|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Want even more content from FPM? Sign up for FPM+ to unlock exclusive series, virtual town-halls with our authors, and more—now for just $3.99/month. Click here to sign up.]
In recent years a conviction has taken hold among some on the right, usually held by the left, that wars were an unnatural state of affairs that would not exist without conspiracies by the military-industrial complex, profiteering defense contractors, warmongers, covert interests looking to spread chaos, and everyone and everything except the actual causes of wars.
Most wars are fought to seize territory.
Denying one of the most basic patterns of human history is an ideological fantasy. Hate the players like Putin or Zelensky, but the game is an old one that goes back hundreds of years. And it isn’t getting resolved today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now unless everyone dies.
(Considering the low birth rates in Russia and Ukraine, and growing Islamic expansionism, this is a very real possibility in which case it will end up mattering very little who controls Kupyansk.)
Regardless of their leaders, the Ukrainians and the Russians have proven willing to fight and soak up hundreds of thousands of casualties. If they weren’t willing, then one side or the other would have collapsed by now. We know how quickly armies that don’t actually want to fight fall apart in the face of attrition. We’ve had recent examples of them in Afghanistan and Syria.
The Russians and Ukrainians want to fight each other because they genuinely hate each other.
Anyone who does not understand this, who wants to pretend that the only reason these wars keep happening is because of Putin, Zelensky, NATO, the EU or some dark unseen force has no understanding of the region, history or human nature. There are local and global factors that led to this particular outbreak of fighting, but the current war is just the latest round of killing.
And as horrifying as the loss of life is, there’s something admirable about both sides sticking it out on the battlefield. Western Europeans, who were once willing to wreck a continent over territory and nationalism, now freely surrender their cities, homes and daughters to invaders. Imagine if the French and the English had the spine to fight off the invaders flooding their nations instead of asking how they can change their culture to better please these new arrivals.
War is to be deplored, but there are worse things than war. Like defeat. Or abject surrender.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse,” John Stuart Mill wrote.
The same sentiments that lead young men to die horribly on the battlefield also make patriotism and nationalism more than mere words that cynical college professors roll their eyes at in class.
Once upon a time we used to admire generals and soldiers who fought well, regardless of the side, before we were taught to view wars as a global shell game with the men fighting and dying as mere puppets of international bankers, and the whole thing not worth a single drop of blood.
That corrosive attitude, carefully nurtured by Marxists, almost doomed Western Europe before WWII, and drank it dry during the Cold War leaving men who would no longer fight for anything.
It was the Marxists and other Socialists who taught that war was a conspiracy of bankers, that nations were puppets of industrialists and capitalists starting senseless conflicts for profit and to distract the working class from the revolution. Eventually this cynical posture came to be widely accepted, spread by academia and the entertainment industry, and is now everywhere.
Westerners gave up on fighting, but no one else except a handful of other first worlders did.
Wars aren’t going anywhere. We’ve just forgotten how to fight them. And especially win them. We have ‘endless wars’ because in the twentieth century we came to believe that governments mattered more than nations and peoples, and that if we exchanged bad non-democratic governments for democratic ones, all the wars would end and endless peace would reign.
The same folly that started with WWI, the War to End all Wars, to ‘Make the World Safe for Democracy’, continued on through the ‘Nation Building’ democracy wars of the 90s and 00s.
We stopped fighting wars for clear national interests and with clear goals. So the wars became endless. But they never ended because they were not fought to be won and were never won.
The pursuit of ‘endless peace’ led to ‘endless wars’ and both are a myth. War is a natural condition of mankind. Peace isn’t. Nations and peoples fall from one into the other. Accepting this common sense reality will help us see the world as it is, rather than as a bunch of 19th century socialists decided that it ought to be seen, and will help us make good choices.
We can’t end wars or bring peace. We can choose to intervene in a war but we should do so if it serves our national interests not because of some fantasies about ending all wars. Just because some nations somewhere are fighting does not mean that we have to step in and do something.
Whatever we do in Russia and Ukraine will only lead to a temporary cessation of hostilities. If we respect the sacrifices both sides have made on the battlefield, we should understand that. We may have an interest in intervening to prevent further conflicts or we may not, but whatever we do will be a bandaid on history that will be torn off sooner or later by the peoples at war.
History, as even Hillary Clinton learned in Geneva, doesn’t come with a ‘reset button’.
Perhaps the best thing that the Trump administration could do is to step away from the war. If the Western Europeans (and some of the Eastern Europeans) really want Ukraine to win, then let them do what they can. A war may do for their backbones what generations of peace did not. And maybe they will even find the courage to clean the Augean stables of Jihad in their capitals.
