by Mike Whitney, The Unz Review:
“Your people do not yet feel an impending sense of danger. That worries me. Can’t you see the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? Meanwhile, people pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, You Tube, 12 minute video
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
“The Russians have put their nuclear weapons on high-alert. This is a really significant development.. They are….sending us a very powerful signal as to how seriously they take this crisis. So, if we start winning, and the Russians start losing, you need to understand that what we’re talking about doing here, is backing a nuclear-armed great power –that sees what’s happening as an existential threat—into a corner. This is really dangerous. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t think that what happened in the Cuban Missile crisis was as threatening to us as this situation is to the Russians. But if you go back and look at what US decision-makers thought at the time, they were scared stiff.” (Mearsheimer: The risks of “backing Russia into a corner“, Twitter minute 1:19)
renowned international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, whose analysis of the Ukraine-Russia conflict in 2015 turned out to be very prescient, gave his view on the current war on March 2nd. He argued that the West is only going to make the situation worse. THREAD WITH CLIPS pic.twitter.com/ymTgg0XVnn
— ☀️👀 (@zei_squirrel) March 7, 2022
Putin does not want Washington’s nuclear missiles parked on his western border in the Ukraine. For security reasons, he cannot allow this. He has made this excruciatingly clear over and over again. As he said on December 21, 2021, more than a month before the war began:
“If US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems.”
No American president would allow a potential adversary to deploy their nuclear missiles to sites along the Mexican-American border. The risks to national security would be far-too great. In fact, Washington would remove those missile sites through force-of-arms without batting an eye. We all know that. So, why isn’t that same standard applied to Russia? Why are policymakers siding with the US and NATO when all the parties involved know what is at stake and know that they have all signed treaties that promise “not to improve their own security at the expense of their neighbors”? These are not just meaningless ‘verbal commitments’ that were made in casual conversations over cocktails; these are promises that have been signed into treaties that the signatories are required to honor. (Note: The United States and every nation in NATO have signed treaties– Istanbul in 1999, and Astana in 2010– that stipulate they cannot improve their own security at the expense of others.) There’s no doubt that NATO expansion enhances the security of Ukraine while weakening the security of Russia. That much is indisputable. And it’s not just a violation of treaties, but a clear provocation tantamount to a declaration of war. Check out this short excerpt from an article by Ray McGovern which shines light on a few of the crucial details that have omitted by the western media:
