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| Home Front: Politix |
| Guns of April and Global War - Russia and Ukraine |
| 2021-04-12 |
| [American Thinker] War between Russia and Ukraine looks imminent. Israel and Iran are engaging in tit for tat maritime altercations. And China is ratcheting up provocative incursions into the airspaces and waters of Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines. Any one of these regional conflicts is incendiary enough to ignite World War III (or, more accurately, each one is capable of transforming the cold, hybrid warfare of cyberhacks, technology thefts, financial markets manipulation, and perhaps even biological attacks that has been underway for many years into total and unrelenting global bloodshed), yet trading markets and news media are largely ignoring what's unfolding. It's as if the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1999 Kargil War between nuclear-equipped India and Pakistan, and the Soviet and Nazi Invasion of Poland were all happening concurrently, and the world decided it was too busy enforcing face mask mandates upon religious congregants and following the turmoil of Khloe Kardashian to care. Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August paints a vivid picture of European elites so mentally imprisoned by the mores and cultural etiquette of the nineteenth century that they failed to grasp the reality of the geopolitical chessboard before them or the likelihood of the monumental carnage of WWI. Something eerily reminiscent of those miscalculations is going on today. In the thirty years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States has squandered much of its time as the world's sole superpower. Rather than winding down NATO's mission in a post-Soviet world, the West redirected and revitalized the alliance after 9/11 into a global military engagement against "extremism," with the U.S. fortifying its role as the world's policeman. And rather than using the end of the Cold War to balance budgets and fix America's unstable financial footing, the U.S. aggressively burdened itself with new and unsustainable levels of debt. In effect, the U.S. rejected the possibility of multipolar peace, assumed the role of global hegemon, and never saved up for a rainy day. Instead of broadly integrating a shaky post-communist Russia into European and trans-Atlantic institutions, the U.S. has wobbled between treating Russia as an ally in the "war on terror" and as a Cold War adversary that must be contained by driving the expansion of NATO-allied member countries all the way to Russia's borders. One moment Hillary Clinton is promoting a "Russia reset," and the next moment Barack Obama and Victoria Nuland are orchestrating a Ukrainian coup d'état to swap a Russia-friendly government with a fiercely anti-Russian replacement. In order to prevent Russia from becoming a thorn in the side of New World Order types utilizing the IMF, WTO, and World Bank as engines for maintaining American-led global governance, U.S.-controlled NATO and E.U. technocrats intent on building a European superstate have kept Russia relegated to the sidelines. And in recent years, Democrats in the U.S., "Remain" Brits opposed to Brexit, and European integrationists who have taken umbrage at Central European countries such as Poland and Hungary defending their own sovereignty have tried to scapegoat lost referendums on illusory "Russian disinformation" campaigns. The effect of this intentional ostracism has been to push Russia closer to communist China and into adversarial brinkmanship with U.S.-E.U. interests. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 They're rioting in Africa, They're starving in Spain. There's hurricanes in Florida, And Texas needs rain The whole world is festering With unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles; Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch, And I don't like anybody very much! But we can be tranquil And "thankfill" and proud, For man's been endowed With a mushroom-shaped cloud. And we know for certain That some lovely day Someone will set the spark off, And we will all be blown away! They're rioting in Africa, There's strife in Iran. What nature doesn't do to us Will be done by our fellow man! - The Merry Minuet, Kingston Trio |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-04-12 07:35 |
| #2 ^ouch |
| Posted by: Mercutio 2021-04-12 07:27 |
| #1 I think the problem between Russia & USA is that each considers the other a bunch of Commies. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2021-04-12 05:08 |