The Ukrainian Dilemma

 Much of geopolitical thinking is still rooted in the horrors of the 20^th century.  The land grabs of Hitler and Stalin, the tremendous death toll and human costs scarred humanity for generations and for good reason.  Poland, for example, lost 20 percent of its population between them during WWII.  Ukraine was starved out (See the film Mr. Jones which vividly depicts it and the fake news campaign of Stalin) under Stalin.  Millions perished and millions more were enslaved under the Soviet system until the Berlin Wall fell in 1991.

It was natural, then, that the West should oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine- his attempt to pull it back into the Russian orbit last February.   As it did with Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the world community was correct to respond by opposing the incursion into another country’s sovereignty.  The invasion was ordered by Vladimir Putin, the hated autocrat of Russia, hated even worse because U.S. Democrats had blamed Putin for meddling in the 2016 election, and impeached Trump over “Russian collusion,” which was never proved.  Still, Ukraine would be his third venture outside his borders, after Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014. 

As someone that grew up with people that fled the Soviet bear claw, I am well aware of the terror and pain Russia is capable of inflicting on its neighbors.  Many of the parents and grandparents of my friends were put in detention camps, deported in boxcars, beaten, shot, and hunted like animals.  Putin is a bad actor and I have no sympathy for him.

Yet, I have a great deal of skepticism around Volodymir Zelenskyy and Ukraine. 

First of all, Ukraine is a deeply corrupt country, and has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Hunter Biden clearly did not get a board position on the Ukrainian energy company Burisma because of his energy expertise.  Further, Zelenskyy has banned the opposition party, and shut down the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.  The U.S. is not making the world safe for democracy in its support of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy himself became a media darling from the very beginning of the conflict.  “Churchillian” was the word most used to describe him.  There were lots of media photos purportedly showing Zelenskyy in trenches in his battle fatigues, defying the powerful Russian army.  At first, it was effective.  But then Zelenskyy started showing signs of overplaying his hand.  Instead of pleading for help, he started making demands.   He did an ill-advised photoshoot for Vogue magazine belied a lust for international fame and attention, as did his photo ops with various members of Congress, and his recent visit to the Golden Globe Awards.  His wife went on a $40,000 shopping spree in New York.  The worst incident was when Zelenskyy asserted that Russian missiles had landed on Polish soil and demanded a response from NATO.  The missiles turned out to be Ukrainian anti-aircraft missiles.   Zelenskyy has raised eyebrows by pitching economic development and mentioning BlackRock and Goldman Sachs—you know, the guys that helped engineer the crash of ’08.  All of this has been bad optics.  People that talk about investing in a war torn area as an “opportunity” like those that spoke about the pandemic as an “opportunity” sets off a flashing yellow.

Another factor that raises some suspicion is his background as an actor, with ties to the World Economic Forum and Klaus Schwab.   This puts him in the same class with AOC and Greta Thunberg.  Zelenskyy is skilled at manipulating an audience.

Yet another issue that raises eyebrows is the amount of aid the US has given Ukraine in the form of cash and weaponry --$50 billion or so in 2022.  With that much of a blank check flowing into a corrupt country, asking where it is all going is a legitimate concern.  Yet, when Rand Paul threatened to hold up funding over an accounting for it all, he was denounced as an obstructionist.  We do know that some of it ended up with disgraced bitcoin pioneer Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt company.  There are rumors that Zelenskyy has helped himself to a healthy helping of taxpayer dollars.  The massive amount of additional debt that the U.S. has to shoulder leaves our government open to the obvious charge of why we are spending so much money to defend another nation’s borders when our own southern border remains wide open.   Zelenskyy is like the pro bono litigation client.  Since he’s not spending his own money, he has no incentive to come to the table and settle.

Finally, there is the geopolitical problem that I have been most worried about—Russian-Chinese collusion.  One of the primary reasons for Nixon’s visit to China in 1969 was to triangulate against the Soviet Union.  China and Russia should be natural antagonists but our clumsy foreign policy has created allies of them.  The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between Russia and Nazi Germany demonstrated that countries don’t have to like each other to become allies—at least temporarily.   But the reality is that Russia and China have held joint military exercises and have publicly acknowledged their alliance.  It is not far fetched to think that Xi and Putin agreed that Putin would continue to prosecute the war in Ukraine with Xi’s help and support.  The Ukrainian war is draining  the U.S. treasury and armaments, and the Biden Administration drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.  To make matters worse, the Administration began to discharge warriors that refused the jab.  To fight a war, you need money, energy,  armaments, and skilled people—and under the Ukraine commitment and because of our own missteps all four have dwindled.   The U.S. simply does not have the industrial base to ramp up quickly to fight a major war against a peer competitor.  To top it off, our military command seems to be more interested in deterring “white rage” and having an environmentally “green” force than in deterring an aggressive China.

