The True Tragedy of the Ukraine Fiasco

The whole world, particularly those who reside in Europe, waits with bated breath for a Russian invasion of Ukraine which seems to be imminent. To the north of Ukraine along their border with Belarus, the ground has finally frozen over, solidifying the path for the Russian armor and heavy weapons which lie in wait a mere sixty miles from the capital of Kyiv. Troops have been massing to the north and east of war-weary and beleaguered Ukraine for months now; At present, a Ukrainian official has told CNN that there are roughly 106,000 Russian Soldiers gearing up for battle. The prime minister of the United Kingdom, Borris Johnson, said on Tuesday that there were up to 15,000 separatists already operating within eastern Ukraine and Crimea. All reports indicate that the Ukrainian people remain stalwart and that the Ukrainian armed forces are preparing to put up heavy residence with the help of lethal aid from the west, which began arriving this past week. The Ukrainian resolve is admirable, but no one, deep down, is fooling themselves. Ukraine will fall in a matter of days to the vastly better trained and equipped Russian Military. Perhaps the Ukrainians will shock the world and put up a fight worthy of Slavic legend, in which case Europe will see its first ground war since the Serbian Conflict in the 90s. Either way, the Russians will win eventually. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, will most likely annex the country briefly to install a pro-Russian puppet government before withdrawing his forces. American troops will likely be stationed in the Baltic NATO states for years to come, to deter further aggression by Russia which will never manifest.

Meanwhile, an axis that has been ordained as "The Resistance" will be on the move. Comprised of China, Russia, and Iran, the recently formed confederacy is so named because all three members share a common goal; to resist, and ultimately upend, American supremacy in every aspect of global politics. The Iranians have an interest in furthering the wars that they have waged for centuries against their Sunni counterparts in the Middle East, as well, of course, in destroying the nation of Israel and driving the Jews into the Sea. In China, Xi Xinping, a product of the Great Leap Forward and a man with a bold thousand-year vision for the Chinese people, looks south and west eagerly. First, he will move on Taiwan. Soon, countries in Southeast Asia like Laos and Vietnam will begin to feel the ultimately irresistible gravitational pull of the Chinese juggernaut. South Korea will begin to feel even greater pressure from the north. Sooner or later, Japan will begin to experience the ramifications of Xi's fever dream as it becomes reality in real-time. Xi wants the entire Pacific Ocean under his thumb, along with the rest of the world by proxy.

As for the Russians? Putin has a similar, albeit slightly more humble agenda than his Chinese counterpart. He has publicly stated that, in his view, the destruction of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century. Russia is no longer communist, rather it is an oligarchy, and its people now have a strong inclination towards the Eastern Orthodox church. Putin wants to create a new Russian Empire; a fusion between the Czarist Empires of old and the newer Soviet Union. He invaded Georgia in 2008, and then eastern Ukraine in 2014. However, this does not necessarily mean that he wanted to be our enemy then, or that he wants a fight with us now. During an interview on Friday with Andrew Klavan on the Andrew Klavan Show, U.S. Intelligence veteran, former Soviet citizen, and author of Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan To Defeat America Rebekah Koffler did not mince words. "If there is one thing that Putin's afraid of, it is the might of U.S. and NATO militaries". And of course, this is the case; Russia, though still boasting an impressive military, only has a GDP equivalent to that of Spain. All the talk about Russia as though they are still today the boogieman that they were throughout virtually all of the twentieth century is ludicrous; Those parroting such falsehoods are either hopelessly misinformed or abject liars.

The coming invasion of Ukraine has been inevitable for decades. The very word "Ukraine" is derived from the Slavic word for "Borderland". When it failed to join NATO in 2008, Its fate was all but sealed. Of course, Putin wants to expand into the former Soviet so-called borderland; it means more oil, more farmland, and most importantly more ports, opening naval channels to the Baltics and beyond into to the Mediterranean for his isolated regime. So, with all of this taken into consideration, several questions need to be answered. First, is Russia our enemy now? The answer is yes. Did they need to be? the answer is no. Is the Russian annexation of Ukraine going to be bad for the United States? Yes. But, only because of the content in which it is going to take place.

It is true that the Russian Federation is grossly corrupt, and it is also true that Vladamir Putin is, objectively speaking, a bad guy. The Russian government has done no favors for their people in ingratiating themselves to the American populous. That being said, there is a very simple reason that Russia has been so thoroughly demonized by the media in America; The truth is that Russians and conservative Americans have a LOT in common. For example, both groups are very religious. The State Department's 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom concerning the Russian people found that a whopping 63% of the population identified as Orthodox Christian, and a solid chunk of the remainder identified with either another sect of Christianity, Jewish, or Muslim. Only 26% of Russians identified as nonreligious. According to the Pew Research Center, America has a similar religious composition to Russia; 70% of Americans identify as Christian, and 22.3% identify as nonreligious. However, when broken down by political affiliation, one can see that 83% of Republicans identify as Christian as opposed to just 63% of Democrats. Furthermore, Democrats are far more likely to belong to churches that practice unorthodox Christianity, such as those which accept gay marriage, allow women to be priests, and generally spend time and money promoting left-wing causes.

