The USSR sent 200,000 troops into Hungary in 1956, and the same number into Czechoslovakia in 1968, to crush freedom-oriented movements. In neither case did we consider, even for a moment, dispatching NATO forces to those beleaguered nations to directly confront the Soviets.
Likewise, President Ronald Reagan was a staunch Cold Warrior, had famously dubbed the USSR the “evil empire,” and did covertly arm Afghanistan’s Mujahideen after the 1979 Soviet invasion of their land. Nonetheless, the prospect of having Western troops directly fight the USSR’s forces was inconceivable with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over everyone’s head. It was a line you just didn’t cross.
Until now.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who’d never consider using the military to establish control over his own fractious nation’s Muslim no-go zones, has again floated the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine to directly confront Russian forces. Macron has said it’s important to maintain “strategic ambiguity” when dealing with Vladimir Putin, which seems to roughly mirror the Russian president’s strategy “escalate to deescalate.” Yet is the issue ambiguity — or geopolitical insanity — or both?
French paper Le Monde reports on the story, writing that Macron again said that the
question of sending Western troops to Ukraine would “legitimately” arise if Russia broke through Ukrainian front lines and Kyiv made such a request, in an interview with The Economist published Thursday, May 2. Macron in the interview doubled down on his comments from earlier this year of not ruling out sending troops to Ukraine, which sent shockwaves through Europe and unsettled allies including Germany. Most of France’s allies said at the time they would not send any forces.
The Economist said Macron gave the interview after delivering a landmark speech last week where he declared that Europe is “mortal” and could “die” partly due to the threat posed by Russian aggression after its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “I’m not ruling anything out, because we are facing someone who is not ruling anything out,” said Macron when asked if he stood by his earlier comments made on February 26.
Macron said “if Russia decided to go further, we will in any case all have to ask ourselves this question” of sending troops, describing his refusal to rule out such a move as a “strategic wake-up call for my counterparts.”
He also stated, ‘I have a clear strategic objective: Russia cannot win in Ukraine,’” Breitbart adds.
“‘If Russia wins in Ukraine, there will be no security in Europe,’ Macron went on to warn,” the site continues. And Moscow believes that if they don’t win in Ukraine, there will be no security in Russia. So does it sound as if we’re going to learn what happens when an irresistible force of folderol meets an immovable object of obstinacy?
As for the folderol, “Who can pretend that Russia will stop there [with Ukraine]?” Breitbart also relates Macron as having stated. “What security will there be for the other neighbouring countries, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Lithuania and the others?”
Really, though, another question should be asked: Is the Ukraine war only raging because NATO, long ago, didn’t “stop there”? Let’s review some history.
NATO was created to counter the Soviet Union; thus, that evil empire’s early-’90s collapse made it rational for NATO to, in a sense, stand down. This is especially true since after the Berlin Wall’s fall, Russia pulled its army back to within its borders and arguably began behaving in a more pro-American fashion. Why, there was perhaps even an opportunity to forge friendly ties with Moscow, which, being characteristically European and Christian as we were, could’ve been a culturally congruent ally against China.
Instead, the pseudo-elite globalists expanded NATO to Russia’s very borders, the equivalent of Moscow or China forging a military alliance with Mexico, Cuba, Canada, and the Bahamas. In fact, despite then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker assuring Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990 that NATO would extend “not one inch [farther] eastward,” there are now on Russia’s borders six NATO members: Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Norway, and, now, Finland — with the latter’s 2023 accession more than doubling the NATO/Russia border.
Was this wise, especially considering that Russia’s withdrawal from Eastern Europe was, it appears, at least partially predicated on Baker’s verbal assurance?
Yet there’s more. According to Putin, he’d asked President Bill Clinton (who left office in January 2001) if Russia might be able to join NATO; Clinton initially said he had “no objection,” but later informed Putin that his “people” nixed the idea.
Despite this, pointed out Pat Buchanan in “Who Restarted the Cold War?” Putin continued making some concessions to the U.S., for a time, perhaps still hoping for closer relations. It didn’t happen.
Then, among other things, came what Putin said was a “red line” for him: impetus for Ukraine to join NATO. Note here that not only had Ukraine once long been part of Russia — and not only does Putin still consider it so — but according to ex-Moscow correspondent Lukas I. Alpert, Russia relies on pipeline networks running through Belarus (a Putin ally) and Ukraine for its oil-and-gas-based economic security. Yet the neocon chicken hawks talked about Ukraine NATO membership, anyway.
Was this wise?
Like it or not, you can’t stomp around in another great power’s backyard like a T-Rex in Jurassic Park.
Backing down at one’s own doorstep would mean losing face and credibility on the world scene and signaling prey status. It’s a no-go.
This is why John F. Kennedy blockaded Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962.
And it’s why Putin can’t back down in Ukraine.
So what would be the result of doing the unprecedented, what we wouldn’t even contemplate with Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Afghanistan: Having NATO troops directly fight Moscow?
If the ICBMs end up flying, will everyone think it was worth it over the globalists’ vanity project?
