Europe, NATO, and Ukraine

Much is being made of the recent Oval Office tiff between President Trump and President Zelensky.  Critics claim that Trump's failure to support Ukraine in its continuing battle against Russia is no different from taking Putin's side in the conflict.  Always, criticism of Ukraine is labeled as apologist behavior on behalf of Russia.  However, I want to know what is our interest in Ukraine?  What national interest are we serving?  Why can't the Europeans tackle this one?  Let's consider some numbers:

Russia is the 11th largest economy in the world with a $2 trillion GDP.  It has a population of 145 million people.

The United States is the largest economy with a $27 trillion GDP.  We have population of 343 million.

If not for nuclear warheads, Russia is a gnat compared to the USA.  But what about Europe?

The European Union consists of 27 countries with a combined GDP of $18.6 trillion and a combined population of 450 million.  Germany alone has a GDP of $4.5 trillion (more than double Russia, you will note) and a population of 84 million.  France and Italy also have larger GDPs than Russia.  Why can't the European Union deal with the Ukraine problem?  After all, it is their backyard, not ours.

Let's consider NATO.  Not including the USA, there are 31 NATO countries with a combined GDP of $24.7 trillion and a combined population of 640 million.  That is 12 times the GDP and 4 times the population of Russia.  Moreover, several of these countries are nuclear powers.

After World War II, it made sense for the United States to guarantee the defense of Europe while it rebuilt from the ruins.  The Soviets had shown a clear desire to annex territory and impose communism.  NATO was needed to defend the remnants of the West.  Today, that clearly isn't the case.  The Soviet Union collapsed 30 years ago and we are pretending it is still a threat.  Either the European Union or the Non-USA members of NATO could easily defeat Russia if they put any resources into it.  The US should have spent the last 30 years weening Europe off of the USA paying for its defense.  They're all grown up now and can defend themselves.

NATO has outlived its purpose.  We should stop funding Ukraine and stop subsidizing European defense.

World War III?

Simon Webb of History Debunked suggests that World War III has already begun.  In fact, he proposes that the first world war should be the Napoleonic Wars, which spanned a decade (1803-1815) and involved actions from India to the Caribbean, and the Middle East to Scandinavia.  The current situation has recently seen North Korean troops heading to Ukraine to aid the Russians.  The NATO powers are funding and supplying equipment to Ukraine, most notably the United States.  In fact, US soldiers are stationed in Israel to man anti-missile batteries.  Israel's war with Gaza has leaked over into Lebanon.  Iran has fired yet another barrage of missiles, which Israel will soon answer.  Will that draw Iran into the war?  Maybe.  He notes that previous world wars were easily defined thanks to the war declarations by each side.  Few participants are declaring war but certainly engaging in war-making activities.

I would not call this a world war yet.  It is more like a new chapter of the Cold War.  Yes, the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago, but this has the same vibe.  If all that it requires to be a World War is the participation of many countries, the Korean War should count.  The UN (led by the US) was on the side of South Korea and while the Chinese & Russians supported North Korea.  Similar conflicts happened throughout the world during the Cold War.

Cold War II.  For now.

Putin Interview

The interview was mostly a history lecture delivered by Vladimir Putin.  His promised minute of background soon expanded to an hour of Russian history going back to the 9th century and the founding of Kiev (Kyiv) by the Rus.  The Rus were Vikings who raided east and are the titular source for Russia.  He explained how this early Russian state had the two poles of Novgorod and Kiev.  Through the centuries, what is now Ukraine was considered part of Russia, most especially that part east of the Dnieper River.  He blames Stalin for having allocated that region to the administrative authority of Ukraine, not really a country so much as a governmental district.  With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the mostly ethnically Russian eastern Ukraine and Crimea were stuck with the mixed ethnicities of western Ukraine.  That was not so bad.  The West promised not to advance NATO.  However, NATO did advance in waves and, in 2008, said the door was open for Ukraine.  He labeled the 2014 revolution in Ukraine to have been a coup d'etat engineered by the West.  From his perspective, the ethnically Russian east was being attacked by Western-backed neo-Nazis.  How could it be wrong for him to fight Nazis?  He brought up the instance of a former Nazi addressing the Canadian parliament and getting an ovation.  Sadly, that's a true story.

