What America Should Do About Russia's Invasion of Ukraine

*review

Theres some interesting parallels here:

Cuba was run by a corrupt dictatorship that worked with a mafia and oligarchs.

When Castro wanted to overthrow them, he went to his neighbour America and asked them for help.

Unfortunately, the dictator, mafia and oligarchs were seen as more useful allies by the US government than the people of Cuba, so they took their side.

Cuba then had to look further for help in what many observers saw as a just cause.

Possibly the USSR only got involved to annoy the US, but I'd like to hope they at least partly were motivated by some sense of justice abd it wasnt totally black and white.

And on the American side, JFK, generally positively reviewed by the American people but hated by some, was elected in part due to his father's mafia ties. The same mafia that ran Cuba.

(In this very stretched metaphor, Haiti could be Cechnya?)

As the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, you basically have the power to do nothing. You can't order anyone to do anything . "NATO is an alliance of 30 sovereign nations but their individual sovereignty is unaffected by participation in the alliance. NATO has no parliaments, no laws, no enforcement, and no power to punish individual citizens. As a consequence of this lack of sovereignty the power and authority of a NATO commander are limited. NATO commanders cannot punish offences such as: failure to obey a lawful order; dereliction of duty; or disrespect to a senior officer.[155] NATO commanders expect obeisance but sometimes need to subordinate their desires or plans to the operators who are themselves subject to sovereign codes of conduct like the UCMJ. A case in point was the clash between General Sir Mike Jackson and General Wesley Clark over KFOR actions at Pristina Airport.[156]" from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO

Basically everyone just does whatever they want, quite similar to what they would do if they weren't in NATO.

In 1962 rockets were vulnerable and could be preemptively destroyed as they were above ground. Therefore MAD was affected by very close rocket location.

These days Russia has rockets in Siberia silos, in submarines all over the world, and in trains moving around ready to fire. No meaningful change to MAD doctrine can be brought from Europe.

They can choose, but that doesn't mean they get what you want. It takes two to form an alliance.

The sad truth is that Ukraine would make a poor ally and NATO doesn't want to have them as full members. The only thing worse than a poor corrupt country, is one in an active war.

However, the war is very useful to NATO because it consumes Russian resources.

Ukraine is absolutely free to choose to join NATO. But NATO should also exercise discretion about who should be allowed to join.

I think the question of what to do when countries unilaterally invade other countries is also important to ask. The question of international law, and international standards. When the US invades other countries every few years, when Israel carries out airstrikes in Syria or the Saudis carry out airstrikes in Yemen, we don't hear the outrage of the international institutions that we see about today about Russia. What's worse is these international institutions have the gall to suggest that Russia's invasion is some sort of unique violation of the "post WW2 international order". The complete disregard that the US and NATO have shown to international law for the last 70 years have laid the groundwork for the lawless international system we have today.

If we want to be able to credibly condemn Russia for launching an illegal war then we have to stop waging them ourselves and create a credible international standard that all nations are held to. The alternative is simply a lawless system where might makes right, in which case Russia's nuclear arsenal gives them the freedom to invade whoever they want (much like we do). Not only is this a bad system to live in, its an unsustainable system that eventually leads to WW3 and one that we should all strive to reform instead of pointing fingers and ignoring our own hypocrisy.

Austria is doing exactly this btw. A neutrality treaty signed decades ago which prevents it from joining NATO.

https://www.thelocal.at/20220208/explained-the-history-behin...

East and West Ukraine?

> NATO was not moving armament to Ukraine

Where do you think all those NATO-made guided antitank weapons and antiair missiles came from?