(from Ukraine Today)
I have long standing connections and was (very) tangentially involved as an advocate for Ukraine, and we were BEGGING for USA involvement, and we got NONE of it until the very end.
If there was USA involvement I want to see some evidence of it. I have a fairly clear idea of how much money per week was funneled through the embassy and state departments (so to speak) to support the demonstrators. Just as the USA always supports demonstrators in self determination. It has been usa policy to force governments to focus on their citizenry since the end of the wars – in the hope that this would curtail wars of expansion.
But from my up close and personal experience, the conflict was between the “Boyars” (the 40 or so rich gangster clans – two of whom I know -although they are the ‘good’ ones ), who wanted neither Russian takeover, nor to join europe, both of which would mean their extermination, but to preserve the status quo (they were largely successful).
The young people of Ukraine, are the only poor white people remaining in the world, and they are poor because of largely non-white, non-ukrainian gangsters preserve the status quo. They want what their Polish relatives across the border have: a decent standard of living, economic opportunity, and freedom from endemic (Russian induced) corruption.
USA has tried desperately to prevent world wars by suppressing wars of expansion and funding self determination by peoples.
The USA is no longer in an economic or military position to do so. And (at least Trump) is trying to manage an increase in first world responsibility for the preservation of this pressure against external expansion, and toward internal advancement, that the USA has (expensively) provided postwar.
However, europe, in the postwar period, has become nothing more than unappreciative client states of the USA and is not economically able to persist both her social programs, and take on the responsibility for preserving the postwar status quo. (and France and Russia have systematically worked to undermine American attempts – France at least since the revolution, always been the enemy of Europe.)
However, american optimism born of a monopoly on power has been misguided, since China – lacking the enlightenment, lacking western high trust, lacking rule of law, lacking any ability whatsoever to speak truthfully, and possessed of both a chip on it’s shoulder and Chinese Supremacy as a traditional doctrine, has replaced the European vacuum and it is this conflict between Asian Bureaucratic Authoritarianism, Muslim Theological Authoritarianism, and Western Rule of Law (markets in everything) that will determine the future we all live in.
Russia has the economy of italy, (tiny) and a population of 150M. She would need three times the population and ten times the economic capacity in order to play an economic, technological, and ideological role in world affairs. But because like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Norway, and Venezuela, is ENTIRELY dependent upon petroleum revenues, she can achieve by the centralization of profits and direction to military technology what she cannot achieve through other means. Russia still has an underutilized labor pool, and underutilized human capital (iq).
(and they are fully aware of it).
Russia needs only to abandon her long asiatic tradition of deception, and simply say “The west has gone wrong, and we are not following that tradition because it has gone wrong, and it would end Russia as rapidly as it has ended europe. But will will cooperate as long as it is in our national interests.” Unfortunately the russian empire cannot be restored for the simple reason that russia has not succeeded in suppression of her endemic corruption, diversity of her economy, and the speaking of truth regardless of cost – in a society where truth has traditionally held a high cost.