The brazenly biased western media is giving us the impression that the Ukraine fighting is some sort of sports competition. Russia’s media, now shamefully silenced in the west by the banning of Russia Today and Sputnik News, portrays the so far modest war in Ukraine as a renewed struggle against WWII fascism. Both views are totally wrong.
In reality, Moscow has been complaining about the West’s meddling in Ukraine for over 14 years. Russian forces are now waging a slow-motion offensive against parts of Ukraine and, so far, trying to keep down casualties. Compare this strategy to the utter devastation inflicted by Russia (with some US help) on secessionist Chechnya in 1990. Compare this to the wide-scale US destruction of Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Palestine. Where was CNN when these threadbare nations were being bombed back into the Stone Age? Or Yemen, poorest of Mideast nations, which is being turned to rubble by US and British bombing?
At least $4 billion of mostly US and British-made arms poured into Ukraine before Russia invaded – and continue to do so now. Some western leaders actually seemed to believe that Moscow would do nothing in response to their intervention in Ukraine.
Imagine that Florida’s crackpot Republicans declared independence from the United States and began importing Russian or Chinese war material?
But far crazier than this has been growing calls by Ukraine’s leadership and many US legislators for old MiG-29 fighters stored in Poland to be refurbished and handed over to Ukrainian pilots for use against Russian targets. It seems America is ready to fight to the last Ukrainian.
This is crazy business. The minute Polish-supplied MiG’s go into action against Russian forces in Ukraine we will go from a minor regional conflict to a real war. Russia will riposte with strikes by their very accurate Iskander missiles against Polish air bases, government centers and logistic hubs. The outgunned Poles will call for military help from Washington – in an election year in which the deflated Democrats will need every ethnic Polish vote in the Midwest.
In any event, air wars have no neat boundaries. The politically powerful US Air Force will demand permission to strike Russian air bases, Black Sea ports and army bases in Crimea. US naval forces in the Black Sea will be choice targets.
US bases in Romania and Bulgaria will quickly join Moscow’s target list. Add NATO bases in Scandinavia. Russian forces are merely a taxi ride from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
NATO’s eastern bulwark is in reality a house of cards. Fortunately, Moscow is too weak to re-invade the whole Eastern front. Moscow spends only one tenth as much on its military as does the US. Stalin’s once seemingly endless armies are now enfeebled. Yet they must defend a mammoth nation of 11 times zones stretching from the Baltic shores to North Korea. Before invading Ukraine, Moscow actually had to bring military units from Vladivostok on the Pacific which is a key potential target for attacks by the US Navy.
The best, fastest way to end the Ukrainian civil war is to partition off its Russian-speaking eastern regions, quench its surging nationalism, and promise Russia it will not join NATO or any other foreign alliance for 20 years. And tell CNN to refocus its hysteria on surging crime in New York City and Chicago.
So far, one of the few American politicians to get this right is Donald Trump.
Reprinted with permission from EricMargolis.com.
