On Secretary Kerry's Threats to Russia Over The Crimea

The Ukraine was Russia’s breadbasket for centuries. In a cold northern country the farm belt is an important area. It is difficult to survive on whale blubber and vodka alone. Europeans since the dark ages have nevertheless sought hostile takeover of the Ukraine and periodically have annexed it through war. The Ukraine is still a vast productive farming region of Europe and is viewed favorably by nations as remote as Sweden. In fact if Russian power were rolled back further Sweden might look to take up the work of King Carl Gustav in taking lands held by Russia.


That king fled to the Crimea eventually and was arrested. Sect. Kerry of the U.S.A. is making threats and imprecations such that Russia should have no claim upon the Ukraine or even the Crimea; a city built not with rock and roll but with Russians lest sanctions and international isolation ensue. Taking the Crimea away from Russia is like taking New Orleans and Pass a Loutre away from the U.S.A. Russia's warm water port has always been a national security requisite for that nation-one Secretary Kerry seems to want to castrate.

http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/03/222720.htm

On March 1 Secretary Kerry said; "The United States condemns the Russian Federation's invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory, and its violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity in full contravention of Russia’s obligations under the UN Charter, the Helsinki Final Act, its 1997 military basing agreement with Ukraine, and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. This action is a threat to the peace and security of Ukraine, and the wider region.

I spoke with President Turchynov this morning to assure him he had the strong support of the United States and commend the new government for showing the utmost restraint in the face of the clear and present danger to the integrity of their state, and the assaults on their sovereignty. We also urge that the Government of Ukraine continue to make clear, as it has from throughout this crisis, its commitment to protect the rights of all Ukrainians and uphold its international obligations."


It should be noted that after the dissolution of the Soviet Union the Russian Government was tentative and disoriented. Agreements conceded by it at that time were made with no small element of coercion and might be compared to distressed sales of property at bargain basement prices. The United States was the large power enacting the coercion then and now and the U.N. would be wise to employ recalcitrance about being sycophants for causes with dubious morality. An insecure Russia is not in the security interests of the west or the east.

President Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union could trust President Ronald Reagan. When Reagan went to Berlin and said ‘President Gorbachev, tear down this wall’ Gorbachev had no worry that N.A.T.O. under Reagan would invade. Peace would break out with Russian troop withdrawals by Dec. 1989 from East Germany en mass. As I mentioned to a fellow passenger on a train to Berlin in Nov. 1987 what I guessed would happen if the Soviet Union broke apart; an economic centrifugal force cut off from the center would fling the peripheral nations into a myriad of individually independent entities, peacefully more or less. There is a difference between nations of the former Soviet Union occupied during World War Two in fighting against the Nazis and those nations that were formerly part of the Soviet Union and Russia before. The former plainly have a right to self determination while the latter have a closer relationship to the new Russia emerging from the wreckage of the old government. Would America allow the states to go their own way of they want or even to have their own moral choices such as limiting marriage to heterosexual reproduction support criteria?

 

Maintaining peace and a non-carpet bagging principle of non-aggression by the more stable west was an element of Reagan’s policy yet with time following U.S. leadership has reverted gradually to a more typical human organizational footing of opportunistic economic predation.

 

Secretary of State Kerry’s bluster about Russian troops ‘invading’ the Crimea is a wrong tone and bad paradigm. Europe needs peace, prosperity and ecospheric recovery with full employment as does Russia. Even of Russia allows the Ukraine to be independent with good will, recovering from the damage done by the Soviet Union and its break up is challenging to Russia and will continue. The U.S. Government seems to have no competence in Russian history at all and is as diplomatically as a Hatfield arbitrator of the Hatsfields and McCoy conflicts.

 

If the United States had a weak, corrupt communist government that in breaking up gave Florida to Cuba would it be wrong or invasive for a rest\to health new U.S. Government to send troops to Florida at the request of t5he people that state who formerly had some ties to America as incredible as that seems? Lawyers in the Executive branch should not act as petty, shyster legalists arguing for hegemony over foreign nations in a two-dimensional approach to a three dimensional world. Reagan didn’t do so and brought peace and prosperity. Spoilt follow-up leadership has brought war, 17 trillion dollars of debt and excess tax cuts and deregulation to the U.S.A. No amount of legal quackery changes the reality of things for-themselves.

 

What is the actual foundation of international law besides power? The United States as the present international 800 pound guerilla was said to have used the Ukraine as a site for extraordinary rendition and torture interrogation of captives in the war against terrorism. The United States has violated international law whenever if felt it useful to do so. International law exists between consenting nations and powerless nations subject to pressure and besides that its force de majeure. The United States should help the Ukraine and Russia to be good friends and neighbors with good words and good offices-it ought to be easy, instead of a promoter of conflict and the possible shedding of blood. Even U.S. security interests would be adversely impacted by seeking to isolate and impose sanctions on Russia. One feels that intelligent leadership is lacking in Washington D.C.

 One also wonders if Russia had more time to develop a free market economy and was more prosperous if the Ukraine wouldn’t prefer a free trade deal with Russia rather than the E.U.?

 

In 1302 Pope Boniface VIII claimed hierocratic power to appoint all temporal political leaders such as the Emperor of the Holy Roman Emperor in a papal bull named Unam Sanctam. In 1324 Marsilius of Padua published a brilliant treatise named Defensor Pacis/Defendor of the Peace wherein he wrote that the citizens of a state-universitis civium and the people of faith-universitis fideum are twin sources of political and ecclesiastical power. Power flows from the bottom up-unfortunately as does money these days rather than the top down. Leaders are to be servants of the people. Jesus Christ was the perfect example of that. Bureaucrats ought to be ready to throw themselves into a pothole to smooth out the path of the truck of commerce instead of taxing it or outsourcing it’s ownership to global networks of concentrated wealth. When U.S. political leadership fails to serve the people well from the bottom up and instead serves financial flummery for the rich it gets into maladroit positions harmful to U.S. national interests. One thinks they are incapable of conflict resolution and progress satisfactory to even simple friends and neighbor issues such as in the Ukraine. One wonders how many agents provocateurs are engaged in puffing up the crisis for the benefit of unknown powers.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/kerry-ukraine-world-calls-calm-crimea-n42601