I just saw the title of an article in New Eastern Europe online entitled "Russia-Ukraine: Only One Will Remain." I'm not currently a subscriber, and I haven't seen an issue of New Eastern Europe on the stands for several months, so unfortunately I could only read a couple of paragraphs of this piece (HERE). I'd like to read the rest of it, and will try to do so, but really, isn't that title alone enough? Postulating that this war between Russia and Ukraine will spell the end of one of these countries is about as dire as it gets. I imagine how I'd feel if I were a citizen of one of those countries and was made to believe that this prediction was an inevitable truth. The desperation. The desire to do ANYthing to protect my country and my loved ones.
I've also just finished reading an article by Benjamin Abelow entitled "How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe." (You can buy it as a Kindle book from Amazon or read it for free HERE.) By the time I got halfway through it, I was convinced that a very large part of the responsibility for this war fell on the heads of Western leaders...and especially upon the heads of four U.S. Presidents: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. That's not an easy pill for me to swallow, since I voted for and mostly approved of two of those four fellows...and genuinely believed that they were good, moral men.
But nothing is truer than truth.
Under the leadership of these four presidents (and others extending back to the end of World War II), the United States of America was responsible for expanding NATO into close proximity of Russian borders--despite assurances that it would not do so; for withdrawing from arms treaties that gave Russia some assurances of its safety; from staging provocative military exercises within spitting distance of Russia; for supplying Ukraine with weaponry which could be used offensively long before Putin's invasion of Ukraine; for announcing that Ukraine could be accepted into NATO at any moment; and for seeing to the ousting of pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was the democratically elected 4th president of Ukraine.
In fact, even though I find Putin to be a loathsome individual at best, it seems clear to me that he is not merely a crazed leader who wants to recapture the lost glories of the Soviet Empire. (I actually never believed it was that simple; in fact, I'm pretty sure that anytime someone tries to defend their position by saying that the opposition is "just crazy" that that is bullshit.)
Which makes me wonder why the U.S. of A. would want to provoke this fight.
Unfortunately, there seems to be an obvious answer. By using Ukraine to fight a war it might be deliberately prolonging, the U.S. of A. is leading the Russian military (and its economy in general) into depletion and exhaustion. It's a proxy war in which American lives are not at stake (except for the boys who go there of their own volition), and it's probably well worth the money being expended on it.
I'm sorry to say that this brings me into some kind of agreement with many of the most loathsome Republican congresspeople...and even makes me sound anti-Ukrainian or, worse, pro-Putin.
Which is not the case at all.
But where does it go from here? Ending support for Ukraine would obviously just insure that the New Eastern Europe article's title became the truth, and that Ukraine would cease to exist as a soverign nation. Entering the war directly would only insure that World War III...the one preceding Einstein's war with rocks and sticks...would happen. As much as I hate to say it, it seems that the only solution is to sit down at the table as see what would satisfy Russia...even if that meant surrendering parts of Eastern Ukraine.
It's a shitty solution. But when you're trapped between Scylla and Charybdis, you are going to lose something. A lot of something. It's still better than losing everything, though, isn't it?
P.S. "The April 2008 Bucharest Summit communiqué re-affirmed the NATO allies' "commitment to keeping NATO's door open to any European democracy willing and able to assume the responsibilities and obligations of membership, in accordance with Article 10 of the Washington Treaty."[6] At that summit, Ukraine was invited to join the Alliance."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_open_door_policy
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