...
...[But]with President Biden’s statement that the United States will not intervene militarily if Russia invades...talks starting in Geneva Monday on the eight-year-old war in Ukraine are different. The conflict...is in Ukraine. But Ukraine will be missing from two of the three negotiating sessions scheduled for this week.
Such a limited role for Ukraine in the talks has clearly unnerved the government in Kyiv.
This is exactly what Great Britain and France did with Hitler over Czechoslovakia--excluded the Czechs. I agree with President Biden that there should be no U.S. military intervention. It is still a very bad look. Ukraine should be at all sessions of the talks.
That is one article on the subject in Sunday's NYT. There is was one yesterday on the sanctions that Biden will impose on Russia if (when) it invades Ukraine again (he has already told Putin on the phone that he would move to cut Russia off from the global financial system; Putin's phone reply was that any new sanctions would lead to a "complete rupture" in relations between the U.S. and Russia) and another today, "Russia Warns That U.S. Doesn’t Understand Its Goals on Ukraine", which goals are to re-create the Soviet sphere of influence in eastern and central Europe. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had given this as Russia's negotiation position and warned that these talks would not be dragged out, as others with the U.S. had, beyond the prime invasion season. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei A. Ryabkov who is conducting these negotiations for Russia, stated the same thing: the talks are to continue without pause. (It is indicative that Russia considers these talks a waste of its time that it is sending Ryabkov and not Lavrov.).
So with both sides having made their positions absolutely clear, why are the talks occurring at all? We know that Russia will invade (they have Ukraine surrounded on three sides already), they know what we will do (and not do) when they invade, we know what they will do when we do what we do. I am completely-pro complete-rupture.
Maybe the talks are not principally about Ukraine at all? Maybe the talks are to get the Americans to draw a red line somewhere in Europe where they will intervene militarily. However, is not that also clear? Any NATO countries. Isn't that the American position? Ukraine is not a member of NATO. If the Americans are willing to negotiate that then this will be Neville Chamberlain-Adolph Hitler all over again. And maybe we should engage in some appeasement! I have long been, as was the previous American administration, a critic of NATO's post-Cold War expansion as provocative and unrealistic in binding the U.S. to intervene with military force if Russia invades Vilnius as it would if Russia invaded Washington. The U.S. tacitly agreed to Soviet hegemony over eastern and central Europe after Yalta (which was in Crimea, Ukraine):
The Soviet Union had already annexed several occupied countries as (or into) Soviet Socialist Republics,[31][32][33] and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe were occupied and converted into Soviet-controlled satellite states, such as the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of Hungary,[34] the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,[35] the People's Republic of Romania, the People's Republic of Bulgaria, the People's Republic of Albania,[36] and later East Germany from the Soviet zone of German occupation.[37] Eventually, the United States and the United Kingdom made concessions in recognizing the communist-dominated regions by sacrificing the substance of the Yalta Declaration although it remained in form.[38]
Is it American position in 2022 that we will go to war with Russia over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania when it was not in 1945--because they are NATO member states?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Bloc
If the Americans are to draw any red lines for Russia tomorrow and Tuesday they should be drawn before all (I would prefer some) of those states. We have already warred over Vietnam and came close over Cuba. Definitely Czechoslovakia, definitely not Poland (again). Of course neither I nor any American "likes" a Russian invasion, or any country's invasion-to-conquer, of another sovereign nation. Of course we are steadfast in support of free determination of the form of government of any people. That is not the issue tomorrow and Tuesday. The issue is when and where we go to war with Russia.
