FM: John Whitbeck
In response to my first message yesterday, one of my
distinguished recipients, a journalist of renown,
forwarded it to a "onetime colleague", who
responded. I then responded to this response.
This correspondence is transmitted below (with names
redacted).
A FURTHER THOUGHT: What is there not to like
about neutrality? Everyone should dream of living in
a country like Austria, Finland of Switzerland,
legally exempt for any involvement in the costly (in
lives and treasure) competitions and confrontations
between the power-obsessed crazies who have always
infested our world and free to focus a country's
attention and resources on improving the quality of
life for its people.
PRIOR THOUGHTS WORTH REPEATING: I am not
aware of anyone, even an inveterate Russophobe,
publicly suggesting that Russian-majority Crimea
would have been reintegrated into the Russian
Federation and the Russian-majority portions of the
Donbas would have fought for and achieved separation
from Ukraine and effective self-government if the
Western-organized anti-Russian coup in Kiev had not
occurred in 2014 and if the new Ukrainian regime
installed by U.S Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland ("Yats
is the guy. ... F**k the EU.") had not, as one of
its first acts, eliminated Russian as one of the
country's two official languages.
At the time of the coup, Putin was fully occupied in
attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi and hoping to
justify the enormous amounts of money spent on
staging this two-week extravaganza. He reacted
quickly -- but he reacted. He did not plot.
The five-step process for reintegrating Crimea into
the Russian Federation (referendum/declaration of
independence/diplomatic recognition by
Russia/application for reintegration/acceptance of
application) was bloodless and accomplished without
the entry into Crimea of any Russian military forces
in addition to those already stationed there with
the accord of the Ukrainian government. In light of
the International Court of Justice's 2010 opinion in
the case regarding Kosovo's unilateral declaration
of independence, the reintegration of Crimea into
the Russian Federation did not violate international
(as opposed to Ukrainian) law. No uniformed
Russian military personnel entered the Donbas to
support the secessionist struggle. (It is even
possible that most or all of the on-leave
"volunteers" who were permitted or encouraged to
cross the border to offer support were genuine
volunteers.)
It follows that the highly hyped assumption that
President Putin is possessed by some pathological
compulsion to commit the crime of aggression and is
deviously plotting a "further invasion" of Ukraine
or even an invasion of the Baltic States or Poland
is ludicrous, founded simply on ignorance rooted in
disinformation and brainwashing or on conscious and
cynical bad faith. A clear-eyed appreciation of
reality is essential if a thoroughly avoidable
catastrophe is to be avoided.
Fortunately, thanks to President Putin's public
release of his two proposed mutual security treaties
and President Biden's prompt and non-dismissive
response, there is now some hope that reality will
get a fair hearing and greater understanding before
it is too late.
NOTE: If President Biden was looking for a
way to outrage President Putin even before entering
the White House, he could not have found a better
way to do so than naming Victoria Nuland as his
Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, the
third highest position in the State Department.