Putin Paranoia
By Patrick J. Buchanan
February 18, 2015 "ICH"
- Hopefully, the shaky truce between
Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro
Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela
Merkel, will hold.
For nothing good, but much evil, could come
of broadening and lengthening this war that
has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians.
The longer it goes on, the
greater the casualties, the more land
Ukraine will lose, and the greater the
likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and
bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of
France on the doorstep of Europe.
Had no truce been
achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in
the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced
to surrender or wiped out, causing a regime
crisis in Kiev. U.S. weapons could have
begun flowing in, setting the stage for a
collision between Russia and the United
States.
One understands Russia's
vital interest in retaining its Black Sea
naval base in Crimea, and keeping Ukraine
out of NATO. And one sees the vital interest
of Ukraine in not losing the Donbas.
But what is America's
vital interest here?
Merkel says a great
principle is at stake, that in post-Cold War
Europe, borders are not to be changed by
force.
That is idealistic, but is
it realistic?
At the Cold War's end,
Yugoslavia split into seven nations, the
USSR into 15. Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, even
Slovenia briefly, had to fight to break
free. So, too, did the statelets of South
Ossetia and Abkhazia in breaking from
Georgia, and Transnistria from Moldova.
Inside Russia there are
still minorities such as the Chechens who
wish to break free. And in many of the new
nations like Ukraine, there are ethnic
Russians who want to go home.
Indeed, a spirit of
secessionism pervades the continent of
Europe.
But while London permitted
the Scottish secessionists a vote, Madrid
refuses to concede that right to the Basques
or Catalans. And some of these ethnic
minorities may one day fight to break free,
as the Irish did a century ago.
Yet of all of the
secessionist movements from the Atlantic to
the Urals, none imperils a vital interest of
the United States. None is really our
business. And none justifies a war with
Russia.
Indeed, what is it about
this generation of Americans that makes us
such compulsive meddlers in the affairs of
nations we could not find on a map? Consider
if you will our particular affliction: Putin
paranoia.
Forty years ago, this
writer was in Moscow with Richard Nixon on
his last summit with Leonid Brezhnev.
It was not a contentious
affair, though the USSR was then the command
center of an immense empire that stretched
from Berlin to the Bering Sea.
And when we are warned that
Putin wishes to restore that USSR of 1974,
and to reassemble that Soviet Empire of
yesterday, have we really considered what
that would require of him?
To restore the USSR, Putin
would have to recapture Lithuania, Latvia,
Estonia, Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan, an area the size of the United
States.
To resurrect the Soviet
Empire, Putin would have to invade and
occupy Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland,
the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and then
overrun Germany to the Elbe River.
How far along is Putin in
re-establishing the empire of the czars and
commissars? He has reannexed Crimea, which
is roughly the size of Vermont, and which
the Romanovs acquired in the 18th century.
Yet almost daily we hear
the din from Capitol Hill, "The Russians are
coming! The Russians are coming!"
That there is bad blood
between America and Putin is undeniable.
And, indeed, Putin has his quarrels with us
as well.
In his eyes, we took
advantage of the dissolution of the USSR to
move NATO into Eastern Europe and the Baltic
republics. We used our color-coded
revolutions to dump over pro-Russian regimes
in Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.
Yet beyond our mutual
distrust, or even contempt, is there not
common ground between us?
As the century unfolds,
two clear and present dangers threaten U.S.
strategic interests: the rising power of a
covetous China and the spread of Islamic
terrorism.
In dealing with both,
Russia is a natural ally. China sees Siberia
and the Russian Far East, with its shrinking
population, as a storehouse of the resources
Beijing needs.
And against the Taliban in
Afghanistan, ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and
al-Qaida, Russia, which suffered in Beslan
and Moscow what New York, London, Madrid,
Paris and Copenhagen have suffered, is on
our side.
During the Cold War,
Russia was in thrall to an ideology hostile
to all we believed in. She had rulers who
commanded a world empire.
Yet we had presidents who
could do business with Moscow.
If we could negotiate with
neo-Stalinists issues as grave as the the
Berlin Wall, and ballistic missiles in Cuba,
why cannot we sit down with Vladimir Putin
and discuss less earthshaking matters, such
as whose flag should fly over Luhansk and
Donetsk?
Patrick J. Buchanan is
the author of the new book "The Greatest
Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat
to Create the New Majority." To find out
more about Patrick Buchanan and read
features by other Creators writers and
cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at
www.creators.com .
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