The propagandists for brain-dead Biden like to say that Putin had Ukraine surrounded.
But in fact, the US and its NATO satellites had Russia surrounded. In the years before the current crisis, we had ample opportunity to reach a compromise settlement. Instead, we kept the option of membership in NATO open to Ukraine and overthrew a Ukrainian President who was pro-Russian. “At the Kremlin last week,[in November 2021] Putin drew his red line:
‘The threat on our western borders is … rising, as we have said multiple times. … In our dialogue with the United States and its allies, we will insist on developing concrete agreements prohibiting any further eastward expansion of NATO and the placement there of weapons systems in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory.’
That comes close to an ultimatum. And NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg backhanded the President of Russia for issuing it:
‘ It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. … Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence trying to control their neighbors.’”
Putin is nobody’s fool, and he has decided to act decisively to free Russia from encirclement. Invasions kill people, and this is sad, but this is the way European power politics operates and has operated for hundreds of years. This was why George Washington in his Farewell Address warned us to stay out of them. “Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence therefore it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
Whether Russia controls Ukraine is none of our business. In particular, economic sanctions are a bad idea. They are immoral. As Mike Rozeff says, “Sanctions are wrong for the same reason that dropping a hydrogen bomb on Moscow would be wrong. They target innocent people. They are wrong for the same reason that attacking the Taliban government in Afghanistan was wrong, when bin Laden was the accused. They are wrong for the same reason that attacking Iraq was wrong when Saddam Hussein was the accused target. They are wrong for the same reason that bombing Libya was wrong when Gaddafi was the accused target.”
Not only are sanctions wrong; they don’t work, they disrupt the world economy, and they reduce the chances of a peaceful settlement. Rachel Lloyd, a policy analyst at the Russian Public Affairs Committee says, “Whether sanctions work – or not – is no great secret. Time and time again, the US has clung to sanctions as its de facto power of tough diplomacy. Yet Washington is failing to recognize the obvious reality: they simply do not work, other than perhaps as a tool to bully or with which to play to the crowds.
In fact, tough-sounding economic policies have been shown to almost never have the desired effect against America’s adversaries. Instead, all too often, sanctions bolster those in power, who use the threat of Washington’s overreaching in their domestic affairs as a way to influence national opinion and shore up their support.
lewrockwell.com |