It seems there are no good guys in this drama. And there have been no articulated objectives.  Zelenskyy has, at various times,  asserted that regime change is his ultimate goal.  At others, it is to push every Russian out of Ukraine, even Crimea.  There has been no real push to broker a peace deal.  Secretary Blinken seems more absent than Buttigieg was on his paternity leave.  Henry Kissinger is advocating NATO membership with Ukraine.  Yet, Russia remains a nuclear power, and has threatened their use. 

What is to be done?

The West is sending  tanks—Germany is sending Leopards and the US is sending M1s, and this represents a substantial escalation.  Yet, there seems to be no consensus on a satisfactory outcome. Is it to roll back the current aggression?  Push every Russian out of Ukraine, including Crimea?  Topple Putin? Unless there is back channel talks we are unaware of, Secretary of State Blinken is as disconnected and absent in this as Buttigieg has been in every transportation problem this administration has faced.  There is no diplomatic effort to stop the killing and the protesters for peace that we saw in 1991 and Vietnam have aged out, and the New Left ironically has no interest in finding a peaceful solution.  How long will it be before Putin does resort to a nuke, or American advisors and trainers get killed?  At the very least, before another dollar is spent, we need to understand the objectives and must get an accounting for all of the money.

 

With at best ambiguous players in this awful scenario, and no end game in sight, Xi can only rub his hands together in glee as the West drains resources away.  

Jumping to Conclusions

 I typically divide up my New Year]s Resolutions by category and actually try to monitor them throughout the year.  I actually do accomplish some things and fall short in others.   I don’t even refer to them as “resolutions” but rather they are goals for the year.

One of the goals which is a carryover from last year and which I have had some success over the past two years is not jumping to conclusions.  

I got my first taste of it a few years ago when the incident involving the Covington kids popped up.  The imagery splurged across legacy media and social media was of a smug looking teenager sporting a MAGA hat looking down on a grizzled Native American as if he were harassing him.  The New York Times described him as a Vietnam Vet, and the framing of the photo was meant to look like a young white supremacist needling this patriotic old American Indian.  Several people immediately posted it on social media with their derisive comments, calling for the kid’s head.  And I admit, I was almost sucked in.  The narrative and images were quite persuasive.  But I refrained from posting any comment.

And it turned out that my inhibitions were correct.  When videos with other camera angles were revealed and the true facts came to light, we learned that the reality was just the opposite of what was portrayed by the media.  It was the Native American that was harassing Nicholas Sandmann, who then sued several media outlets and won settlement in his defamation lawsuits with the Washington Post and CNN. 

You would think that after the confrontation with the Covington kids, the fake hate crime of Jussie Smollett, and the fake noose of Bubba Wallace, that people would not rush to judgment following an event.  It’s pretty clear that legacy media and social media are willing to censor, distort or outright lie.  And when the facts turn out differently than are first presented, it can be quite embarrassing.  Nikki Haley found out the hard way when she rushed to decry the supposed “hate crime” perpetrated against Bubba Wallace, only to learn that the “noose” was merely a garage pull. 

But the Twitter crowd remains undeterred. 

When Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed with a cardiac issue recently, and we feared that we might have the first on field death since Detroit Lions player Chuck Hughes collapsed and died in 1971.  The Twitter crowd immediately began pointing fingers at the vaccine.  That may or may not be the case, but it was much too soon to leap to that conclusion.  It’s certainly possible, but demonizing Pfizer or Moderna is simply premature.

Then we had the sabotage against an electrical substation in North Carolina that plunged thousands into darkness for 4 days.  The sabotage occurred on the day following a large protest against a proposed drag queen show at a local theater.   Immediately, Twitter was flooded with posts claiming that the entire area is full of racists and bigots.  Several posts derided the sheriff as a redneck.  But there was not a shred of evidence that the act was motivated by the drag queen show (notwithstanding the fact that citizens are perfectly within their rights to object to such a thing in their community).   There have been several other attacks and intrusions on power stations throughout the country, and while no parties have been caught, it is increasingly unlikely that the drag queen show had anything to do with it.

Jumping to conclusions reveals a lack of critical thinking.  While the immediacy of social media tempts one to respond, a response often simply tells the world that you are siloed and vulnerable to confirmation bias.  People wanted to believe that far right redneck sabateurs were responsible for the attack on the substation in North Carolina.  People want to believe that the vaccination was the cause of Damar Hamlin’s near death experience.   People wanted to believe that the garage pull in Bubba Wallace’s garage was a noose put there by some racist.  Media bias and the number of false flags, especially in matters of alleged racist or bigoted acts (Smollett was the king of that) suggests that it is wise to wait for an event to simmer for awhile before commenting.  While some on social media could win a gold medal in an Olympic leaping to conclusions event, at least that is one of my continuing goals this year is to refrain from doing so.