He thinks are policies towards Russia have made no sense for decades. Last year he sent me stuff about the cultural/ ethnicity divide in Ukraine when I was nagging to better understand. The maps come out frequently when I have questions (I ask a LOT of questions š). My interest in Ukraine has largely revolves around ecology and following the Chernobyl stuff because wildlife is thriving and the civil war seeps into the coverage. I asked him about an article two days ago, via text, and Iāll paste his long (this is typical) text back below - he responded with this 15 minutes after I sent the article. He didnāt think much of the article, but felt another history lesson was due.
āHi. I was confused about the article. In any event, the issue here is NATO. A little history is in order. First, Stalin defeated Hitler. Eighty percent of German casualties were on the Eastern front. The success of the D-Day Normandy landings were important in keeping Stalin from over-running Western Europe, which he certainly would have done had they failed. Stalin was acutely aware that in 1814, Czar Alexander I, after forcing Napoleon out of Russia, pursued him to Paris. The Napoleonic wars ended with Russian cavalry in Paris. Stalin wanted to emulate him, spreading the Communist revolution to the Atlantic. NATO was formed after Stalinās death In 1953 but with Stalinās aspirations still in the air. It was a defensive pact ā a shield against Soviet expansionism. After the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO changed. Instead of a shield to protect Western Europe, it became a sword aimed at the Russians. During negotiations prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, James Baker
, Bush Iās Secretary of State, promised Gorbachev three times that NATO would not move āone inchā to the East. Der Spegiel, the German magazine, wrote an article early this month saying the Germans promised Gorbachev the same thing. In 1996, NATO began accepting former Eastern Bloc countries into alliance. The last to be accepted were the Baltic states. Although formerly part of Russia, they are heavily Germanic from virtue of their creation by the Teutonic Knights in the late Middle Ages. Ukraine and Belorussia are different. Both are ethnically Slavic, the same as the Russians. Ukraine was an integral part of Russia for hundreds of years. What we are seeing in Ukraine today is a civil war. The United States might have played a productive role in peace mediations and possibly prevented the war. The neocons in charge of policy today have nixed that. I think the war will end in partition and bitter feelings all around. Our policy here is comprehensively incomprehensible. Sad.
We have no vital national interests in Ukraine except peace. We tried nation-building in Iraq, and that didnāt work out too well. This whole affair is a disaster. Ukraine is being destroyed. An idealist would say the Ukrainians are creating their own country by dying for it. The problem is, even if they win, which I doubt, they lose. Victory means winning a war-ravaged landscape with a hateful neighbor to the east. There will be no end to the animosity. The same people who took us into catastrophic wars in a Iraq and Afghanistan are doing the same thing in Ukraine, with the same results.
Whatās the point? Good question. At the end of the First World War, after all the bloodshed and destruction, no one could remember what the war was about. The same thing was true in Vietnam, if not more so.ā
He thinks are policies towards Russia have made no sense for decades. Last year he sent me stuff about the cultural/ ethnicity divide in Ukraine when I was nagging to better understand. The maps come out frequently when I have questions (I ask a LOT of questions š). My interest in Ukraine has largely revolves around ecology and following the Chernobyl stuff because wildlife is thriving and the civil war seeps into the coverage. I asked him about an article two days ago, via text, and Iāll paste his long (this is typical) text back below - he responded with this 15 minutes after I sent the article. He didnāt think much of the article, but felt another history lesson was due.
āHi. I was confused about the article. In any event, the issue here is NATO. A little history is in order. First, Stalin defeated Hitler. Eighty percent of German casualties were on the Eastern front. The success of the D-Day Normandy landings were important in keeping Stalin from over-running Western Europe, which he certainly would have done had they failed. Stalin was acutely aware that in 1814, Czar Alexander I, after forcing Napoleon out of Russia, pursued him to Paris. The Napoleonic wars ended with Russian cavalry in Paris. Stalin wanted to emulate him, spreading the Communist revolution to the Atlantic. NATO was formed after Stalinās death In 1953 but with Stalinās aspirations still in the air. It was a defensive pact ā a shield against Soviet expansionism. After the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO changed. Instead of a shield to protect Western Europe, it became a sword aimed at the Russians. During negotiations prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, James Baker
, Bush Iās Secretary of State, promised Gorbachev three times that NATO would not move āone inchā to the East. Der Spegiel, the German magazine, wrote an article early this month saying the Germans promised Gorbachev the same thing. In 1996, NATO began accepting former Eastern Bloc countries into alliance. The last to be accepted were the Baltic states. Although formerly part of Russia, they are heavily Germanic from virtue of their creation by the Teutonic Knights in the late Middle Ages. Ukraine and Belorussia are different. Both are ethnically Slavic, the same as the Russians. Ukraine was an integral part of Russia for hundreds of years. What we are seeing in Ukraine today is a civil war. The United States might have played a productive role in peace mediations and possibly prevented the war. The neocons in charge of policy today have nixed that. I think the war will end in partition and bitter feelings all around. Our policy here is comprehensively incomprehensible. Sad.
We have no vital national interests in Ukraine except peace. We tried nation-building in Iraq, and that didnāt work out too well. This whole affair is a disaster. Ukraine is being destroyed. An idealist would say the Ukrainians are creating their own country by dying for it. The problem is, even if they win, which I doubt, they lose. Victory means winning a war-ravaged landscape with a hateful neighbor to the east. There will be no end to the animosity. The same people who took us into catastrophic wars in a Iraq and Afghanistan are doing the same thing in Ukraine, with the same results.
Whatās the point? Good question. At the end of the First World War, after all the bloodshed and destruction, no one could remember what the war was about. The same thing was true in Vietnam, if not more so.ā
*our* policies towards Russia š¤¦āāļø