Stranger things have happened.
Trying to bring peace to the Russia – Ukraine war is an even worse mistake than the war itself. Whatever their virtue, wars can at least be won, but peace is a choice for both sides. And we cannot choose for them. That is more nation building. Only they can choose their own futures.
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse,”
Powerful statement indeed.
And the decay has only grown worse since.
Europe has been invaded by millions of hostiles and its leaders can’t even bring themselves to deport them before they go on killing sprees.
War is absolutely terrible. Except for the alternative.
INTERESTIN IS THAT THOUSANDS OF YEARS DIDNT TEACH HUMANKIND NOTHING BESIDES KILLING MORE FOR ILLUSORY PEACE TIME .
YOUR ARTICLE IS MAGNIFICENT
And disarmed their indigenous populations so that when the muslim mass killing starts, we have been left defenceless.
Let’s see: Two corruptocrats who have neither family nor skin in this war claim justification and glory unto themselves and their visions of glory.
…and when two elephants fight it is the grass that suffers still.
I don’t think President Trump wants to choose for Russia and the Ukraine. He just wants to broker a “deal” to end the war. No matter how much Putin and Zelenskyy hate each other and want to save face, I think they’d rather end their war than piss Trump off, because he can hurt them very much economically. I expect them to stop the war and Putin will come out ahead and Zelenskyy won’t be dead.
I think President Trump does agree with you that wars can be necessary, although he says he doesn’t want to fight any and he sure doesn’t need to. He’s shown during his first term and already in this one that he won’t hesitate to have foreign enemies killed in their own countries without committing any American ground troops, which would be unnecessary and stupid. I figure he’s going to have more of our enemies killed in the next four years. Have some buttons pushed, have some enemies killed.
The only danger America faces from its enemies are domestic “terrorist” (jihad) attacks and those are going to happen again anyway, no matter what the President does or doesn’t do.
And the killing of the Iranian mullahs and their “Revolutionary” Guard is 46 years overdue.
Trump is doing what’s best for American interests and he’s also seeing what he can get out of brokering a temporary cessation of hostilities.
If we come out of this with mineral rights in exchange for guranteering Ukraine’s security, that certainly will be an interesting outcome that will infuriate everyone.
President Trump is practicing some rational selfishness!
We call it America first patriotism.
Well said sir…….succinct and to the point.
As if we are supposed to know and understand what that abstract concept is supposed to be. Some people here do, because you spent several years trying shove it down everyone’s throat. So there are about 10 of us. In the real world, something you know nothing of, people could care less what ‘rational selfishness’ is.
If they are paying attention to what Trump and DOGE are doing they will understand that Trump is trying to help Americans and the country, not himself. You will never get Trump because you and your toadies are basically too self involved and selfish to care what anyone thinks. you will always be a self-involved loser.
Yes, leave it to Trump to try and profit from anything.
Really now. A billionaire approaching 80 is focused on new sources of profit. Sheesh–
With Soros and the American Left installing Zelensky , it feels like the American Left owns Ukraine and they’re trying to oust Putin so they can install a puppet in Russia and own Russia too .
Maybe Russia is another piece of the New World Order Puzzle ?
Maybe they want to replace Putin with a stooge and constantly harass America with threats of nuclear war ? For some reason or another .
I don;t know , it just seems like something is up with the Left and this war .
“……the Left’s vast patronage network funds the woke pressure groups manipulating the administrative state…..” here in America. It has absolutely no influence on countries such as Russia, China and the islamic countries.
Parts of the Left support Russia and parts of the Left support Ukraine.
And Putin subsidizes a nice chunk of the anti-American Left.
One of the European elite said publicly just a few weeks ago that their goal is to break apart and control Russia. I have heard this before. This explains why Europe wants to continue this war despite Trump. Given their willingness to sacrifice their own people to Islamists, we can’t imagine they have good intentions for either party in this war. They truly are NWO vampires.
Regrettably true.
It goes back thousands of years, as far back as I have read.
Since the caveman days… when Grog went to Glug’s cave and was playin’ patty-cake with Glug’s woman. (and they say chicks don’t start wars)
As Victor Hanson channels Heraclitus, “War, the father of us all”
yes, when it comes to human nature
when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, more like centuries, but perhaps every conflict has the seeds of a more ancient one within
Your quote from Mill reminded me of a similar thought from Sir Winston.
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worse fate, you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves”. — WSC.
powerful
but sadly the sorts of people who have surrendered everything will rather be slaves than fight
Chruchill was an evil man who was greatly responsible for WWI. He was in the ‘secret elite’ that was as demonic as our ‘deep state’. Do some history!
