Ukraine – Can’t We All Just Get Along?
Well, yes and no. Those words were spoken by a 27-year-old Black philosopher, petty crook and inadvertent revolutionary, Rodney King, after being brutally beaten by four hateful L.A. police officers.
The racists who beat up King to an inch of his life, were wrong. The jury, which did not include any Black jurors, and found the four cops not guilty, were wrong. The thousands of Angelenos who decided enough was enough, and began the 1992 L.A. Uprising, were possibly wrong, but they had justification.
The jury, none of whom had lived the Black experience in Amerika, didn’t think about the blowback that would be caused by their action in turning their backs on the constitutional rights of a young Black man. Their failure to "do the right thing,” resulted in 63 deaths, 2,383 injuries, more than 7,000 fires, damage to 3,100 businesses, and nearly $1 billion in financial losses. Large parts of poor people’s L.A., and some affluent neighborhoods, burned for six days in May 1992. The lack of forethought is sometimes called “The Law of Unintended Consequences.”
Ukraine and The Law of Unintended Consequences
Quick! Tell me who is going to win the Ukraine vs. Russia war/military operation. If you said military contractors, you were correct. You get partial credit if you said China. While Russia was trying to get missiles, and such across the border out of their face, NATO and the US were showing that they can’t really protect another country except to arm them to the teeth.
Even if Russia succeeds in some sort of superficial victory, such as, getting Ukraine to pledge not to join NATO, getting rid of Nazis, and leaving the Peoples Republics alone, it still won’t be secure. The Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, border Russia, and they are all members of NATO.
Ukraine may get points for seemingly bogging down the fearsome Russian Army. It may also get fast track treatment for joining NATO or the European Union (depending on how things turn out).
Speaking of unintended consequences, more than 1.7 Ukrainians have become refugees in other countries in the last couple of weeks. More than a million have fled to Poland. Very few have been able to come to America. Family lives are being disrupted, and not all will be able to return. Another 229,000 refugees from the Donbas region have fled to Russia.
In any case, the reward will not be worth the price. Hundreds of people, on the way to thousands, are dead or will die. Homes and commercial buildings in Ukraine are being destroyed (who gets the contract for rebuilding?). The really sad thing is both Ukraine and Russia share the same ancestry, the Kievan Rus, who thrived around Kyiv and spread to Moscow, about a thousand years ago. “War is Hell,” as Civil War general, and noted Indian killer, William Tecumseh Sherman said.
The Battle Is On
Ukraine is not an easy country to support. The regime came to power in a violent coup. It is not a “democratic state.” “Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” according to the Nation magazine, in 2019. Transnational support for Azov has been wide, and Ukraine has emerged as a new hub for the far right across the world, said Time magazine in 2021.
In January 2018, Azov rolled out its street patrol unit called National Druzhyna to “restore” order in the capital, Kyiv. Instead, the unit carried out pogroms against the Roma community and attacked members of the LGBTQ community, reported the staunchly anti-Communist Radio Free Europe. Supposedly, the Azov Battalion forced President Zelensky to change his position from implementing the Minsk Accords to condemning them.
In 2015, Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector, another Nazi group, was appointed Head Advisor to the Chief of the Ukraine General staff, Colonel-General Victor Muzhenko. The Nazis began as ad-hoc militias. Now they are card-carrying members of the Armed Forces. This is not a lovable couple.
These Nazis haven’t gone after the Jews yet, but I would bet President Zelensky, who is Jewish, gets blamed if Ukraine is defeated. In World War II, Stepan Bandera and the OUN, Organization of Ukraine Nationalists, worked with German Nazis to kill as many as 1.6 million Jews. Even though the Germans looked down on their Ukrainian allies as subhuman, they let them do the dirty work.
After the war, the OUN operated as an underground organization that conducted assassinations and sabotage until the late 1950s. In 2010, the outgoing President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko, awarded Bandera the posthumous title, “Hero of Ukraine” German police in 1941 reported that "fanatic" Bandera followers, organised in small groups were "extraordinarily active" against Jews and communists. Bandera also didn’t like Poles. His organization murdered up to 100,000 Poles who lived in Ukraine.
Old Hatreds Die Hard
“Today, when there is a war with the occupier at the front, and the struggle against the “fifth column” (spies) continues in the rear, we remember and honor the memory of Stepan Bandera,” Andriy Tarasenko, leader of the nationalist (read Nazi -ed.) party Right Sector, said.
The Way the Russians See It
I can see Russia’s point that they don’t want missiles or nukes on their doorstep, especially when they could fall into the hands of Russian-hating Nazis at any moment.
As a union organizer, I got very angry when the employer refused to negotiate. That’s when we would have no choice but to strike. This is exactly what Biden and NATO did to Russia. They refused to negotiate. What an insult.
Did Putin and the other leaders of Russia have any alternatives? They could have just said “never mind.” But what kind of leader, in this country or Russia, would leave his people constantly exposed to bombing, missile strikes, or perish the thought, nuclear weapons, all within five to 15 minutes of their targets.
I have always been a peace activist. So I would like to say this war should be stopped, should never have happened. But what is the alternative? I haven’t seen anyone suggest one. Not on mainstream media (MSM), not on social media, not out on the street. The only alternative is to negotiate seriously. That means both sides make concessions. But it seems that Zelensky is being told to stall, more weapons are on the way (also more dying, more destruction).
One thing that should change is the attitude of so many people that this is a black and white issue. It’s not. But if you think it is, you’re not helping resolve the biggest threat to peace in many years.
Remember unintended consequences? Here’s a big one. What if China takes advantage of this moment to reclaim Taiwan? What would Biden do then? Probably the wrong thing. Many of you can recognize the baiting of Russia that went on for months. It was almost like someone saying “Invade, we dare you.”
Now the baiting of China has already begun. On March 4, former Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo raised the paranoia of Chinese leaders when he said: "The United States government should immediately take necessary and long overdue steps to do the right and obvious thing: that is to offer the Republic of China, Taiwan, America's diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country."
Well, Taiwan is stolen property. It was the last refuge in 1950 of Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek. Chiang, a former general, collaborator with the Japanese invaders in the 1930s and 40s, and organized crime associate, fled to Taiwan as Mao’s Red Army was closing in on him and his army. He’s dead now, but China has never been able to reclaim the island. They may think that now is the time to do it while everyone’s focused on Ukraine.
That would be an unintended consequence bigger than Covid-19.