It was interesting but not particularly engaging.  Putin was very repetitive and Tucker mostly just sat listening.  This was not a back and forth conversation since they do not speak a common language.  Tucker did have some good questions.  Who blew up Nord Stream pipeline?  Putin said, "You."  Obviously, he meant the United States but Tucker responded by saying he had an alibi for that day.  Silliness.  Clarifying, Putin pointed the finger at the CIA, saying it required certain abilities to blow up a pipeline that far beneath the surface and that most countries didn't have the capacity.  Later, he asked why Putin didn't just deal with the US - as Ukraine is nothing but an American proxy - in order to secure a peace deal.  Putin stated that America could easily have Zelinsky agree to a peace if America wanted peace.  He announced a willingness to come to an agreement.  Tucker asked if he might invade Poland.  Certainly not.  Such would only happen if Poland attacked Russia.

Part of Putin's argument for annexing those parts of Ukraine that are east of the Dnieper River sounded a lot like Hitler's reasons for taking the Sudetenland in 1938.  Hitler said the region was populated by ethnic Germans, which was true.  However, it was also a natural barrier against German invasion.  Is this a case of history repeating?

Putin frequently accused the West of dealing in bad faith.  The advance of NATO and the long history of meddling in Ukraine was mentioned several times.  He suggested that US presidents weren't really in charge of foreign policy.  In a conversation with President Clinton, he asked if Russia could join NATO.  Clinton didn't give an answer at the time but later said not.  Putin viewed this as Clinton being told by the true powers that be what the answer should be.  He mentioned that he had good relations with George W. Bush and Donald Trump.  One supposes that means he didn't have good relations with Obama and Biden.

Clearly, if Putin ever leaves office, he has a bright future as a guest lecturer or even a professor of Russian History.  I took Russian History in college and he sounded spot on from my recollection.  However, the interview is slow and monotonous, only occasionally interesting.  Accusing the West is what you expect him to say, so little of it was a surprise.  The reaction from other media sources is the most surprising thing.  Jealousy that Carlson got the scoop?  Disappointment that Russia's side of the story has an outlet?  If you read to this point, you can skip watching the interview.

FBI Raid vs. Phone Call

Not so long ago, President Trump called the president of Ukraine.  During that call, Trump wanted the president to investigate claims regarding Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Vice President Joe Biden calling for the firing of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.  Shokin had been investigating Burisma for corruption.  The phone call was leaked and accusations of quid pro quo and efforts to undermine a potential political opponent were raised.  Soon, an impeachment followed.  Of course, the video of Joe Biden demanding that Victor Shokin get fired or $1 billion in funding would be canceled was somehow not viewed as a quid pro quo.  In any case, the precedent is clear: if you investigate a potential political rival, you deserve impeachment.

On Monday, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.  More than a year and a half after he left office and strangely close to the midterm elections, the Biden Administration didn't merely ask the local authorities to maybe look into misappropriated documents.  No, they dispatched the FBI in force.  Is Trump a potential political rival to President Biden?  Indeed, he is. Looking at the recently established precedent, it seems that an impeachment is in order.  Right?

Luckily for President Biden, Republicans are spineless.  If they do reclaim the House and/or Senate, they will do nothing.  They may hold some pointless hearings, but they won't defund the FBI or the DOJ.  They certainly won't try an impeachment.  If they did impeach, the very media that was cheerleading the Trump impeachments will decry how this one is a threat to our democracy.  The media are mostly organs of the Democratic Party, just as is the bureaucratic state.  If the Republicans had a spine, they would use the power of the purse to starve the bureaucratic state that hates them.  Washington DC votes over 90% Democrat and yet the Republicans keep funding their enemies.

Chomsky for Trump!

In a recent interview, Noam Chomsky announced that only "one western statesman of stature" was pushing for peace in Ukraine and his name is Donald J Trump.  I would never have believed such a thing had I not watched the clip.  Even after watching the clip, I wonder if it was a deep fake.  When Trump came to office, Chomsky described him as a sociopathic maniac who would drive the country to civil war.  Now, a year and a half after his election loss, Chomsky sees him as a peace maker.  Though he does not directly state it, he views the expansion of NATO in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a key trigger for the current conflict.  He argues for a "partnership for peace" that would be open to membership around the world.  No military alliances.  Interestingly, he says that George H W Bush suggested such when the Soviet Union fell.  DeGaul had such a vision and Macron has sought something similar.