For the best history so far on that war is SCOTT HORTONs ”Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine” (2025).
It is 800 pages long.
Scott Horton is a Libertarian and famous for hos erudition.
America isn’t in a Cold War with Russia. Putin just likes to see America fail as often as possible, he has no plans or hopes to destroy our government and society the way the Soviet Union did.
Back in the 60s Americans liked their good blue collar jobs and prosperity. Today Americans like their entertainment (cell phones, the worldwide web, sports, streaming pay per view channels, etc.) and their ideologies. They also like to complain but that’s just the human condition. Nobody who counts wants to live in a world controlled by Russia or China.
And most Americans hate all things “woke” and are increasingly hostile to leftism, especially now that Trump is back in office and has assembled a core team of pro-American and anti-left professionals, who are by and large NOT unqualified political appointees in an incestuous network of corruption. His Cabinet picks, Musk and DOGE, Dan Bongino as Deputy Director of the FBI, et al are already hard at work reducing the power of the left, and like Trump, they’ve only just started their jobs. Americans trust President Trump and his policies FAR more than they trust the Minitrue Media and all they represent, which is mainly the Dirtbagocrat party and all things “woke.” In fact, Americans deeply mistrust the Minitrue Media, which means they mistrust the D-Bags. All polls show this even though they’re designed and rigged to show the opposite.
Russia is just another country with leadership that doesn’t like America. There is no Cold War.
Three down votes, eh? You lick borscht out of dead men’s buttholes without even tossing back a vodka chaser.
Scott Horton is pushing the same leftist-libertarian narratives in which America ‘provoked’ Russia and there would have been no war otherwise.
History and basic knowledge of the region makes it clear that Russia would have moved on Ukraine in one way or another regardless.
Yeah, Puto wants that Soviet Empire….er……Union back. I notice he isn’t going after the Stans, though.
Listen to JEFFREY SACHS brilliant speech on the war in Ukraine.It was recently in the EU Parliament. He is a Conservative and agrees with Scott Horton.In the speech, 6 hours of facts,check him out:
6 hours! Can’t you give us a synopsis?
NATO needed to die the day the Berlin wall fell.
Yes. America needs to abandon the corrupt drain on our money and resources that is NATO.
Zelenskyy demands to join the impotent NATO but its members will never accept the Ukraine and have said so. They love the free big bucks they get from their European member states and love the even bigger bucks they suck from America. They want to wallow in that money and the sleazy graft it enables. The last thing they want to do is fulfill the purpose NATO was created for and fight a defensive war against Russia, not that provoking Putin would be defensive.
The only worse organization America is a member of is the UN, and personally I think the overwhelming amount of international organizations we’re in are worse than worthless. They overwhelmingly tend to benefit the international elites at the expense of ordinary Americans.
They say they won’t until they figure out how to get in on the business of graft, Ukraine being the leader of the pack. Wait until there is some sort of peace deal brokered and a little time goes by. NATO, the UN and the EU will start sowing the seeds of Ukrainian membership into NATO under the guise of some sort of economic agreement that will no longer tolerate even the possibility of Russian invasion.. Right out of Biden’s playbook.
If there are ways to grift and get graft, international organizations always find them.
Wow! I can’t believe you got 5 thumbs down for stating the obvious fact that both the U.N. and NATO are useless and a drain on the American taxpayer.
Yeah, probably the type of trolls who Hate Elon Musk and DOGE.
A very thoughtful piece. Thanks.
I wish I could recall the source of this, but I read that to be an educated person one must
1. Be curious
2. Be guided by evidence
3. Know history
4. Recognize the immutable characteristics of people.
Peaceniks seem to fail all four.
“Recognize the immutable characteristics of people” is the big one.
It makes every abstract theory fall apart.
This article is the ultimate subject of tribes and nations. Any war is about money/power. Any war can be won by one side or another by various analyses appearing in the mirror. This is what creates all of the side streets of study with their moral preening that we have to suffer through hearing about again and again.
“All wars are bankers wars” is an accurate summation. The King has always wanted more money for self aggrandizement of some sort.. He can only tax his people so much before they begin dissolve. He must then attack a neighboring tribe or borrow money in Florence or London. This is because he has just taxed his financial base, farmers, from last year and can only borrow on next years’ crop. Then bankruptcy looms.
This system extended through history into WW2. Britain and France quickly spent their funds and were whining at the doors of FDR/New York to bail them out of their self created poverty and imminent doom. Then arrived the concept of continuous war and new types of taxes to support “interests” and their lucious interest payments.
