calculated on an explosion of nationalism in the region and did not much like the look of it. It was only after the USSR fell to pieces in 1991 that the unthinkable became the unstoppable.
But some people in American politics wanted to push further. They feared that Russia would one day rise again and challenge American power.
Paul Wolfowitz, also one of the authors of the Iraq disaster, set out a policy of diminishing and humiliating Russia back in 1992, long before anyone had ever heard of Vladimir Putin.
While it found supporters in the Pentagon and elsewhere, many others, from the brilliant veteran Cold War diplomat George Kennan to the ultimate master of cynical diplomacy Henry Kissinger, opposed the resulting policy of Nato expansion.
Kennan prophetically said in 1998 (when Putin was an obscure politician) that ‘I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War’.
He warned: ‘I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.’
He said it was an insult to Russia’s then fledgling democrats, arguing: ‘We are turning our backs on the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless revolution in history to remove that Soviet regime.’ And so it was.
Prominent Russian liberals, such as Yegor Gaidar, begged influential Western friends to challenge the Nato expansion policy.
But there is a lot of money in the making of weapons, and a lot of fame to be won in pursuing warlike policies, and so it went ahead, gathering speed and strengthening Russian nationalists and antidemocrats as it did so.
Then in 2008 George W Bush, a pathetic parody of his war veteran father, suggested Ukrainian Nato membership.
That was probably the moment at which conflict became inevitable. The prominent American neoconservative Robert Kagan has put the matter well: ‘While it would be obscene to blame the US for Putin’s inhumane attack on Ukraine, to insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.’
The point of all this is that the current policy, of militant and indeed military support for Ukraine, is a very old one, and a very controversial one.
There is a serious case against it, made by serious patriotic people in the West. Yet it is seldom heard. Nearly as important, there simply is no direct British interest here, though the fact is never discussed.
We have very little in the way of trade, political or cultural links with Ukraine (or with Russia for that matter).
We have no territorial conflict with Russia. Not since the long-ago Crimean War, now recognised by most people as a futile folly which achieved nothing, have British armed forces been active in that region.
As long as the war was a distant battle, this perhaps did not matter so much. But even before the Putin invasion those, like me, who opposed goading Russia were defamed as ‘Putin apologists’ (I have for years referred to him as a sinister tyrant) and falsely accused of ‘parroting Russian propaganda’.
Aren’t we supposed to live in a free democracy in which both sides of a question can be discussed, without one side being accused of treachery?
Surely it is Putin who regards dissent as treason? Once Putin had invaded, I was constantly accused of ‘justifying’ the action, even though I clearly, and without hesitation, condemned the invasion as barbaric, lawless and stupid, and have never deviated from this view.
Yet not a day goes by without someone smearing me as a traitor of some sort. Actually, anyone who has Russia’s best interests at heart is grinding his teeth in fury at Putin’s idiotic crime, which has done limitless damage to the peace and security of that country for decades to come and perhaps forever.
And now it has brought us closer to nuclear war than ever before. Surely that development – and it would be extreme folly to dismiss Putin’s words as bluff – compels us all to be more thoughtful, not less.
I would just like to make a plea for us as a people and a nation to start discussing this in a grown-up fashion, rather than by assuming the present policy is the only right or patriotic one.
Perhaps it isn’t. In which case it has never been more important to approach the subject with an open mind.
Putin and his corruption and murderous thuggishness were long tolerated by the West so long as they had only domestic and regional consequences. Putin's attack on Ukraine though is different and is part of a larger program directed against the West to recover the influence and power that that the Soviet Union had.
US and NATO opposition to the attack on Ukraine is thus called for as part of defending the interests of America, NATO, and Europe as a whole against Russian aggression. In addition, Putin's conduct resonates deeply with the lesson of World War II that a militaristic autocrat with territoial ambitions in Europe cannot be trusted but must be confronted decisively before he is at full strength.
Where Hitchens and others "asking questions" go completely off the rails for me is in taking up Putin's propaganda lines and embracing the ideas of Russophiles like George Kennan who were doves and appeasers during the Cold War. No small part of Ronald Reagan's greatness was his Cold War aim: we win, they lose. At some point, many conflicts cannot be compromised and come down to who wins and who loses.
Call me a simple-minded neocon tool of the defense industry, but I heard similar derision when I was a Cold War hawk. Is it really so wrong to want the US, Nato, the West, and free societies to win, and for the Soviet Union -- and now an aggressive Russia and Putin to lose? Tell us, Hitchins and Tucker, what is your answer? I'm just askin' -- that's all.
Yes, but nominally they are supporting the Ukraine. They are supporting Russia economically because they are hypocrites and need what Russia has.
Well a lot of us are concerned about American corruption and murderous thuggishness. The antics of FBI / DOJ are not exactly demonstrating we are a paragon of virtue or even democratic principles, except the meaning of democratic being use by the president of the EU.
You appear to want to continue this madness until it ends in an inevitable nuclear holocaust. Some of the rest of us want off the global train to hell.
Another global homo swarmbot. Yes there were communists and McCarthy was right about that. But for every communist life that McCarthy ruined there were 10 innocent folks he also ruined. And you are also an idiot because you utterly refuse to comprehend Hitchen’s point - which is that McCarthyite tactics -and no one claims he and his accomplices didn’t use the tactics he/they used - are arrayed to prevent serious debate on the Ukraine question
“I had no idea you even existed until you stared calling names.”
