Ukraine crisis a boondoggle for U.S. munitions makers

President Biden announced Friday he's "convinced" Russia will invade Ukraine "in the coming week. When challenged why he thought that, he replied "significant intelligence capabilities.

Of course, the president and Congress have been saying attack is imminent for the last 2 months. During that time both have been ratcheting up weapons sales to Ukraine and other pro West states on Russia's border. Over $650 million in weaponry in pouring into Ukraine and $6 billion of it, including 250 Abrams tanks, has just been sold to Poland.

The Ukraine crisis is a gift from the Gods to the weapons industry. It is also cheered on by that segment of the military that promotes endless war as their sole purpose in serving. The crisis is further hyped by mainstream media which learned long ago that perpetual war, potential or real, is a ratings and revenue bonanza.

While the U.S. and the West continue diplomacy with Russia, their statements offer no indication of any compromise whatsoever with Russian security concerns. If so, than some form of invasion, likely to peel off the largely Russian population of the separatist Donbass area, is the most likely target. Ironically, fighting may start from a Ukraine attack on separatist forces in the Donbass to force NATO and U.S. assistance against Russia's response.

The Ukraine crisis may be haunted by Biden's correct and gutsy decision to end our 20 criminal war in Afghanistan that has largely destroyed Afghanistan as a functioning state. Biden is under attack from pro war Republicans and Democrats alike who have pounced on his brave action which threatens their endless reliance on perpetual U.S. warfare. He’s appears shell-shocked and resistant to further efforts at peacemaking. That could lead to tragedy.

So far everyone is losing from this crisis except for the munitions makers and their supporters in Congress, military and the press.

And, there's no god to help us.

 Sensible negotiations, not promoting bully pulpit hysterics needed in Ukraine crisis

The Trib’s editorial ‘It’s 11:59 in Ukraine, and Joe Biden needs to ascend the bully pulpit’ takes the bizarre and inaccurate view that President Biden is somehow AWOL from involvement in resolving the crisis. Its evidence is to quote admittedly British hardliners making wildly irresponsible claims. British intelligence chairman Col. Richard Kemp compared French president Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, to Neville Chamberlain at Munich, 1938, saying “Today, it’s almost as if President Macron is reading from Chamberlain’s script.” Macron offense? Simply promoting sensible negotiations of Russian security concerns. Why quote such unhelpful rhetoric?

The Trib uses that and other inflammatory rhetoric to lament it “is unfortunate” Biden is not making equally “attention getting rhetoric.”

What the Trib knows but won’t tell its readership is that Biden, as well as NATO, will not risk a single soldier to defend Ukraine if Russia invades because Ukraine is neither in NATO, nor vital to NATO and America’s national security interests. Both have said as much publicly.

It is also unfortunate the Trib dismisses sensible Russian security concerns regarding further expanding NATO to Russia’s border and placement of potentially offensive missiles there by stating Russia negotiates under the “guise of security concerns.”

Even worse is the Trib’s use of “so-called” to dismiss the Minsk II Protocols of 2015 out of hand. Successful completion of Minsk II will return the Donbass breakaway provinces to Ukraine under regional autonomy that will provide security for the Russian speaking inhabitants threatened by Ukraine ultranationalists, while withdrawing Russian involvement from the region. Likening such sensible negotiations to appeasement is irresponsible.

Bully pulpit may be good for the Tribune, but not for ending the Ukraine crisis. Biden’s low profile, while his diplomats figure out how to accommodate Russian security concerns without U.S. hardliners likening Biden to Chamberlain at Munich, is the correct approach. The Trib would be wise to step away from the bully pulpit for a seat at the negotiating table.

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Editorial: It’s 11:59 in Ukraine, and Joe Biden needs to ascend the bully pulpit

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

As America was debating the Super Bowl halftime show and bickering about politicize

d mask mandates, the mood in Europe over the situation in Ukraine was turning mighty bleak — 130,000 amassing Russian troops and the possibility of an imminent military invasion can have that effect.

This week, the defiant Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that his government had been told that Wednesday will be “the day of attack.” Russia, of course, denied this, and Zelensky later walked back his comments, saying he only was repeating media reports of the opinions of others. But who can trust Russia?

Nobody. European leaders were confirming the likelihood of an imminent invasion all day Monday. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the situation as “the edge of a precipice.”

