Terrific piece, David. Though, I would argue Seymour Hersh's reportage has some distance to go to convince me Norway pulled the trigger on Nord Stream. And, as for Crimean annexation: The people there held a separatist referendum, much as the Quebecois did in Canada, (on two occasions) and voted overwhelmingly to reject the Maidan Putsch, with its attendant Nazi regalia and regressive philosophy and - like Edward Snowden - shelter behind the skirt of Mother Russia.
I also reject the notion it was the fear of NATO expansion alone driving Russia to come at long last to the defense of the Ukrainians in the Donbass being shelled by Kyiv since their attempt to escape the regime as the Crimeans had. That is the strawman argument clutched to by such luminary lefties as Greg Palast in his bitter denunciation of Russia's leader, neo-Hitler Putin.
Russia waited eight long years as the civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk were daily murdered - in contravention of every international humanitarian convention - before intervening to stop the onslaught. But, emboldened by US/NATO assurances, neo-Churchill Zelenskyy forgot his electoral promises of peace, dedicating instead his country's future to total victory, or Slava Ukraini, the mythical glory of war.
A cease to the fighting will come finally to Ukraine, and it will come through "jaw, jaw" not "war, war" as Winston the British Bulldog famously said he preferred. Until then, all who call for more war, war to bring peace are history deniers and enemies of Peace.
Ukrainian pre-war politics weren't that black and white. Pre-putsch, the parliament was cozying up to the EU and was about to sign a trade pact with Russia. Putin forced forced Yanukovych to withdraw from the agreement which caused pro-liberal, pro-EU factions to take to the streets. This eroded Russian control of Ukraine. And as with anyone in the old school Soviet KGB, Putin would not tolerate and started agitating pro-Russian Ukrainians against those in the streets. As you can imagine the protests turned to rioting which is exactly what Putin wanted. He used this as a pretext to arm separatists in Donets and Luhansk, and send his own troops into the Crimea.
The Crimean referendums were, like the Donets and Luhansk referendums of last year, were held at the point of a gun. IIRC, there were two options on the ballot; Revive the independent Crimean constitution of 1991, or join the Russian Federation. There was no option to remain in in Ukraine. When faced with those options as well as armed soldiers looking over their shoulder, I'm not surprised at the outcome. But any statistician will tell you that a referendum that gets 97% of the vote is a rigged election.
I agree with your assessment of Zelenskyy as a modern-day Churchill. He really has a way of moving a people with his oratory skill. Even tho' Zelenskyy promised peace, he is also a patriot and can't bow to external pressure. Every Ukrainian knows of their treatment at the hands of the Czars; and the Holodomor - the genocide committed by Stalin in the '30s. I can almost guarantee that *every* family have members they lost in the Holodomor.
But, it will end through "jaw, yaw". Not until Ukraine holds the upper-hand in negotiations tho'. For him, it mean the return of Crimea and most of Donets and Luhansk. He may be willing to give land for peace, but not in the way that Churchill's predecessor, Chamberlain thought. Any treaty from a position of weakness isn't worth the paper it is printed. Zelenskyy knows this. Ukraine tried Land for Peace in 2014, and it took only 8 years for Russia to come back to take it all. He might be willing to a demilitarized zone along the border.
As far as the chance of a full-blown nuclear war, I don't think it will happen. I remember the Cold War. I was in it. The tension now isn't as high as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Able Archer incident in 1983, when I was in the Navy. As you probably know, a politician can give the order to launch a nuclear weapon, but it takes military officers to execute the order. Most military personnel who work with the nukes feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. I firmly believe that there are sound, moral people on both sides that will prevail if Putin falls off his rocker. Any intercontinental missile launch (Godsforbid) will find themselves passing a launch response. But a tactical nuke, that's a different story. NATO would probably respond with an measured response. Mostly likely against military production capability or critical internal infrastructure.
Another thoughtful, perceptive, and penetrating analysis, David, as your readers have long since come to expect from you.
