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Trying to justify his aggression against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is accusing the West of expanding NATO, ignoring legitimate Russian security interests, of being manipulative, domineering and exploitative. He is upset that Russia is not treated with the deference befitting a great power. Despite lacking substance, coherence and rationality this reasoning has worked with the Russian people. Things are changing, however. Overconfident when the invasion began on February 24, 2022, Russia’s state media’s TV talking heads (“We’ll take Kiev in three days!”) now sound confused, perplexed and scared. The reason? ‘They are not scared of us anymore!’ Who is this ‘they’? The answer is the ‘collective West’.
Alas, the ‘collective West’ provided many reasons for Russia’s elite to believe Western democracies were afraid of a resurgent Russia. Moscow felt (and still does) that it could cheat, bully, intimidate the weak and terrorize them with impunity. This brazen attack on a defenceless state during Putin’s presidency was the result of Western fear and a mistaken belief in the Russian Army’s might. The fact is that a ‘hybrid war’ conducted by the Russian Federation against the West over the last 20 years did not attract an immediate and substantial response, thus inviting Russian escalation and setting the stage for the Ukraine outrage. Continuous insistence by the US that NATO countries increase their defense budgets was met with indignation. President Trump was accused of destroying NATO when all he did was ask — impolitely, it must be admitted — that his European allies pick up their share of the defense bill.
Thanks to the bravery and determination of the Ukrainians, this fear has largely been overcome. Western governments have realised the only way to deal with Moscow’s criminal regime is to inflict retaliatory damage commensurate with the harm caused. It should have been done in 2008, at the time of the unprovoked war against Georgia, or at the latest, in 2014 during the Crimea annexation. Hopefully, the liberal democracies have now ceased supporting its enemy with their passivity. To continue the same way would be akin to stepping on the garden rake, getting smacked hard in the face by the handle, and then repeating the exercise again and again.
The Russian Empire has long been seemingly determined to self-destruct. It was saved from the consequences of its own follies by an extraordinary confluence of good fortune, plus a lack of foresight and fear of unintended consequences in the West. Its survival was paid for by the immense suffering of Russia’s peoples amid the failed hopes of the rest of the civilised world. Sometimes it seems that the Almighty chose Russia to demonstrate how not to govern, how not to live and how not to communicate with the rest of the world. Consider this three-part timeline of the West saving Russia from itself.
1917 -1936: Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks managed to prevent the empire’s disintegration after the October Rrevolution and the civil war that followed. The West then helped Stalin to industrialise, creating a strong, well-armed anti-Western USSR. The human cost was horrendous, but who has ever cared about human suffering in Russia?
1941 -1945: After the initial period of hesitation at the beginning of Germany’s surprise Barbarossa invasion, Russians decided Hitler was no better than Stalin and united under the dictator they knew. The West again saved Russia, this time with its Lend-Lease program. After the war, it was only Stalin’s death and the deterrence of America’s much larger nuclear arsenal that prevented WWIII.
1989 – 1992: After the formal dissolution of the USSR, the Russian Federation emerged from the wreckage. This triggered the “phantom pain” an amputee feels, the lost limbs in this case being Russia’s vanished “greatness”. The Federation was kept together by the massive injections of Western investment, right up until the Ukraine invasion and the sanctions that followed. As soon as Russia is strong again a succession of wars follow and the anti-West rhetoric turned up to maximum volume.
This time, ideally, a Ukraine victory might actually succeed in breaking the vicious cycle.
THE Cold War ended not with the bang but a whimper. Nobody came to the USSR’s rescue – not a solitary Russian patriot with a Kalashnikov, not a single tank drove into a city square, no artillery was heard, no swashbuckling navy steamed forward. That is how 72 years of bluff and smoke and mirrors, of terror against its own people, idiotic economics and no less inane Marxist theories ended. The unique alliance of former communist functionaries, the security apparatus and organized crime then coalesced as the new ruling elite of what is in terms of land area the largest country on the planet.
