29 Mar The Ukrainian Conundrum
Winston Churchill spoke of the difficulties of understanding Russia in 1939, describing Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”.
The same might be said of the difficulties of understanding how to appraise the Ukraine/Russia war.
The easy ‘bad guy’ title falls on Vladimir Putin. He’s the invader.
And there’s an easy bad guy narrative to go with it—namely, that he has said the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of the 20th century…and therefore he must be motivated by a desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union in the 21st. According to this narrative, Ukraine is just the first step in a plan to reassemble the Soviet Union and ultimately annex or otherwise definitively control the rest of Europe in due time.
There’s also an easy ‘good guy’ complementary narrative: the plucky underfunded, under-weaponized, freedom-seeking Ukrainians, led by George Washington’s successor Zelenskyy, are scrapping and clawing and maybe even winning against the vaunted Red Army.
But the riddle, mystery and enigma aspect of this conflict shows up in other narratives.
The Putin-not-quite-so-terrible narrative: Putin has said NATO membership for Ukraine was the red line of red lines for him, and Biden mouthed off publicly in December 2021 that such membership was available for the taking by Ukraine. Moreover, there are US-funded biolabs in Ukraine, and nobody serious believes that bioweapons research is always and only defensive and never offensive. Therefore, so this narrative goes, Putin is not an irrational, unprovoked invader; he’s actually rational about the protection of Russia’s border, and he was directly challenged/provoked to see if his red line was really red. Turns out it was in fact red, but his objective in the invasion is not random destruction, devastation and civilian casualties; it is to protect his country.
The complement to this narrative is that Ukraine has a history of massively corrupt government that has plainly acted as a money laundromat for American politicians, most notably including Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Add to this corruption videos showing the apparent torturing of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian forces (maybe they’re not such good guys), and you might end up positing the best outcome of this conflict as a Russian cleanout of the western corruption with a minimum of Ukrainian civilian casualties. Ceding control of separatist regions to Russia while leaving the rest of Ukraine sovereign and intact would be a palatable solution to most of the world, and a relief.
So depending on which narratives you believe (while recognizing all of them may to some degree be products of propaganda and not based on facts on the ground), you could reasonably align with Lindsey Graham’s apoplexy toward a Putin-led Russia, or you could reasonably align with a pox on both houses and stay as far away as possible.
However, George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are united in support of Ukraine—and they are three of the most anti-American leftists in the world. What they want—and the reasons they want it–are never what heartland America wants, nor are they ever supportive of American exceptionalism and sovereignty.
They want the demise and destruction of Judeo-Christian America as the leader of the free world, so somewhere in their fervently desired outcome in Ukraine is a furtherance of that goal. Is it the de-dollarization of world trade, which could indirectly cause the financial collapse of the USA? There is reason to think so. The hyper-sanctioning and cancel culture tactics the Biden cabal is applying to all things Russian inevitably (as planned?) push Russia toward a tighter alliance with China, with whom they share a motive to create an alternative to dollar-denominated world trade. Once the dollar is out as the world’s reserve currency, America’s national fiscal insolvency will be fully exposed…and nothing good for America is likely to come from that exposure.
(It’s intriguing to consider that the New World Order ‘masters of the universe’—which includes the Biden cabal—may be in danger of outsmarting themselves: the de-dollarization/splintering of world trade financing directly undermines their efforts to unite (coerce) the world around a single digital currency which can be used to control all human spending and activity in furtherance of the all-important, all-encompassing climate change agenda. See Sundance’s interesting take, here.)
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If it were possible to posit everyday Ukrainian people as the true party-in-interest in this conflict, it would be easy to root for their success, and to justify backing them up with material assistance. And if a surge of Ukrainian national unity and pride in beating back the Russian invasion would enable and lead to a purge of corruption and an end of western money laundering operations in that part of the world, that would be a target outcome easy for most Americans to get behind.
The unfortunate reality of March 2022 is that no sentient, engaged American patriot trusts the legacy media or the Biden regime to be honest and truthful about much of anything…and certainly not about anything relating to war, energy, de-dollarization, and national borders. The deceit and dishonesty are ubiquitous. The result is there is no way to trust that material assistance to Ukraine would end up in the right places and be used for the right purposes toward a right goal.
Until Biden and Harris resign or are removed from office, and legitimately elected American leaders replace them, the best answer may be to not overthink this. Wish for the best for the Ukrainian people, but a pox on everyone else, and keep official American involvement to a minimum.
[For a thought-provoking and informed discussion of Russia/Ukraine, listen to today’s show on America Can We Talk?…in which Debbie plays an extensive recent interview with Trevor Loudon. Mr. Loudon is one of the most well-informed people on the planet regarding the history and objectives of communism, particularly as they relate to the goal of taking down free America . Not everything he says in the interview aligns precisely with this post…which simply underscores the riddle, mystery and enigma realm in which American patriots find themselves. So listen, question and be patient. Truth will out.]