I would add only this: As Carl Jung noted in The Undiscovered Self, in addition to their bloody wars of colonial conquest, European states have an even longer and at least as bloody history of wars against one another. When, though, has the world seen a European war such as the proxy war in Ukraine, provoked, as you've noted, by the USA and NATO, which is to say, the USA, in which millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians are pitted against one another? Russia and the former Soviet republics are home to a majority of the world's Orthodox Christians, who even before the proxy war began were struggling to recover from the effects of decades of Soviet religious repression. Blinken and Nuland, the Biden administration neocons who ginned up the proxy war, and who, according to Sy, planned the Nord Stream sabotage, an act of war, are reflexively pro-Israel Jewish Zionists of Eastern European ancestry. Is this neocon war, seen by many as a Blinken/Nuland project, widely perceived to be "good for the Jews" and a good look for the American Jewish community? Asking for various friends who happen to be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and of no particular religious tradition.
Don't forget Yugoslavia and Libya in the list of countries recently destroyed by NATO. in 2007 at a European Security Conference Putin stated that NATO had broken all its promises and that Russia's absolute Red Line was the absorption of Georgia and/or Ukraine. The US Nazi coup carried out with the intention of turning Sevastopol into a NATO naval base and stationing US nuclear missiles in Eastern Ukraine a short five minute flight away from Moscow forced Russia to react. Initially they tried to implement the Minsk Accords to make Ukraine a neutral state and guarantee the people of Donetsk and Luhansk the right to retain their language, culture, and education. As we now know from admissions by Merkel, Poroshenko, and Macron, they signed the agreements in bad faith with no intention of honoring them. The ongoing construction of NATO bases in Ukraine and the imminent attack on Donetsk and Luhansk sealed the issue and forced Russia to pre-empt the NATO/Ukrainian attack. Russia did not start the war; Poroshenko did in 2014.
The whole US plan traces back to the Project for a New American Century of the 1990's which among other things calls for preventing the reunification of Russia and Ukraine at any cost, and failing that, to start a war between them that would destroy Ukraine so that it would be a burden on the Russian economy for decades to come, slowing their recovery from the US created "Shock Privatization" of the 1990's which reduced Russia to a semi-deindustrialized state.
Terrific piece, David. Though, I would argue Seymour Hersh's reportage has some distance to go to convince me Norway pulled the trigger on Nord Stream. And, as for Crimean annexation: The people there held a separatist referendum, much as the Quebecois did in Canada, (on two occasions) and voted overwhelmingly to reject the Maidan Putsch, with its attendant Nazi regalia and regressive philosophy and - like Edward Snowden - shelter behind the skirt of Mother Russia.
I also reject the notion it was the fear of NATO expansion alone driving Russia to come at long last to the defense of the Ukrainians in the Donbass being shelled by Kyiv since their attempt to escape the regime as the Crimeans had. That is the strawman argument clutched to by such luminary lefties as Greg Palast in his bitter denunciation of Russia's leader, neo-Hitler Putin.
Russia waited eight long years as the civilians in Luhansk and Donetsk were daily murdered - in contravention of every international humanitarian convention - before intervening to stop the onslaught. But, emboldened by US/NATO assurances, neo-Churchill Zelenskyy forgot his electoral promises of peace, dedicating instead his country's future to total victory, or Slava Ukraini, the mythical glory of war.
A cease to the fighting will come finally to Ukraine, and it will come through "jaw, jaw" not "war, war" as Winston the British Bulldog famously said he preferred. Until then, all who call for more war, war to bring peace are history deniers and enemies of Peace.
Ukrainian pre-war politics weren't that black and white. Pre-putsch, the parliament was cozying up to the EU and was about to sign a trade pact with Russia. Putin forced forced Yanukovych to withdraw from the agreement which caused pro-liberal, pro-EU factions to take to the streets. This eroded Russian control of Ukraine. And as with anyone in the old school Soviet KGB, Putin would not tolerate and started agitating pro-Russian Ukrainians against those in the streets. As you can imagine the protests turned to rioting which is exactly what Putin wanted. He used this as a pretext to arm separatists in Donets and Luhansk, and send his own troops into the Crimea.
The Crimean referendums were, like the Donets and Luhansk referendums of last year, were held at the point of a gun. IIRC, there were two options on the ballot; Revive the independent Crimean constitution of 1991, or join the Russian Federation. There was no option to remain in in Ukraine. When faced with those options as well as armed soldiers looking over their shoulder, I'm not surprised at the outcome. But any statistician will tell you that a referendum that gets 97% of the vote is a rigged election.
