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.
You are very naive if you believe Russia gives a flip about Donbas other than stealing land and resources. Russia threatens the USA now more than in 1982. The Speaker of the Duma even talks of reversing the “illegal” transfer of Alaska. They brag constantly of their ability to “win” a nuclear war. The Donbas takes no military “hits” from Ukraine. The Donbas is Ukraine as my friends and family there can tell you. Russian crimes in the Donbas are unspeakable and precede 2014.
As for the US being broke, that raises an issue that intersects with the Ukraine war in one respect that is little mentioned: the role of the dollar as the global trade and reserve currency. That is what permits the US to finance its massive public debt with foreign borrowing.
No small part of the reason for the dollar's value is that the US is a global military and political power. Maintaining that role and the dollar's value implicitly requires that we act as the global policeman against economically disruptive aggression. And, contrary to what you seem to think, the cost of helping Ukraine is a pittance compared to the value to the US of the dollar's role as a trade and reserve currency.
Why not enter into peace talks in good faith and find out, instead of trying to read Putin’s mind? Why does Biden obstinately refuse peace talks every time? What’s the harm? Is what Russia is asking for, in a final negotiation, any threat to the US homeland in the slightest? Is it worth risking the end of civilization?
And what part of your homeland would you negotiate away to criminal invaders? Seized resources will only strengthen and embolden the 22-year dictator. If you want to deter nuclear war then show strength not weakness.
“No small part of the reason for the dollar’s value is that the US is a global military and political power. Maintaining that role and the dollar’s value implicitly requires that we act as the global policeman against economically disruptive aggression.”
That is precisely the problem, and the source of the impending decades-in-coming economic collapse and, quite possibly, the deaths of hundreds of millions of souls in a nuclear war - which would’ve been driven by madmen like Biden, Putin, and Zelensky and their own unmoderated guesses and assumptions about “disruptive aggression” and intent. But thanks for the candor, boomer.
“And what part of your homeland would you negotiate away to criminal invaders?”
Huh? What of the US homeland could possibly be negotiated away in Russo-Ukrainian peace talks? I’m not following.
The question is: what is Russia demanding in peace negotiations? Has Biden or Blinken ever even listened to a first request? Has any neocon?
Is it out of concern over nuclear war? Or do you regard Russian claims as legitimate? And on what basis do you regard the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine as legal?
Moreover, if Russia is justified in such measures, then why would you criticize far less provocative actions by the US and NATO in assisting the defense of Ukraine by the supply of arms and equipment? After all, Ukraine borders NATO members.
Putin demanded Ukraine agree to never join NATO, a de-militarized Ukraine, recognition of Crimea as being Russian, recognition that Luhansk and Donbas Oblasts are independent, giving evey Oblast the right to leave Ukraine and recognition of Russian as an official language. Its a de-facto end to Ukrainian independence and existence as a country.
There’s clearly a difference of opinion in the central USA to that if eastern Europe and the UK.
I wonder if Alaskans view the threat from Russia tge same way. When Sarah Palin said she could almost see Russia from her window, maybe she meant in a good way.
Oh it was a tiring weekend - I guess I wasn’t keeping up Thanks
“When Sarah Palin said she could almost see Russia from her window”
If you were informed with sources than the msm, you’d know that was a myth. https://checkyourfact.com/2018/03/14/fact-check-did-sarah-palin-say-i-can-see-russia-from-my-house/
And remember I DO speak from precisely the “Central USA” perspective. Let the U.K. and EU deal with these border skirmishes and get their energy sources cut off. Would love to help, but WE ARE BROKE.
(1) You see no US security interest as to Ukraine. I see it in the threat to NATO members Poland, the Baltic republics, and others. I also see the Putin regime, its aggressive nature, and effort to reassemble a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe as direct threats to US security interests.
(2) The risk of nuclear war. You see it as a reason to accommodate and appease Russia in its attack on Ukraine. But where would you draw the line? At NATO's borders? Yet Russia, under control of madman Putin, has demanded that NATO member Poland have no NATO troops or facilities on its territory and that, as a former member of the Warsaw Pact, it must accept Russian influence and political demands. Would you agree to that because Russia has threatened nuclear war?
And how would you expect to discourage nuclear proliferation against the obvious lesson that a nuclear state run by a madman who issues nuclear threats always gets his way?
Ukraine would not be in its current fix as a victim of Russian aggression if it had kept its nukes after the Soviet Union collapsed. Notably, as the price for giving up nuclear weapons, Ukraine received assurances against aggression from Russia, with the US pledged to hold Russia accountable for those assurances.
(3) We disagree on the legitimacy of Russian claims. There was never a formal, long-term pledge not to expand NATO, and efforts to negotiate one foundered on excessive demands by Putin and menacing behavior toward Russia's neighbors.
Neo-Nazis are not a significant political force in Ukraine, but Russia has sent elements of the Russian Imperial Legion to fight in Ukraine, the Legion being the paramilitary arm of the ultranationalist Russian Imperial Movement.
The United States designated that group as a terrorist organization in 2020, and the German BND classifies it as neo-Nazi based on its ideology and use of Nazi symbols and Hitler pictures. Germany has rejected Russian claims that the Ukrainian government has neo-Nazis.
In sum, Russia is using its own neo-Nazis to assist in the invasion of a neighbor on the false pretext that it has neo-Nazis in postitions of power. I do not see that as providing a valid reason to attack a militarily weak neighbor.
Russia has not made any formal claims to the UN that its attack on Ukraine was provoked or justified under international law. Doing so would be a major blunder because no one who knows the facts takes such claims seriously and submitting them to UN jurisdiction would result in an investigation and formal disapproval. Putin has even declined to submit his claims against Ukraine to a vote in the normally acquiescent Russian Duma for a declaration of war or its equivalent.
(4) Why no US negotiations with Russia? In fact, there have been diplomatic discussions with Russia, but no sound basis for peace talks has emerged. As the politically dangerous mobilization demonstrates, Putin wants victory by dismembering and subjugating Ukraine. Any talks would be as to the schedule on which that would be accomplished.
“You see it as a reason to accommodate and appease Russia in its attack on Ukraine”
Stopped reading there. Done, sorry, gotta move on.
Yes, having nukes matters. Call it what you want. We “appeased” all thru the Cold War. Think Afghanistan, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the entire postwar start of the Warsaw Pact. The line was NATO’s borders, which, as a US “security concern”, never moved east of Berlin when the USSR existed, unlike now for reasons neocons never, ever articulate.
Having hypersonic missiles and nukes and the likely ability to wipe out humanity has consequences.
Also decades of “world policing” and getting to 1.3X debt-to-GNP ratio has consequences. You boomers simply cannot accept that the unipolar world is over.
More than that, along with military power, the US alone has a unique combination of other attributes that reinforce the dollar: a massive domestic economy; honest accounting; the rule of law; stable democratic government; powerful international lending institutuions like the IMF and World Bank; cultural attractiveness; and a lack of a credible rival currency as a global alternative.
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