Ukraine - Russia - Biden

I begin this article with a time-frame notification. I am still away from home, and, due to conflicting time restraints over the next few days, I am submitting this article several days in advance to meet the deadline for publication. Therefore, it is likely that some of my comments will have been overtaken by real time events.

The primary topic in the national news is Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, which many people fear could lead to a U.S. war with Russia.  This is a fear that dates back to the 1950s.  In fact, the world held its breath for 13 tense days, in October 1963, after a high-flying American U-2 surveillance aircraft discovered that the Soviet Union was deploying missiles in Communist Cuba.  War was averted at the last spellbinding moment when Soviet ships carrying missiles to Cuba encountered a flotilla of U.S. Navy warships blockading access to Cuba.  After sailing dangerously close to the battle-ready Americans, the Soviets reversed course and withdrew. The missiles already in place, in Cuba, were subsequently dismantled and returned to the Soviet Union.

Now, 60 years later, with Russia the only significant remnant of the long ago neutered and pastured Soviet Union, Russia’s Napoleonic afflicted dictator, Vladimir Putin, has attacked the neighboring country of Ukraine.  He wants to resurrect the old Soviet Union, which had been built on the backs of European countries enslaved by Russia at the end of World War II

In fact, Putin is using the same ploy that Germany’s Adolf Hitler used to initiate World War II.  Hitler accused Czechoslovakia of mistreating the German population in the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia.  The German military crossed the border unopposed and basically annexed the area.  Hitler then manufactured a similar reason to attack Poland. The Polish people resisted, and World War II began.

In Putin’s case he has manufactured various concerns about a thriving Ukraine, which abuts Russia’s western border.  Although Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Putin fears it will join NATO and become a military threat to Russia.  Most recently, Putin claims that Russians living in eastern Ukraine no longer want to be part of Ukraine and have established independent areas, which he recognizes as part of Russia.  That gave him a questionable reason to invade/attack Ukraine.

Just as Hitler’s military invasions/attacks on Czechoslovakia and Poland were the beginning of his World War II quest to subdue and rule all of Europe, Putin’s attacks on Crimea, in March 2014, and now on Ukraine are the beginning of his similar quest to resurrect the old Soviet Union as a-to-be-feared super power.

As the international symbol of democracy and freedom, what are we – the United States  – doing while a gallant nation friend is in a David and Goliath battle with the bully of Europe; i.e. Russia?  I can tell you what our so-called president is doing. He is making a case for a Republican landslide victory in the November mid-term elections. He and his vice president are a worldwide embarrassment. 

God bless America, Ukraine, and its president and magnificent people!

--Jerry Jones,  a native of Sparta, is CIA retired.