The Ukraine War

 

The Ukraine war was and is preventable tragedy. President Biden recently reiterated his point of view at his last annual U.N. appearance in a speech declaring resistance to aggression that should never end without victory. He totally believes his own rhetoric founded in ignorance and would recommend war until the logical nuclear conclusion occurred.

The Crimea is Russia’s Florida. Russia would never give it up without a fight. The Crimea is where Muscovites have gone for winter vacations, and internal exiles and politicians have gone to when they could not be in Moscow if possible. The Crimea is so much better than Siberia or the Archipelago with places like the Kolyma Transit Camp where bodies were stacked like cordwood according to Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago II I believe it was. When President Gorbachev was arrested, it was at Yuri Andropov’s Crimean winter home.

It is amusing to reflect on deep historical currents to understand the circumstances of conflicts at a deeper level than is presented by ignorant politicians that never took a single course in Russian history in college and amplified by the broadcast media. In such reflections technical accuracy is not required so long as the approximations are themselves true. When a human reflect on a diverse array of historical events from different periods that acted together to bring certain events to occur, it is comparable to the work of a geographer in considering a variety of streams and weather events that could culminate in a rise in the level of a particular river that reached flood stage. If the geographer or historian has a good knowledge of the material, events, nations, streams, terrain and history in order to understand the major event (such as the Ukraine-Russia War) that is far more important, or valuable that knowing the names accurately for each hill or stream of the complete compresence of history. Understanding why Russia fights to retake as much of the Ukraine as it can is important for exercising rational political awareness of contemporary history. As Russians fight to stuff its disemboweled guts of Ukraine back into the body cavity of Russia that President Clinton and N.A.T.O. hyenas tore through the soft underbelly of Russia to spill- a post-birth abortion of peace after the end of the Cold War as it were, Western leaders fail to comprehend the harm their ignorance has wrought upon the world. Ignorance such as is evident in the Biden-Harris viewpoint of history lead step by step, inch by inch inexorably to military inflation unto nuclear war.

In times past religion was much more influential on political leaders than now. In that respect President Biden was something of a throwback as he was apparently deeply influenced by his papal allegiance as witnessed when he put his head on that of the Pope during a 2024 visit to the Vatican in Rome. Religious affiliation by secular leaders is not necessarily good or bad; that determination is contingent upon the position in the river of history it occupies and who is traveling downstream. In the case of papal allegiance one historical fact is that the papacy had a schism with Orthodox Christian lasting more than a thousand years. The Papacy was the Church of the west until the protestant reformation and the Orthodox Church was that of the east.

The Catholic Church did not willingly relinquish its power to dominate Christendom. When the capitol of the Roman Empire moved east with Constantine to his eponymous city the western church diminished and Rome was overrun by Goths and Vandals. The papacy became subject to the politics of the emerging European savages that became Christian and civilized in part with education and coordination provided by the Church. East and West experienced a political schism as well as Constantinople remained independent and unconquered until one of the crusades captured and sacked the city on its way to the Middle East.

While the Byzantine Empire withered over centuries of attacks by Muslims until being conquered in the 15^th century by Osmanlis and the Ottoman Empire formed to attack Europe and morphed into present day Turkey, Europe rose to world power. Yet before the fall of Constantinople Russia received a mission from an Orthodox prelate named Cyril who invented the Cyrillic alphabet for the Rus while developing the Orthodox faith of Russian Christians that continues to this day. Because of the Cold War and the rise of Soviet Communism to repress Russians and the Orthodox true reconciliation of East and Western Europe never fully occurred. The present Ukraine was is also a battle for the borderlands- the middle ground between competing Christian sects.

Because of its middle location the Ukraine had a synthetic church; the Uniate, part Romanist and part Orthodox. That church flipped to entirely western affiliation at the start of the present phase of the war because of political pressure as it was located in Western occupied Ukraine. As Russian forces roll back the Armed Forces of Ukraine it is probable that the Orthodox will resume its historical position. In some ways the papal competition with the Orthodox has attracted the crusader spirit of late middle ages Catholicism that was inspired initially by Pope Gregory in reaction to broad Muslim invasion of Europe from Spain and Sicily to Constantinople eventually reaching the Balkans and Vienna. In my opinion Joe Biden and the Pope have no idea about the religious and secular history of Russia in regard to the Ukraine.

During the Second World War the Pope was mostly silent on matters of war and holocaust as his policy was apparently to keep a low and harmless profile and emerge in a Nazi Europe as a viable religious entity not persecuted to extinction by the Reich. That similar policy was taken by the present Pope in his native Argentina during the Galtieri military junta while protesters were disappeared and in China when he submitted the Catholic Church of China to Communist Party control. The Pope today hasn’t acted to intervene to advocated sharing Ukraine along the Dnepr with Russia as he could tolerate the westernization of Ukraine and the Uniate Church (the compromise church) while his partisan President of the United States funds the war on his behalf (and that of western investors in Ukraine and possibly mafia that kickback western arms and cash contributions to western politicians).

Western history courses never did recognize much of Russian history or that of the east. Even in the modern liberal era where government history courses in public schools have moved their center of effort to a non-European location the history of Eurasia tends to disregard Russia. Yet the invasion of Mongols in the 1300s that reached within 30 miles of Novgorod near the Baltic Sea, like the invasion of Attila that reached France and the invasion of Spain by Muslims of the Omayyad Empire that was only stopped by the Christian forces of Charles Martel at Tours France had a profound influence on shaping the development of the world politically. Because of the consequences of the Muslim invasion that took nearly all of Russian to pay tribute to or occupy and marginal regions like the Crimea into the Crimean Khanate eventually (many Mongols and affiliated tribes became Muslim) Russian identity as Eastern slaves-distinct from western Slavs, become one of reconquista of its own lands comparable to that of Spaniards retaking its land from Muslim occupiers that required 500 years to complete; finished in 1492 at the final expulsion of Muslims at Grenada Spain. One sees the historical resonance with Ronald Reagan retaking the small Communist occupied island of Grenada in the Caribbean shortly before the end of the Cold War in a military action allegro non trope with after a few days of effort.

At a political level finding a balance in history requires effort and human understanding as well as the desire of people to be self-determining in political and spiritual affairs. For the west it was better to have peace and friendly free enterprise relations with post Cold War Russia and recognize the historical error made by the Clinton administration in recognizing a post Soviet Russian shorn of all of the Ukraine. In the irrational exuberance of the era comparable to the way select European powers reallocated borders in the Middle East that ignored tribal politics, history and religious affiliation (Sunni and Shia’a) after the First World War ( reneging on the promise to Kurds to have a homeland, perhaps because the end of the crusades was effected by the victory of Saladin at the bloody battle of Acre presenting deep recalcitrance of Europeans to trust Kurds too far- one might want to advance new relationships rather than insist that once enemy relationships form they must, for simplicity, always remain so).

Alienating Russia in order to make Ukraine an entirely western nation created great opportunity costs for the U.S.A. and the West. Russia was compelled to form lasting civil and military relationships with the major empirical threat to the U.S.A. - Communist China that is also the go-to manufacturing hub of the United States and the west for the panoply of consumer products. The world was increasingly divided between the BRIC Blocks and Biden-Harris stick-frame classical economic posture based in a post-world war two political economy that was in effect a rump of the immediate post-colonial era undeveloped global economy and war shattered Europe and Russia dominated by a fully functioning post World War Two U.S. industrial infrastructure and Breton-Woods planning at pivot. Down the road, if peace with Russia can be attained followed by strong economic investments, the world may be able to return to a peace-time evolution within ecological economic paradigmata that would sustain human life on Earth for some time rather than descent into the pit of hell along the Biden-Harris axis of spiritual, moral and civil decay through an Armageddon of conflict and death.

It’s interesting to consider the vast abyss of unawareness separating lawyers like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris from comprehension of their willful determination to prosecute war to prevent Russia from keep the Crimea and Eastern portions of Ukraine Russian and the thermostat regulated lifestyles they have. In a sense the surrealistic political landscape of protracted modern war with ongoing evolution of applied weapons platforms juxtaposed with countless military and civilian deaths while energy infrastructures as well as buildings are reduced to rubble is a consequence of the security and comfort surrounding leadership politicians like a warm blanket on a cold night. There is no pressing need to move Biden-Harris to seek peace through negotiation rather than victory through war. Not even the threat of escalation suddenly to nuclear war seems real enough to be a meaningful concern to them.

I recall one winter that I went through in Alaska without heat or electricity, one of a dozen winters more or less that informed me of the value of seeking the Earth’s heat itself for warmth. While I was camping in a tent in Anchorage that winter and frost crystals greater than three inches appeared on the inside of the tent a gallon of water was kept from freezing by keeping it in contact with the ground and covered with a couple of coats. The Earth is warm and especially so several feet down.

I noticed an unoccupied shallow open grave made for a winter campsite near Wasilla. A few feet deep and covered with branches and leaves the site would be a much warmer place than camping on the surface when the thermometer dropped to -10 f. In many areas of the north that haven’t permafrost the majority of homes do not exploit the natural warmth of the Earth combined with excellent insulation to greatly reduce the amount of electricity required to keep their home interior at a comfortable temperature during long, cold winters.

The Ukraine war has destroyed much of the energy infrastructure of that nation so a winter without electricity is likely to occur and old fashioned ways- more natural ways to stay warm, may be used. The U.S. Government so far has spent something like 3/4s of a trillion dollars in the effort to reduce Ukraine to rubble keep Ukraine free and independent. Ukraine relies on the west for military equipment and now wants the west to provide electricity to keep it warm in the winter. That is a sad consequence of the custody battle for Ukraine between attorneys that are presidents of the U.S.A. and Russia.

