by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:
The town of Shostka in Ukraine is located 317 miles away from The Kremlin in Moscow — Russia’s military central-command location.
The city of Havana in Cuba is located 1,131 miles away from Washington DC — America’s military central-command location.
A nuclearly armed missile that’s launched from Shostka to The Kremlin would take about 5 minutes to get there. It would behead Russia’s military command.
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A nuclearly armed missile that is launched from Havana to Washington D.C. would take about 30 minutes to get there. It would behead America’s military command.
All of the world acknowledges that America’s President JFK in 1962 would have been fully justified to grab Cuba, or else to launch a first-strike nuclear invasion of the Soviet Union, in order to prevent Soviet missiles becoming emplaced in Cuba.
All of the world therefore must likewise acknowledge that Russia’s President Putin now would be fully justified in doing everything, up to and including to take all of Ukraine, in order to be able to prevent America from placing its missiles in Ukraine, which means that Russia has a clear right to take all of Ukraine if the U.S. continues to persist in its demand that Ukraine be allowed to enter NATO — which entrance into NATO by Ukraine would mean then that America would become able to place its missiles there a mere 5-minute striking-distance away from The Kremlin. Russia would need to be crazy in order to accept that possibility, and isn’t crazy; so, Russia doesn’t accept it.
In 1962, if the Soviet Union had been unwilling to agree with America not to place its missiles in Cuba, then America would have been fully within its rights to take over Cuba so as to prevent that from happening — or, failing that, to initiate a WW III against the Soviet Union. One way or another, it needed to be stopped. And, because both sides in that matter — JFK and Khrushchev — were decent and intelligent people, WW III did not happen then.
In 2023, if the U.S. is unwilling to agree with Russia not to place its missiles in Ukraine, then Russia would be within its rights to take over Ukraine so as to prevent that from happening. One way or another, it needs to be stopped, and this means that the leaders on both sides need to be, yet again, decent and intelligent people.
Vladimir Putin said on 6 June 2015 in his “Interview to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera” at https://archive.is/j55e0#selection-1199.37-1235.274 in the interview:
US military spending is higher than that of all countries in the world taken together. The aggregate military spending of NATO countries is 10 times, note – 10 times higher than that of the Russian Federation. Russia has virtually no bases abroad. We have the remnants of our armed forces (since Soviet times) in Tajikistan, on the border with Afghanistan, which is an area where the terrorist threat is particularly high. The same role is played by our airbase in Kyrgyzstan; it is also aimed at addressing the terrorist threat and was set up at the request of the Kyrgyz authorities after a terrorist attack perpetrated by terrorists from Afghanistan on Kyrgyzstan. We have kept since Soviet times a military unit at a base in Armenia. It plays a certain stabilising role in the region, but it is not targeted against anyone. We have dismantled our bases in various regions of the world, including Cuba, Vietnam, and so on. This means that our policy in this respect is not global, offensive or aggressive. I invite you to publish the world map in your newspaper and to mark all the US military bases on it. You will see the difference. Sometimes I am asked about our airplanes flying somewhere far, over the Atlantic Ocean. Patrolling by strategic airplanes in remote regions was carried out only by the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. In the early 1990s, we, the new, modern Russia, stopped these flights, but our American friends continued to fly along our borders. Why? Some years ago, we resumed these flights. And you want to say that we have been aggressive? American submarines are on permanent alert off the Norwegian coast; they are equipped with missiles that can reach Moscow in 17 minutes. But we dismantled all of our bases in Cuba a long time ago, even the non-strategic ones. And you would call us aggressive? You yourself have mentioned NATO’s expansion to the east. As for us, we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?
For a person of his high degree of intelligence (here meaning intellectual ability, not “intelligence” like the CIA, MI6, etc.), Putin is strikingly incompetent at “PR” (propaganda and public relations) and has only once publicly stated in a clear way what’s at issue here, which issue is the necessity for Russia to protect itself against The West’s (i.e., by the U.S.-and-allied countries) thus-far ceaseless and ravenous aggression that increasingly clearly aims to conquer (‘regime-change’) Russia. He said it only once, and this happened at a ridiculously inappropriate forum for it, deep down within a lengthly public meeting with international investors who have, or were considering to have, investments in Russia (in other words, this crucial statement about Russian national security was presented within a context that was not about Russia’s national security — it was instead in a totally wrong public forum for presenting his only relatively clear public statement about his #1 concern regarding his #1 responsibility as Russia’s President, which is national security — specifically Russia’s national security — and about what the leaders of The West were trying to do that endangers and gravely threatens Russia’s national security; i.e., to position U.S. missiles in Ukraine). He said, there, at the “Russia Calling! Investment Forum”, on 30 November 2021, that (at https://archive.is/zLr4t#selection-1491.105-1499.681 in the proceedings),
