Just Askin’: What Are We Doing In Ukraine?
President John F Kennedy once remarked that we had enough nuclear missiles to destroy the Soviet Union twice. When asked about this by journalists, Nikita Khrushchev smiled and replied, “We’re satisfied to be able to finish off the United States first time around. Once is quite enough. What good does it do to annihilate a country twice? We’re not a bloodthirsty people.”
Although Khrushchev’s comment was made in jest it also masks a Soviet and now Russian concept that we in the United States need to learn. Its not about the size of the blade but the placement of the tip. Do we outgun Russia? Absolutely. Would we win? Absolutely not. Now before everyone starts pointing their red, white and blue, you’re-a-communist fingers at me, please hear me out.
We are now closer to an armed confrontation with Russia, a major nuclear superpower, than we have been in almost five decades. How did we get here? That is a rather simple question. The answer isn’t so easy, unfortunately. We ended up here through various war entanglements that Jefferson said we must avoid. Any student of America and history remembers his historic words. “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.”
We are knee deep in NATO which has basically out lived it’s usefulness to the United States; hopelessly trapped in the various dealings of the United Nations that proved their usefulness when they appointed Iran to the Council on Human Rights. Finally we got there through our empirical sense of duty to the entire world. Pat Buchanan has spoken at length about our various involvements and where they are taking us. Well we have arrived, we can’t go further East now, kids.
So I guess some of you are wondering why I keep saying the US is involved and keep saying that we need to be out of Eastern Europe. Obviously we have no troops there but what we do have is far more dangerous and quite technically an act of war. Victoria Nuland has been caught twice now talking about our fomenting of the protests in Ukraine. Back in December she told the National Press Club that we have dumped five BILLION dollars into the “agitation of Ukraine.”
Then of course there was the infamous “F the EU” call. In this call she talks about who to put in power! We are meddling in the affairs of Ukraine while we lecture and threaten the Russians not to do the very same thing! Russia has done nothing to Ukraine except loan them fifteen billion dollars as of late.
But here is a broader question to ask yourself. Russia has only two foreign naval ports. Why has the United States been involved in uprising in both of those places; Syria and Ukraine? The answer is simple our current administration desire a conflict with Vladimir Putin.
So, as many of you know I have given a large amount of support to the Ukrainian people and I still respect their tremendous dedication and bravery. However, I feel that we are getting in way over our heads starring down the Russians. The reality of geopolitics is that there is no such thing as good will. We aren’t in Ukraine stirring up resentment against Russia because we love to see democracy around the world. We weren’t in Iraq to watch this beautiful flower of democracy bloom all over the Middle East.
In geopolitics, there is one question when examining the worthiness of an operation. What can they do for us? That’s why we aren’t in Syria even though one thousand times more people have died. Imagine that, for every one dead body in Ukraine, there are one thousand dead Syrians. But Syria can’t do anything for us. No Oil, no strategic geography therefore we shrug and walk away like a kid bored with a television show. The Ukrainian people need to remove themselves from their oppressors without the United States and NATO. If the EU wishes to help so be it. If the Ukrainian people began to be brutalized by the Russians then and only then do we get involved. If you free a butterfly from a cocoon you have sentenced it to death because it doesn’t have the strength to survive. Ukraine is like a butterfly. Strength and longevity come from the struggle for freedom.
We are threatening the Russians to stay out of Ukraine and what are we going to do if they call are bluff. I mean in reality they already have. Wednesday night in the United States, while most Americans slept, Crimea was crawling with Russian troops and armored personnel carriers. Are you willing to spark a nuclear war with the most dangerous nation in the world for no reason. Is Russia harming the Ukrainian people or brutalizing them? No, so why are we provoking someone we claim as an ally? Putin is sending us a very pointed message: Don’t mess with the bear or you will get the claws. Most Americans aren’t even aware that a Russian warship made port in Havana Thursday morning. That’s ninety miles from Florida. You still think it’s just business?
The Russians understand force and are much more willing to use it than we are. Remember the placement of the tip? What if the placement of that tip was Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Mexico. We aren’t the only people who can put our feet up on someone else’s coffee table.
The point is at the end of the day we are risking nuclear war with a military which has been being groomed for this fight with the West for thirty or more years and is backed into a corner. I wish Ukraine all the best and I pray for them and their struggle but, Mr. President and NATO, I beg you please get out of Putin’s sphere of influence before we feel the tip of that Russian blade in a place we cant heal from.
Image: Courtesy of: http://www.blacklistednews.com/Ukraine_Protests_Spread_to_ Other_Major_Cities/32314/0/38/38/Y/M.html