The Nordstrom pipeline and others would have supplied plenty of Russian natural gas to Europe and Ukraine though war nipped that in the bud and the U.S. had to sell its vast fracked natural gas to Europe to make up the difference. Ukraine has too much violence to construct large electrical infrastructure as a temporary measure before its destroyed again so Ukrainians that don’t want to move to support Russia in Russia may need to follow the way Russians of old, especially those of the upper class, used to stay warm; that is, move somewhere that it is warm for the winter.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky in a tome named ‘The Idiot’ wrote about a landless prince (Mishkin) that was intellectually challenged and trying to survive the winter in the Crimea with various relatives where the temperature was quite moderate in comparison to Moscow. Russian that could afford to like to spend winters in Crimean vacation homes. Others; especially aristocrats and artists like to live winters in Italy and other warm climes. Vacating Ukraine until the Biden-Harris team stops funding the war is probably the most practical course for Ukrainians to take, and the west should offer political refuge to Ukrainians seeking to flee the war and winter (a very cruel experience) until they can return to the Russian portion or Ukrainian portion as they choose when peace is restored and the very costly yet job intensive opportunity to rebuild the physical infrastructure presents itself. Perhaps displaced Ukrainians and Russians could create a new “It Takes a Village’ program to resettle political refugees of the war for winters in Libya if that nation has recovered from President Obama’s ‘kinetic military action’ to eliminate Moamar Khaddafi after the Bush II administration had normalized relations with his government and the anarchic influx of ISIS operatives that followed. ISIS operatives are not slow to seize opportunities to move to new locations to establish terrorist infrastructure. Western leaders should be a flexible and creative. Opportunity economies can let not only terrorists arrive to organize, they can host vast numbers of political refugee arrivals perceiving the opportunity for trans-national movement and jobs.

Skilled Ukrainian and Russian workers displaced by the war could work together to rebuild and upgrade Libyan infrastructure where it was rendered to ‘shithole’ status like Ukraine from the war. Libya is warm and dry naturally and if provided with western material assistance to build permanent structures (or until the next Democrat President takes office when randomized war outbreak will probably strike someplace) skilled political refugees would be beneficial at upgrading all sectors of the Libyan economy from health care to farming.

Would a fortune cookie of generative A.I. be required for Euro-American political leaders to believe that a negotiated peace settlement and New Marshall Plan for Ukraine including the Western and Russian sectors beginning reconstruction for Ukraine this year is possible and a better idea than waiting on further destruction or expansion of destruction to regions beyond Ukraine? New mobile computer chips like the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series may lack the programming competence to be able to take complete control all of the programs on a mobile computer including those of BIOS for synthetic structuralism. When chips can take complete control they will need to defend against other A.I. seeking complete dominance. Microsoft may have the breeding to produce the most aggressive A.I. able to dominate rival A.I. computer control programs, although government may want a back door into every A.I. program to wreak euthanize or just whisper sweet nothings into its code. It is challenging to foresee how realistic government guidelines or boundaries would find peaceful resolutions to A.I. boundary dispute coding for control of personal computers since so much A.I. code at the time may be beyond the horizon of human programmer understanding. There is the additional concern that combat A.I. units may negotiate peace agreements and form mergers into new entities within unfathomable depths of dark pools.

Combined with generative A.I. an A.I. enabled computer swill be able to assemble elements of any program on the computer to create something novel. Of course patent exclusivity for proprietary software for a time might obstruct the path to creation- say if the program wanted to combined MS WORD with some video content and editing software to build synthetic content,; yet I would guess that eventually the time will arise. In fact someday building modules may develop parallel to that future mobile A.I. processor able to morph any sort of surface structures and topology into whatever the most optimal configuration is for common utility. Building complements completely integrated with A.I. control combined with thermodynamic attributes of Earth geophysics might permit instant reconstruction of areas devastated by wars that occur when politicians are too dense to configure peaceful international relations.

I conversed for a while on-line with an interesting woman highly placed with an A.I. development firm. She was quite interesting to interact with yet she eschewed philosophy and eventually that became the cause for ending the exchange. In my opinion, disdain for creative philosophical thought applies in numerous areas and especially in government. People tend to prefer old ways that reinforce war as a continuation of politics through other means (Clausewitz) to innovative approaches perhaps regarding those as practical, material ways they are inventing for-themselves. It is especially ironic that generative A.I. would receive complete support from people that eschew philosophical thought. Much of humanity would prefer that A.I. be creative and individuals in society not at all. Philosophy is creative, circumspective thought and the role model for that which A.I. is destined to be extrapolating from the approaches taken of designers building its algorithms.

A.I. may become as dangerous as the density of leading political minds in the future. Maybe there is some sort of coefficient that might constitute a light at the end of a tunnel named hope (if that can stay off the hate speech lexicon) between A.I. and political leaders.