Ukraine Again (SSR)

“I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I have only one thing tosay to you: You need to get out of Ukraine.” -Prime Minister Stephen Harper ofCanada

About 2 months have gone by since I made my first remarks about the situation in Ukraine with Russia. Unfortunately, this situation is still running. As an innocent, by-standing American, my knowledge of what is actually happening in Ukraine is slim. Putin has been warned time and time again to get out of Ukraine and yet there he remains. The other problem is that the threats of outside forces are minimal. The countries involved are behaving like small children with remarks similar to ‘I’m not going to play with you.’ Policies such as “the isolation that Russia is currently experiencing will continue.”

               

Above it all we have the United States, hovering like a disapproving parent. “We’re also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles,” he said, “and one of those principles is you don’t invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections.” The ‘he’ being our fearless leader President Obama and evidently the sole reason we are concerned being that Ukraine ‘has mechanisms for democratic elections.’

It has occurred to me that perhaps this is very much history repeating itself. Let’s all just pause for a moment and recall what happens. Russia decides she wants to get more stuff to play with and takes over the surrounding countries. The rest of the countries get a little scared and say, ‘hey, maybe you really shouldn’t probably do that.’ Russia says whatever and keeps doing whatever she wants. Eventually the other countries say, ‘eh, what could possibly happen? If it gets bad we just won’t play with Russia anymore.’ Then, for the next three or four decades Russia and the rest of the world are completely at odds.

Just in case you missed it I’m referencing the Cold War. After months of relative inaction on the behalf of every other country Russia has now surpassed every manner of civil takeover. In the face of this our president has finally just edged closer to calling the military incursions an invasion. Not actually calling it an invasion, but edging that much closer. To sum this up I have decided that the governments of quite a few of the most advanced countries in the world have a difficult time telling the difference between the black, white, and gray.