Ukraine–A Domestic Brawl That Is Not Our Fight
Friday night two New York police officers were shot trying to intervene in a domestic fight between a mother and son. One was killed and one was critically wounded. The survival of that officer remains in doubt. Ask any police officer about the risk of trying to separate warring parties, whether it is a fight between a husband and wife or a parent and child. It is damn dangerous and can go south fast.
The shooting that happened in that Harlem apartment last Friday is an apt metaphor for the United States sticking its nose in the internal affairs of Ukraine. You cannot understand the current situation without understanding the history of Ukraine during the last 100 years. The vast majority of Americans cannot find Ukraine on a map much less converse knowledgeably about the underlying ethnic and religious divisions that fractured this manufactured nation.
Please watch this short video. It provides an excellent overview:
Ukraine has a bloody, horrific past. While many Americans have trouble remembering what happened four years ago, the psyche wounds from the Holomodor, the Nazi invasion, the Soviet conquest of the Nazis and the Holocaust are still fresh and suppurating. The rancid pus oozing from this history continues to poison Ukraine’s politics, both domestic and international.
The Biden Administration and the Brits are busy trying to sell their respective citizens the lie that we are arming Ukraine to fend off a Russian effort to re-establish the Soviet empire. This is dangerous nonsense. Ukraine is not a Jeffersonian democracy yearning to breathe free air. It is a fractured country and now much of the West is hell bent on ignoring this reality and adopting saber rattling towards Russia while treating Ukraine as an expendable pawn.
Russia remembers history. Between 20 and 26 million Russians died in World War II. The parents and grandparents of Russia’s current political class paid that price. Almost every family in Russia lost a loved one because, in their world view, they failed to stop a growing military threat on their western border.
Look at this situation from Russia’s perspective. The United States promised not to expand NATO:
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s famous “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, was part of a cascade of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991, according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
We lied. Instead of maintaining the status quo, we have expanded NATO towards Russia’s border. Make no mistake–Russia considers the expansion of NATO as a direct military threat.
As I pointed out in a previous article, the United States has been conducting regular military exercises in countries bordering Russia for more than 20 years. If you think these exercises are of no concern to Russia you are worse than a damn fool.
Now we are arming the Ukraine with weapons that will be used against Ukrainians with strong ties to Russia. This is madness that carries a genuine risk of sparking a nuclear conflagration. Russia will not be bullied and will not cower. If you indulge such a delusion then you know nothing of the price Russia paid to defeat Nazi Germany.
The idiots that infest Biden’s national security team appear to not understand this central point. If we continue on this path of provoking Russia our nation is likely to wind up like those two brave cops in New York–dead and bloodied.
