Zelenskyy knew the munitions that hit Poland were fired from Ukraine yet he persisted, even in the face of precipitating a wider war, in claiming it came from Russia. Zelenskyy is a dangerous fellow.
Yesterday November 15, 2022 may be a turning point in our reenact human history. Will we survive as a species or will we go the way of the dinosaurs and the trilobites? In these last days in the festering war in Ukraine we have come the closest to world nuclear war as we have since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
The war in Ukraine was always a dangerous enterprise. The policy of expanding NATO to Putin’s doorstep was always fraught with danger. NATO is a dangerous mutual defense alliances similar to those that triggered WWI and plunged the world into terrible conflict which killed millions. Yet we unwisely expanded the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” from the few nations in the North Atlantic into thirty nations all across Europe and on to Russia’s front door.
Most recently, Biden ignored Russian pleas for diplomacy and compromise. Then once the war was initiated, rather than seek a diplomatic solution, President Biden decided to proceed to wage a proxy war in the Ukraine. He could have supported a peaceful solution to the conflict early on, and saved many lives, in Ukraine and Russia, but he preferred to expand and extend the conflict for domestic purposes and in an unwise attempt to economically bleed Russia—a potential rival in Eastern Europe. Biden armed Ukraine to the teeth, providing more than $60 billion dollars in aid, untold advanced military hardware, strategic guidance, intelligence updates and guidance, as well as secret military “advisors” on the ground. The “meat grinder” war has continued for nine months generating a world-wide inflationary spiral and looming recession, devastating the economy of the UK with 12% inflation and that of Europe, the US and the wider world which as a result suffers from looming food, fertilizer and fuel shortages.
Yesterday, the underlying fear of a wider war raised its ugly head when we were faced with the prospect of direct NATO-Russia conflict that could have had the potential to lead to WWIII. Russia is surrounded by NATO nations—all bound together in a mutual defense pact that would force that entity into a joint military response against any aggressor. If any one of the 30 NATO members is attacked it would automatically insist on an escalation that would draw all thirty nations into the conflict and surely precipitate a nuclear response from Russia.
Our worst fears were realized when just that seemed to have occurred yesterday, when the Polish Prime Minister Andrzej Duda reported to NATO that a Russian missile struck a farm building in rural Poland close to the Ukraine border, killing two Polish citizens. Duda called for NATO’s Article 5 response. The incident rattled our aging President Biden who was roused out of bed (in Bali) to contact the Polish PM for a night conference. The disconcerted and nonplussed President responded to reporter’s shouted questions about how he would respond to this new atrocity from Russia —with a one word answer:”No!” There was no further explanation as to what that meant. “No” there will be no response, or “no” I do not want to answer. …
Duda revealed to the press that the wreckage at the Polish site, located some 60 miles west or southwest of Kyiv, revealed that the missile was a Russian manufactured munition. Only a few hours later Volodomyr Zelenskyy the Ukrainian PM immediately called for a military response from NATO to what he termed “Russian missile terror”.
The war crisis rattled the world for a full day..until several facts emerged. The missile was tracked on a trajectory from Kyiv toward the Polish border and not from Russian positions. The missile was indeed of Russian manufacture but was one of those in long use by Ukraine for anti-missile defense response. The Russians insisted that they had not fired the munition at Poland.
The NATO nations and military heads all declared unanimously that this event was not a case of Russia targeting Poland, or even a case of a Russian missile gone astray. The NATO members have concluded that the munition was fired by Ukrainian forces probably at incoming Russian missiles. The Russian target was not hit and the Ukrainian rocket apparently flew on into Polish territory, killing two on Polish territory.
What was important to underscore here was the fact of how close we all have come to an all out war. Mutual defense alliances with a trigger mechanism for all out war are dangerous affairs (remember WWI ) Would we really want to ignite the world into a nuclear holocaust for the question of whether a few hundred square miles of Ukraine, should be a semiautonomous Ukraine state, or a part of Russia? Would we really want a full scale war between nuclear armed Russia and the USA?
One more little mistake like this last one—the Polish farm incident and we may have one. Perhaps the circumstances might take place at a time or place in which the facts are not so clear—or are obscured by the fog (and lies) of war, or the blunders of “war lords”. The results would be that the rest of us will be heading for bomb shelters every time a truck backfires on a local road.
Another matter to underscore here is the less than diplomatic behavior of Volodymyr Zelenskyy who must have know immediately that the weapon which exploded on Poland territory was fired by his own forces. Yet he persisted to blame the Russians, even to the point that it may have precipitated a wider war which would have horrible consequences for Ukraine and the rest of the world. Zelenskyy is a dangerous fellow. His interaction and seeming control over our own aging and frail leader represents a very serious threat to the safety and survival of the rest of the world. Our own leaders are irresponsible if they ignore this fact.
Someone —somewhere in a position of authority perhaps in Europe should take over from these two dangerous leaders—-one weak and too old and the other too evil and dangerous— and begin a process of deescalating this terrible conflict and its threat to the world economy and world peace.
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