The Fighting in Ukraine May Come to This
The ongoing reporting of the fighting in Ukraine between the forces of Ukraine's central government in Kiev and rebel soldiers in Eastern Ukraine assisted by the Russian armed forces continually waffles over whether to call this "conflict," "incursion," "war," etc. But we may be approaching a time of resolution to this debate. Now that we know that armed forces of the Russian government of Vladimir Putin crossed the border with Ukraine and actively assist the rebels in mortal combat, it will be harder and harder to avoid calling this war - a war aggressively pursued by a Russian government intent on expanding the borders of what Putin has determined will be a "Greater Russia."
Critics of the current Ukrainian government, who consider it to have overthrown a "legitimate" government in a coup in February of this year will find it harder to press that argument as the intentions of the Russian government become manifest. Putin stated these intentions clearly long before the expulsion of the Russian-dominated government in Kiev, a government chased from the capital by the protests of ordinary people gathered in the Maidan - events we commented on long before this caught the fancy of the Western media. Perhaps the opinion of a former adviser to Putin may be closer to the truth than many of us wish to admit:
Today's world is far too connected, and as a result far too small, for any of us to ignore what's going on around us. This doesn't mean that the U.S. or any other government has to get involved in the affairs of every other nation on earth. But even to avoid entanglements requires a strategy to do so in a manner which protects your own citizens, a prime responsibility of any effective national government. As for the U.S. government, we certainly hope, or rather we expect, that the government will first and foremost protect its own citizens. Whether this entails stopping Putin's ambitions will have to be addressed, and the time is fast running out to address it.
Critics of the current Ukrainian government, who consider it to have overthrown a "legitimate" government in a coup in February of this year will find it harder to press that argument as the intentions of the Russian government become manifest. Putin stated these intentions clearly long before the expulsion of the Russian-dominated government in Kiev, a government chased from the capital by the protests of ordinary people gathered in the Maidan - events we commented on long before this caught the fancy of the Western media. Perhaps the opinion of a former adviser to Putin may be closer to the truth than many of us wish to admit:
“Putin’s army will be stopped where the Ukrainians, the West and the whole world decide to stop him.” Andrei Illarionov, a former economic adviser to Putin who’s been critical of the Russian leader after quitting his post in 2005, said today in an interview in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. “Sanctions don’t have any effect. Historically, there’s no evidence of sanctions achieving their intended goal, even when they were much stricter.”If the conflict has not been universally recognize as war yet, Illarionov's comments lead us to believe it soon will be, under any definition. It won't be fighting or conflict or uprising or any of the other euphemisms we've heard and read. It will be called war. And once unleashed, we all need to be concerned about those unintended consequences that will result. It will no longer be a local conflict that's isolated in some remote part of the world, as it may appear to some now.
Today's world is far too connected, and as a result far too small, for any of us to ignore what's going on around us. This doesn't mean that the U.S. or any other government has to get involved in the affairs of every other nation on earth. But even to avoid entanglements requires a strategy to do so in a manner which protects your own citizens, a prime responsibility of any effective national government. As for the U.S. government, we certainly hope, or rather we expect, that the government will first and foremost protect its own citizens. Whether this entails stopping Putin's ambitions will have to be addressed, and the time is fast running out to address it.
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