Dear Friends,
It seems to me… weakness always begets war. The Ukrainian crisis illustrates the weakness of the West in negotiations with Russia, brought about by the fecklessness and stupidity of our leaders. One point I have not heard anyone else make, yet, is that the US is dependent on Russia for access to space and the International Space station. The US cannot impose economic sanctions on Russia without consequence unlike Iran or North Korea. Couple that with the fact that Europe is dependent on Russian natural gas, and the entire West is effectively castrated, seriously limiting the ability of the US to put leverage on Russia. So, the fact is there is nothing really stopping Russia, from doing whatever they want… potentially leading to World War.
Europe needs Russian natural gas because, while they have plenty of natural gas under their own feet, they are unwilling to get it out. The new fracking technology has opened up millions of cubic feet of natural gas but the environmental weenies in Europe, (backed by Russia), bar them from getting it. Nuclear technology is off the table for the same reason. This policy has delivered Europe into the hands of Putin. The Arab Spring and Syrian civil war has also closed off another avenue of potential natural gas into Europe… the proposed gas pipeline from the Middle East. Both the abandoned gas pipeline and the reluctance of European leaders to open up their own natural resources has made Europe into a vassal state of Russia.
The US, by accepting dependence on Russia for access to the International Space Station, has put that very expensive experiment into the hands of Russia. Should the US government level sanctions on Russia for annexing the Crimea, Russia can simply stop bringing American astronauts to the space station, effectively taking that hardware over, along with most of Ukraine. The US has always been the leader in space exploration in my lifetime but now has taken a back seat. Doing so puts all the billions of dollars we have invested in space infrastructure, technology and knowledge base in jeopardy. Not only that, but now that we rely on Russia for access to the trillion dollar space station, they have a pretty big card to play should the US government get too feisty
Putin is taking a play from Hitler’s playbook, and is ginning up more protests in Eastern Ukraine, ala Czechoslovakia 1939, in his continuing crusade to conquer Eastern Ukraine. Hitler claimed he would invade Czechoslovakia, to “protect” the Germanic people there, (like Putin is exploiting the Russians in Ukraine), unless the European powers caved and signed over the only democratic republic in Europe at the time. That little gambit gave hundreds of Czechoslovakian tanks into Hitler’s hands. Neville Chamberlain did, and the rest is the violent history of WWII, violence that resulted in 60 million human beings dead. Hitler had even less bargaining power then, than Putin does now.
The upshot is, Ronald Reagan was right… again. Reagan warned about the dangers of Europe becoming dependent on Russia for natural gas. Now our President has so weakened the US, not only in military power, but economic and space as well, the US has become a paper tiger. Europe is cowed by Putin’s outmaneuvering, and so cannot mount any defense of themselves, let alone the sovereign integrity of Ukraine. China has it’s own expansionist goals as well, so they are going to sit back and see how this all plays out, endangering all of eastern Asia. Yes, Poland, Georgia, the Baltic Republics, Europe are facing imminent danger. Indeed the whole world is entering a very dangerous place. All because our leaders have been stupid, lax and selfish. Woe to us if this episode in human history works out as bad as it did before. Weakness always begets war, it is a fact of human history, and our leaders have made us weak.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