The academic streams all have points to be made that contribute to the various arguments about causes war listed above. That is why it is such a juicy piece of meat for the socialist scientists to rehash continually. Otherwise they would have to go back into the fields to earn enough to eat and we can’t have that facing our “elite”.
Hadrian fixed a Roman problem in Judea for thousands of years. Carthage is a tiny port in North Africa. A “Roman Peace” is the only answer to continuous war as the greed of rulers is never satiated.
Few wars are bankers wars. Mostly they bankrupt and exhaust whatever nations are fighting them. Even the winners come away with little to show for it, as you noted in WWI. WWII broke Europe entirely.
Empires can temporarily draw trading wealth, but the cost of the wars drains that as well and destroys them.
Men don’t fight wars for money, they fight them for immortality. and for petty hatreds.
Men fight wars as victims of propaganda. Rulers start wars because of money. Rulers may be kings, bankers or businessmen.
The behavior of the elites you cited brought me to think of all the govt bureaucrats that are being told to justify their jobs and pay or bug out. I may be a little off base with this connection but them having to hop off the gravy train and engage in some type of productive work is, in a way, what the “elites” throughout history have used to justify their wars. The difference is the now-unemployed govt “elites” have no one to go to war against but I’m sure they possess the same attitude. Imagine the frustration they must feel knowing their union (their front-line defenders) are powerless.
The old hatreds are real, but this war was started with the Maidan rebellion, orchestrated by western powers to use Ukraine against Russia, with the eventual goal of toppling Putin. Ukraine was also a test case for all kinds of NWO bullshit and massive money laundering. It’s correct to say that that the core it is a battle for land and resources around the Black Sea in particular.
This war started with the breakup of the USSR’s republics, their desire to be independent, Russia’s desire to reclaim them.
Much of this would have played out the same way under any strong Russian leader.
The bottom line is that the Russians and Ukrainians have competing nationalist visions and their prestige and sense of honor is tied to Ukraine being under Russia or being independent.
The rest is details.
Daniel, you might find interesting an historians take on what’s up with Putin and the West. It’s called David Starkey Talks on youtube. It’s titled “Putin’s Power & Western Impotence” from 2 years ago and is about 37 minutes in length. I hope you can find the time to check it out.
The MEN, both Ukrainian and Russian, who are COMPELLED by their respective government leaders to fight each other, do not want to be at war. Greenfield’s argument is clever, but not sound. Should parents never intervene to stop siblings from fighting? Should law enforcement officers never intervene to stop street fights? Peace can be, and must be, enforced.
Yes, the men at war want to be at war.
If they didn’t want to be, they wouldn’t be.
Putin isn’t Stalin. There aren’t NKVD squads with machine guns marching behind Russian soldiers. And the idea that Zelensky’s costume party is some terrifying tyranny is just silly.
Spend any time in the region and you’ll see that Russians and Ukrainians really hate each other.
To be fair:
Russia has had success recruiting for the front. And despite talk of a ‘draft’ – no conscripts have reported to the frontline – unless somehow this is being done during the dark of night.
Meanwhile, being a male Ukrainian is almost as unsafe as being an unborn baby in the West. Ukraine cannot meet its recruiting objectives,
and they’ve only been able to stop desertion by shooting men in the back.
Not exactly an ‘equal’ balance.
Enforced? Who’s going to do that? It needs to be brokered and President Trump is just the man to do it.
“The trader and the warrior have been fundamental antagonists throughout history. Trade does not flourish on battlefields, factories do not produce under bombardments, profits do not grow on rubble. Capitalism is a society of TRADERS—for which it has been denounced by every would-be gunman who regards trade as “selfish” and conquest as “noble.”…
If men want to oppose war, it is STATISM that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged “good” can justify it—there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.” – Ayn Rand, from her essay “The Roots of War”
In the history of mankind it is EARLIER than we think.
War is not the natural state of man but it is the state of man when men have not discovered or have abandoned reason. There is no conflict of interests among rational men who do not seek the UNEARNED or to rule other men by force.
“War is not the natural state of man but it is the state of man when men have not discovered or have abandoned reason.”
Human history disproves that. As it disproves most dogma that claims mankind will overcome its nature when it achieves some new level of enlightment under a particular favored ideology.
Human nature doesn’t change. Rand’s own life proved that.
The nature of man is that he is the rational animal but rationality is not automatic. At every moment of a man’s life he must choose and make the effort to be rational.
