The Nuclear Option

It is on the Table....

Greetings once again, my dear friends.  This week’s missive was particularly hard to write because of all the information coming out on so many topics.  It is hard to focus on one thing and write about just that.  I have five other partial missives this week that I got 500-800 words into on different topics and they just didn’t feel right so they went into the notes folder to perhaps be drawn on again in the future, or not.  I also put a number of pages of research for various topics into storage for future use this week as well.  Anyway, I finally decided to write about the escalation in tensions with Russia and what I think is really going on as news broke this week about Putin’s announcement of further mobilizations.

If you remember, I wrote (poorly because of cold medicine head) about the region’s history and gave a more realistic account of the geo-political situation from an objective point of view here.  I also tried to cut through the fog of war (better this time) and shine some objective light on the real strategic situation in Ukraine here.  If you haven’t read them, please do. It will make an excellent primer for this piece, as I may not go into the same detail on some topics and it will assist you in understanding my point.

At this point, the Ukrainian conflict couldn’t be going better for Russia or its stated major goals in going to war there.

1.       Secure the warm water ports in south eastern Ukraine.

2.       Protect the native Russian population in Eastern Ukraine from genocide at the hands of Ukrainian Nazis.

3.       Prevent Ukraine from joining NATO or the EU.

4.       Prevent becoming fully surrounded by hostile military bases.

Remember, the people of Donetsk and Luhansk have been fighting a war of independence since 2014 when a NATO backed revolution toppled the democratically elected government so that they could run a pipe line from the middle east into Europe to undercut the existing pipelines from Russia to Europe.  As is often the case when the existing government said “no” to Western plans, NATO, led by the United States, joined forces with ultra-nationalist NAZI forces in Ukraine to topple the democratically elected government that was just trying to maintain stable, friendly relationships with both Europe and Russia (here, here, here, and here).  I guess it was kind of a Mr. Miyagi moment “Walk on road, hm? Walk right side, safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later…get the squish just like grape”. To paraphrase: Here, diplomacy, same thing. Either you diplomacy west, ok! You diplomacy east, ok! You diplomacy neutral…just like grape.  Because we can’t have independent nations attempting to act in their best interest by actually following our founder’s advice: “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.” Was the advice of Thomas Jefferson, and when Ukraine attempted to follow that advice it had to be toppled so as to be more amenable to entangling alliances that fit the interests of NATO and the United States.

What the news doesn’t tell you is the ethnically-Russian half of the country in the regions of Donetsk, Crimea, and Luhansk were disenfranchised by the 2014 revolution and have been in a state of rebellion, essentially, since that time.  Russia didn’t invade a unified sovereign nation and its invasion has been largely hailed as a liberation in Eastern Ukraine by the ethnically-Russian population.  So now, with the support of the home teams in Donetsk and Luhansk (here), I find it humorous that most of the western media, especially the mainstream media (MSM), like to talk about the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Republics’ (who have elected parliaments) approved a referendum.  What nation on earth, including our United States, isn’t self-proclaimed?  Seriously, the only difference between a valid self-proclaimed nation and invalid one is that nation’s strength of arms.  If they are strong enough to force others to recognize their validity, then they are a genuine nation. If not, they are absorbed back into whatever stronger nation says they rightfully belong to it.  In our Revolution, with some help from France, America was strong enough to force the British Empire to recognize our self-proclamation of nation status.  In the American Civil War, the only difference was that the South wasn’t strong enough to force the North to acknowledge its claim to independence.  The nature of the conflict or reason for separation doesn’t really matter because ultimately, in most cases, the establishment of a new nation is dependent on force of arms.  That is just an uncomfortable truth of the world.

At this moment in history, we find that Ukraine has been in a slow Civil War since 2014 with a flimsy, often broken peace deal that never really stopped the fighting or actually resolved the underlying conflict in the Minsk Accords 1&2 (here, here, and here).  By the parliaments of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) setting a public referendum not on being their own nations (they already did that), but on reunifying with Russia, it will give Putin political cover and as long as Russia keeps their forces constrained to those regions changes the context from a war of aggression to one of defense.  I am sure there will be charges that the election was rigged by Europe and the United States.  I am equally sure that Russia, the DPR and the LPR will swear blind that the elections were fair.  Who knows?  Seriously, we can’t even for sure resolve questions on the fairness and integrity of our own elections. Why in the world do we think we can manage it elsewhere?

The bottom line is Russia is on the cusp of victory if the people of the DPR and the LPR vote to reunify with Russia (here) and Russia chooses to just defend those regions from being recaptured it becomes much harder for Kiev to win and accomplishes at least two goals: First, it protects the ethnically-Russian majority of those regions from the genocidal violence they had been suffering.  Second, while not stated, it is under stood that Russia absolutely needs the warm water port in Crimea and that will be much more secure.  It also allows Russia to declare victory, even if it doesn’t accomplish some of its other objectives.  I think Putin knows this and that is why he waved thermonuclear annihilation around the other day because he is willing to go that far to secure the ports (not having them is an existential threat to Russia).  He believes that Europe and America know he isn’t bluffing and won’t be willing to risk it to stop him.  Further, I don’t think his mobilization is for further aggression as much as it is to fully and securely take control of the newest additions to Russian territory (here).

The problem is I am not as confident as I think Putin is that current American “Leadership” is capable of a reasoned rational approach.  America has already derailed the peace talks once at the moment of agreement (here), just as America said “no” to talks addressing Russia’s valid concerns in the lead up to the invasion of Ukraine.  Talks that, had they occurred, may have avoided the Ukrainian conflict all together (here).  Who knows what will happen, but I am afraid that the demonic forces of Sodom on the Potomac won’t accept a loss in Ukraine (even if they are not actually engaged in the war), and I don’t really like the predictable result of that unwillingness.

Matthew 24:7

7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.

God Bless you,

-Sam