Why Ukraine Matters Whether Or Not We All Realize It Yet

I hear a lot of talk over the past several days to few weeks about how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is none of our business here in the U.S. This is not our fight, and though it’s sad what is happening to the Ukrainian people, we don’t need to be concerned or involve ourselves in this as a primary stakeholder.

And that is true if you look at these sorts of things from a very short-sighted perspective, whether through the front windshield or the rear-view mirrors.

From the short-sighted perspective:

It’s not like America and Great Britain helped Russia talk Ukraine into giving up it’s arsenal of 5,000+ nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security assurances that none of the great powers would do just the thing Vladimir Putin is currently doing for all the world to see.

Furthermore, it’s not as though prior to the Budapest Memorandum that massive arsenal would have made Ukraine the most heavily-armed of nuclear states in the world (after the U.S. and Russia) compared with now being a fully de-nuclearized state which has to pass out automatic weapons to every man Jack to defend the country against Russian tanks, troop transports, armored personnel carriers, missile platforms, et cetera…

Oh, wait. Yes. Yes, we did. Actually we did do that.

But at least it’s not as though Ukraine has been seeking to formally join NATO for the past decade-and-a-half to deter the exact actions Putin is taking right now for all the world to see.

Furthermore, it’s not as though leading NATO countries like the U.S. and U.K. have strung Ukraine along with pats on the head and assurances that they’re well on their way, and we’ll get around to adding you guys here soon we promise – at our next meeting, or eventually, or at some point, maybe…

Oh, wait. Yes. That one is also true, actually.

But at least Ukraine is a backwater of little to no importance strategically. I mean, it’s not as though we’re talking about a country which is fourth in the world in terms of the overall valuation of its natural resources – natural resources which a strong man dictator and his friends would love to have at their disposal when they try to go for broke in reforming the old U.S.S.R.

I mean, if Ukraine had a lot of agricultural and mineral value for a potential future expansion of regional and global power projection aspirations, that would be one thing. 

Thank goodness we’re not dealing in Putin with someone who says that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, then acts and delivers remarks in such ways that make you think he has designs to reassemble said Soviet Union.

And we can all be glad the strongman of Mother Russia has not signaled in speeches that actual NATO members are next because they formerly were part of the USSR.

And it’s not as though China is simultaneously threatening to take over Taiwan when Taiwan is a leading producer and supplier of semiconductors in the world, a very valuable strategic asset both economically and militarily for a nation with global superpower ambitions like Chairman Xi has expressed.

Oh, wait… Yes, actually. All of those are also the current conditions.

So what are we going to do about it? Why, we’ll try some tepid sanctions which for weeks will be promised by Biden’s feckless administration to be intended as deterrents, then openly admit for the world to see that those same sanctions had zero chance of preventing anything from the beginning like we all knew full-well, and we’ll openly fret about all this distracting from combatting Climate Change and micro-aggressions. 

But, hey. At least Biden just announced his Supreme Court Justice pick to replace Breyer. And you’ll furthermore be glad to know she is fully qualified, seeing as how she is both a female and a person of color.

So move along, folks. Nothing to see here. This is fine. This is all totally fine and will definitely not come back to haunt us and our progeny in the coming years and decades when the word of Americans provokes neither admiration nor respect nor fear, only mockery and derision.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but maybe just maybe someone promised 10% of Ukraine for the big guy. Just sayin’.

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