Ayn Rand was neither infallible or omniscient, no one is, she was human, and like every human being, she had free will, if she chose the irrational at some point in her life it isn’t because mankind is doomed to ultimately irrationality.
If man is doomed to be irrational and you believed this for a fact, with complete conviction, you would not bother to write a single word anymore.
Rational is an abstraction. Man is not rational, he rationalizes.
And usually with irrational consequences. Given how many wars have been held throughout the ages, it would appear being rational is what one might call the “weak force” and does not come naturally. There’s something circular embedded in this argument when it comes to historical fact given how many times the “rational” determination has led to “irrational” behavior.
You’re over THX’s head.
You need to spend some time trying to teach algebra to Demokkkrats – it will teach you futility.
Actually, people are ruled more by emotion than reason. Especially chicks and gay guys. Lezbos too, come to think of it.
God forbid anyone criticize your irrelevant “queen”
Workers of the world unite!
It would appear that war is the natural state of man. We seem to be involved in them all the time. The history of this country is war. The history of the world is war.
It so sad to think that you will never come to realize that war is not the result “lack of reason”…..your endless fantasyland, where everyone sits on a lotus flower contemplating navels.
For you it will always be EARLIER than you think. Or is it LATER than you think. Ah, who cares. Seems you have spent your life praying for your fantasyland. The rest of us actually live our lives in the world of reality.
Thanks for this thoughtful writing which says eloquently and convincingly something thats actually unpopular.. That peace at any cost may cost so much it can be the less moral outcome of a war.
I don’t know much about Ukraine vs. Russia. And I may be obsessed or just worried but I apply these insights to the awful “ deal” with Hamas (Qatar) that Israel should not have been pushed into. A peace that empowers evil isn’t peace, It’s delusion. Not being able to differentiate evil from good cannot be the foundation for peaceful “ coexistence.”
Thank you.
There’s really no such thing as peace. Deals are fine when both sides are capable of coexistence. When they’re not, the deals are worthless.
Yeah, any islamopithecine can prove that.
I usually agree with Mr. Greenfield. I have a lot of respect for him. But I disagree with him this time about the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Actually it is not a war between Russia and Ukraine, It is a war between Putin and Ukraine,
If there is one thing we should have learned from the last century it is that, while no country is perfect, some countries are better than others. And some people are better than others,
There is evil in the world and the sooner you confront and stop evil the better. Putin, like Hitler, is evil. The only way to stop someone like Putin is to stop him with force, We should have learned that by now.
Negotiations or appeasement does not work with someone like Putin. Words about International Law or civilized behavior don’t work with him. He wants to reconstitute the Russian Empire and he does not care how many of his own people die in this war and he does care how many Ukrainians he kills.
If you make any deal with him he will just start another war later when it suits him, either against Ukraine or another country.
We must support Ukraine and defeat Putin. Putin is pure evil.
When we support Ukraine we are not supporting Zelenksy. We are supporting the Ukrainian people who are fighting and dying because they do not want to be conquered by Russia and dominated by Putin.
We should give Ukraine all the weapons they want with no restrictions on the use of those weapons. They are the ones fighting and dying and they are fighting and dying for all of us. The least we can do is support them in every way we can.
We must make Putin suffer such terrible losses on the battlefield that even he will realize he cannot continue this war that he started. That is the only way this war will stop.
What are you talking about the Russians have always been arrogant tribalist aggressors, the Russian people are no more innocent than the Palestinians.
Yes, arrogant Russian aggression was misplaced every time the Japanese kicked their vodka soaked asses.
Putin is a ruthless dictator but there’s a reason that much of Russia supports him (dubious elections aside) which is that they see him as making Russia into a great power again. In reality, Putin has hollowed Russia out and handed much of it over to China and Muslims.
I respect your passion, but Putin is not Hitler. He’s a murderous dictator, but the world is full of those. He’s not bent on extermination, but dominating former Russian possessions so he can pretend he’s a new czar.
Is that evil? Perhaps. But it’s a sadly commonplace evil around the world and in human history.
Yeah, Puto wants “to crush (his) enemies, see them driven before (him,) and hear the lamentations of their women.” His enemies seem to be all the former Russian possessions except the Stans. I don’t think anybody wants “asshole Uzbekistan.” (I once said that line about Uzbekistan to a Tajik and he laughed.)
Nonsense. Putin is no more evil than any other oligarch.
Supporting Ukrainian Nazis is what set off this phase of the war.
As I’ve pointed out many times –
no politician can enjoy popular support when a terrorist organization is murdering his people on his border.
We’re not used to this sort of thinking – Trump is evil because he’s defending our border, and so too Pootler is evil for defending his border.
