Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
The question remains: When did the relationship between Russia and Ukraine become a matter of such vital interest to the U.S. that we would risk war, possible nuclear war, with Russia over it? How did we get here?
During the 70 years that the Soviet Union existed, Ukraine was an integral part of the nation.
Yet this geographic and political reality posed no threat to the United States. A Russia and a Ukraine, both inside the USSR, was an accepted reality that was seen as no threat for the seven decades that they were united.
Yet, today, because of a month-old war between Russia and Ukraine, over who shall control Crimea, the Donbas and the Black and Azov Sea coasts of Ukraine, America seems closer to a nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.
Why? Time to step back and reflect on what is at stake.
Exactly what threat does Russia’s invasion of Ukraine present to us that is so grave we would consider military action that could lead to World War III and Russia’s use of battlefield nuclear weapons against us?
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly hinted at the use of such weapons, should NATO intervene in the Ukraine war and Russia face defeat, or in the event of an “existential” threat to the Russian nation.
We hear from our moral elites that morality commands us to intervene to save the Ukrainian people from the ravages of a war that has already taken thousands of Ukrainian lives.
But what would be the justification for U.S. military intervention in Ukraine, absent a congressional authorization or declaration of war?
Consider. The year the Liberal Hour arrived in America with the New Deal, 1933, a newly inaugurated Franklin D. Roosevelt formally recognized Joseph Stalin’s murderous regime as the legitimate government of a Russia-led USSR.
FDR met personally with Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov even as the Holodomor, the forced starvation of Ukrainian peasants and small farmers, the kulaks and their families, was far advanced.
Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter in Moscow, won a Pulitzer for covering up that crime of the century with its estimated 4 million dead.
The question remains: When did the relationship between Russia and Ukraine become a matter of such vital interest to the U.S. that we would risk war, possible nuclear war, with Russia over it?
How did we get here?
We got here by exploiting our Cold War victory as an opportunity to move NATO, our Cold War alliance, into a dozen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, up to the borders of Russia. Then, we started to bring Ukraine into NATO, the constituent republic of the old Soviet Union with the longest and deepest history with Mother Russia.
Thus, while Putin started this war, the U.S. set the table for it.
We pushed our military alliance, NATO, set up in 1949 to contain and, if necessary, fight Russia, 1,000 miles to the east, right into Russia’s face.
In the 1930s, when Britain’s Lady Astor was asked if she knew where Hitler was born, she answered: “Versailles.”
At the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which produced the Versailles Treaty, millions of Germanic peoples and the lands they had inhabited were severed from German rule and distributed to half a dozen nations across Europe.
When we get back on our feet, we will take back all that we have lost, said Gen. Hans von Seeckt of the German General Staff.
We hear warnings that if Russia uses chemical weapons in Ukraine, NATO will react militarily. But if no NATO ally is attacked, why would NATO respond to a Russian attack on Ukraine?
Though outlawed today, chemical weapons were used by all the major participants in World War I, including the Americans.
As for atomic weapons, only Americans have used them.
And while we did not introduce the bombing of cities — the British and Germans did that — we did perfect the carpet-bombing of cities like Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and Tokyo.
The Ukrainian war, now a month old, has demonstrated the utility of nuclear weapons. Putin’s credible threat to use them has caused the U.S. and NATO to flatly refuse Kyiv’s request to put a no-fly zone over Ukraine.
And as Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons has deterred NATO from intervening on Ukraine’s side in this war, other nations will not miss the message: Possession of nukes can deter even the greatest nuclear powers.
The longer this war goes on, the greater the suffering and losses on all sides. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are already dead, with 10 million uprooted from their homes, a third of that number having fled into neighboring states of Eastern Europe.
The longer the war goes on, the greater the likelihood Putin resorts to indiscriminate bombing and shelling to kill off the resistance, and the greater the possibility that the war expands into NATO Europe.
Meanwhile, in the secure American homeland, 5,000 miles from Kyiv, there is no shortage of foreign policy scholars beating the drums for a “victory” over Putin’s Russia and willing to fight to achieve that victory — right down to the last Ukrainian.
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Nein!
Not if this guy is right….
