I AM SPEAKING OF COURSE OF RUSSIA'S INVASION OF THE UKRAINE.
BUT IT REALLY WASN'T... AS REGULAR READERS OF THIS BLOG WELL KNOW.
IT CAME DOWN TO A FAILURE ON THE PART OF NATO AND SADLY...THAT FAILURE CONTINUES.
So permit me to recap.
All NATO had to do was first - admit the Ukraine into its Club years ago.
Even having failed to do that,,,it still could have flooded the Ukraine with Troops - lots of Troops.
The fact that it did not ,,, gave the Green Light to Putin to walk right in,
As for Sanctions and the Threat of Sanctions one Wagg correctly summed that up today as "handing out parking tickets to Russian Tanks".
Putin's Objective is patently obvious ...He wants the return of the olde USSR.
The West's Objective is much less clear. Our Democracies are in Decline and the Will to fight for Freedom in recent years has become more and more impaired. Added to this is the fact that several European Countries most notably Germany relies on Russian Oil and Gas and this has made them timid in their opposition to this Dictator. It has become most apparent that their reliance on Green Energy has been pure folly. They failed to realize that if they chose to shutter their Oil and Atomic Facilities Bad Guys like Putin and Xi would not do likewise. I suspect this will be the beginning of a Rethink on Green - sadly too late for the Ukrainians.
The Only Thing President Biden came out strongly against yesterday was stating categorically that US Troops would not be dispatched to the Ukraine. (Justin Trudeau made the same declaration but in His case ithas understandable due to the fact that He is having trouble finding our one and only Soldier to send off to War.)
But seriously speaking ...they are both Wrong...Dead Wrong in fact but from a practical point of view they are merely echoing the wishes of their Citizens.
And in the case of America you can almost understand their feelings - the Korean War ended in stalemate.. in fact it is technically ongoing even to this day. Vietnam was an unmitigated disaster...as was Afghanistan.
They did beat Saddam Hussein and Iraq but that too was a failure on 2 fronts - first, was the reason for that war ... was to abolish Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction which it turned out never existed. Second and even more importantly - Iraq was an effective buffer against an even worse Evil Empire ...Iran. So they won the battle but lost the war ...so to speak.
This led to Their Failure in countries like Syria and the Middle East generally. It has been one disaster after another, no wonder Americans are not at all anxious to get involved in another foreign war,
But they of course need to so, as does the whole of Europe, otherwise no country there will be safe and it will only be a matter of time when Putin acts again as he will.
And guess who else is watching these events with utter glee? Why Xi Jinping ...China's Dictator for Life of course.
And in His sights is the tiny island of Taiwan. If I was them I would get out of Dodge...which of course they cannot do. And Xi will most certainly do this ...just as it was preordained that Putin would do what he did. I will go further...I can just hear Xi's Advisors telling Him to go into Taiwan now while the Free World is otherwise occupied with Ukrainian Invasion.
Although I fully realize that I am wasting my time - if that same Free World...what is left of it - wanted to prevent the loss of Taiwan - all that would need to be done is for countries like the US, Japan and South Korea to flood the waters around Taiwan with War Ships. That would stop China in its tracks but again - as in the case of Putin ...this will not in all likelihood happen.
Maybe the lesson for us in all of this is that maybe the time has come to take up learning Chinese and Russian...we may soon need it.
As I See It...
'K.D. Galagher'
