For the best of all possible reasons, our side always feels it has to expand and dominate and promote its culture and democracy to Russia and China

For the best of all possible reasons, our side always feels it has to expand and dominate and promote its culture and democracy to, Russia and China, in particular!

Four regions of Ukraine annexed by Russia, this week (end Sept 2022).

All my life I considered Ukraine as being part of the USSR and had more in common with Moscow than Washington, London or Paris.  Especially, when Crimea was given to Ukraine by Kruschev in 1954, I think it was, when I was 6 years of age.

MOST UNFORTUNATE!

Our foolish crowing over winning the Cold War in 1991 when it was Gorbachev who magnanimously initiated its ending;

our failure to credit the Russian submarine commander who chose not to fire his nuclear missiles when he was being depth charged by the USAF in the 1962 Cuban missile crisis;

our failure to disband NATO when the Warsaw Pact disbanded;

our promotion to Moscow of the Chicago Boys and their right-wing, trickle down, the rich first and last, economics;

our warm embrace of the extremely wealthy Russian oligarchs to London;

yet, our failure to be generous, open and friendly with Russia after Yeltsin, when Putin came along;

our failure to welcome his offer of help after 9/11, 2001;

or to understand his strong right-wing, nationalistic and patriotic Russian feelings;

the idiocy of being unable to get into the mind of Putin in order to maintain good relations with him, when things had started out so promisingly;

the sheer stupidity of President Bush, in April 2008 in Bucharest, Romania in persuading his allies to open the door for both Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, despite Putin's disgust ("an open-ended promise of membership one day ... Putin made his displeasure plain" - 'The World Tonight', Radio 4 on 29.11.22);

our view that conceding anything to Putin was wicked appeasement, so that our sphere of influence, our NATO and military exercises and nukes had to come right up to the Russian border;

our NATO "was founded in 1949 as a counterweight to the Soviet Union" and "any state in the alliance is effectively under US protection" but it led to the Warsaw Pact being formed in 1955 to counterbalance NATO but dissolved in 1991 after our mighty Cold War victory;

our subsequent subsuming of the former Warsaw Pact members into NATO;

our being shamelessly unapologetic (not even regretful) at our side overthrowing their fairly elected pro Russian president that initiated the disastrous war in February 2014 that ratcheted up a gear or two, eight years later - this year.

All this has contributed to the tragedy of the West siding with Ukraine and funding its war and training its troops, when it was not a member of NATO and, when we had not made it clear to Putrid that this is what we would do if he invaded Ukraine;

If I lived in one of the four regions annexed, I would not care a toss whether Zelensky or Putin ruled over me.  I would simply want my friends, my family, and myself to stay alive and earn a liveable income/pension to the natural end of my days.

The scale of the horror, the fear, the killings and destruction over where a national boundary line should be drawn on a map.  It is just not worth it, in my opinion.  But how we humans love to hate and kill one another to make a point - or a boundary line.  Our death wish to make us one of the most short-lived species in the history of the planet!!

Tim Weller    1 October 2022 (updated 30 Nov 2022)

I suppose this does, rather obviously, display my thoroughly jaundiced and agnostic and sceptical and dissident views!