So many have just accepted the war raging in Ukraine…..few bother or even care that there was some sanity in the madness….
About here I need to add a disclaimer to avoid any confusion accusations.
I am by NO means trying to justify the brutality and barbarity of the invasion of Ukraine….just that there is always more to a story than is known or covered by the media in its rush to break news.
Another lingering question is ‘why Ukraine’? There have been other horrific events in the period since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, including Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Palestine yet no comparable clamor for criminal justice and punitive action. Certainly, a part of the explanation is that the Ukrainian victims of abuse are white and European, and global media was mobilized effectively by the West and by the related international prominence accorded to Zelensky, the embattled Ukrainian leader given unprecedented access to the most influential venues on the global stages of world opinion. It is not that the empathy for Ukraine or support for Zelensky’s national resistance is misplaced, but that it has the appearance of being orchestrated in ways that other desperate national situations were not, and thus give rise to suspicions about other, darker motives.
This is a concern because these magnified concerns have acted as a principal way that the NATO West has gone out of its way to make the Ukrainian War about more than Ukraine. The wider war is best understood as occurring on two levels: a traditional war between the invading forces of Russia and the resisting forces of Ukraine coupled with a geopolitical war between the U.S. and Russia. It is the prosecution of this latter war that presents the more profound danger to world peace, a danger that has been largely obscured or assessed as a mere dimension of the Russia/Ukraine confrontation. Biden has consistently struck a militarist and confrontational note in the geopolitical war, demonizing Putin while neglecting diplomacy as a way to stop the killing, and atrocities, in effect, allowing the war on the ground to continue because of the higher stakes of grand strategy. If this two-level perception is correct in appreciation of the different actors with different priorities, then it becomes crucial to understand that in the geopolitical war the U.S. is the aggressor as much as in the traditional war Russia is the aggressor.
Why Ukraine?
Is NATO the culprit?
George Kennan, the intellectual father of America’s containment policy during the cold war, perceptively warned in a May 1998 New York Times interview about what the Senate’s ratification of Nato’s first round of expansion would set in motion. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan stated. ”I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else.”
He was right, but US and Nato leaders proceeded with new rounds of expansion, including the provocative step of adding the three Baltic republics. Those countries not only had been part of the Soviet Union, but they had also been part of Russia’s empire during the Czarist era. That wave of expansion now had Nato perched on the border of the Russian Federation.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine
Further reading…..
I was there: NATO and the origins of the Ukraine crisis
https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clinton-expansion
Be Smart…..Learn Stuff….
Turn The Page!
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
In Saner Thought 
You lost me on this train of thought when you posted this: “Biden has consistently struck a militarist and confrontational note in the geopolitical war, demonizing Putin while neglecting diplomacy as a way to stop the killing, and atrocities, in effect, allowing the war on the ground to continue because of the higher stakes of grand strategy.
There is no way that Biden ever neglected to try diplomacy in this situation. There is no way that Ukrainian President, Aelenskyy ever neglected to try diplomacy in this mess. In fact, both America and Ukraine continue to leave the doors to a diplomatic solution open but more recently Putin has declared that all such diplomatic efforts have come to a dead end.
Surely the world must realize by now that no amount of diplomacy is ever going to change the course that Putin has set for both Ukraine and NATO but all the West as well.
If anyone has been guilty of consistently striking a militaristic and confrontational role in this mess, it has clearly been Putin.
I pointed out the violation to the Minsk Agreement….Zelensky is a PR construct….he is an actor…..Biden is a product of the M-IC it is more about corporate profit than diplomacy….what did he try to avoid this conflict? chuq
He didn’t do much to avoid the conflict. In fact nobody did much to avoid the conflict because when the Russians started their “Exercises” by positioning their military near the Ukrainian border, everyone I ever heard talk about it was saying that an invasion was “Unlikely.” Given all the military exercises and posturing going on in the world today, there was no reason for anybody to suspect that Putin would actually invade. Big surprise! No one is at fault for not “Doing anything to prevent this.” At the time, nobody saw any reason to do anyting to prevent “This” because “This” was considered to be so “Unlikely.”
I seldom thought it was unlikely….but I did think there would be some sort of breakthrough to save a war….I was sadly mistaken. chuq
I wish there had been some kind of “Breakthrough” to keep Hitler out of Poland too .. but sadly, there was not. This is no different. Different day, same crap — some insane freak isolated from reality and suffering from megalomania because he has the power …There was no way that anything would ever have prevented Putin from doing what Putin intends to do …
True he was going to do what he wanted….but then the same can be said for most nations….there will always be an excuse for the use of force. chuq
I don’t know why we can’t just convince Russia to join either NATO or some new kind of Federation and let’s all be buddies and trading partners and forget all about expansion and war and all the rest of it. You are correct in a manner of speaking when you say that NATO should get out of the expansion business …but given the history of Russias aggressions, who can feel safe anymore and why shouldn’t there be a NATO where anyone who wants to join it can join it?
Why would he? NATO was formed then expanded to confront Russia….NATO main purpose is for war….why change that….war is good business. chuq
Russia certainly seems to think war is good business. — I want to focus your attention onto something and have youo tell me what you think of it if you hve the time …..https://notsomethingelse.com/?wref=bif
Interesting blog…..thank for the heads-up chuq
It is a f**king anti-American, Pro-Russian POS but I find it interesting anyway.
He is a Brit after all…..so I can understand his reasoning on some things. chuq
My affinity for British politics ended at or around the time of Yorktowne,USA in the 1700s.
LOL But yet we Americans are so fascinated with the Royals….chuq
I could care less bout the royals.
Me either and that makes us unique….chuq
I hope John still likes me. 🙂 I read some of the posts on the link he provided.
I would like to see some news about Mariupol that is not coming from Far-Right Azov Militia troops on the ground. Their involvement reminds me very much of the German Army in WW2, when Wehrmacht units took second place for equipment, armour, and vehicles compared to the Waffen SS, and also had to obey orders from the officers in those political regiments.
As for NATO expansion, it was unnecessary, as the whole concept of NATO is built around American Nuclear Missile capability anyway, not how many ground troops can be provided by small countries like Estonia. It was the proverbial ‘red rag to a bull’, and has come back to haunt us now, and for the foreseeable future.
Best wishes, Pete.
I believe that the world would be better off if in 1992 NATO had disbanded….the USSR was gone it was not needed any longer…that is until it started expanding rapidly…..chuq