Does support for Trump make Chomsky a right-winger?  No, he has been anti-war since before I was born.  However, now that Trump is out of office and President Biden has established a record, the contrast has been stark.  Trump started no wars, the first president of that distinction since Carter.  Trump's team brokered the Abraham Accords, the first major peace agreement since... Carter and the Camp David Accords.  Trump de-escalated tensions with North Korea.  Trump even flirted with leaving NATO.  Though I generally disagree with Chomsky on most topics, I think he has a good point here.

Dossier Refuted, Laptop Confirmed

Before Trump was inaugurated, the Steele Dossier was published with many accusations that claimed Trump colluded with Russia to get elected.  He was a puppet of Putin.  Of course, of the last 4 presidents, it was only during Trump's term that Putin didn't invade another country.  Odd that he missed that obvious opportunity.  Of course, it was eventually discovered that Christopher Steele - a British Spy - had gleaned all his information from Russians at the behest of the Clinton Campaign.  None of the supposed kompramat was ever produced.  The Mueller Report offered a variety of 'obstruction of justice' accusations against the president that were so pathetic that the Congress couldn't muster an impeachment for them.  However, the Russian Collusion story lasted the entirety of Trump's term and the walls were forever closing in.  The media could not get enough of it.  In the end, it was a nothingburger.

In the days before the 2020 election, big news appeared in the New York Post: Hunter Biden's laptop showed that he had used his father's connections as Vice-President to secure jobs and financial deals with various foreign companies.  He received $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch, a $50K/month position with Burisma in Ukraine, and a multimillion dollar deal with China.  Then there were the pictures of Hunter with a crackpipe.  In response to this breaking news, NYP was banned from Twitter.  Media outlets across the board announced that it was Russian Disinformation.  During one of the presidential debates, Joe Biden declared that it had been debunked.  Now, 17 months later, the New York Times has admitted that the laptop was Hunter Biden's.  Emails found on it have been confirmed and have been useful in a tax investigation.

The media had the Steele Dossier prior to the 2016 election but could confirm none of it.  No one published it.  However, when James Comey mentioned it to President Trump, now it was valid news.  Buzzfeed rushed to publish and the feeding frenzy began.  By that precedent, one would think a similar attitude would apply to a laptop that had far better provenance than the dossier.  Nope.  The media had a demonstrated animosity toward Trump and a story that might torpedo Biden would lead to a second Trump term.  Better to bury the story until Biden could be elected.

The Space Powers

As of now, only three countries are capable of putting astronauts in space: USA, Russia, and China.  For the last 20 years, the USA and Russia have been more or less allies in space, jointly maintaining the International Space Station (ISS) and providing rides for astronauts of other countries to that station.  Fron the retirement of the Space Shuttle (2011) until the introduction of the SpaceX Crew Dragon (2020), Russia launched all crews to the station.  China is the newcomer in space and has made impressive progress.  While the ISS is nearing retirement (perhaps sooner than expected considering current politics), China has begun assembling a competing space station.

That brings us to Ukraine.  Is it in the best interest of the United States to drive Russia toward an alliance with China?  With both an economy and a population that is ten times the size of Russia's, China is the greater challenge in the future.  Space dominance will be very important sooner than we realize.  If two of the three space powers align against the 3rd, that could be decisive.  This is especially so when one looks at the lack of alternatives the US currently has: SpaceX or Bust.

As noted in an earlier blog, NATO has been pressing Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.  The US has trained Ukrainians and provided weapons.  This constant encroachment signaled that the Cold War was still being fought and NATO was stealing marches on the Russians by annexing more and more of the former Warsaw Pact, ever diminishing the sphere of influence of the once great power.  If the roles were reversed and the Warsaw Pact was training Mexican troops, providing them with arms, and calling for Mexico to join the Pact, it is a certainty that the US would invade and give Mexico a smackdown; we've done it more than once already.

We have pursued a foreign policy that is not in our interests.  Though a nation should have the option of choosing its allies, that doesn't always work in a multipolar world.  Hong Kong would surely have preferred to remain in the British Empire and Cuba wanted to be a Soviet satellite.  Each was denied.  Though we may argue that Ukraine should have the right to join NATO, the result is conflict that could escalate to World War III.  That is certainly not in anyone's interest.

