Perhaps Ukraine could become a NATO member and receive its Article 5 collective defense protection, with an agreement that there would be no military installations on its territory.
Or perhaps the parties could jointly select a country or panel of countries to arbitrate, or at least mediate, this dispute. (The fifteen-odd countries currently considered to be neutral include Costa Rica, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Mongolia, Mexico, Serbia, Turkmenistan, and the Vatican.)
World governance is a sordid affair. One can view the Ukraine situation as a dispute within organized crime:
The world is run by 200 crime families (nation states). The three most powerful are USA, China, and Russia.
Ukraine** is getting trampled in a turf war set off when Russia pushed back because it believes that the USA is using NATO to undermine Russia’s security.
Given the suffering, hardship, and death that is and will be inflicted on the countless innocents who are not made members of these crime families, the crime bosses should do the right thing: de-escalate and reach a settlement in the framework of the Monroe Doctrine and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
(**recall that attempts have been made to rationalize the dubious dealings of Trump, Manafort, and the Bidens in Ukraine by pointing out that corruption is rampant there.)
"The Republican Realists are the missing voices in the debate."*
I think a healthy debate about the role of America in global conflicts is a good idea, not just in the GOP, but on the Democratic side as well. There is an unfortunate tendency in NATO to expect Americans to come to the rescue both militarily and financially when European conflicts arise. There is a global tendency to perceive the American taxpayers as an infinite well of largesse for every problem on the globe. We can't be that while Europe refuses to make any sacrifices to save itself. I say that as a left wing progressive who believes Brussels and the Atlantic council have been derelict in their duties to contain Putin since 2014 because it was just too inconvenient.
The EU has been cautioned by Obama administration since Putin's aggression against Ukraine in 2014 against going all in on Nordstream and having too much energy dependence on Russia, but EU did it anyway. Unsurprisingly, they want America to bail them out and provide the bulk of funding NATO's anti-Putin military operations instead of doing what they were urged to do 7 years ago: decouple themselves from Russian energy dependence and cautiously engage Russia as the EU blithely expanded eastward to welcome anti-humanitarian nations like Hungary and Poland.
Obama cautious on more sanctions against Russia unless Europe agrees
The truth is, this situation in Ukraine is primarily Europe's fault, but yet the expectation is that the US has to do the hard work to fix it. Europeans needed to fix their own problems by making hard choices, like finding alternatives to Russian energy...something they refused to do, so now they have to take responsibility for this crisis because they gave Putin leverage by not reining in their addiction to cheap Russian petrochemicals. It's infuriating that Democratic-leaning *Realists like John Mearsheimer who predicted these events 7 years ago were ignored.
Perhaps Ukraine could become a NATO member and receive its Article 5 collective defense protection, with an agreement that there would be no military installations on its territory.
Or perhaps the parties could jointly select a country or panel of countries to arbitrate, or at least mediate, this dispute. (The fifteen-odd countries currently considered to be neutral include Costa Rica, Finland, Ireland, Switzerland, Mongolia, Mexico, Serbia, Turkmenistan, and the Vatican.)
World governance is a sordid affair. One can view the Ukraine situation as a dispute within organized crime:
The world is run by 200 crime families (nation states). The three most powerful are USA, China, and Russia.
Ukraine** is getting trampled in a turf war set off when Russia pushed back because it believes that the USA is using NATO to undermine Russia’s security.
Given the suffering, hardship, and death that is and will be inflicted on the countless innocents who are not made members of these crime families, the crime bosses should do the right thing: de-escalate and reach a settlement in the framework of the Monroe Doctrine and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
(**recall that attempts have been made to rationalize the dubious dealings of Trump, Manafort, and the Bidens in Ukraine by pointing out that corruption is rampant there.)
"The Republican Realists are the missing voices in the debate."*
I think a healthy debate about the role of America in global conflicts is a good idea, not just in the GOP, but on the Democratic side as well. There is an unfortunate tendency in NATO to expect Americans to come to the rescue both militarily and financially when European conflicts arise. There is a global tendency to perceive the American taxpayers as an infinite well of largesse for every problem on the globe. We can't be that while Europe refuses to make any sacrifices to save itself. I say that as a left wing progressive who believes Brussels and the Atlantic council have been derelict in their duties to contain Putin since 2014 because it was just too inconvenient.
The EU has been cautioned by Obama administration since Putin's aggression against Ukraine in 2014 against going all in on Nordstream and having too much energy dependence on Russia, but EU did it anyway. Unsurprisingly, they want America to bail them out and provide the bulk of funding NATO's anti-Putin military operations instead of doing what they were urged to do 7 years ago: decouple themselves from Russian energy dependence and cautiously engage Russia as the EU blithely expanded eastward to welcome anti-humanitarian nations like Hungary and Poland.
Obama cautious on more sanctions against Russia unless Europe agrees
https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-obama/obama-cautious-on-more-sanctions-against-russia-unless-europe-agrees-idINKBN0JP25T20141211
The truth is, this situation in Ukraine is primarily Europe's fault, but yet the expectation is that the US has to do the hard work to fix it. Europeans needed to fix their own problems by making hard choices, like finding alternatives to Russian energy...something they refused to do, so now they have to take responsibility for this crisis because they gave Putin leverage by not reining in their addiction to cheap Russian petrochemicals. It's infuriating that Democratic-leaning *Realists like John Mearsheimer who predicted these events 7 years ago were ignored.