I am not in a position to comment usefully on the current state of the war in Ukraine. Too far away, too little information. Having said that, I find news reports about Zelensky’s “Peace Plan” to be interesting. As I understand it, a precursor to negotiations to end the war would be a good faith agreement between Russia and Ukraine to stop all attacks on their respective energy systems. His plan also includes early Ukrainian membership in NATO. I suggest that this reflects his understanding that Ukraine can not, by itself, defeat Russia and is looking for Western Europe and the United States to stop the fighting. I presume that he is also increasing his tactical effort to get the munitions necessary to significantly increase the pressure on the Russian heartland. My guess is that all of this is fundamentally encouraging to Putin, in that it implies that his campaign is succeeding, in as much as the Biden Administration and Western Europe are unwilling to provide the level of support necessary to hurt Russia enough to force Putin to agree.
Now, we have United Nations Secretary General Guterres attending Putin’s BRICKS meeting, where he is being accused of ignoring the Russian dictator’s various transgressions. I am not a fan of Guterres, but I see this criticism as being off the mark. I suggest that the UN Secretary General, by the definition of his position, has to talk to all nations that are members of the organization. I argue that talking to each other is better than shooting at each other and I would encourage more substantive talking and less mindless shooting. The problem being that bad people choose to try to use force whenever they sense weakness and talking instead of shooting is frequently interpreted as weakness. Putin has spent his entire life correctly calculating the amount of force that he can use before his antagonist resists militarily. The success of his Crimea adventure led directly to his effort to capture Kiev. I believe that he might well have succeeded had his army not let him down by running out of gas on the drive to the Ukrainian capital. Biden’s bungling of the situation has given us the current mess, but Obama’s acceptance of Crimea was the fundamental precursor mistake.
Whatever the reasons, the fighting in Ukraine is not only destroying that country’s infrastructure and killing far too many Russians and Ukrainians, it is also adversely impacting the economy of the world and raising the possibility of a nuclear exchange that very well could eventually (minutes) include us. While I don’t mind Guterres talking to Putin and Xi at their BRICKS meeting, I also do not have the least reason to expect anything to come of it. Guterres and the current UN are irrelevant in the real world. So is Zelensky. The only way that the argument in Ukraine between Moscow and Kiev is going to be temporarily settled is when Zelensky and Putin sit down (figuratively) at the negotiating table. The only entity that can force that to happen is Washington DC. The only national level politician that is arguing for that to happen is Donald Trump. It is one of the reasons that I voted for him. Those of my fellow Americans that are trying to elect another figure head president are making a tactical mistake that will ensure that we remain on the present inadequate political trajectory.
PS: Electing Trump is not an ideal solution to our current political imbroglio. It is merely the least bad alternative. We will still have a mountain of work to do, but that is better, by far, than the alternative before us at the present time. I am pessimistic that we will, in fact, do the work necessary, but I still want to continue to try.
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