One will rarely find either Russians or American conservatives waving rainbow flags outside of their homes or businesses. A poll conducted in September 2021 by the Statista Research Department and published on October 15th, 2021 shows that 42% of the Russian people disagree with the statement "Gays and lesbians in Russia should enjoy the same rights as other citizens". A further 17% said that they rather agreed, and only 14% of the population said that they agreed with a statement that summarizes the most basic aspects of the LGBTQ+ agenda. In America, 83% of Democrats fully support the legitimization of same-sex marriage. A surprising 55% of people who identify as Republican now support recognizing gay marriage as well. However, this is largely due to the fact that such practices have been legal at the federal level for a decade now, as well as the reality that every facet of the culture has been working day and night to break down conservative opposition on this issue for decades. This is also a number that describes Republican voters, and it is important to remember that not all Republicans are conservative. most are not.

Russians and conservatives both value hard work, they care little about nursing their feelings, and they place little faith in excuses. Conservatives are naturally inclined to look past the pits of America's historical shortcomings and focus on the summits of American glory. Russians likewise are fervently patriotic. Both Russians and Conservatives value family and country above all else. In many ways, a conservative in modern America is likely to have far more in common with a resident of the suburbs surrounding Moscow than he would with any resident of Brooklyn or Malibu. The media in America, at the behest of their liberal corporate donors and political allies in Washington, embarked years ago on a campaign to slander Russia and her people simply because Russians are conservative. This campaign intensified when Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, after which the media used the 100,000 dollars in Facebook ads supporting Trump and paid for by the Russian Federation as grounds to justify an all-out attack on the character of not only those corrupt officials governing the Russian people but on the Russian nation as a whole. The left in America hates and is willing to lie about, Russia and her people for the same reason that they hate and are willing to lie about Victor Órban and the Hungarians; because both represent illiberal and conservative nations who maintain, to some degree, the western religious ethics of the old world.

Instead of pitting ourselves against the Russians, we should be collaborating with them in areas where cooperation would be jointly beneficial. China is now the greatest threat to our interests, and it is not even close. Just like China's imperial ambitions do not interfere with Russia's, our own did not need to either. Our imperial agenda was created to conflict with Russia's by design, through bad actors and policy from the depths of the Washington bureaucracy, the intelligence community, and the military-industrial complex. For example, what use does America have for eastern Europe? Let alone a country that doesn't even belong to NATO such as Ukraine. These countries offer virtually nothing to the average American. What use do we have even for NATO? Trump made this point throughout 2016, to the chagrin of the establishment on both the left and right in the U.S., but he was correct to ask such questions. Everyone knows the truth, even if they do not want to say it out loud; NATO is just the American military draped in the flags of Western Europe. No sane person believes that Germany, or Norway, would be able to handle Russia in a full-blown ground war. NATO, at its core, is a deal between America and Europe in which the Europeans are guaranteed our protection in exchange for the maintenance of our imperial outposts within their borders. I would gladly trade the support of every country in Eastern Europe for friendship with Russia in the face of the growing Chinese threat. The sole purpose for aligning with these Eastern European nations was to set us on a collision course with the Russians, to enrich the military-industrial complex and strengthen the reach of the intelligence community.

So, what have we done instead of trying to work with Putin? We have driven Russia away from the west. We have forced Putin into the cold embrace of Xi Xinping. During the first cold war, the United States opened up to China in order to drive a wedge between the People's Republic and the USSR during the Nixon presidency. We have taken the exact opposite approach to the one that won us the first Cold War; We have forced our two greatest adversaries into an alliance that grows stronger by the day.

Our incompetence does not end with this fateful miscalculation. Not only did we choose the Eastern European NATO members over the comparative titan that is Russia, but by engaging in ridiculous environmentalist folly at home, we have forced many members of NATO into the arms of the Russians to secure their supply of oil and natural gas. This was made clear this past week when Germany, which depends on Russia for 35% of their oil according to a Forbes article by Dave Keating from 2019, sent Ukraine a lousy 5,000 kevlar helmets, sparking outrage within the Ukrainian government. The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, went on Fox News and called the shipment "a joke." He, of course, is correct. Russia provides Europe as a whole with 40% of its natural gas. So, in summary, not only did we pick a virtually useless alliance comprised of a conglomeration of undermanned and ill-equipped nations who lack experience instead of a friendship with the Russian Federation, but through our foolish and unrealistic domestic policy resulting from our concerns over climate change, we then caused the fracture and complete neutralization of that very alliance which we had foolishly chosen.

The coming war in Ukraine, however short or drawn out it ends up being, will undoubtedly be tragic. Thousands will be injured and killed. Innocent people will die. People will be displaced and they will freeze to death in the infamous Russian Winter. While this tragedy has been coming for years, it did not also have to be a disaster for the United States. Through a more nuanced approach to diplomacy with the Russian Federation, we could have salvaged some degree of leverage from this unfortunate situation. The contrary position which has been taken by both the left and the neocons in this country will serve to damage America's global hegemony, as well as to close the already small gaps still left between the members of the newly christened "Resistance" axis