Incredibly, the liberal democracies, contrary to their core interests, decided to be gentle and accommodating. Instead of completely disarming a well-known predator, we respected Russia’s sensibilities and indulged its bruised national pride. We in the West treated it as a genuine partner, even admitting it to the G7. Instead of encouraging the national aspirations and genuine security concerns of the long-subjugated former Soviet republics, we deferred to the inflated pretensions of a never-has-been superpower. Georgia and Ukraine were strongly advised not to seek NATO membership. The Budapest Memorandum (1994) was signed by the Russians, among others, guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for handing over to the Russian Federation its nuclear arsenal, third-largest in the world at the time. Once again, Western democracies saved their enemy only to then be mesmerised by its misperceived strength, by its bluff and brazen arrogance. And here we are today, not 20 years later and confronted once again with the prospect of a wider war, its threat underscored by Moscow’s insistence that nuclear weapons remain an option.
There are many parallels with 20th-century episodes, such as the Spanish Civil War of 1936 and the appeasement of Hitler as preludes to a WWII. Then, as Ukraine is now, Spain was a battleground between actors fighting it out for supremacy. The weakness and indecisiveness of the leaders of the West emboldened predators — Hitler and Stalin then, Putin today. History’s obvious relevance explains the extraordinary, unprecedented unity and generosity of diverse liberal democracies in extending help to Ukraine. This unity caught the aggressor by surprise. Instead of a weakened, fearful and avoidant West, as was the case during the Georgian assault in 2008 and 2014’s Crimea annexation, the Russian Federation had to contend with the newly awakened political will and resolve of the Free World. Make no mistake, this unity is no mere feel-good compassion for an underdog but a manifestation of hard-headed clarity in recognition of the possibility of a future and much larger clash. This is the perennial error dictators make: when a democracy is slow to anger it is mistaken for weakness.
We should be clear about the nature of the adversary, and by that I mean Russian society in its entirety. While Putin is both the architect and symbol of current Russian aggression, he is a mirror reflection of a significant part, if not a majority, of Russia. Certainly he is extremely popular amongst the people born during the USSR’s existence, but not so much amongst the elite, who realise the war in Ukraine is a trap and see Putin as responsible for bringing down the sanctions that are denying them the mega-rich trappings they regard as their right and due.
The majority of the Russian population is convinced, unthinkingly and rather naively, that the “collective West” is an enemy intent on destroying Russia because, to cite a common explanation, it is “envious of Russia’s spiritual strength and its riches”. There are other lame and unconvincing appraisals of the Western nations’ alleged malice, and together they maintain a grip on the national imagination. The last remaining Russian public opinion institute, the Levada Centre, consistently finds 83 per cent support for Putin.
One way to think of Russian society is through the lens of cult pathology. These traits are: fealty to the system while scorning outsiders, lack of external political feedback, fear, contempt and a severely limited understanding of how the world works beyond Russia’s borders. Add to this a baseless conviction that an outside enemy is always there, just waiting to pounce, and then add censorship, blind faith in a leader, an intolerance for opposing views, lack of capacity for critical thinking and a widespread political naivete. What is sometimes called the “mysterious Russian soul” is, in reality, a catch-all for a traumatised and isolated mentality shaped by an ever-present background paranoia. Among other traits, it means a high tolerance for violence and aggression, plus a widespread lack of empathy. It also means learned helplessness, lack of initiative and a disregard for boundaries and rules.
According to numerous observations by the Russian oppositional bloggers, as well as personal anecdotes of people I know and trust, the amount of anger in Russian is increasing exponentially. The elites know well that the possibility of these feelings reaching the stage where they erupt and confront them with losing systemic control is drawing closer. That civic explosion needed to be stymied with a distraction — a home-front safety valve, if you will — to redirect anger away from the real causes of Russian domestic failure and its perpetrators. This is, in my opinion, is one of the key reasons why Putin launched his “small victorious war” against a neighbour blithely assumed to be a military pushover.
