pn901 . The War in Ukraine — and how America cannot lose whichever way it goes

 

No, Russia should not have invaded Ukraine despite its reneging on the Minsk Agreement and its reaching out to join the EU and  NATO.   

Neither should the US have invaded Iraq, threatened Iran and Venezuela, boycotted Cuba, and helped assassinate Allende in Chile. Not to mention the CIA training Ukrainian forces for the past six to eight years.

But that's what powerful nations do when they can get away with it,  which they often do thanks largely to the media shaping public opinion.  When the other side does it we call it propaganda in an unfree nation; when we do it it's called the free press of the free world. 

pn891. US–China rivalry intensifies in the Pacific, and a footnote on the Ukraine

By Denghua Zhang** East Asia Forum. 16 April 2022

[US Professor John Mearheimer says there's only one winner from the Ukraine war — China! See Footnote.]

US–China geostrategic competition is intensifying in the Pacific as both governments commit more resources to battle for influence.

The US government released its Indo-Pacific Strategy in February 2022, which fleshes out its policy priorities in the region. This document is based on the ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ concept announced by previous president Donald Trump in 2017. The strategy testifies to US concerns about China, asserting that ‘intensifying American focus is due in part to the fact that the Indo-Pacific faces mounting challenges, particularly from [the People’s Republic of China]’. It lists China, COVID-19 and climate change as core challenges for the United States. Competition with China has received bipartisan support among the US Congress.

pn873. Another, Oblique, Perspective on the Ukraine-Russia War

Steven and the Governor-General Patsy Reddy

My friend Steven and I were at Wellington Teachers' College together in the late 1950s. I think his perpective on the Russia-Ukraine war is important.  This is what he wrote to me:

"My letter is published in this week's Listener. I had and have the Ukrainian crisis on my mind and wrote this letter in a hurry. People here can afford to take a simplistic view of events far away, ignoring historical and geopolitical reality. The reward of old age is that I have seen all this before, 'There is nothing new under the sun'"

His NZ Listener letter reads:

Subject: Putin and Khrushchev  To: <listenerletters@aremedia.co.nz>

Putin and Khrushchev, Ukraine and Hungary, 2022 and 1956,  I can't help but see parallels.

pn872. Ukraine and Russia -- Missing Dimensions (and NZ's Vladimir Putin Fan Club)

Crimea War: Charge of the Light Brigade

In times of war people take sides and causes and realities get lost between the sheets as I think can be seen in the current media coverage of war in Ukraine.

 While on the one hand Putin talks about Nazis hiding in the Ukrainean bed and alleged attacks on Russians living in the Ukraine, our own media shows Russians shelling hospitals and killing women and children and thousands of citizens fleeing while the more honourable Ukrainians shell Russian tanks and kill Russian generals.