Don’t be Distracted by the “Ukraine Crisis”

By Wayne Allensworth

Is it “stupid,” as one friend asked me recently, for “us” to be involved in the Russia-Ukraine crisis? My answer: It’s not stupidity driving this, but ideology. Stupidity in such a case would be acting in way contrary to the American interest, but that assumes the “stupid” parties involved could even think of an “American interest” in a way any normal person could understand. Our political elites know what they are doing, to the extent that such ignorant, arrogant people can “know” anything.

NATO has been expanding for decades, after then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was told in 1990 by then-US Secretary of State James Baker that NATO military structures would not advance Eastward following German reunification. Gorbachev did not get anything in writing, though he later complained that NATO expansion was a violation of the assurances he was given at the time. In 1994, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher told Russian President Boris Yeltsin that Washington would not support bringing new members into the alliance. In 1997, no less a figure than George Kennan, considered the author of Cold War containment policy, called NATO expansion a “fateful error” that would “inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western, and militaristic tendencies” in Russia, reviving a new Cold War that was unnecessary and dangerous.

He was right. The present crisis around Ukraine is the result of the West’s elites interpreting the end of the first Cold War with the Soviet Union not as an opportunity to return to “normalcy,” but to expand the boundaries of globalization.

Globalism dictates that “democracy” (read: “woke” insanity) must rule the earth and all who stand against it are Nazis, monsters, devils, etc. It is the Davos Politburo that is on a fervent ideological crusade, not Russia. In the narrow, muddled  minds of our “elites,” they are the “good guys” and men like Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban who reject globalism, stand for national sovereignty, and denounce woke craziness are evil and must be dealt with. NATO can’t be a threat, as they see it, because it is “good” and on “the right side of history.” Anyone who would see it as a threat is evil. They really believe this. They are true believers in globalization, made evident as well in their relentless war against historic America. That war, not Russia, is the real threat to us.

NATO’s potential absorption of Ukraine would create a military dagger pointing at the heart of Russia. Putin is thinking of his historic legacy and will not allow that to happen. Thus, Russia’s demand for security guarantees, including no further Eastward NATO expansion. Putin is fully aware that the globalist/woke West is hostile to Russia and has been seeking to undermine his regime from within for years. 

The best thing for all concerned would be a neutral Ukraine that has relations with both Europe and Russia, but the globo-expansionist machine is like a shark that can’t stop moving and feeding or it dies. Lots of Washington careers and departmental budgets depend on having an enemy. 

Post-Communist Russia is not our enemy, but Washington and the global oligarchs are. It is not Vladimir Putin who is dissolving our borders, rendering American citizenship meaningless, and supporting radicals who set fire to a number of American cities during the Antifa-Black Lives Matter riots. It is not Putin who is seeking to suppress political dissent in the US, or censor Washington’s critics.

If NATO military infrastructure that could include offensive missile systems was present in Ukraine, those missiles could strike Moscow in minutes. That, quite naturally, is unacceptable to the Kremlin. ANY Russian leader, not just Putin, would want to prevent that. The blustering he is doing now is designed to force the West to negotiate on Russia’s security guarantee proposals. Failing that, as he himself has said, he is prepared to use “military technical” means to ensure Russia’s security.

We might dislike Russia’s customary heavy-handed bullying, and we might feel sympathy for the ordinary people in Ukraine and Russia who wish only to live in peace, but Moscow’s security demands are those any great power would make in a similar situation. A negotiated solution that takes Russian security concerns into account is appropriate and necessary.

The American Remnant must understand that D.C. elites despise Putin largely for the same reasons they despise us. Their hostility to Russia is connected to the culture war against Middle America. Russia is standing against globalization, so in that regard, we should hope for a peaceful solution that satisfies Russian concerns.

The “Ukraine crisis” is another example of the globocrats distracting us from our real concerns. I might add that lots of people living in Central Europe apparently feel the same way—the threat to Hungary or Poland isn’t as much Russia as it is a “liquid modernity” that is dissolving any remnants of traditional social structures, it’s the rapid decline of Christianity, the collapse of marriage and birth rates, and “trans” madness, not to mention mass migration. It’s the EU attacking those countries for defending their sovereignty and non-wokeness.

Ukraine is not our problem. Our real problems are right here, not thousands of miles away. 

Wayne Allensworth is a Corresponding Editor of Chronicles magazine. He is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel Field of Blood.