Timothy Birdnow

This is probably just bluster but it's bluster by a cabal of obvious psychopaths who have nuclear weapons....

Russia Threatens Pre-Emptive Strikes If NATO Continues to Provide Support for Ukraine

Former Russian President Medvedev made these threats, not Putin, I might add. Medvedev is and always has been Puttin's puppet, so it is coming from Putin (who wisely is avoiding making these statements himself.)

Author Ward Clark argues that any attack by Moscow on any NATO member would lead to war is a bit disingenuous; it's NATO making the act of war here, not Russia, and while he is entitled to his own viewpoint at least he should be honest enough to admit that. NATO has openly crossed the line on several occasions in this war and is preparing to cross a rubicon.

Trump is playing this about as well as he could given the cards he was dealt by the previous Administration. I know many of the "no war, ever" crowd will be fuming over this the fact remains that Trump needs to influence events so as to settle this war, which is killing vast numbers of people and threatening the security of all Europe. Trump wants to settle this, not let it grind to it's horrible conclusion, which will mean Moscow in Kiev and an eternal guerilla war in the region. THAT would be a greater threat to NATO and the U.S. than settling this thing now. But Putin refuses to negotiate in good faith at this point and he must be made to understand he can't have it all,that a half a loaf is better than no loaf.

Had this war not dragged on for so long a negotiated settlement would have been much easier. Now Trump is forced into aggressive diplomacy. His hope is that the Russian People, or at least the billionaires who own the kleptocratic nation, will tire of spending their money on a largely lost cause and demand a negotiated settlement.

This is your typical Trump high-stakes poker game. But it is a very dangerous one to play.

As regular readers know, I have long opposed this war and our meddling except as mediator. I think the Russians have their own viewpoint, a viewpoint completely ignored in this because the internationalists want to bleed Russia dry and then absorb the husk. That's why they neither tried to settle it nor win it; they wanted this thing to simmer adn thus drain Russian coffers and arms supplies and manpower.

And Trump has tried to negotiate a peace without much luck as both sides have their dander up. It's hard to sit down with the people you think are monsters and make concessions (especially for the Ukrainians). I also think Zelensky is a huge part of the problem; he's basically made himself dictator of the Ukraine as part of his emergency war powers (suspended elections indefinitely, suspended freedom of religion, made parliament (the Verkhovna Rada) his bitch, arrested journalists, etc.) Most of this was accomplished with the aid of NATO and the Western aid flowing into his government coffers. Without NATO backing the Ukrainians forces would have collapsed inside of six months.

In fact his government was put in power by the CIA in the first place, or at least the government prior to his administration. Russia has never forgotten that little fact. Nor the fact Ukraine cut off water from the Dneiper river to the Crimea. Nor the fact that during the leadup to the invasion Ukraine was shelling Russians in Crimea. Nor the fact they suppressed the use of Russian as a language in the east, or that they suppressed the Orthodox Church. Also, Russia has long seen Ukraine as a renegade province, not a nation.

But certainly the Ukrainians have big scores to settle - like the invasion of Crimea, or the attempt to strangle her economy by cutting off gas and oil. And they remember the Holodomor, the murder of millions of Ukrainian farmers by slow starvation as a policy of the old Soviet Union. That's not something easily forgotten and forgiven, especially when the people who did that to you are now at your door asking for a big chunk of your country.

And of course Russia invaded them; kind of hard to make nice after that.

So now both sides are stalemated and intractable and something or someone has to break the stalemate. Putin keeps violating cease-fires, and he isn't negotiating in good faith, so Trump is upping the ante in hopes that Putin will come back to the negotiating table and be serious about it. It might work. It might lead to doomsday.

Trump's only other option is to simply let the situation burn itself out, meaning allow Russia to annex the Ukraine and thus be in a position to threaten the former Warsaw Pact countries. No doubt Putin wants them back as well.

And remember we DID promise the Ukrainians that we would defend them if Russia attacked when asking them to give up their old Soviet nukes. The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances made this promise back in 1994, so we are under some obligation.

Of course one must ask how long does our obligation last, especially since it was not a formal treaty? That was over thirty years ago and times have most definitely changed. Is the U.S. still obligated to protect, say, Cuba, which we did in the Spanish American war? Are we obligated to protect Panama? It may be in our interests but certainly such agreements expire over time, even if there is no formal expiration date.

This is no small question and the Russians certainly need to have some minor victory so they can save face and end the war on a (fake) high note. But the Europeans want nothing exxcept Russia's face in the dirt, and they have always been the ones fanning the flames in this.

The question is, will this sabre-rattling just be big talk or will it turn to action at some point? That's the real danger.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 05:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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