I agree with your assessment of Zelenskyy as a modern-day Churchill. He really has a way of moving a people with his oratory skill. Even tho' Zelenskyy promised peace, he is also a patriot and can't bow to external pressure. Every Ukrainian knows of their treatment at the hands of the Czars; and the Holodomor - the genocide committed by Stalin in the '30s. I can almost guarantee that *every* family have members they lost in the Holodomor.
But, it will end through "jaw, yaw". Not until Ukraine holds the upper-hand in negotiations tho'. For him, it mean the return of Crimea and most of Donets and Luhansk. He may be willing to give land for peace, but not in the way that Churchill's predecessor, Chamberlain thought. Any treaty from a position of weakness isn't worth the paper it is printed. Zelenskyy knows this. Ukraine tried Land for Peace in 2014, and it took only 8 years for Russia to come back to take it all. He might be willing to a demilitarized zone along the border.
As far as the chance of a full-blown nuclear war, I don't think it will happen. I remember the Cold War. I was in it. The tension now isn't as high as the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Able Archer incident in 1983, when I was in the Navy. As you probably know, a politician can give the order to launch a nuclear weapon, but it takes military officers to execute the order. Most military personnel who work with the nukes feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. I firmly believe that there are sound, moral people on both sides that will prevail if Putin falls off his rocker. Any intercontinental missile launch (Godsforbid) will find themselves passing a launch response. But a tactical nuke, that's a different story. NATO would probably respond with an measured response. Mostly likely against military production capability or critical internal infrastructure.
Thank you both - Excelente!
Another thoughtful, perceptive, and penetrating analysis, David, as your readers have long since come to expect from you.
I would add only this: As Carl Jung noted in The Undiscovered Self, in addition to their bloody wars of colonial conquest, European states have an even longer and at least as bloody history of wars against one another. When, though, has the world seen a European war such as the proxy war in Ukraine, provoked, as you've noted, by the USA and NATO, which is to say, the USA, in which millions of Eastern Orthodox Christians are pitted against one another? Russia and the former Soviet republics are home to a majority of the world's Orthodox Christians, who even before the proxy war began were struggling to recover from the effects of decades of Soviet religious repression. Blinken and Nuland, the Biden administration neocons who ginned up the proxy war, and who, according to Sy, planned the Nord Stream sabotage, an act of war, are reflexively pro-Israel Jewish Zionists of Eastern European ancestry. Is this neocon war, seen by many as a Blinken/Nuland project, widely perceived to be "good for the Jews" and a good look for the American Jewish community? Asking for various friends who happen to be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and of no particular religious tradition.
Don't forget Yugoslavia and Libya in the list of countries recently destroyed by NATO. in 2007 at a European Security Conference Putin stated that NATO had broken all its promises and that Russia's absolute Red Line was the absorption of Georgia and/or Ukraine. The US Nazi coup carried out with the intention of turning Sevastopol into a NATO naval base and stationing US nuclear missiles in Eastern Ukraine a short five minute flight away from Moscow forced Russia to react. Initially they tried to implement the Minsk Accords to make Ukraine a neutral state and guarantee the people of Donetsk and Luhansk the right to retain their language, culture, and education. As we now know from admissions by Merkel, Poroshenko, and Macron, they signed the agreements in bad faith with no intention of honoring them. The ongoing construction of NATO bases in Ukraine and the imminent attack on Donetsk and Luhansk sealed the issue and forced Russia to pre-empt the NATO/Ukrainian attack. Russia did not start the war; Poroshenko did in 2014.
The whole US plan traces back to the Project for a New American Century of the 1990's which among other things calls for preventing the reunification of Russia and Ukraine at any cost, and failing that, to start a war between them that would destroy Ukraine so that it would be a burden on the Russian economy for decades to come, slowing their recovery from the US created "Shock Privatization" of the 1990's which reduced Russia to a semi-deindustrialized state.
I've been watching a lot of MASH reruns lately, Hawkeye Franklin Pierce had the right idea. War is hell, as seen through the MASH 4077 tent.
War is a racket.--Smedley Butler