Why America is Forced to Defend Ukraine

Timothy Birdnow

Like it or not we are pretty much forced to defend Ukraine at this point.

Back in the '90's when the Soviet Union was collapsing the Ukrainians had all these old Soviet nukes laying around (fully 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers, or the third largest nuclear arsenal on Earth).

Bill Clinton asked them to destroy the weapons, something Ukraine was reluctant to do because they acted as a deterrent on Russian - and other - power. Clinton made assurances that the U.S. would protect Ukraine from invasion.

On December 5, 1994 the U.S., Great Britain, Russia and Ukraine signed a pact guaranteeing Ukraine's security in return for their destroying the nukes.

While Russia is now in breech of that treaty, the U.S. is still obligated to come to Ukraine's defense.Here is an overview of the process.

The Minsk agreement of 1991 was a part of the START agreement which the U.S. ratified.So was the Lisbon agreement of 1992. The Massandra Accords with Russia and the U.S. saw American guarantee Ukrainian security in exchange for fully dismantling the nukes. These assurances were cemented by the Budapest memorandum of 1994.

From the cited article:

So we DO have a dog in this fight. We volunteered to defend Ukraine and it is part of the START treaty. Here is a from NPR.

It was probably a mistake to make these assurances, but we did and we are stuck with them. OR we renege and the whole world knows we are untrustworthy and we lose our role as world leaders.

I agree; this will just be the beginning. It's like Hitler at Munich. If Putin gets away with invading Ukraine he will move against other former Warsaw Pact countries, and we will be faced with a terrible decision.

This all goes back to oil and gas. Gazprom, the Russian energy company, was squeezing the Ukrainians with price gouging. Ukraine retaliated by threatening to shut down the pipelines which supply gas to Europe. Russia's economy is primarily based on energy, and it is Putin's overall strategy to dominate energy to Europe.

He couldn't allow that. It is the same reason he invaded Georgia in 2008; Georgia was part of an American plan to bypass Russian and Iranian territory and bring gas and oil from the east to Europe. Also, Georgia wanted to join NATO. Russians don't like having potential enemies at their borders.

So Putin invaded then and he is invading Ukraine now for the same reasons. He also wants the empire back, and Ukraine (and Georgia) were always satellites of the Russian orb.

Biden should have worked to keep energy prices low. That is what ended the Georgian invasion; a drop in oil prices bankrupted the enterprise.

Biden's weakness in Afghanistan and his petulant reversal of all of Trump's policies has only emboldened Mr. Putin. There is a power vacuum left as Biden seeks to manage American decline and reduce our ability to project power, and Putin is happy to step in and take charge.

The Taiwanese recalled their citizens from Ukraine, but China did not. 

Why? Because the Chinese believe the Russians will win this easily. They want their citizens in place to work with the Russians when it's over. Taiwan, allied to the U.S. and dependent on American protection, is worried.

If Putin gets away with this the Peoples Republic of China will probably move against Taiwan.

While it is terrible it has come to this, I fear washing our hands of it is no longer an option.

Putin has already won. The only option that prevents war at this point is for us to give Russia everything it wants in return for a limited withdrawal (and Ukraine will become a puppet state of Russia) so Mr. Biden can claim to have brokered a deal.

Not that that's the only real option. The real option is to get OPEC to ramp up production of oil and gas and to boycott Russian energy. Squeeze them into submission. But Biden probably won't be able to do that, and he certainly won't ramp production of energy back up here in the States because it will offend his radical base. And it's not part of the plan by the Davos crowd running Mr. Biden.

So it's either we renege on our deal with Ukraine and accept defeat while claiming victory or we launch all out war with one of the nuclear powers (which has a newer nuclear arsenal thanks to Bill Clinton paying to dismantle the old Soviet arsenal, freeing Russia to build a new, more effective, one back in 2005).

But if we don't act things could spiral out of control very quickly.

Either way we are in a heap of trouble.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 12:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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