HOW TO END THE WAR IN UKRAINE AND PROVIDE SECURITY AND STABILITY IN EUROPE

We′ve all seen Winston Churchill′s famous quote about Russia: "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Not really.

I lived in Moscow in 1995 with a Russian family in Aviamotornaya. I was studying the Russian Language at the Moscow State Linguistic University.

It is CRUCIAL to note something 99% of America does not know or appreciate. Obviously, neither do its leaders. It is the key to unlock numerous doors.

From 1240-1481, the Mongols conquered and ruled Russia. They raped, murdered, robbed, destroyed entire cities.

241 years! To put that in perspective, the United States has existed as a nation for 243 years. Imagine if during almost that entire time the U.S.A. had been ruled by barbarian hoards. They gang rape your sister, daughter, wife and mother in front of you; slit their throats; steal your shoes; laugh at you. There is nothing you can do … nothing! I don′t like being so graphic about it, but that′s the way it was and would be.

Mongol rule created a national complex in Russia: never to be conquered again by foreigners. If death is the alternative, so be it.

Americans, who have no comparable experience, do not - cannot - understand the motive of do-or-die defense that drives Russia. They think that, on the contrary, Russia is hell-bent on conquest.

“If you give them an inch, they′ll take a mile.” We of the Vietnam War generation heard that reasoning – or lack of it – countless times. Well, North Vietnam won the war, and then ... nothing. No conquest anywhere. Kissinger′s “Domino Theory” was as empty as he was.

To start with, it is incomprehensible to Americans that Russians would genuinely view NATO as a threat - but they do. The rejection by the U.S. of an early Russian proposal to not have a war in Ukraine if that nation agreed not to join NATO, showed once more the continuing lack of understanding by the White House, the Congress and the Pentagon of the national Russian security complex.

The admission under President Clinton of seven Eastern European nations to NATO - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - set off security alarm sirens all over Russia.

It′s Reality Therapy Time.

I remain unconvinced that the seven should have been admitted. Why?

There is no check list for NATO membership. However, according to the State Department

--New members must uphold democracy, including tolerating diversity.

--New members must be making progress toward a market economy.

--Their military forces must be under firm civilian control.

--They must be good neighbors and respect sovereignty outside their borders.

--They must be working toward compatibility with NATO forces.

The overall goal of NATO – the point of it all - is “to increase security and stability across Europe.” Here, a tangible oxymoron appears. By including more members in NATO – specifically, the countries mentioned above – security and stability across Europe were diminished, not enhanced.

How to end the war in Ukraine and to increase security and stability in Europe:

The seven Eastern European nations mentioned above should be reconstituted to form a neutral geographic belt that separates the West and Russia. They would be members of neither bloc. That would of course involve seriously considering the unthinkable: removing them from NATO. There may, however, be another option in which, as special cases, their continued membership in NATO is qualified in the direction of neutrality.

On the other side, Belarus, currently in Russia′s, camp, would have to change its status.

Recent events in the Ukraine war underline once again a serious misunderstanding of basic political realities on the part of Washington.

CNN′s unidentified analysts nailed something cold. The

“anxious reaction to Ukraine’s newly granted powers is another example of the Kremlin’s successful strategy of forcing the West to see the conflict on Russia’s terms, confusing each fresh attempt by Ukraine to resist Russian aggression as a major “escalation.”

Alongside the battlefields, the Kremlin has been engaged in a fight to force the West to argue from Russian premises rather than its own, and to “make decisions in that Kremlin-generation alternative reality that will allow Russia to win in the real world,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think-tank, said in a report in March.

Kateryna Stepanenko, a co-author of that report, told CNN the strategy was a revival of the Soviet concept “reflexive control,” by which a state imposes a false set of choices on its adversary, forcing the adversary to make decisions against its own interests.

“The persistent Western debates and delays in Western military aid to Ukraine is a clear example of the Kremlin’s successful reflexive control strategy, which had committed the Western to self-deterrence despite routine Russian escalations of the war,” Stepanenko said.”

Russian Premises… Putin and his advisors understand an underlying power dynamic better than Washington:

(i) He who controls the definitions of the situation, controls the situation.

(ii) He who controls the situation, makes the rules of the game.

(iii) He who makes the rules of the game, has the power and wins the game.

A neutral bloc of Eastern European nations is a needed redefinition - a change of, not in – the situation. A Western initiative would replace its defensive retreatism.

The rest follows.

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