February 2022 Archives

Dear America,

It's gotten to the point that I am taking what Russia is doing in and around Ukraine, including what it did nearly a decade ago in the formerly Ukrainian territory of Crimea, personally.  I think that the time has come for Russia to be isolated as a sociopath in the community of nations... regardless of whether Putin orders his troops into Ukraine or not.  Russia as a nation has evinced all of the attributes of an outlaw for decades going back a century, and that anti-national behavior has now spread into every aspect of life from the international level to that of the individual household.  With its contamination of everything connected to the internet, which is essentially everything that each of us does, Russia has descended into the status of universal nemesis for the entire population of the world, and we should insist that, to the extent possible, Russia be excluded from the community of nations economically, socially, politically and transactionally on the most basic level.  Russia is a menace and the world should do what it can, as closely as possible, to imprison a miscreant nation that is a constant threat to us all.

My understanding is that the plan is essentially that on at least the economic level, but that isn't enough.  We have to build a theoretical wall around Russia such that it is deprived of all of the benefits of international modernity.  Obviously, importuning won't work as rational intercession with a sociopath can't address the pathology that lead to the sociopathological  behavior.  The sociopath doesn't form intent by contemplation.  The sociopath acts out of compulsion, and that is the nature of the Russia problem.  Russia is what it is...sort of like a pandemic.  We have to vaccinate ourselves and hope that it works.  The Biden administration has promised retribution against Russia, but that is like threatening a criminal with prison, which even if it occurs doesn't prevent recitivism.  Let Russia be what it is, as if we have a choice.  But, I suggest, build a wall around it since we can't send it to a remote island and blocade it so that the imprisoned pariah can't escape.  We no longer have a choice (it may not be long until we have to do the same with China).  We should bring all of our commerce home.  We should refuse to accept their currency or enter into contracts with their corporate entities.  We should bar their citizens from visiting, requiring that they renounce their Russian citizenship before entering our borders.  To be Russian should equate to being a leper in biblical times.  It should be an internationally respected principle: never trust a Russian.  Never let one into your life; you'll be sorry if you do. 

I'm not big on anathematizing peoples.  It is inimical to justice, and immoral in the bargain, but it is time for reciprocal sin in this case.  We have no choice really in that, to the extent that we deal with Russia, to that extent we are vulnerable to the amorality and lack of ethics that characterize Russia's behavior as a nation in the world.  And it is not as if these measures will be irrevocable.  This isn't just pejoration.  The Russian people can easily redeem themselves by showing some discretion when they go to their polls.  It has to be borne in mind that Vladimir Putin was elected...and reelected...and reelected.  That's an indication that the majority of Russians approve of his concuct, which means that Putin is a reflection of a national ethos, much the same way as was Donald Trump, who's administration nearly anathemized us.  I don't think of this course as punitive.  I think of it as necessary for our survival.  Consider the possibility that Russia decides to expand across a sea to our country.  The more powerful Russia is it that happens, the more difficult it becomes for us, America, to retain our sovereignty, and if we lose ours, how long can it be before the rest of the peoples of the world lose theirs?

Of course, all this can be viewed as hyperbole, but we at least have to ask ourselves if it is.  If we don't do something about Russia to discourage if from continuing its anti-social behavior, what can we really expect in the future.  As I've said before, it's time to give up on friendly persuasion.  It obviously won't work.  And as is apparent from past history, especially since the annexation of Crimea by Russia, half measures won't work.  Maybe our president is contemplating something like the isolation of Russia already, but just in case he isn't, we may have only two choices now.  One is world war III.  The other is to learn Russian.

Your friend,

Mike  

Dear America,

This Crimea...I mean Ukraine...business is beginning to get on my nerves.  It's serious, obviously, in that it portends armed conflict in which people will die, be displaced from their homes and homeland, and suffer profoundly in general.  But it bothers me that our diplomats, and even our president keep talking to Vladimir Putin and his henchmen about it.  As his annexation of Crimea demonstrated, he is an autocrat in every respect, and he's going to do what he is going to do.  So as to this vaunted diplomacy, what's the point.  And then of course there's the point that Ukraine doesn't seem very concerned about all this while American and European politicians obsessively wring their hands and predict dire consequences for everyone.  In my opinion, the way to approach all this once everyone has stated his position is the way you have to approach any bully.  You simply say, you do what you're going to do and we'll do what we're going to do, and then in this case, we should just back away and wait until something happens, if it ever does.

It seems much like the prehistory of World War II.  Great Britain sent its prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, to negotiate with Hitler, who was claiming his nation's right to annex part of the then-country of Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland.   It was a curled strip of land essentially surrounding Czechoslovakia on three sides, inhabited by people of primarily German ancestry.  It had been ceded to Czechoslovakia by treaty after the World War I re-delineation of borders, and there had been some contentiousness amongst the populace of the area ever since.  But be that all as it may, Hitler invoked the German concept of "Lebensraum" as a justification for seizing the Sudetenland, which negotiators led by Chamberlain had acceded to in treaty negotiations that took place in Munich shortly before the war started.  Of course, that history is somewhat more complicated than that, but the overall point is that Hitler was going to take the Sudetenland no matter what was negotiated before Munich, at Munich or after Munich.  Chamberlain came back from Munic with a document that Hitler had signed regaling the world with the claim that it constituted "peace for our time," which as it turns out, it was not.  By the way, FDR went along too.

So here we are with our president and diplomats supplicating for the withdrawal of the Russian force positioned to invade and annex Ukraine as it did Crimea...as Hitler did Sudetenland...and we're kidding ourselves into hoping that Putin will rethink if we just tell him that he's being very naughty.  It won't work.  Putin knows what we and the community of nations are capable of and what we will do.  He is either daunted by all that or he isn't.  There is no benefic purpose in continuing the discussion, which reveals only that it is we who are daunted, and sufficiently so that we have immersed ourselves, and thus staked our putative power on his answer.  I say, let him do what he is going to do, especially since Ukraine and its president seem to be taking Putin's saber rattling with a grain of salt.  We should be waiting to wade in until we are asked to, if then.  When Europe is involved in conflict will be time for us, under the aegis of NATO to participate in attempting to thwart Putin's acquisitive aspirations.  There is nothing to be done now other than to show a supplicating tendency of which he will only take advantage and by which he will only be emboldened. 

When I was going to law school, a professor said to a class I was in that the mark of a good lawyer was as much his understanding of when to stop talking as it was in what he said when he did talk.  It's time to stop talking.

Your friend,

Mike