Mar
2

NATO Situation

“Wishing doesn’t make things so. It’s time to get hard-nosed and real about what’s going on so we can stop this nightmare before it spins completely out of control.” — Col. Kurt Schlichter, U.S. Army, Ret.

Conservative columnist/commentator Kurt Schlichter — who is also a retired Army colonel and a trial lawyer — put out a piece the other day that I wanted to share. In short, he presented several points about this whole Ukraine/Russia/NATO mess that need to be considered when assessing the situation. They may be unpleasant or controversial, but, as he says, “We have to start accepting some realities.”

Regardless of one’s feelings about the war, Biden, Trump, Putin, Zelenskyy, NATO, etc., these are some very fair observations. What follows is the “short version”, as I have grabbed the first 1-4 sentences of each point Schlichter makes…

Russia is absolutely in the wrong for invading Ukraine. Nothing Ukraine did excuses or justifies Russia’s actions. But we still need to understand why they did it. They had reasons, even if you and I don’t agree with their reasons…. There is much more going on in this conflict than in the portrait painted by the media and establishment.
Ukraine is not going to be able to win the war if the definition of winning the war is recovering all the conquered Ukrainian territory. A continued stalemate will result in many thousands of additional deaths.
Zelensky will have to accept the reality that America will need to be paid back for its aid, which means, as a practical matter, access to Ukraine’s mineral reserves. The establishment has been scandalized that Trump expects to be paid back, but why should America pick up the tab? It’s not our war.
Ukraine is an unbelievably corrupt country, and the idea that no substantial portion of our aid money has been stolen is ridiculous. There are going to be a lot of people getting very rich off the American aid, including many Americans.
The American people are, by and large, tired of subsidizing Ukraine’s end of this war. They are absolutely against American forces being involved.
China is a substantially greater threat to the United States than Russia in the macro. [More on this below.]
The Europeans should be taking the lead in supporting Ukraine and should be taking the lead in defending Europe. They are freaking out about this. It’s hilarious that their answer to Donald Trump telling them they need to step up and take charge of their own defense is to step up and take charge of their own defense to show Donald Trump what for.
The campaign to insult critics of past Ukraine policy by calling them Putin’s puppets and so forth is a lie and is going to result in enmity towards the idea of helping the Ukrainians.
Some of our NATO allies are participating in internal repression, including suppression of free speech and the right to organize and participate in elections via non-establishment parties. This dangerously undercuts the moral argument in favor of NATO. Americans have no desire to spend blood and treasure defending countries that arrest people for speaking. And the Europeans refuse to accept the judgment of their people [e.g., Germany].
It is in America’s interest that this war ends. We want to draw Russia away from China and closer to the West. It is not in our interest to have a war going on where our proxy is fighting with a nuclear-armed enemy, regardless of how moral the cause of Ukraine is.