Has the Ukraine Situation Identified the ‘West’ as a Group of Bully-Boy Opportunistic Nations?
By strict “bully definition”, I think it has.
Ukraine has given me personal pause for thought — and led me to ask the question … ‘am I a racist?’ It has brought into sharp focus our Western limitations. And our fears. But mostly our love of creature comfort.
Germany, for example, refuses to stop buying gas from Russia because people will get a bit cold. We do not want to be inconvenienced — not even at the expense of many innocent deaths.
As a result, we are all complicit in assisting the Ukrainian genocide. Surely we should be pushing our weak European leaders to switch off the oil and gas purchases from Russia. And end this war.
As the war plays out, definite red lines have been crossed with little or no real consequence. History taught us the futility of putting off today’s fight for tomorrow’s war … if we cripple the Russian economy today, yes we suffer a bit, but far less than if we go to war tomorrow.
Please explain the difference between Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and the subsequent invasion of Poland in September 1939, and Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine? Because I for one am watching history repeat itself — right down to the Western leaders doing the same thing, for the same reasons.
Nothing.
In 1939 we didn’t want another World War (creature comforts). In 2022 we do not want a nuclear war. But the history suggests, like then, that we are in for a repeat if we don’t stop the bully-boy aggressor.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it” — George Santayana.
We are happy to defend our rules-based system when the perpetrator is small and defenceless. But when it is one of the big boys’ like Russia, our methodology changes. We are not so fast to intervene with boots on the ground and to execute a proper war, instead, we then opt for a more comfortable proxy war. Like armchair supporters shouting from the side-lines at a sports match.
Only this is not a sport.
And are we falling for the media narrative pushed by big business, that we have an enemy in Russia, and potentially China. Are they really the enemy, or just different.
Is that not big business playing me like a second-hand fiddle? War is profitable, so who is the enemy if Russia and China are not in the mix? We don’t need aircraft carriers and expensive military hardware to fight a Senegal, a Mogadishu, or some Middle East sovereign country. Not even for North Korea.
Both Russia and the USA have a weighted military-led economy. The entire National Health Service of the UK — which delivers a full and free medical service to every resident of the UK at source, is budgeted to cost £33.9 Billion pounds in 2023/4. The USA military budget for 2021 was $801 Billion.
It dwarfs the entire U.K. NHS spend and military budget COMBINED. So what happens when the USA does not have a ‘proper’ enemy?
It then cannot justify the budget spend and the entire USA economy wobbles markedly because 800 billion dollars or a significant portion of it would be unnecessary and removed from the economy. Unemployment would sky-rocket. The housing market would crash, mortgage companies would go bust etc.
The US Military machine employs a vast number of people. By 2031 there will be 2.28 MILLION retired military personnel. The Army employs 481 254 people, the Navy 341 996 and Air Force 329 614 in current ACTIVE duty. The budget is set to increase to 915 Billion dollars by 2025. (Source — Statista)
The USA HAS to find enemies
And that is becoming increasingly difficult to do. They also have to be a sizable enemy to justify the current budget. Harder still.
Top 10 Countries with the Highest Military Expenditures (2020):
- The United States — $778 billion
- China — $252 billion [estimated]
- India — $72.9 billion
- Russia — $61.7 billion
- United Kingdom — $59.2 billion
- Saudi Arabia — $57.5 billion [estimated]
- Germany — $52.8 billion
- France — $52.7 billion
- Japan — $49.1 billion
- South Korea — $45.7 billion
My only question is WHY? Why does the USA spend so much on its military? If they spent 1/4 of this budget, the other 9 countries on the list would still never catch up.
The ‘rule of law’ works because ‘the line’ is “held”. In conventional war, if you cannot hold your line, you cannot win the war. Russia has crossed the line … and the West did not hold it. Nor push the perpetrator back over the line.
This is bad. Very bad. It signals weakness and humans are animals, our base instinct void of humanity, is to seek the weak and exploit them. Russia is exploiting our Western weakness. We are happy with our rules-based order, so long as it does not interfere with the Starbucks run for a Frappuccino.
Russia knows this now, but so does everybody else.
As an exercise in comparison, I replaced Ukraine with Hong Kong and Russia with the U.K.
China remained who it is.
The U.K. had ruled Hong Kong for hundreds of years — from 1841. In 1997 it handed sovereignty back to China.
So it’s similar to the Crimea and Ukraine for the old USSR. Only it wasn’t handed back.
China has apparently breached its agreement regarding Hong Kong (HK) three times. No matter which side of the fence you stand on, the current stamp down on HK citizens is wrong.
The West did nothing. China is BIG.
Compare this to the Donbas / Crimea annexation of the region by Russia.
Hard-fought HK freedoms have been trampled over by Beijing and in my comparison model, so has Ukraine been trampled on. The U.K. has opted for a Russian-style Ukrainian intervention in HK.
They invaded HK with a view to restoring the status quo that was British rule. They want HK back just as Russia wants Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (Or more).
What would China do?
How would China respond to the UK nuclear threat?
It is a totally subjective view but I think they’d do more than fight a proxy war and they would not be deterred by the threat of nuclear war. They would hold THEIR line and they would ensure their rules-based order was supported.
I live in the West. I, therefore, subscribe to the Western rules-based order. It’s probably conditioning … subconsciously …. media, politicians, propaganda, my EQ inputs, and family have conditioned my response and acceptance of this rules-based system.
We do not eat dogs and grasshoppers.
However, ours is not the only rules-based system. It has simply been the dominant system as a result of a victorious world war and control of the narrative stemming from that victory and subsequent economic strength.
But things are changing. Other economies are growing. Other rules-based orders are gaining momentum. Muslim / Islam and China have their own rules-based order.
They subjugate women and believe in Sharia law. They eat squishy things, dogs, and grasshoppers. It’s a way of life. Therefore it’s not frowned upon. But rather than understand their system, we are trying to enforce ours.
Has Russia some right to be worried about its security as NATO creeps ever closer? Compare our 9/11 retaliation and loss of non-military human life due to drone strikes etc. with the situation in Ukraine.
And no, I am not for one second excusing Russia … what they continue to do is very wrong, but then surely I cannot excuse the USA and its ‘Allies and Partners’ for their attacks either.
No invasion of a sovereign nation is acceptable. So how did a terrorist group flying into the World Trade Centre morph into IRAQ? Either they were a terrorist group or Iraq — but they cannot be both. And if it was Iraq, how is that different to the proxy war we fight in Ukraine?
I now find myself trying to understand why I am so invested in Ukraine, but felt very little for Afghanistan and Syria. Is it because of colour — I cannot bear the thought I am that racist.
Is it ethnicity — I am European, could that be it? Do I secretly still think of Russia as the enemy because of communism? Surely not.
Or is it simply because it is just plain wrong. I feel a sense of injustice towards Russia for what it has done in Ukraine.
BULLY:
noun
a person who habitually seeks to harm or intimidate those whom they perceive as vulnerable.
verb
seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce (someone perceived as vulnerable).
We attack nations with impunity, draw geographical lines and divide ethnic groups and we subjugate, all in the name of our Western “democracy”. Centuries ago it was “Christianity” and the Crusades.
Are we not the instigators of genocide? Are we really better than Russia?
Somehow I do not feel good about myself anymore. Somehow I cannot help feeling the war in Ukraine is nothing more than a Shakespearean play and the play is completely written. I cannot help feeling that some people know the ending already … Only on these occasions, for personal gain, there is no spoiler alert.
If you enjoyed this, you might like “China-not the crockery”, it exposes my struggle to grasp this conflict:
