Another Despot Raises His Ugly Head In Europe, The World Sees Deja Vu …

The nation of Ukraine finds itself in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of hav­ing a pow­er­ful ene­my almost encir­cling a large par­ty of its bor­der and anoth­er more pow­er­ful but friend­ly alliance to its flank of which it is not a member.
One expert argues that if you think of Ukraine as a clock, Russia encir­cles Ukraine from 10 through 7.

This leaves only a small por­tion of Ukraine’s bor­der between 7 & 10 that has friend­ly neigh­bors, tak­ing into account that Belarus is a hos­tile pow­er to Ukraine that has allowed Russia to launch aggres­sion against Ukraine from its borders.

So here is Ukraine in a sort of no-mans-land, not a part of the old sovi­et empire any longer but not a mem­ber of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO).
Many peo­ple have asked, (a) why is America send­ing troops to east­ern Europe? The United States has com­mit­ments as a mem­ber of NATO and to arti­cle five of the NATO char­ter, known as the “com­mit­ment clause.” Within this clause, every mem­ber of NATO agrees that it will con­sid­er an armed attack against any mem­ber state, whether in Europe or North America, as an attack against all 30 mem­bers of the organization.
Additionally, the United States is the most pow­er­ful nation on the plan­et; despite its flaws, America has always stepped up to the plate in defense of weak­er nations in dis­tress and defense of Democracy.

America’s lead­er­ship after world war 11 cre­at­ed the United Nations, NATO, the International Criminal court in the Hague, which has large­ly kept the peace since the end of the last world war in 1945.
(b) Why does­n’t the United States insti­tute a no-fly zone over Ukraine? A no-fly zone requires sig­nif­i­cant resources and man­pow­er; how­ev­er, a no-fly over Ukraine would also mean American pilots fly­ing sor­ties con­tin­u­al­ly over a nation larg­er than Texas.
Where would the Russian air­force be? It would not allow anoth­er nation’s planes to be over its troops on the ground and so what we would have in quick time is a shoot­ing war between American and NATO forces with a pow­er­ful nuclear-armed nation that has a sociopath for its leader.

Vladimir Putin wants a buffer between him­self and NATO forces; there is no deny­ing that. A look at the map above bears out Russia’s inse­cu­ri­ty at the prospect of Ukraine becom­ing a NATO mem­ber. (NATO) mem­ber states in blue would mean NATO on Russias’ bor­der should Ukraine become a mem­ber of the west­ern alliance.
Russia’s annex­a­tion of Crimea and its incur­sion into Georgia, as well as its sup­port for the break­away regions with­in Ukraine, demon­strates (a) Vladimir Putin’s desire to expand Russia’s bor­ders west­ward or to pre­vent NATO from out­flank­ing Russia.
In Fairness, Putin talks about the west­’s annu­al war games on his bor­ders, some­thing the United States would not tol­er­ate if Russia did the same.
It appears, how­ev­er, that Vladimir Putin’s larg­er ambi­tions are larg­er than mere­ly top­pling the elect­ed gov­ern­ment in Kyiv and installing his own pup­pet régime like the one he has in Belarus.
Step by step, Putin wants to redraw the old Soviet-era bor­ders in east­ern Europe. He con­stant­ly laments what he char­ac­ter­ized as the weak­ness that allowed for the fall of the Soviet Union in the 80s.

On March 18^th, 2014, Vladimir Putin annexed the Republic of Crimea and the fed­er­al city of Sevastopol. Following the annex­a­tion, Putin imme­di­ate­ly esca­lat­ed his mil­i­tary pres­ence on the penin­su­la and lever­aged nuclear threats to solid­i­fy the new sta­tus quo on the ground.
Before send­ing his forces into Ukraine, Putin for­mal­ly rec­og­nized the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and direct­ed the Russian Defense Ministry to deploy troops in those regions to car­ry out “peace­keep­ing functions.”Putin claimed in a ram­bling speech that the Nation of Ukraine was a Russian cre­ation. On February 24^th, Vladimir Putin fol­lowed up by order­ing a bru­tal assault on the demo­c­ra­t­ic nation of Ukraine. He also warned that any­one who tried to stop him would be swift­ly dealt with in ways nev­er before seen in his­to­ry. -(Basically, again lever­ag­ing the use of nuclear weapons).
Notice the hyper­bole in the lat­ter state­ment- where have we heard that ver­nac­u­lar before?

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.