Why, you fraud! Your first post to me was:
[PETER HITCHENS] A PLEA FOR CIVILIZED DEBATE, RATHER THAN McCARTHYITE INTOLERANCE, ON THE UKRAINE ISSUE
9/25/2022, 6:36:58 PM · 11 of 45
AndyJackson to ought-six
You pro globhomo swarmbots are so predictable.
Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies
Globohomo swarmbots? And you accuse ME of calling names?
“What is sad is that you worked for AF intelligence and still are utterly ignorant of geo stratgy and geopolitics.”
Too funny. You are one of those rare individuals of whom it can be said, “Whenever he spoke, something was subtracted from the sum total of human knowledge.”
“Is it really so wrong to want the US, Nato, the West, and free societies to win?”
“Wanting” is different than taking action, like Biden supplying weapons, fake-debt-money, advisers, trade sanctions, nuclear brinkmanship, and maybe later even our sons as soldiers.
Question you Ukrainistas must answer: How does Putin “losing” and Ukraine’s “winning” as a result of these actions benefit our nation one iota?
“How does Putin “losing” and Ukraine’s “winning” as a result of these actions benefit our nation one iota?”
Ukraine wins by not losing. Ukraine has no designs of conquest and acquisition re: Russia; whereas Russia DOES have such designs re: Ukraine. What does a Ukraine victory accomplish? On a geopolitical front, it will stay if not stop any further aggression by Russia against its neighbors, some of whom are NATO members.
He’s referring to McCarthy. The one whose name is in the title.
As during the Cold War, Russia may issue nuclear threats but our nuclear and military forces are sufficient to make such threats profoundly self-destructive if ever acted upon. As the old line goes, Russians love their children too, and at key points during the Cold War, Russians refused to use nuclear weapons even when there was a temptation or a seeming reason to do so. I see no good reason why that will not continue to be the case.
Moreover, a rational and calculated fear of nuclear war is a good reason to seek Putin's death or ouster and the development of a pro-Western, genuinely democratic regime in Russia. Such a regime would readily build down Russia's over large nuclear force and would adopt a restricted use policy as to nuclear weapons.
A plea for civilised debate, rather than McCarthyite intolerance, on the Ukraine issueHypocrite? Or you contradicted yourself Peter.
See my posts at 41 and 50, above.
The website seems to draw more RINOS!
McCarthy had nothing to do with investigating Hollywood. The House UnAmerican activities committee investigated Hollywood.
McCarthy was a senator who headed the Army-McCarthy hearings. That committee investigated communists in both the Army and the state department.
Yes, read Stanton Evans last book’ Blacklisted by History. An excellent straight forward political biography. Without McCarthy there would never have been a real federal employee security program.
Have it, and read it, also, Treason by Ann Coulter
First, Britain, Russia, and the United States signed the Budapest Memorandums where Ukraine returned Soviet Nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for Russia recognizing and guaranteeing Ukraine's sovereignty and borders. China and France signed their own Memorandums as well.
Second, stopping the next USSR/CCCP from getting started and having another Cold War all over again.
Russia did not invade Ukraine thinking US and Europe were strong enough to resist. Putin thought Covid, the global recovery from it, energy sales to Europe, and politic divisions made everyone weak. That was a one of the biggest political miscalculations all time.
Much of his decision making is for "Russian irredentism". Since the fall of the USSR, the "good old days", Russia has created is own mythologized view of its history and manifest destiny to recreate the USSR.
What Russia did in Ukraine is the exact same pattern they did in Georgia and Chechnya. Buy off and stir up trouble, claim a group of "Russian Peoples" is oppressed, or really wants to be part of Russia, build it up over a few years then invade. Blame everyone else and use sheer volume of propaganda to overwhelm the opposition. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The former Soviet states free of Russia domination have some strong objections to this. Estonia has given 1/3 of its military budget to Ukraine. The former Soviet states are not going to wait for the to fall one by one. The battle for their independence, that they do not want to fight on their territory, is in Ukraine.
Imagine Russia’s corrupt Mexican stooge president has just announced he has accepted Putin’s offer to make Mexico the Warsaw Pacts’ thirtieth member following number 29 Spain and 30 Britain. What do you think Trump would have done had he found that situation in 2017? That was Russia’s position vis a vis NATO and Ukraine in February. Putin did the only thing a patriotic Russian could do in that situation. We ravaged South East Asia for a decade trying to keep the first domino from falling ten thousand miles away. We don’t understand when Putin reacts to the very last domino falling, on his border, 300 miles from Moscow.
Bingo.
You and Biden are recommending actions as if Putin is now rolling tanks through Paris or Warsaw. In fact, the buffer around Russia has shrunk to almost nothing, thanks to Bush-Clinton-Obama-Biden.
This is not 1946, 1968, or 1982.
Biden and NATO have brought NATO aggression to Russia’s doorstep. And not to mention Ukraine’s government is full of neo-Nazis. You’re making worst-case assumptions Putin has any other intentions than allowing the self-determination of the Donbas, which has been taking military hits from Ukraine for 8 years.
The point is that none of this is worth one bit of US interest, other than helping to broker peace - and to ensure this nuclear madman power doesn’t have its saber-rattling nuclear enemy (NATO) within a few dozen miles of its major cities.
In addition, we have no money whatsoever to spend on any of this. WE ARE TOTALLY BROKE. Again, it’s not 1982 anymore.
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