Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve…. Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.
When Hungarian rebels arose in 1956 to overthrow the Communist regime imposed by Joseph Stalin, President Dwight Eisenhower refused to send U.S. forces to aid the Hungarians.
Ike would not take America to war with Russia over a small country in Central Europe.
While the Hungarians were heroic and inspirational, Hungary was neither a member of NATO nor a vital U.S. interest. Moreover, it was on the Soviet side of the Yalta line dividing Europe, and agreed to by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta in 1945.
For similar reasons today, President Joe Biden has refused to send U.S. troops, ships or planes to attack Russian forces invading Ukraine.
Though a nation of 44 million and almost as large as Texas, Ukraine is neither a vital U.S. interest nor a member of NATO.
However, were Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Estonia, whose population is 3% of Ukraine’s, America would be obligated to go to war with Russia.
Does this disparity make strategic sense?
Should not America have the same freedom of action to decide whether to fight for Estonia as we do to decide whether to fight for Ukraine? After all, Ukraine is far larger and more populous and strategic.
In 1948, President Harry Truman refused to use force to break Stalin’s Berlin Blockade. In 1956, Eisenhower refused to intervene to save Hungary. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy refused to use force to stop the building of the Berlin Wall.
In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson refused to intervene when the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia to crush the pro-democracy “Prague Spring.”
Yet, today, America’s leaders do not have the same freedom not to act as did Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. We are obligated to act. Why?
Because, since the end of the Cold War, we have expanded the membership of NATO, and there are now 28 nations of Europe we are obligated to defend if they are attacked.
Ukraine is not one of them, but five of them that border Russia or Ukraine — Romania, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia and Estonia — are currently providing Stinger or Javelin missiles to Ukraine to destroy Russian tanks, down Russian aircraft, and kill Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
If Putin retaliated against any of these countries for these arms transfers that are killing Russian soldiers, the U.S. would be obligated, under Article 5 of NATO, to fight Russia on behalf of these NATO nations.
Article 5 automatically conscripts the United States into a war with Russia, if Moscow retaliates against a NATO nation providing weapons to kill Russian soldiers.
Why have we willingly tied our own hands in this manner?
During 40 years of Cold War, America remained secure while East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were all under Moscow’s control.
These nations are all free today as a result of the West’s victory in the Cold War. But why do all these nations have war guarantees from the United States when none of them, as the Cold War demonstrated, is a vital interest of the USA?
Why, after the Cold War ended in 1991, did we agree to fight a war with Russia, including a nuclear war, on their behalf when 40 years of Cold War demonstrated they were not essential to our security?
Today, by our refusal to intervene militarily in Ukraine, to slow or halt this Russian invasion, we are sending a message to the world.
That message?
Ukraine’s independence is not vital to the United States. While a desirable goal, it is not worth our fighting a war with Russia to preserve.
Moreover, the independence of Ukraine is not worth the risk of using U.S. planes to establish a no-fly zone for Russian planes in the skies over Ukraine.
Indeed, had we given Putin assurances that NATO was closed to Kyiv, we might have prevented what has happened, because that was the first and most insistent of Putin’s demands.
The heroic rhetoric we are hearing from our political and media leaders aside, the real message sent to Ukraine by our own and NATO’s actions and inaction is this:
We will send you weapons, but we are not sending our troops, and we are not going to fight your war for you, or beside you, unless and until we decide that it is in our vital interest to do so.
Fortunately, we had not brought Ukraine into NATO, nor given Kyiv a war guarantee that obligated us to risk everything for a nation deemed not vital to us.
Those who prevented the U.S. from realizing former President George W. Bush’s ambition to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO may have saved us from a war with Russia in which both of us could have suffered horribly.
Whether we go to war for a nation that was formerly part of the Soviet bloc should be a matter for decision by the Americans of that day and time — not mandated, not dictated by our signature on a 73-year-old treaty, devised for another era and another world.
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This is not about Ukraine. The globalist cartel that is running the US government and NATO could not care less about Ukraine, except for its role in laundering money from the worldwide drug cartels which funds the secret wars and clandestine operations which governments must distance themselves from.
What this is about is expanding the globalist agenda. Russia, and Iran are the only holdouts when it comes to globalist domination. The globalists want to control the entire planet, and they will not rest until they have complete control of every person on earth. The Russians realize correctly they would receive extremely prejudicial treatment under such subjugation by the globalists. They have taken the stand they would rather fight and die, that to live under enslavement. This is the same stance they proved themselves willing to suffer extreme sacrifice for in WW2.
The globalists should pay attention when the Russians say that if they are going down, they may as well take their assailants with them…
Jdog, I cannot possibly disagree with someone with sufficient command of English and English grammar to use the expression “could not care less” correctly. You are clearly a cut above the intelligence of the average news writer or commenter, and so, you just might be right!
(For those who didn’t get it, the expression is commonly incorrectly phrased “could care less,” which is the exact opposite of what people using that expression intend.)
This is the full text of article 5:
Article 5
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
Notice it says “such action as it deems necessary” It does not mandate the use of force, or indeed any action. Each nation can do as it sees fit.
If the goal is to throw out the globalists, and at the same time clearly identify the Republicans who are paying only lip-service to the American people,
..a refusal to vote for any candidate who does not run on a platform of withdrawing the US from NATO not only pulls the rug out from under the Globalists, but going into an election in which the Republicans will prevail on a large scale, it gives the general population a means to seize back control of your wannabe elected office holder from the paying lobbyists.
NATO is a literal trip wire to bring the US into conflicts, and it is FRANKLY actually quite likely that much of the continent would be better governed by Putin than by the Merkel and Von Der Leyen.
Instead of scheming to fight with Russia, lets demand that these perma-crats and neo-scammers justify why the US is still funding the ”defense” of a continent welcoming in any straggler that feels like wandering in from the 3rd world.