If you are listening to the U.S. media about the war in Ukraine, Russia is struggling and on the ropes. But the map and the following videos tell a different story…
In carrying out its “special military operation” (i.e., invasion) on a broad front, Russia is avoiding leveling cities. The plan appears to be to encircle major cities, cut them off and then, like a boa constrictor, slowly choke their prey into submission…
Ukraine is fighting a defensive war in isolated pockets. I have seen no evidence that Kiev is providing resupply or reinforcements. There is no evidence of another Ukrainian Army mounting a counter-offensive to take the pressure off of what is left of the AZOV battalion. This is not complex analysis–if you are surrounded and forced to fight a defensive battle without resupply or reinforcements, your ability to continue as a combat effective unit rapidly deteriorates.
I have not seen ANY photos of dead Russians but NATO claims 7 to 14 thousand? Blown up vehicles up the wazoo, where are the bodies?
All the info coming from anyone or anything is total shit.
Dear Pat: Please retire
Sadly I have seen the execution videos of several Russian soldiers by Ukrainian military.
In one video a wounded Russian soldier with his hands raised is shot to death by several men unseen from the camera angle. His body is later left in the street.
Non of the execution and torture videos have been shown on ANY western mainstream media – that would spoil the narrative of Ukraine good, Russia bad.
The Civillian Millitia of Donbass (Donetsk and Lughansk) have been brutalised by nazis and killed in thier thousands over the last few years of fighting the Nazis, and there are many videos of the newer POWs being abused by Nazis.
The photos the MSM does show of so called “Russian Soldiers” – young men and old men wearing poorly fitted uniforms and farm boots are of the civillians of the Donbass – not regualr Russian soldiers. Photos like that of boys and old men has encouraged many westerners to fly to Ukraine to fight russians they think are ill equiped, porly rained, and with low moral. No, these are ordinary people who have taken up arms in a Civil War that has been going on since 2014, and until Russia went in the west did not a sh-t about it.
The official figures of last week from the Russian military themselfs (reported by Russian media giant “TASS2) was 1300 dead and 3200 wounded. The civillians in Donbass have suffered 14000 killed by Ukraine regualrs, nazis, and foreign mercs.
No official figures of Ukrainian military killed, but estimates are over 12000 dead and 40000 wounded, with the entire Navy, Airforce, and military logistic facilities wiped out.
The Ukrainians have also lost over 1000 tanks and APCs.
The website “Southfront” is good for info on Ukraine you wont find in other places, as is the blog “The Saker”.
Link to Southfront:
https://southfront.org/
I’m sure we are only fed what the media wants us to see (think).
Buchanan is a POS.
Hey Pat when are you going to let us know that the war is the transition from covid to keep the lie machine alive?
The title to the Article asks a question…
Is Victory for Ukraine Worth Risking Nuclear War?
The answer is a clear “NO!” The U.S. cannot and should not be the police force for the world, especially for a country that has been attacking its own people prior to this particular conflict. And yes, the U.S. is culpable in that this country overtly caused the ouster of a democratically elected government in 2014.
For me, it is simple. I believe Putin when he says he will use Russia’s nuclear arsenal if NATO interjects itself into the conflict. Whether the critical thinking want to see or not, we pushed Putin to this point by extending the NATO invitation to Ukraine. American would never let Russia set in Mexico, so why is it so hard to see the correlation that Russia doesn’t want the U.S. or NATO, as a proxy, sitting at its border. More than MAD, the stigma of hell caused by a nuclear exchange has staved off a button being pushed. The nuclear weapons of today are Extinction Level Events and there is no “little” button in all this where tactical nukes can be exchanged because it will break the seal on pandora’s box. Each use of deadly only makes it easily to use deadlier the next time.
Ukraine cannot be the world’s maginot line with Russia. NATO participation here makes this become WWIII and Einstein had a good thought about how the ending of this plays out with sticks and stones.
Just a thought! The bible talks about the armies in the end times riding horses and using spears and swords. All technology destroyed? Literal hand to hand combat? Obviously there were no words for tanks and cannons in their language then so those items couldn’t be understood or even expressed. Just thinking in typeface. Any opinions?
How about the bible being fiction, written by corrupt men seeking to rule other men.
I can only laugh because there is the idiot Americans that will say yes.
While nuclear war is always possible, so long as those weapons exist, I doubt seriously if it is in the cards.
Mostly because there is no entity that would benefit from actual nuclear war.
That being said, a crisis which made the world believe that nuclear war was imminent may just be the catalyst to bring about universal acceptance of the NWO. Living under tyranny for most, is preferable to dying.
You really don’t think anyone is going to allow Biden to fire any missiles at anyone?
What the powers that be fear more than anything else is loss of control. Nuclear war, unless it is scripted, and both sides following a plan, would quickly become un-controllable, and risk complete destruction and loss of everything they value.