And there is another factor in the war’s genesis — the fear of where the gradual decrease in Russia’s Slavic population will lead. The influx of the non-Slavic migrants, mostly Muslim, from the former Soviet republics is becoming a threat to Russia’s traditional ethnic identity. Some Russian towns are already critically short of the Russian men, who have been drafted and, according to intelligence estimates, killed in the tens of thousands. The nightmare of the present generation of Russian women having no prospect of building families of their own, known only too well after the WWII, looms large. Reincorporating and absorbing into Russia’s population Ukraine’s Slavic population might ameliorate this looming demographic catastrophe — or so the theory goes.
AFTER one and a half years of the baseless war on Ukraine, Russia has an astonishing number of private armed formations, more than forty of them, according to reports. Should things go bad, expect chaos as these factions fall out and fight each other in a repeat of the turf wars that marked the 90’s, when the spoils of the USSR’s collapse were up for grabs. The ensuing chaos — smootah in Russian — might well turn out to be spectacular in its lawlessness, self-destruction and human cost.
Another historical precedent also begs to be considered. When the last Czarist government felt imperiled by the possibility of a revolution it sought to use antisemitism as a safety valve. Similarly, today’s Russian government has sought to deflate the level of dissatisfaction within Russian society by demonizing Ukraine and “Nazi Ukrainians”. Astonishingly, according to the official Russian propaganda, Ukrainians now occupy the scapegoat spot assigned to Jews for 2000 years.
We are living through a painfully stark moment of truth. Our triumphalist, self-congratulation at winning the Cold War is over. The reality of future confrontation, the possibility of the WWIII, the first real clash of this war’s beginning, is upon us. With it comes the polarization of democracy versus autocracy, with resurgent China leading the charge. Autocracies and dictatorships are uniting. We should do the same.
It pains me to repeat this, but we, the people of the Free World, and our governments have emboldened our enemies to attain positions of strength from which they feel strong enough to attack us. The late Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky begged the US Congress not to permit trade, any trade at all, with the Soviet Union: “Your trade puts the handcuffs on our hands”. I can only ask you to mull Bukovsky’s words, while adding that the same wisdom should apply to trading and co-operating with the Russian Federation, Communist China, bizarre North Korea, fanatical Iran and similar actors. They will put handcuffs on all of us.
So, the key question: Will we step on the same garden rake again?
I’d like to express my gratitude to my friend , mentor and editor Dr Peter Arnold OAM, for his help with this essay.
Dr Michael Galak and his family came to Australia as refugees from the Soviet Union in 1978
NOTE:
Here is incomplete list of wars of aggression, not counting WWII, the USSR or its legal successor, the Russian Federation, have pursued:
1918 – 1920 1st Soviet – Finnish war
1918 –1920 Soviet – Estonian war
1919 -1920. Soviet – Lithuanian war
1921 – 1922 Soviet – Polish war
1921 -1922. 2nd Soviet – Finnish war
1929. Special Military Operation (SMO) Afghanistan
1930. SMO Afghanistan
1934. China operation
1936 – 1939. Spanish Civil War
1938 – 1939. Soviet – Japanese war
1939 Soviet invasion of Poland
1939 – 1940 3rd Soviet – Finnish war
1941 Invasion to Iran
1944 – 1956. Western Ukrainian war
1944 – 1956. Lithuanian war
1950 – 1953. Korean war
1956. Hungarian revolt
1957 – 1975 Vietnam war
1968 Czechoslovakia invasion
1975 – 1991 Angola war
1979 – 1989 Afghanistan invasion
1991 – 1993 Georgia/Abkhaz intervention
1992 Moldova/Transnistria intervention
1992 – 1997 Tadjikistan intervention
1994 – 1996. 1st Chechen war
1999 – 2000 2nd Chechen war
2008. Georgia war
2014. Crimea invasion
2015 Syria intervention
2018. Central African Republic intervention
2022 Ukraine war
Thank you Michael Galak.
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So refreshing to read the unvarnished truth. The truth in this article shines with integrity compared with what we read in the appeasing centre left mainstream media.
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Articles like this are what makes Quadrant such invaluable publication. They’re rare or non existent in the mainstream media.
When did Russia become an enemy of Australia? Sure missed that bit. Does playing American lackey for their wars make us an enemy of Russia? Sounds a bit silly.