But it’s basic outside the West.
I thought it was interesting when the EU Leaders stepped up to offer their support for Ukraine. I don’t think it was due to ACTUALLY supporting Ukraine as much as it was opposing PRESIDENT TRUMP! Maybe PRESIDENT TRUMP was doing his “rope a dope” to GET the EUroweenies to take a stand and contribute MORE in the way of arms and funding!
Having a more united front against Russia might just be enough to persuade them to “back off”, but there should be ONE ABSOLUTE GUARANTEE – NO NATO FOR UKRAINE! BUT, Russia should know that NOW all of the EU will back Ukraine if further aggression occurs. Or not!
I think this was Trump’s way of telling them to arm up or your next. Where else can Russian expansionism go but East? If the “Euroweenies” set on their hands waiting for the US to save them they might want to give it another thought. The US vs Russia will not be a few missiles fired into urban areas until someone says “uncle”. Putin wants a “buffer” from NATO expansion (not to mention his Czarist dreams that can easily be held in check with a fortified EU). He may be delusional but I doubt he would run the risk of the total destruction of Russia were that to be the threat on his doorstep.
So, Daniel, if I understand you correctly, you are taking a “plague on both their houses–feh!!!’ approach. And maybe that is indeed what will happen, anyway, while we in the west should be protecting western civilization from cultures and political belief systems that wish to destroy it. And Europe, in particular, as of now, is not doing that.
I’m taking a realistic approach to the situation.
I strongly believe in protecting western civilization. I’d like to see Europe actually do it.
Yep, it’s not like Putin hasn’t been watching how dedicated the Europeans have become in preparing to defend themselves.
“Si Vis Pacem Para Bellum”
I agree mostly with the author. However, it was worth mentioning how Ukraine joined Russia in 1654. Ukrainians realized soon afterwards what a terrible mistake their Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitskiy made. Poland and Austria-Hungary aggressions towards Ukraine were the reason to ask the Russian Tsar for protection. Most Ukrainians hate Russians for centuries.
As to the claim to “Zelensky is a dictator”, I say that is an abject lie. It is war time now. Listen for example what Anatoly Shariy @Sharij_news who fled to Spain says in his YouTube channel. He serves for Pukin. There are a few others abroad now who are helping Pukin.
“… there’s something admirable about both sides sticking it out on the battlefield.”
This is repugnant to make a moral equivalence between Ukraine and Pukin. There is nothing admirable about aggressors.
I despise “tremendous” lying on how much money the US government has spent on Ukraine.
I’m an old Jew. My father was born in Ukraine 110 years ago. Many Ukrainians hate Jews. There were many Ukrainian murderous pogroms against Jews in the imperial Russia. Nemirov, Odessa, other cities and towns. I was taught to be fair. That is one of the most important Jewish beliefs. I stay with Ukraine against Russia.
I THINK Greenfield would agree with the proposition that ENDLESS wars are primarily designed to amass money and power—rather than to definitively solve anything—but I’m not entirely sure. I see the endless war function as no different than warlords or crime bosses extracting protection money from their peeps—those who provide the goods and services of peaceful daily life—so as to “defend” or “protect” that civilian population from their neighboring warlords or crime bosses. And, at least to some extent, it’s a hideous, unnecessary, and self-perpetuating scam. It’s a WIN/LOSE model that benefits a power elite, and keeps everybody else relatively poor and struggling to pay taxes—and also being expected to feed their children into meat grinders.
I would further observe that when one source of endless war—the Cold War, for example—ends, new sources of endless war have to be brought forward by this power elite. And those new sources of endless war and conflict ALWAYS ARE brought forward. Can’t ever have that peace dividend. No, no, no.
I am one of those “on the right” who see the whole concept of limited government —of, by, and for We, the People—as designed to promote of peaceful communities and peoples who trade with one another in a WIN/WIN set-up—which is the antithesis of the endless war model.
That said, I think wars should be ended definitively. One side should lose, and that side should not keep getting propped up and encouraged to go on committing acts of terrorism and senseless violence.
Maybe there’s no way out of that endless war paradigm in the Middle East, but I hope there is. If anyone can find the exit ramp, I think it’s Trump. Also with regard to the Ukraine meat grinder.
‘Endless war’ is a modern concept.
Wars are a basic part of human nature and history. They’re not going anywhere.
What we think of as an ‘endless war’ is usually a war we refuse to win. Until the Cold War, most wars were fought to win. Afterward we fought wars for nation building and refused to unleash full force to win them.