President Joe Biden has been conspicuously absent when it comes to such attention-getting rhetoric, even though the U.S. has removed embassy personnel from Kyiv to the far western city of Lviv. This is unfortunate. Biden can and should command a bully pulpit. The U.S. cannot just stand by while Russian President Vladimir Putin commands, in essence, that Ukraine abandon all of its alignments with the West.

Others are stepping into the breach.Under the Daily Telegraph headline, “This is the E.U.’s darkest hour,” the British former infantry commander and chairman of the Cobra Intelligence Group Col. Richard Kemp drew a perhaps inevitable comparison between Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, and Neville Chamberlain, the notorious appeaser of Adolf Hitler. “Today, it’s almost as if President Macron is reading from Chamberlain’s script,” Kemp wrote Monday.

Kemp and other British hardliners are reacting to Macron’s pressuring Ukraine to, in essence, appease its aggressor, Putin, by implementing the so-called Minsk Accords that would, in simple terms, compromise Ukraine’s sovereignty as a nation and give Moscow and its shadow actors a far greater say in its affairs.

Putin of course has demanded precisely that, under the guise of security concerns. America’s political leaders were pathetically slow to wake up to the evils of Putin, preferring to use him in their own domestic rivalries without realizing he was laughing at them with every social-media manipulation he authorized. But we’re all surely well aware by now, at least, that Putin is nobody’s sweetheart.

Kemp aptly called Putin’s methods “gunpoint bartering.” Consider this recent Putin remark directed at Ukraine: “Like it or not, you’ll have to tolerate it, my beauty.”

What a creep. And a dangerous one to boot. The situation in Ukraine has been giving Wall Street jitters, not least because of the potential impact on world energy prices, potentially making the global inflation problem even worse. Putin’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, talks less like a James Bond villain and goes down easier with the Wall Street types, but he’s still a depressing read: “Moscow is angry at the E.U.,” he was quoted as saying Monday, good cop to Putin’s bad guy but a manipulative double act nonetheless.

American should be a whole lot angrier with Putin, a one-man wrecking ball to prospects for relative global Calm as the coronavirus retreats.

Reportedly, President Barack Obama’s exit note to President Donald Trump cited the situation in North Korea as the most pressing of global problems. In reality, that piece of paper should have contained the name Vladimir Putin. Ukraine might not be the end. Already there is tension along the border of Lithuania and the notorious Belarus.

Paratroopers from Fort Bragg's 82nd Airborne Division prepare to board a plane from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Feb. 14, 2022. They are among soldiers the Department of Defense is sending in a demonstration of American commitment to NATO allies worried at the prospect of Russia invading Ukraine. (Andrew Craft/The Fayetteville Observer)

What to do now? Clearly, time is running short for any kind of so-called diplomatic solution to this issue, although it’s still worth trying.

In every successful negotiation, each side has to give up something it wants. In this case, there should still be diplomatic measures that can be done to avoid loss of life and a cascading global crisis.

That, of course, would require a level of unity in the contra-Putin camp that has been sorely lacking to date. And it would require far more U.S. focus on the crisis. Most Americans are not aware of who is traveling to this region on their behalf to try to resolve the situation. Do not leaders like Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who visited Kyiv on Monday, deserve heartier U.S. support?

Ensuring global stability and security is a crucial part of the job of the most powerful leader in the world, and that has to take precedence.

It’s time for skilled negotiators to do everything they can to maintain peace, but none of this can include empowering Putin to exact his will upon the world or to oppress the rights of Ukrainians.

Here in Chicago, we worry about the many Chicagoans with friends and family in Ukraine, a nation with long and close ties to this city.

They, and Ukrainian immigrants and descendants across the nation, deserve America’s practical, firm and intensely focused support.

Avoid the A word when discussing Ukraine crisis

Discussing complex issues of war and peace is never easy. Each country promotes its interests and agendas. To avoid slipping into the abyss of war all sides must engage in sensible negotiation geared toward peaceful resolution that considers often intractable competing interests.

Unfortunately, the current crisis in Ukraine is causing some Western hardliners to denigrate any efforts to negotiate sensibly with the Russians. When French President Emmanuel Macron promoted negotiations with Russia to resolve the threat of Russia invading Ukraine, British intelligence chairman Col. Richard Kemp compared Macron to Neville Chamberlain negotiating with Hitler at Munich, 1938, saying “Today, it’s almost as if President Macron is reading from Chamberlain’s appeasement script.”

References to Hitler, Chamberlain, Munich as well as especially appeasement have no place in the current discussion of East-West concerns involving the two nuclear superpowers capable of wiping out humanity if negotiations fail.