Benjamin Sledge Is Claiming He Knows Why Putin Invaded Ukraine

This is dangerous. Opinions should be exactly that. Opinions

I am writing this with the greatest respect for Benjamin Sledge, the author of the article No One Has Addressed WHY Russia Invaded Ukraine (So I'll Do It).

We are living in dangerous times, and words matter. This topic has the whole world on edge. History is unfolding as I am writing this.

Benjamin is entitled to his opinion as I am entitled to mine.

But Benjamin's article does not come across as an opinion.

I will highlight the points he makes in his article and state why I think it's dangerous.

Headings with Psychological Gymnastics and establishing authority.

The article popped up on my feed, and the heading immediately triggered emotions deep in my amygdala. My subconscious read, "No One," "Russia," "Ukraine," "Invaded," "WHY," and "I will do it." Then the cover pic connects all that with the word "Putin."

The very first sentence is the one that ruffled my feathers.

In August 2008, the geopolitical intelligence company I worked for went on red alert. — Benjamin Sledge, March 1, 2022

He is establishing authority. I am supposed to listen to a former employee of a geopolitical intelligence company. But Benjamin should know better.

I show a picture of a hacker attack on NATO IT systems in the cover pic. You can find more information on Exclusive: NATO Classified Cloud Platform Compromised. That site, DDOSECRETS, also breached the Kremlin and all sorts of other organizations. It's a dangerous game, but they do it for the public good. For ALL of us. The WHOLE world.

I have more than 25 years of experience in the software industry, and I know many more sites like that. I do not mention these kinds of things on a platform like MEDIUM, nor do I use my employment history to try and persuade people to believe certain things.

Anybody with a couple of years of experience in the Sofware Industry can read that cover pic and know exactly where and how to look for weak points in an application. Even a NATO application.

I will never do that, nor do I have any intention to share such knowledge with anybody.

This is dangerous stuff. It should be treated as such. The world is suffering.

Calling something the Russo-Georgian War and referencing Wikipedia.

Benjamin is still establishing authority, but he tackles a sensitive and complicated topic by calling it the Russo-Georgian war and referencing Wikipedia to boot.

You cannot do that? Not with serious topics like this. Your facts are completely wrong, and you do not provide me with references to cross-check.

Here are some quick facts on the subject with some references in the reference section. The time-line is up until 2013, covering the 2008 period mentioned in Benjamin's article.

• This was an Ethnopolitical conflict that Georgia or Russia did not start. It had nothing to do with Geopolitics.
• If you want to give the conflict a name, why not. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict? Or the Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict? Or the Georgia–Abkhazia and Georgia–South Ossetia conflicts? Or ALL of the above?
• You need to study the history of The South Caucasus (Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Georgians), or at least skim over it. This is a complex situation.
• The breakup of the USSR created an ideological power vacuum. The outlying provinces of the former Soviet Union started challenging their local Soviet authorities. This caused a parallel emergence of nationalist groups.
• On April 9, 1991, Georgia became one of the first Soviet republics to declare its independence. To understand what happened between then and 2008, you need to understand the history of Georgia, the Armenians, South Ossetia, and North Ossetia. Who asked for support from Moscow, and who did not? A few people can correctly answer the question. Not some person that spoke to "My neighbor who is Russian."
• As I wrote in my previous article, For Once, (Some) Americans Should Shutup And Stop Calling Putin A Madman: You Polishing The Bombs Of War. Again (I said some? Also, right about now, I am scared and angry?), the Georgian conflict that started in 2008 was also called the war of South Ossetia. The real war only lasted five days. The conflict began with Ossetian separatists, who started bombing Georgian villages. Georgia launched a military offensive in response.
• Russia's role in this conflict was sending army and air troops to support Ossetia. All sides, Russia, Georgia, and South Ossetia, were accused of war crimes by the Human Rights Watch. Russia was blamed for invading a sovereign state and threatening democracy.
• So now we have South Ossetia. We have Georgia. We have Russia, and we have 2013. We know 2014 was an important date for the region. I come up with a blank if I try to understand how Ukraine, Donetsk, and Luhansk fit into the 2014 to 2022 timeframe. I have no clue. Neither does my neighbor. So then I do what I normally do in situations like that. I shut the hell up.

Russo-Georgian is the name of a Border. Not a War.

This brings us to the elephant in the room. NATO

NATO is now causing people like Benjamin and Me to have a different understanding of 'Expansion.'

At the heart of why the Russians invaded a relatively unknown country became an enigma to the populace, but within our company everyone reached the same conclusion — Russia did not want Georgia to become a NATO state. — Benjamin Sledge, March 1, 2022

Benjamin does not mention the name of his company. I covered his company's flawed thinking on the 'invasion' of Georgia earlier in this section. The 'invasion' or war did not start in 2008. It started long before that. If his company only red-flagged it in 2008, then it did not pay attention to "geopolitical intelligence" red flags long before that.

