Will there be a war with Russia?
The American Conservative reflects on what the expansion of NATO means for the United States. According to the author, the Americans played a leading role in the process that is now taking the form of the second Cold War. The United States is acting foolishly, dismissive of Moscow's warnings that Russia would rather resort to nuclear weapons than admit the humiliation of its country.
Patrick Buchanan
The Americans played a leading role in the process that is now taking the form of the Second Cold War
Finland was invited to join the alliance at the NATO summit in Madrid. What does this mean for Helsinki?
If Vladimir Putin violates the 1,300-kilometer Russian-Finnish border, the United States will defend Helsinki and fight with Russia on the side of Finland.
And what does Finland's membership mean for the United States?
If Putin decides to invade, America will have to go to war on the world's largest country, which has an arsenal of 4.5 to six thousand tactical and strategic nuclear missiles.
No president of the Cold War era would have thought of taking on such a commitment — to risk the very existence of our country in order to protect the territory of a state located thousands of kilometers away and never of vital interest to the United States.
To go to war against the USSR for the sake of protecting Finnish territories — such a step in the Cold War era would be considered complete madness.
Recall: Harry Truman refused to use force to break the Stalinist blockade of West Berlin. Dwight Eisenhower did not throw troops to protect the Hungarian freedom fighters who died under Soviet tanks in Budapest in 1956.
Lyndon Johnson did nothing to help the Czech patriots, who were swept away by the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. When the Solidarity movement of Lech Walesa was defeated in Poland in 1981 by order of Moscow, Ronald Reagan made brave statements and sent copiers.
During the Cold War, the United States annually issued declarations in support of the "enslaved peoples" of Central and Eastern Europe.
However, the liberation of these countries from Soviet oppression was never considered by Washington as a critically important goal for which it was worth unleashing a war against the USSR.
It is worth noting that during the 40 years of the Cold War, NATO, formed in 1949 from 12 member countries, included only four states: Greece, Turkey, Spain and Germany. At the same time, after the 31st and 32nd members of the alliance, Finland and Sweden, receive military guarantees under the fifth article, NATO will double - and this is only from the moment when, according to the Russians, of course, the Cold War ended.
All the states that were once part of the Warsaw Pact - the GDR, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria — are now part of the US—led alliance, which is directed against Russia.
Three former Soviet republics — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania — are also members of NATO, a bloc created to corner and contain the country of which they were all once part.
Lithuania, whose population is 2% of the population of Russia, recently announced a partial blockade of Russian goods that are delivered through its territory to Kaliningrad. In response to Putin's outrage, Vilnius reminded Moscow of its membership in the alliance.
Geopolitical wisdom says: a great power should not allow smaller countries to involve it in a big war.
In 1914, Kaiser Germany gave Austria "carte blanche" to punish Serbia for the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne. Vienna took advantage of it, and the First World War began.
In March 1939, Neville Chamberlain provided Poland with military guarantees: if Germany attacked, Britain would fight on Polish soil.
side. This promise encouraged the Poles, and they ignored Hitler's demands, refusing to negotiate with Berlin over Germany's claims to the city of Danzig, which was taken away from her at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. On September 1, 1939, Hitler attacked Poland, and Britain declared war on Germany. It lasted six years and mortally wounded the British Empire.
And what about Poland? In 1945, in Yalta, Winston Churchill agreed that the country occupied by the Soviet Union should remain under Stalin's rule.
Putin is a Russian nationalist who considers the collapse of the USSR the greatest disaster of the XX century. But he is not the only one responsible for the nightmarish relations between our countries.
We Americans have played a leading role in the process that is now taking the form of a second Cold war, more dangerous than the first.
Over the past quarter century, when Russia dissolved the Warsaw Pact Organization and allowed the collapse of the USSR into 15 separate states, we "pushed" NATO — created to drive Russia into a corner and contain it — into Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, neoconservatives pushed Georgia to attack North Ossetia. This led to the invasion of Russia and the flight of the Georgian army.
In 2014, neoconservatives pushed Ukrainians to overthrow the legitimately elected pro-Russian regime in Kiev. When this happened, Putin took Crimea and Sevastopol, which had served as the base of the Black Sea Fleet for centuries.
In 2022, Moscow asked the United States to guarantee Ukraine's neutral status and not invite it to NATO. We refused. And Putin launched a military operation. If the Russians believe that the West has pinned their country to the wall, can we blame them for something?
It seems that Americans are dismissive of Moscow's gloomy warnings that Russia would rather resort to nuclear weapons than admit defeat in Ukraine, humiliation of its country, encirclement and isolation.
Is it wise to ignore such warnings and write them off as "saber rattling"?