It should be noted that World War II was triggered when Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland.  Britain and France declared war to free Poland.  At the conclusion of the war, Russia retained the whole of Poland.  Everyone was war weary and abandoned Poland - and most of Eastern Europe - to a half century of tyranny.  Yes, it was absolutely unfair to those nations, but the alternative was considered worse.  Is defending Ukraine worth the costs?  We didn't intervene to this degree when Russia invaded Chechnya.  We didn't do much when Russia carved out a chunk of Georgia.  We didn't risk war when Russia claimed Crimea.  Why now?

If we could abandon Ukraine in order to keep Russia out of an alliance with China, would that be a good trade?  Would it be appeasement or realpolitik?  I tend toward the later position.

Turnabout is Fair Play

In 1962, the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing missiles in Cuba.  This was viewed as grounds for risking World War III, a nuclear Armagedon.  If not for Vasily Arkhipov, the submarine B-59 would have launched a nuclear strike on October 27, 1962.  It was the Cold War and tensions were high.  Of course, Cuba was an independent country.  What business did we have in denying them missiles, especially considering US involvement in the Bay of Pigs disaster the previous year?

Beginning in 1979, the United States and Russia fought a proxy war in Nicaragua.  The US supported the Contras while the Soviets supported the Sandinistas.  The US Monroe Doctrine had essentially declared the Western Hemisphere to be the domain of the US, foreign powers not welcome.

In 1983, the US invaded Grenada.  It had been communist-friendly since a 1979 bloodless coup, trading with Cuba and the USSR.  However, when a coup by hardline Marxists murdered the milquetoast Prime Minister, the US sent in the Marines. 

Let us consider the current situation in that light.  During the Cold War, the NATO states were on one side and the Warsaw Pact on the other.  When the Soviet Union crumbled, many Warsaw Pact countries sought membership in NATO.  In much the same way that the US considered Cuba to be encroaching, Russia has reason to view such NATO expansion as an encroachment.  How far have we encroached?  Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Albania, Croatia, and Hungary were all in the Soviet Bloc but are now members of NATO.  That's a lot of encroachment that Russia has tolerated.  Of course, most of these countries had only been 'acquired' during World War II.  Sure, it stings, but it's not like they had been part of Russia for centuries.

In 1991, Ukraine became independent for the first time in centuries.  It had long been swapped among empires: Ottoman, Polish, Russian, Soviet Union.  It had been part of Russia/USSR since the 17th century and still has a large Russian minority (17%).  It is closer to Russia than Cuba is to the United States.  If Russia had something similar to the Monroe Doctrine, offering NATO membership would be a clear violation.  NATO is a military organization created to oppose Soviet expansion, but now it has been expanding toward Russia for 30 years.  Now it proposes to annex a region that has been in the Russian Empire for centuries.

It is argued that World War II was caused by the mismanagement of the peace in the wake of World War I.  The Treaty of Versailles was as much about assigning blame to Germany as to providing for peace.  How likely is it that the current conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of the mishandling of the peace in the aftermath of the Cold War?

Ukraine: Should We Care?

Obviously, we should care about war and strife, but is this our fight?  I would argue not.  Some years ago, I was looking at comparative economies and was astonished to find that Russia was quite unimpressive.  According to 2017 numbers, the USA had a $19 trillion economy, China was at $12 trillion, and Russia was $1.6 trillion.  Canada had a bigger economy in 2017.  Germany has twice the economy of Russia. If just the big names of Europe (France, Germany, UK, & Italy all have bigger economies than Russia) pooled resources, they have an $11 trillion economy.  Hey, what if we added Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Denmark, and so on combined resources?  That would be roughly $18 trillion.  Why can't they deal with the comparative pauper of Russia?  It's in their backyard, not ours.  No, let's have the US taxpayer bail us out again, as they have been doing since World War II.  The combined population of France and Germany is 150 million.  Russia is at 145 million and falling.  Europe has more than enough resources to deal with Russia.

Only 6 months ago, the Biden Administration fled a backwater where the opposition was armed with AK-47s and little more.  Too tough.  Oh, but nuclear-armed Russia with tanks, jets, missiles, artillery, and so forth is a fight that we can handle.  Nope.  Europe has spent the last 77 years outsourcing its defense to the United States.  I think it's time they resume control.