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All on Mon Feb 28 00:19:10 2022
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Russia is now the world's biggest rogue state
By Ward Dossche - 2:292/854
Based on an article I picked-up somewhere,
too good to pass up and annotated / changed
adapted for clarity.
It will take years, perhaps even decades, before all the consequences
of February 24, 2022 become clear. It is finally dawning that a
European country is under attack by a dictator.
Why do we make the same mistake over and over? Well, that's only a
problem in the Balkans, we say, until a murder in Sarajevo triggers
World War I. Ah, that Hitler is threatening Czechoslovakia is "a
quarrel in a country far away from here between people about whom we
know nothing," as Neville Chamberlain said. And well, Stalin's robbery
of distant Poland after World War II was none of our business until we
were in the Cold War. We did it again, not waking up until it was too
late and seeing the full implications of Putin's capture of Crimea in
2014. And so now February 24, 2022 is going down in the history books.
Here we stand again, clothed in nothing but the rags of our lost
illusions.
At such times we need courage and fortitude, but also wisdom. And make
sure to choose the right words. This is not World War III. But it is
already much more serious than the Soviet invasions of Hungary in 1956
and of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The five wars in the former Yugoslavia
were terrible, but the international risks were less great. There were
brave resistance fighters in Budapest in 1956, but Ukraine today is a
fully independent and sovereign state with a large army and a
population that declares it will fight back. If they don't resist,
this will be an occupation. If they do, this will be the biggest war
in Europe since 1945.
The Ukrainians face one of the strongest armies in the world,
well-trained and equipped conventional troops and about 6,000 nuclear
weapons. While Ukraine many years ago was the 3rd largest nuke-power
in the world, it dropped it in exchange for safety. Russia is now the
world's biggest rogue state, commanded by a president who ... judging
by his hysterical diatribe the previous week ... has lost all sense of rationality, which dictators always do sooner or later. To be clear,
when, in his Thursday morning declaration of war, he threatened anyone
"who stood in his way" with "consequences never seen before in
history," he was indeed talking about a nuclear attack.
In the end, the Russians themselves will have to stand up and say
they've had enough.
There will come a time to reflect on our past mistakes. If we had made
a serious effort in 2014 to help Ukraine defend itself, if Europe had
been less dependent on Russia for its energy, if we had drained the
dirty Russian money swamp of London, if we had imposed more sanctions,
we might be better off now. But we must now start from where we are.
In the early fog of the war that has just begun, there are several
things we need to do in Europe and the West. We must strengthen the
defense of every square meter of NATO territory against any possible
attack, cyber attack or hybrid attack. This will be especially
necessary on the eastern borders with Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. For
70 years, Western Europe's security has been built on the "one for
all, all for one" principle of the NATO treaty. Like it or not, the
security of London is inextricably linked with that of the Estonian
city of Narva, that of Berlin, of Bialystok in Poland, Rome or
Cluj-Napoca in Romania.
We must provide all possible support to the Ukrainians. There is only
one threshold that we must not cross: we cannot enter an outright war
with Russia.
The Ukrainians who choose to stay and resist will do so with all the
military and civilian resources at their disposal, to defend the
freedom of their country. That is their absolute right, legally and
morally. Inevitably, the limited international response will bitterly disappoint them. Like the Czechs in 1968, the Poles in 1945 and the
Hungarians in 1956, the Ukrainians will say that we, their fellow
Europeans, are abandoning them.
Yet we can still do something. We can continue to supply weapons, communications technology, and other logistics equipment to a country
that legitimately responds to gun violence with gun violence. In the
slightly longer term, we can support resistance movements that fight
the occupying forces and a possible puppet government. And we must be
ready to receive the flood of Ukrainian refugees.
The sanctions we are imposing on Russia must also go beyond what is
before us. So far-reaching economic measures, but also expulsions of
Russians who have any link with the Putin regime. With his $600
billion war treasury and his hand on the gas tap to Europe, Putin can
put up with it for a while, so it will take some time for those
sanctions to take effect.
Ultimately, the Russians themselves will have to stand up and say
they've had enough. Nobel laureate Dmitri Muratov and countless others
have already expressed their horror at this war. In that regard, read
the touching story of Ukrainian activist Natalia Gumanyuk, about a
Russian journalist who was crying on the phone while Russian tanks
rolled into her country. That horror will only increase once the
bodies of young Russians return in body bags, and once the damage to
Russia's economy and reputation is revealed. After all, the first and
last victims of Putin are always the Russians themselves.
Which brings us to a final, crucial point. We must prepare for a long
conflict. It will take years, perhaps even decades, for all the
consequences of February 24, 2022 to become clear. In the short term,
things are definitely not looking good for Ukraine.
But I am reminded of the delightful title of a book about the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956: "The Victory of Defeat". By now, just
about everyone in the West has understood that Ukraine is a European
country that is being attacked and dismembered by a dictator. Today,
Kiev is teeming with journalists from all over the world. That
experience will change their image of Ukraine forever. After the end
of the Cold War we harboured quite a few illusions, but now we are
reminded again how countries should put themselves on the mental
European map:
....with blood, sweat and tears.
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--- Azure/NewsPrep 3.0
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