Faster Tom... Faster!
Back when this glorious war began -- on February 23 (the press reports the 24th, but the invasion began on the 23rd), many people understood that if the US got involved, it would go long. We'd hoped a injection of weapons alone would protect the Ukranian people, but oh, they've become dependent on billions to free themselves, and they still need so much more.
Tom Friedman, the top foreign-policy mind writing for the American newspaper The New York Times, is just starting to catch on to the implications of long-term American involvement in this latest glorious war. Why they don't think of these things months previous to invasion, instead of now that the US has so many "sunk costs" is mystifying. (You might think war strategy, and survival instincts and methodologies do not come naturally to a non-military-trained mind like Mr. Friedman, who is essentially helping to lead Democratic politicians with his political columns in America. God help him, god help us. He's too slow a thinker to be a leader, much less advising the people who employ the advisers. This war is not a good look for America. We own it, even if we're not yet admitting it... I don't think Europe will forget our actions as quickly as what we did in the Middle East either. Americans be warned what's being done in yoru name, and will be held accountable to your children...)
Friedman in the NYT:
By claiming territory that he doesn’t fully control, I fear Putin is painting himself into a corner that he might one day feel he can escape only with a nuclear weapon.
In any event, Putin seems to be daring Kyiv and its Western allies to keep the war going into winter — when natural gas supplies in Europe will be constrained and prices could be astronomical — to recover territories, some of which his Ukrainian proxies have had under Russia’s influence since 2014.
Will Ukraine and the West swerve? Will they plug their noses and do a dirty deal with Putin to stop his filthy war? Or will Ukraine and the West take him on, head-on, by insisting that Putin get no territorial achievement out of this war, so we uphold the principle of the inadmissibility of seizing territory by force?
Do not be fooled: There will be pressure within Europe to swerve and accept such a Putin offer. That is surely Putin’s aim — to divide the Western alliance and walk away with a face-saving “victory.”
But there is another short-term risk for Putin. If the West doesn’t swerve, doesn’t opt for a deal with him, but instead doubles down with more arms and financial aid for Ukraine, there is a chance that Putin’s army will collapse.
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