And you said Mr Galak:
Vladimir Putin is accusing the West of expanding NATO, ignoring legitimate Russian security interests, of being manipulative, domineering and exploitative…..
All of which is undeniably true and the facts exist to prove it over and over again.
Australia has no need to make an enemy of Russia or of China for that matter. This US proxy war against Russia waged with Ukrainian bodies and blood is none of our business. We should stay out of it as we should have stayed out of Vietnam.
And while I am sure the author is sincere and even on occasion, factual, the reality is that disaffected ex-refugees rarely make good sources of reliable information. We saw that with Iraq, a war confected and created by disaffected Iraqis who had long ago fled, playing terrible games against their country with the Americans.
By the way shall we compare the list of Russian wars with American wars? Probably not because the Russians would look better.
Yes, rosross, I agree! If we follow Michael Galak’s reasoning, we should form a great “Coalition of the Willing” and effect “regime change” in Russia, China, and those others who are not like us; of course, the people of those countries will rise up in unity to embrace Western Democracy, like we have seen in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, etc. Paradoxically, Russia and China still uphold the traditional family and cultural values that Conservatives in the West mourn the loss of. Do we really want to see Red Square become Rainbow Square?
OBTW: regarding the squatter at the proposed Russian Embassy site in Canberra; he should put up an Aboriginal Flag, like with the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, which I believe is still squatting on Federal land!
In the late ’90’s I was a military air traffic control officer at a forward deployed air base in the Northern Territory. We were assigned a task of preparing a paper concerning the air assets required to provide a Combat Air Patrol to protect a national asset (a VLCC, or Very Large Crude Carrier) while it transited the Timor Sea to pass through the Torres Strait and thence down the East Coast via outside the Barrier Reef to Sydney. The risk window of opportunity was deemed as 72 hours. We decided that the minimum number of aircraft required overhead the VLCC at all times to meet any threat was 4. We based our assumptions on 1 hour outbound, one hour on task, 1 hour inbound and 1 hour of operational maneuvering. This meant that every aircraft on task required another 3 aircraft in support. It follows therefore that to task one aircraft for the duration of the threat required 72 aircraft in reserve and to task 4 aircraft required a train of just short of 300 airframes. This does not account for the pilot group, or the maintenance group or the resupply group or anything else which would have most definitely been required, e.g., air to air refuel, airborne radar, anti-radiation assets etc. One can poke holes in my numbers but the fact remains that at the time of writing we had 12 legacy FA-18’s at the airbase and a severe lack of stand-off air to air missile kits and what we did have were out of date and no match for that which the enemy? could have fielded. Now tell me please, Rosross, who could we call on to assist the defence of that national asset, a VLCC which, if destroyed would see Australia starve of fuel in a matter of days. And that is only one ship. Our so called defence force is puny and incapable of fielding the numbers required in the reality of a major conflict. Please re-configure your argument.
One important point made here is the unpalatable news ( we’d like to deny and ignore) of the support for the blatant aggressor’s war at home – even though that may be lessening to some extent in more recent times.
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However the support probably isn’t lessening due to new found moral qualms by the population but more likely over the lack of quick success and the mounting casualties which are getting harder to hide.
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There’s a tendency for even politicians on the right to say we have no argument with the populations in totalitarian states but only with their leaderships. It would be really good if that were completely the case but the statistic mentioned in this article over support for the war at home tends to at least show that’s a questionable proposition.
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It’s wise for policymakers to recognise this recent statistic as well as the unrelenting and long term indoctrination of people against the West over many years in totalitarian states.
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Its a very sad fact and one we’d all wish not to be true and one we’d all hope would change over time but nevertheless we should not be naive about it.
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Ignoring it can lead to an underestimation of a totalitarian regime’s determination to wage war against the Free World with the knowledge it will be able to engineer the support of its people. It can also lead to naive wishful thinking that the people in totalitarian states will eventually see the light and the threats towards the Free World will simply evaporate.
We in Australia are a very long way away from this war but unfortunately there are serious implications for the long term security of Australia in this war.
