In 1994, when Russia grabbed Crimea and started its war in Donbas, the USA under Obama did practically nothing. It gave Ukraine some aid that didn't include weapons, implemented some toothless sanctions, and that was it.
In 2022, when Russia started its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the USA under Biden did something. It helped with money and weapons. But the help was always too little and too late to ensure a victory over Russia, and came with a string attached: not to be used for attacks on Russian soil. It was later revealed, in William Arkin's 2023 Newsweek article Exclusive: The CIA's Blind Spot about the Ukraine War, that Biden's officials secretly made a deal with Putin to prevent Ukraine from "any actions that might threaten Russia itself", and in exchange, Putin wouldn't "escalate the war beyond Ukraine". In other words, the USA, while doing lip service to the heroic struggle of the Ukrainians, in fact bound their hands and offered them to Putin for extermination.
Moreover, as the German newspapre Bild reported, the Biden administration, by not delivering enough aid, sought to force Ukrainian leadership to negotiate with Russia and surrender some territories, rewarding Putin's aggression and land grab: "The U.S. and Germany allegedly hope to nudge Ukraine to negotiate with Russia through a carefully targeted scope of arms deliveries... Kyiv's two leading military donors... plan to provide the exact quantity and quality of arms to ensure that Ukraine can hold the front and have a strong negotiating position, but not enough to fully liberate its territory."
In fact, things have become worse. As a result of the policy of the Republican Party, which has by now become strongly pro-Russian, US aid to Ukraine stopped altogether about half a year ago.
Ordinary Americans, as far as I can see, sympathize with Ukraine but not enough to want their tax money used to rescue it. They think that it is too bad that Russia has attacked Ukraine but the USA should not send more aid because it hasn't enough money for its own citizens. In addition, they don't want "escalation", i.e. nuclear war. In their minds, angering Putin is "escalation" while the full destruction of Ukraine isn't.
What they don't know, or rather don't want to know, is that the USA has an obligation to defend Ukraine. It is called the Budapest Memorandum and it was signed thirty years ago, in 1994. According to it, Ukraine would surrender its nuclear arsenal (third largest in the world) to Russia. In return, Russia, the USA (under Clinton) and the UK would "respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty in the existing borders". Ukraine, which was a newly independent country by this time, perceived the promise of the three superpowers as a guarantee, while they perceived it as empty words.
Recently, Clinton expressed regrets about persuading Ukraine to denuclearize: “I feel a personal stake because I got them (Ukraine) to agree to give up their nuclear weapons. And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons.” He is right. Ukraine is being destroyed and hundreds of thousands of valiant Ukrainians have already been murdered because the USA tricked and betrayed it with a false promise.
The Budapest Memorandum is little known among Americans. They don't know about it because they don't want to. When I write about it in comments to Yahoo!News articles, I get multiple downvotes. The great American nation which I admired is no more. Today's America is full of people who lack the compassion to sympathize with an innocent nation subjected to a genocide, lack the sense to realize that Putin will wage World War III unless stopped in Ukraine, lack the honor to keep their country's pledge, and lack the courage to stand up to a rogue nuclear power. In addition, despite living in the strongest economy in the world, they somehow cannot make a decent earning, and are sure that this is because the USA gives too much aid to Ukraine.
I don't say that such heartless, mindless, greedy, whiny, pathetic losers are all present-day Americans, or even the majority of them. But it is an undeniable fact is that their proportion is large enough to shape the present American policy.
America is done for. It has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. But we mustn't allow its victim, Ukraine, to be dragged down and perish.
No comments:
Post a Comment