The Danish media—like most western media—assure me that Putin’s “recognition” of the “independence” of the “republics” of “Lugansk” and “Donetsk” in what was formerly Ukraine will be met with hard words and sanctions from the western world. Is being met with them.
Very hard words, and very serious! Sanctions so brutal they may actually be war crimes!
There’s no point linking to any specific articles. For one thing, they’ll all be outdated by the time you read this post. For another, they’re all the same. The globalist hive-mind has clearly concluded that there’s nothing to be done but write angry letters, deliver angry speeches, and apply sanctions, sanctions, and more sanctions. White House fabulist Jen Psaki even issued a statement last night to the effect that Old Puddinhead will shortly be signing an Executive Order to “prohibit new investment, trade, and financing by U.S. persons to, from, or in the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine.”
That none of those things have proven at all effective in stopping any aggressive actor on the world stage from doing anything, ever, is irrelevant. It’s simply comme il faut: it’s how diplomacy gets done.
And it’s the diplomacy of sanctions and speeches and letters that counts, the establishment has been telling us for years, because the only alternative is war.
Fecklessness or war, those are the options. So if you’re opposed to fecklessness then you’re obviously the worst kind of war hawk.
Any sufficiently developed crisis can reach a point where those are indeed the only options, but what the western establishment seems unwilling to acknowledge, or incapable of understanding, is that by the time that point is reached the game is already lost.
By the time you’ve cornered me in an alley, drawn your gun, and demanded my wallet, the only options I’ve got left are meek surrender or violent death. My wallet’s gone either way.
Diplomacy isn’t the art of dealing with such situations, it’s the art of avoiding them.
Which is to say: our diplomats have failed.
(As usual: name your favorite “diplomatic victory” of the past forty years.)
There’s a reason Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while the Dread Tyrant Trump was in office: it’s because he didn’t know how Trump would react. That guy was crazy—who knows what he might have done? Unfortunately, Trump scared the establishment even more than he scared Putin, so he had to be sent packing.
But Putin has known all along, as we all have, exactly what a western world under the nominal leadership of Joe Biden would do, which is exactly what they have done, which is nothing at all.
Less than nothing, really: after all, we applied sanctions after Russia’s 2014 invasion of the Crimean peninsula and yet here we are.
Doing the thing that didn’t work last time doesn’t seem very serious, does it?
Worse, the western establishment appears to be so shocked by the magnitude of its own ineptitude that it’s trying to spin its way out of this, as if another layer of words could conceal the nightmare scenario their faith in mere words has brought us into.
Notice the way the media—all establishment media, Danish and American—are phrasing the events of the last 24 hours. Putin hasn’t invaded Ukraine, he’s merely recognized the independence of a couple of breakaway republics. He’s sent peacekeepers into Eastern Ukraine. That’s all. So it’s totally not an invasion, you guys, relax!
These people are so oblivious that when they gathered at the eleventh hour to try to keep the peace, where did they do it? Munich! I’m surprised Kamala Harris didn’t come back to America waving a piece of paper guaranteeing peace in our time.
About six years ago I had the good fortune of spending an hour or so in a hot tub with a young Ukrainian woman. It was my good fortune not because she was a stunning young woman in a skimpy bikini, or not merely because of that, but because she helped clarify my own thoughts on Ukraine.
Crimea was already a done deal by then and the troubles in the east were well underway. Herself and I had asked her what she thought of the argument we’d heard so much of from many people whose opinions we respected: that eastern Ukraine was essentially a shithole, mostly populated by ethnic Russians anyway. Why not just let it go?
Her indignation was gloriously edifying. It was lengthy and thoughtful but it was her ending that’s stayed with me:
“There are lot of ethnic Mexicans in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas,” she said. “And a lot of them are on some pretty lousy land. Why not just let Mexico have it? I mean, how would you feel if Mexico decided to just take it?”
Anyone who thinks Russia has not just invaded Ukraine—anyone buying into the fiction that Russia is merely sending men (peacekeepers!) into a couple of “breakaway” areas that are mostly full of Russians anyway—should reflect upon her question.
Is Ukraine not a sovereign nation? If not, what is it?
Do its borders not matter? If not, why not?
If Mexican soldiers began accompanying the stream of migrants pouring in over our southern border, and the President of Mexico announced that Mexico was determined to take back the land wrongfully stolen from it by America, and there was support for such Mexican repatriation among a majority of the Mexican Americans in the affected regions, would we be so quick to give up territory?
But that’s where the hive-mind scolds come bounding in: Well, they ask, what do you want, war?
No.
No, I do not want war. No reasonable person ever wants war.
But the narcissism and idiocy of our establishment have brought us to the point where our only options are allowing the invasion of Ukraine to stand—or going to war against Russia.
But hey—no mean tweets!