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We’re actually a very long way away from absolutely anything that goes on in Europe or the United States of America for example.
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But perhaps more importantly for our security – people in the United States and Europe are certainly well aware how very far away from them that we are.
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That has implications for us if ever we were to be threatened by a major power in our region.
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To think there’s absolutely no chance of Australia being threatened in our part of the world would be extremely naive. It would also be extremely naive to think we could handle such a threat on our own or with the support of other free countries in our region. We would certainly need the support of the US and probably Europe.
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So for us to proclaim ourselves as neutral and to be very careful not to provide help or even diplomatic support in anyway in this war effort would make it very easy for the United States and Europe to ignore our plight if we were threatened in the future.
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Messaging our neutrality in this war would set a powerful precedent for other countries to ignore us if we needed them. We would only have ourselves to blame if they ignored us in our time of need.
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Of course there’s also the very important moral imperative for a free world country to support other free world countries.
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And the totalitarian world would prefer that didn’t happen because it will be strengthened by dividing the unity of the Free World to resist totalitarian states.
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The United States is likely to play a key role in the continued freedom of the West and our continued freedom in Australia – hopefully just by its presence without the need for war. It’s well to remember there wouldn’t be a free world without the United States.
“Of course there’s also the very important moral imperative for a free world country to support other free world countries.
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And the totalitarian world would prefer that didn’t happen because it will be strengthened by dividing the unity of the Free World to resist totalitarian states.”
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So simple to understand and so true.
BO , your post is beyond naive . What “serious implications” are there that are worse than what our domestic leaders are doing to our country right now ?!! And your trust in Biden’s USA is laughable . The most corrupt , demented and nasty leader using Putin as the world’s designated villain is the tragedy of our time . I fear the Biden/Dem/Media regime far more than the Putin/Zelensky money pit , which is Europe’s problem , and not one cent of Australian treasure should bolster crass comedian Zelensky’s coffers .
Thanks, Michael, for this take on the Russian war in Ukraine. I, too, am a child of refugees, except my parents escaped the USSR as a result of WWII, my father having deserted the Red Army (not much choice, being unavoidably left behind the front during the Nazi blitzkrieg onto Stalingrad), while my mother was taken as a 17-year-old slave from Kiev in 1941, to work in German industry. Your analysis, and its conclusions, fit entirely with all I’ve learnt over the years, from my parents, the relatives they left behind, and my own observations while travelling through Russia (being able to talk privately, in their language, with locals).
There’s just one point I feel needs explanation: “the Levada Centre, consistently finds 83 per cent support for Putin”. Would you truly expect a different result? I’m surprised it’s not higher! You’d be well aware why such polls/surveys are completely misleading. The endemic paranoia, and knowledge that your views will definitely not be confidentially treated, prevent people from expressing their true beliefs; far safer to stay well within the herd, and keep your head low, while being fully aware that the system is rotten. People learnt a long time ago that their views and desires meant nothing to the autocracy, so why attract unnecessary trouble to yourself?
Further, throughout Siberia, I gained the impression that the overlords in Moscow were hated, seen purely as thieves of all its extensive natural resources, and a dumping ground for criminals and political prisoners, while giving nothing back in return. It truly is like a third-world country. I’ve read elsewhere that China is starting to look more closely at contested territory in Siberia, even giving places like Vladivostok their original Chinese names. And there’s a lot of two-way travel and trade across that long border — it’s possible that many local Russians might prefer Chinese business and administration! Could Xi Jing Pin be lining up for a territorial grab there, rather than Taiwan, while the Russian army is preoccupied with Ukraine?
Whatever, it’s so sad that the poor Russian people have to go through all this idiocy yet again, a very heavy price to pay for allowing a sociopathic kleptocrat to take over. I can’t see any way out for them except through yet another civil war — and I suspect many Russian citizens feel the same way, although they wouldn’t dare say this openly.
I’m sorry, rosross, but your views on this matter truly baffle me. And I disagree with your generalisation that “disaffected ex-refugees rarely make good sources of reliable information”. Some are in a far better position than local “expert” commentators to understand complex situations, especially given their intimate appreciation of regional cultures and history, and their ongoing contact with relatives and friends left behind.