So they became endless slogs in which nothing really changed.
the whole of Europe and GB is a history of wars. It was tribes vs the tribes that migrated before them. For the time being, we seem to have settled on fixed borders (the exception being Russia/Ukraine) but the talk of war could change all that very quickly. The same rationale that existed then still exists. It only needs a spark to set it aflame.
I could be wrong, but I think the reason Trump wants to end this particular war is because he (rightly, in my opinion) believes that the action of the U.S. government, going back a couple of decades, was the impetus for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I hope that if this war is settled, then going forward, we will just tend to our own knitting and let the players act how they will
Solzhenitsyn the prophet in 1968:
: “It pains me to write this as Ukraine and Russia are merged in my blood, in my heart, and in my thoughts. But extensive experience of friendly contacts with Ukrainians in the camps has shown me how much of a painful grudge they hold. Our generation will not escape from paying for the mistakes of our fathers.”
Thanks for the quote !!!!!
In his article Mr. Greenfield states, “Anyone who does not understand this, who wants to pretend that the only reason these wars keep happening is because of Putin, Zelensky, NATO, the EU or some dark unseen force has no understanding of the region, history or human nature.” However, the let’s be clear that the origins of this conflict lay on the steps of the Obama administration’s State Department.
It was the classical foreign interventionists that decide to drive a wedge between Viktor Yanukovych’s desire to maintain closer economic ties with Russia and these deep state actors’ desire to make Ukraine a Western client state. Obama’s point person in Ukraine, Victoria Nuland covertly gave economic support and then political recognition to the extreme opposition parties like Svoboda. People forget that the so-called Euromaidan Revolution was an insurrection, where the opposition parties stormed the legislative building and literally installed their people, where they immediately started passing laws. They passed ultranationalist laws along with banning the Russian language. This was the catalyst for the Russian minority speakers, who were the majority in the eastern provinces to seek independence. Again, most people seem to forget long before Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the American backed coup created the conditions for the civil war, which started back in 2014.
So essentially the Democrats broke Ukraine and now it’s up to the Republicans to repair all the damage done by America’s leftist deep state actors. Because of what the Democrats did, then yes – it’s totally unrealistic for Ukraine to walk away with it’s pre-2014 borders. Tell me, why the hell after this civil war, would the Russian minorities in the eastern provinces ever want to be part of Ukraine? This satellite state was an artificial construct when it was part of the USSR. It was governed by hand picked governors who were Russian Communist loyalists and Ukraine’s borders were just artificial. When the USSR collapsed, it was unrealistic that Russia would ever allow Crimea to be held in Ukrainian hands. Crimea is home to the Russian Black Sea Fleet at the Port of Sevastopol, which is the American equivalence of Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
There can be a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine but it’s unrealistic that Crimea and Ukraine’s former pre-2014 eastern provinces will be returned back to Ukrainian hands.
Ireland was conquered, massacred under Cromwell, looted, governed by penal laws,from the 15th to the 20th century, and rebelled again and again. But somehow the question of hating didn’t come into it. We just wanted them out. In the 20th century the British Army was the mightiest on earth but the Irish rose again and won. The love of your country is a terrible thing, it banishes fear” Ukrainians love their country and gladly will die for it. It’s human nature.
While I generally agree.
My own analysis is biased by the fact that I actually know a lot of Russians and Ukrainians.
We’ve been watching this situation develop since the fall of the USSR.
We knew an invasion of Ukraine was coming – not just because of the gathering forces on Ukraine’s border – but also because the Ukrops could not stop bombing the Dombass.
Weeks before Pootler rolled tanks: Ukrops began dropping cluster bombs on the Dombass.
Not sure about you, but once cluster bombs drop on your town, you do NOT give a flip about ‘theoretical’ war or diplomacy or any other egg head crap someone wants to use to justify bombing your home.
Without understanding the situation on the ground, most of you draw the wrong conclusions from ignorance of the pieces on the board.
Ukrops were terrorizing the Russian majority, and bombing them – in an effort to ethnically cleanse the Dombass. So the Dombass declared independence and appealed to Russia for protection – an effort that was rebuffed until a number of civilian casualties showed up on Russian TV.
Eastern Ukraine is mostly Russian. Never mind the population movement during the Soviet era. Dombass and Crimea are mostly Russian, and have been Russian dominated for centuries.
The idea that these Russians should live under a Ukrainian government that hates their guts,
and not expect them to request relief from the motherland
is simply short sighted. Theory or no theory.
And Dombass is not the only spot where Russians are numerous. Russian communities are strewn across the former USSR. Some small some large. These people do not give a flip about theories of war or ‘evil’ politicians. They care about the fact that they are surrounded by hostile locals who blame them (with some justification) for the crimes of Soviet communism.