There is a lot to study about NATO to get the complete picture. I tried to cover some of it in my last article, but I would be the first to admit some people have a more in-depth grasp of the subject.

The picture in the cover pic of my previous article tells many stories when studied carefully.

I've been looking at that map for many years. Whenever I look at that map, I always have a couple of questions. Who is expanding? If Russia is only ONE country, is it not easy to track how they are expanding? If NATO is NOT a country, it should surely consist of MANY countries?

How and why do these countries become members of NATO?. At what rate does the number of countries in NATO increase? Can I safely say; NATO is expanding?

I will use one article that summarizes my thinking whenever I study the NATO map every other year. The article, NATO Isn't What You Think It Is, by Stephen M. Walt, makes an argument for the following four points:

1. Article 5 is not a tripwire for war.
2. NATO is not a club, and there are no dues.
3. NATO expansion was a mistake. Really.
4. NATO is an anachronism.

He is a professor in International Relations at Havard University, and he wrote the article in 2018. I am trying to reach out to him as I am writing this.

His article is behind a paywall, but anybody can read it. The writing of people like Professor Walt always seems to shine the light on important topics by covering both sides. Sometimes there are more than two sides to a story.

Some people find the first motto of NATO disturbing. Some people are not even bothered by it. Here it is :

NATO’s first motto was “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Rumor has it, the first Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Ismay, lived by it.

Final thoughts.

The suffering of the people of Ukraine is on all minds. For now, I can only offer my prayers.

The same goes for the people of every other country in the WORLD.

I do not feel the same about the Government of every country in the WORLD.

The people of a country and the country's Government are two distinctly different things. I never let the one abuse my genuine empathy for the other.

I agree with Benjamin. It would be a mistake to call Putin a Madman. He does many things that can not be condoned by anybody who prefers PEACE rather than WAR.

But he remains a strategist and a dangerous one at that. Sometimes a dictator becomes a dictator due to external forces. Agents Provocateurs. It used to affect only ONE country. In the modern-day world, it affects the whole WORLD.

Here are some of my opinions and predictions in rapid-fire, and I offer no references.

Nobody knows what Putin is going to do next. Nobody knows what China is Discussing with Putin. Nobody knows what India is discussing with Putin.

When the GOLD standard was dropped in 1971, the US dollar lost 75% of its value. The US dollar was adopted as the WORLD's official reserve currency in 1944. This was signed and sealed in The Bretton Woods Agreement by 44 allied countries. Let me repeat that. Forty-four countries. You can dabble with that number 44 as you wish, but I can guarantee you the number is much less than 44.

There are a LOT of countries that feel that agreement gives some countries an unfair advantage. The US dollar will not be the world's reserve currency in the future. I don't know when or how this will happen, but I am sure it will happen.

The Objective in Ukraine is not to incorporate Ukraine into some semblance of the former Soviet Union. The objective is to secure control of the seaports of the Black Sea. Since time immemorial, the Black Sea has been important for trade between EAST and WEST. Putin knows this. China knows this. India knows this. The USA knows this. The EU knows this. The UK knows this. NATO knows this even if it's not a country. Everybody would know this if history and geography were part of their school curricula.

Sadly, not many of our brothers and sisters in the WORLD know the importance of the Black Sea for fair trade between EAST and WEST.

As I said in the conclusion of my last article, I predict Donald Trump will be president of the USA in 2024. In the conclusion of my previous article, I mention the titles of books that support such a scenario. The names are hidden in quotation marks.

I suffer from "accidentally throw yourself off the fifth floor" syndrome. So let me be clear. I have no intention to do what the young hackers from South America did when they hacked NATO IT systems. Absolutely none.

I have 25+ years of experience in the software industry. You can ignore what I am about to say, or you can do some of your research.

If you've been in the software industry for a couple of years in specific roles, you quickly become aware of how easy it is to breach the security of any IT system. Ethical hackers do this all the time. The data they extract is out there. If you are interested, you will be able to find it.

Let me repeat. I know nothing of these things.

PEACE

References.

1. Understanding Ethnopolitical Conflict Karabakh, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia Wars Reconsidered. This book is part of a series by the University of St. Andrews, UK. I am an alumnus of the University of South Africa, so I use that channel to access academic material.
2. You don’t have to use academic channels. Most public libraries have access to the same channels. If you are lucky enough to have a library close to where you live, their digital library is a gold treasure. Librarians are some of the most unappreciated people in the world. They will be able to point you to academic papers that you can access.
3. NATO’s Secret Armies — Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe
4. Postmodern Imperialism Geopolitics and the Great Games
5. Brexit, President Trump, and the Changing Geopolitics of Eastern Europe
6. Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian populism
7. The New Faces of Fascism Populism and the Far-Right
8. The origins of the Slavic nations premodern identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
9. Unrestricted Warfare China’s Master Plan to Destroy America
10. opensecrets.org and all the sites in its network. It is now becoming a global network of sites that covers the whole world.