For Australia to adopt a myopically naive isolationist policy would be reckless in the extreme. Surely you know a little of Ukraine’s history (if not, I’d highly recommend Serhii Plokhy’s The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, possibly the most concise account of this very complex subject). Putin’s war defies morality, decency, commonsense, history and international law; the behaviour of his military forces is insanely criminal. If the Western world stood by impotently, what messages would that convey, not only to Putin’s gang, but to China? Were we to declare this war was of no interest to us, none of our business, why should anyone else bother should Xi Jinping decide Australia needed to be taught a lesson? In his view, we are a genocidal, racist country, oppressing Chinese-language speakers, and sitting greedily on natural resources desperately needed by the developing world, of which China just happens to be the biggest and most populous nation. When the PLA comes marching down our streets, will you be putting on a hot cuppa for them, and going out waving a welcoming red flag? Or will you be praying and hoping that someone else might come to our aid?
Sure, our involvement in Viet Nam, and Iraq, were poorly conceived (and in my view, unjustifiable and stupid), but past mistakes should not restrict today’s actions; this current war is something different. All the nations of Western Europe certainly see the potential dangers of doing nothing – and not just to their own interests, but more widely. I’m extremely grateful that the USA can still keep its act together on this – although we don’t know for how much longer, which is a big worry.
@pmprociv,
My views on the matter come from reading the historical records, along with a good understanding of Russian history and a lot of time spent in Russia stirred well with a heavy dash of common sense and reason.
You said: And I disagree with your generalisation that “disaffected ex-refugees rarely make good sources of reliable information”.
Iraq was a classic example of why disaffected refugees are not to be trusted. History is littered with such convenient mistakes. Logic decrees that those who feel forced to abandon their country, for whatever reason, are likely to be highly emotional about issues which relate to their country and emotional diminishes the capacity for reason. I suspect that also, as would be the case with Russia, that the refugees are even more enraged when the outcomes they feared do not come to pass and their flight, was in essence for nothing. Human nature is such we never like to be wrong. Spread that on the sandwich of grief at rejecting and losing one’s native country and anger increases. Anger is not conducive to objectivity.
You said: Some are in a far better position than local “expert” commentators to understand complex situations, especially given their intimate appreciation of regional cultures and history, and their ongoing contact with relatives and friends left behind.
That is certainly possible but I doubt it is common. Those who flee and decades later, having made a good life for themselves in another country are often more conflicted and filled with hate. Ongoing contact with relatives and friends will always be its own torment, but again, hardly a factual or objective source.
You said: For Australia to adopt a myopically naive isolationist policy would be reckless in the extreme.
Myopic is a subjective assessment. And Isolationism has worked very well for the Swiss. Russia and Ukraine are irrelevant to Australia and its people and we have long had the view that migrants should their their hatreds behind.
Yes, I do know a bit about Ukraine’s history, ancient and modern and I know a lot about Russia’s history. They are the same people historically and the major mistakes were made, not surprisingly, when the Soviet Union fell.
Like many Australians I have friends with Ukrainian connections and they are, like Serbs and Croats, in my experience, great haters. One friend who had a Russian father and Ukrainian mother is more pragmatic and sensible but he would have to be.
You said:Putin’s war defies morality, decency, commonsense, history and international law; the behaviour of his military forces is insanely criminal.
The proof for your claim does not exist. The facts make it very clear that this is a US proxy war against Russia, with the long-stated goals of breaking Russia into pieces, with the help of Nato and the foolish Ukrainians. Is it moral for a nation threatened by others to seek to defend itself? I think it is. And under international law and UN regulations, Russia is more than entitled to go to the aid of ethnic Russians in Donbas and elsewhere, who have been murderously attacked by the Ukrainian Government for nearly a decade.