A more responsible form of diplomacy would be to recognize the Russians have an issue thanks to the legacy of communism, and try to set up reasonable accommodations for the locals’ security without giving carte blanche to ethnically cleansing Russians.
And meanwhile – Russia is still stuck with their anti-Semitic foreign policy. Want to be ‘intellectual?’ – separate the two problems.
Ethnic cleansing by cluster bombs? Dialect sensitive cluster bombs? Is “Pootler” paying you to spout this nonsense? You seem to forget why your “Ukrops” hate Russia: Stalin made room for Russians by starving out the “Ukrops” –a couple million of them.
A corollary to the ‘bankers’ wars’ fallacy is the ‘wars for oil mythology’, the idea that it costs less to procure oil through war than the oil is worth. How did it work out for Saddam?
NATO is a defensive alliance, and anyone who says different is a moron–democracies never fight democracies, and you have to go more than a century back to even find a democracy take the offensive. Even poor stupid Putin knows this. Europe has watched and is afraid–who but NATO can keep them safe?
Problem is European states are rapidly evolving into totalitarian regimes with dwindling human rights just like Russia. It’s getting harder to tell who the bad guys are. Greenfield’s take on it is pretty realistic but the fact remains that a Pax Americana is not entirely out of the question.
One of the most profoundly accurate assessments of the human condition that I have read in years. Wars end when one side annihilates the other or when one side loses the will to fight.
The West (including Israel) doesn’t understand what winning a war entails. Having a superior military and fighting to a stalemate is not the equivalent to achieving a real victory, the only path to lasting peace and security. .
Evan in the separate article about South Africa today, IO see this same feature. No mention of Blacks raiding Whites’ farms, killing whole families and taking the land. Only we poor black folks are suffering from apartheid. Give me a break.
And the whole world apparently wants to be kind hearted to the sad victims.
Am I crazy or is it the rest of the world this time?
Mr. Greenfield makes some good points. However, not only do these two want to fight, but the fighting itself is so toxic that it threatens to spread. It has gone on for too long, longer than the German/Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia which was one of the precipitating events that led to WWII (Russia’s invasion is often likened to the earlier one by the Germans). Russian history is an on again off again control over Ukraine. Poland and Lithuania also controlled Ukraine at different times. Because of the Ukraine being under Russian control at various times, and because large portions of the Ukraine population speak Russian on an everyday basis lends itself to the narrative that there is some sense in which Russia “deserves” control of Ukraine. However killing and displacing millions of people including one’s own people seems to suggest that fantasies of power rather than justice issues are behind Putin’s move. I therefore agree with Trump that too many people have lost and are losing their lives, and that a peace should be restored even if there are restless, unresolved issues attending such so-called “peace.” Ukraine may have to lose Donbas and Donetsk, but perhaps other occupied areas can be returned to Ukraine. Will they be satisfied if they are thrown a bone like Donbas and Donetsk which they can control along with Crimea which they had received previously?
“In recent years a conviction has taken hold among some on the right, usually held by the left, that wars were an unnatural state of affairs that would not exist without conspiracies by the military-industrial complex, profiteering defense contractors, warmongers, covert interests looking to spread chaos, and everyone and everything except the actual causes of wars.
Most wars are fought to seize territory.”
I refer you to an article “A Strategy for Avoiding Two-Front War” written by A. Wess Mitchell (look up who he is and what was his job) in August of 2021. That would be a short primer on how from the point of view of American political science your proposition is inherently untrue.
Aside from that:
You can throw a rock at the field of American political science and it will land on some mention of Mackinder’s Heatland theory, Mahanian ideas about ocean trade routes, or Thucydides trap.
WWI was not fought for territory in itself, but for geopolitical position, with Cult of the Offensive among military planners prompting Germans to pursue the closing window of opportunity to roll over Russo-French military bloc before changing industrial balance could spoil late Schileffen’s plan.
WWII would have a lot of similarity to WWI, except for the role played by a particular racial theory going back to mid-19th century. If it would be a simple land grab, Hitler could have accepted Stalin’s plea for peace in late 1941 and Germany would keep so much land that there would not be enough colonists to settle it for next twenty years.
“Protection of Europe from Asiatic hordes” required total extermination of tens of millions of people up to Ural mountains.
In Cold War the territory was only valuable as favorable terrain for the start of WWIII, and Cuban Missile Crisis shows how important strategic balance of forces was.
Peace is not the absence of War.
Listen to Bob Dylan in his great song called… Masters Of War.. You Tube has it…