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Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Today is the 1-year anniversary of the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.

 So? Billions more? So?

ZeroHedge, here, (cited derivative item because the original Seymour Hersh item is behind a subscription wall).

At WashExaminer, "Hawley says Ukraine aid has no ‘end game’: ‘What about our nation?’" by Heather Hamilton, Trending News Editor --September 21, 2023. Not that Hawley is the world's foremost authority, but his claim has seen no cogent rebuttal. 

"Push on," is not a rebuttal, nor is "spend more," and Hawley is correct that Ukraine is NOT about China/Taiwan. The Chinese are patient. The Chinese seeing our quitting it in Ukraine, bad idea not enslaved to sunk costs; should that actually happen; will conclude we are susceptible to rational behavior. In many ways it is not a bad thing to have them think of us that way. A negotiated settlement, land in exchange for peace, a non-NATO-expansion commitment to Russia, it is not too complicated to contemplate. Putin might be quite amenable. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, quite pliable -- accepting of a reality he could not alter should Russia and NATO want to settle.

Economist, Mar. 2022: "John Mearsheimer on why the West is principally responsible for the Ukrainian crisis -- The political scientist believes the reckless expansion of NATO provoked Russia." He dates things back,

THE WAR in Ukraine is the most dangerous international conflict since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Understanding its root causes is essential if we are to prevent it from getting worse and, instead, to find a way to bring it to a close.

There is no question that Vladimir Putin started the war and is responsible for how it is being waged. But why he did so is another matter. The mainstream view in the West is that he is an irrational, out-of-touch aggressor bent on creating a greater Russia in the mould of the former Soviet Union. Thus, he alone bears full responsibility for the Ukraine crisis.

But that story is wrong. The West, and especially America, is principally responsible for the crisis which began in February 2014. It has now turned into a war that not only threatens to destroy Ukraine, but also has the potential to escalate into a nuclear war between Russia and NATO.

The trouble over Ukraine actually started at NATO’s Bucharest summit in April 2008, when George W. Bush’s administration pushed the alliance to announce that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members”. Russian leaders responded immediately with outrage, characterising this decision as an existential threat to Russia and vowing to thwart it. According to a respected Russian journalist, Mr Putin “flew into a rage” and warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.” America ignored Moscow’s red line, however, and pushed forward to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. That strategy included two other elements: bringing Ukraine closer to the eu and making it a pro-American democracy.

These efforts eventually sparked hostilities in February 2014, after an uprising (which was supported by America) caused Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. In response, Russia took Crimea from Ukraine and helped fuel a civil war that broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.

The next major confrontation came in December 2021 and led directly to the current war. The main cause was that Ukraine was becoming a de facto member of NATO. The process started in December 2017, when the Trump administration decided to sell Kyiv “defensive weapons”. What counts as “defensive” is hardly clear-cut, however, and these weapons certainly looked offensive to Moscow and its allies in the Donbas region. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its armed forces and allowing it to participate in joint air and naval exercises. In July 2021, Ukraine and America co-hosted a major naval exercise in the Black Sea region involving navies from 32 countries. Operation Sea Breeze almost provoked Russia to fire at a British naval destroyer that deliberately entered what Russia considers its territorial waters.

It is a confrontation on Russia's border, not ours. It is a more immediate thing to them, as we'd possibly feel perturbed were Russia active in Mexico, up to mischief there. Moreover, they have a land bridge and Black Sea presence. Proximity favors their efforts.

Economist, this month, here, here and here.

Some might say that buying a proxy war is not a sound investment.

The Biden administration thinks otherwise. Having bought one, on payments.

Hawley is correct that more pressing things could be done stateside, with money and policy.

Is NATO expansion worth a long lingering distant loss of lives, both sides; a big weapons suck where only U.S. domestic arms manufacturers smile?

A test of wills? Why? What's it gain our citizens? Better jobs (outside of weapons plants)? A safer world? A bigger NATO, after Baltic area membership expansion, or is that a "So what?"

A fact: With both pipelines already blown up, there is no comparable easy thing.

After the recent coup, France is exiting Niger. Macron gets a brightness award for that one.