WhatsappRussia has placed more than 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. The Western countries, who are being led by nobody now, are having a dificult time responding. So what is this all about?
The main word seems to be NATO. Russia is not a superpower the way that it was between the 50’s and 80’s. But it is still a major threat and should not be treated lightly. As Mikhail Gorbachev has declared recently, there are still many nuclear weapons under the control of Vladimir Putin and the threat to destruction of the world continues to exist.
The core problem today is that the West does not have a clear leader today as Joe Biden is known, to everyone who watches him, to be a weak leader that is slowly losing his faculties. In addition, Russia is a wounded country. The more than one million people in Russia are still bothered by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin has declared this many times over. He would love to have Ukraine back in the Russian orbit.
But there is an additional aspect here. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Gorbachev was promised that NATO would not expand, and the West would not move any of it’s troops westward. But what actually happened is that NATO did expand years later. Poland, Rumania, and Hungary fell to NATO, and Ukraine looks like the next domino that is inclined to fall to the West. So, even if Russia does not feel threatened by the West, they still do see their power decreasing, and their borders becoming more encircled by NATO countries.
Putin may not want to spread Communism like the Soviet Union dictators before him. However, he does indeed want to restore Russia as a strong and powerful country that will not be dominated by anyone. That explains why Russia invaded and took over the Crimea. And Putin knows that if the Ukraine ends up in the NATO orbit, then the Black Sea, a major maritime border withe Russia, will also be under the orbit of NATO.
This entire mess could be negotiated out and should NOT lead to a war. Putin should receive a guarantee that allows him to save face that ensures that NATO will not touch Ukraine for many decades and that the Black Sea will not have any NATO Forces for decades. Just like John F. Kennedy diffused the Cuban Missile Crisis by giving in on missiles in Turkey, the West needs to give in on something that will be painful for some, but will save the lives of tens of thousands of people.