As to the behaviour of the Russian forces being insanely criminal, many military experts, including American, have consistently commented on the fact the Russians sought to avoid civilian casualties. The fact Russia and Ukraine are the same people with a history of intermarriage is no doubt the reason why the Russians did not do shock and awe in Ukraine as the Americans did in Iraq. They should have. Wiping out power and water within days as the US did in Iraq, would have shortened this war and lessened the carnage.
You said: If the Western world stood by impotently, what messages would that convey, not only to Putin’s gang, but to China?
Since this war was created by the Western world and is a proxy war waged by the Western world, the US and its craven lackeys, your question makes no sense.
Simple logic says if China or Russia had done in Mexico or Canada what the US/Nato has done, over decades in Ukraine, the Americans would do what the Russians have done. Only hypocrisy would say otherwise. This war did not need to happen. The Americans instructed their stooge, Zelensky to knock back every peace overture from Russia. To be fair, the Ukrainian neo-Nazis also told Zelensky they would kill him if he negotiated with the Russians. A rock and a hard place scenario.
You said: Were we to declare this war was of no interest to us, none of our business, why should anyone else bother should Xi Jinping decide Australia needed to be taught a lesson?
Conflating the war in Ukraine with an imagined war with China does not work. However the Americans have also been busy stirring the pot in Taiwan, more of their deadly ‘colour revolutions,’ and we can only hope the Chinese are as pragmatic as they appear to be.
The irony is the Chinese and Russians want the same thing, which is what the US wants and which fuels its hegemonic obsession – TRADE, wealth, economic stability. If the US had encouraged Russia to join Europe this war would never have happened. Instead with the help of the craven Europeans, it set out to ring Russia with military bases, ignoring everything the Russians said.
Some of us remember the hysteria from the Americans when Russia tried to set up a military base in Cuba. And yet, the Americans in their stupidity, thought they could do even worse to Russia, directly on its borders. The hypocrisy is sickening.
You said: In his view, we are a genocidal, racist country, oppressing Chinese-language speakers, and sitting greedily on natural resources desperately needed by the developing world, of which China just happens to be the biggest and most populous nation.
You need to read more widely and more deeply and stay away from mainstream media. Australia has been stupid fomenting and promoting a war scenario. There are too many stupid people to believe such things and that creates anger toward Australians with Chinese ancestry.
You said: When the PLA comes marching down our streets, will you be putting on a hot cuppa for them, and going out waving a welcoming red flag?
I presume PLA refers to the Palestinian Resistance. I will applaud when they get their freedom from the colonial regime which occupies their country, in the same way I will be cheering West Papua when they are released from colonial occupation.
You said: Or will you be praying and hoping that someone else might come to our aid?
Our alliance with the US is dangerous and we have become nothing more than a military base for them which, if they start a war with China means the bombs will be dropping here. Blame the US, not China but they don’t care as long as bombs don’t drop on Americans. They would fight China to the last Australian just as they want to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.
You said: All the nations of Western Europe certainly see the potential dangers of doing nothing – and not just to their own interests, but more widely.
Actually they don’t. A lot just hate the Americans even more for starting this war in their backyard. And they loathe the Americans for bombing Nordstream. They will hate them even more when Winter returns.
You said: I’m extremely grateful that the USA can still keep its act together on this – although we don’t know for how much longer, which is a big worry.
The latest I have read is the Americans are already changing their language and caving in on Ukraine. Good. The sooner a peace agreement can be reached with Russia the sooner the useless bloodshed ends.
On this issue, pmprociv you are highly subjective and while I can have compassion for your invested passion, I also know such passion creates war, death and suffering. The IRA could never have carried out the slaughters it did if Irish-Americans, sitting safely far away, had not funded them to do it. The same applies to those who fund Israel’s violent occupation of Palestine and those who promote this war in Ukraine.
@pmprociv,
To put it more concisely, my views are sourced in applying principles of justice, rule of law, human rights, democracy and common human decency, seeking always to understand the history and realities of any situation.
There is no such thing as good and bad and everyone has within themselves a capacity for evil. When we deny that we encourage tyranny. War is tragedy for all involved and reading military history it soon becomes clear that it is never as simple as the propagandists claim. The First and Second World Wars were not simply the fault of Germany and many of the claims made against Hitler are not substantiated by the facts.
Without understanding why wars happen we will never be able to prevent them. And that means, it takes two to tango and two or more to create a war. The Ukrainians are not innocent victims in this and Russia is not without blame. However, the blame must also be distributed to the meddling Americans and their European lackeys.
I do understand why people deny the historical facts and realities of such situations but it is not the best way to seek resolution to problems we face in this world. Nor does it alleviate the human capacity for war.
Thanks for your most detailed response, rosross. Wow! At least you lay all your ideological cards out on the table, face up. And I’d say you keep well up with all your favourite conspiratorial websites. From the context, it should have been clear that my PLA referred to the People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest, rather than any rabid Palestinian mob.
There’s no point in my engaging with all your counter-arguments, for our worldviews drift far apart, to opposite poles, on this subject. There’s just one needing a response: “And Isolationism has worked very well for the Swiss.” I’m surprised, given your intelligence, and knowledge of history and geography, that you could possibly compare Switzerland with Australia. One is mountainous, with no natural resources to speak of, jammed in amongst a bunch of richer, agriculturally productive, once warlike nations, and has contrived to become the world’s banker. The other is an isolated, thinly settled continent saturated with mineral resources, as well as agricultural wealth and potential, but stupid political leaders and economists.
Back to the topic: the latest developments in Russia (today being 25th June, 2023), with Moscow’s streets being barricaded against a possible Wagner Group invasion, will bear out that one of us is clearly wrong. It’s the beginning of the civil war that I predicted as soon as Putin’s invasion of Ukraine stalled. But I couldn’t have guessed that it would have been precipitated by Putin’s rottweiler, Prigozhin, simply assuming that army chief Gerasimov might be the first to break. Prigozhin has publicly labelled Putin a criminal, a liar, a thief, whose excuses for the war were all baseless, that NATO has never been a threat to Russia. Who’d have ever thought? The oligarchs, many with their own private armies, now have no choice but to take sides, quickly, in the coming civil war — in which there will be only one winner, and, as always, it sure won’t be the Russian people. As they say in Russia, nothing is real, while everything is possible.
No doubt Putin apologists, maybe even the great Mearsheimer himself, will be blaming this on NATO, and the CIA (who can’t even get Trump locked up, with FBI help). Why, maybe Prigozhin has done a deal with Zelenskiy? Or Biden? Regardless, I reckon Xi Jinping is starting to salivate, enticed by prime little bits of Siberia along China’s borders. We sure live in interesting times — who’d want to be dead right now?
Why poke the bear of prolixity?
Put with admirable concision.
It saddens me to say that in the last year I have not read a single Quadrant article on the Special Military Operation that wasn’t painted blue and yellow. This article is no different in that regard.
MarkGrig63, may suggest you read some commentary from a disillusioned Russian diplomat?
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/sources-russia-misconduct-boris-bondarev
I’m so relieved that Quadrant has had the guts to defend the truth, which for me is its major role. The arguments in this case are clear-cut, to anyone familiar with history; you’d have to be ideologically strait-jacketed, and/or totally divorced from reality, to not see this.
Seriously?..April fools day early?
Would the US allow Russian war games/military presence on their Canadian or Mexican border.????
Yet Russia is supposed to with these supplied asinine MSM talking points…which are mainly directed at the old USSR..not Russia..but why bother with facts right.
The date chronology missed the 2014 Maidan Coup instigated by the US.
Missed the ‘Nyet Means Nyet’
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1494809960286507009?lang=en
Missed the Nazi`s fighting for the US..sorry Ukraine.
https://mate.substack.com/p/siding-with-ukraines-far-right-us?s=r
Missed the Donbass slaughter by Ukraine.
Missed the war games the US/NATO do on Russias border.
https://cliscep.com/2022/05/10/putin-the-record-straight/
Missed the broken promises the US made to Russia that they would not ask for then Ukraine to join NATO
Here are the phone taps for the replacement the Americans wanted.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSxaa-67yGM#t=89
Good bye..I am out..