Nancy O'Brien Simpson
You don't have to be a mind reader to know that for fifteen teen long years Putin has said the same thing over and over. I have a red-line don't cross it. NATO advancement through Ukraine to the Russian border is unacceptable. Period. End of discussion.
We could at this point go to the USA's red line, the Monroe Doctrine, and point out the hypocrisy of the USA finding Putin's position untenable. The Monroe Doctrine which we have lived by for two hundred years since 1823 says anything on our hemisphere is off-limits to foreign powers we don't like. The Caribbean, Latin America is ours don't mess with us or else. And, the or else is brutal. We have sanctioned, assassinated leaders, facilitated coups, and worse to defend our red-line.
But, Russia is not allowed to have a Monroe Doctrine or a red-line because only the USA can rule the world at will.
When Cuba fell to Castro do you remember The Bay of Pigs? Do you remember the CIA assassination attempts on Fidel Castro? Do you remember that the USA was willing to consider a nuclear holocaust because communism was too close to its border?
The USA can do anything to assure its ascendancy and protect its interests but not other countries. Putin has been requesting Ukrainian neutrality for over a decade to no avail. Not only that but he has shown he was willing to back up those demands and in 2008 and 2014 he was willing to use force to ensure this would not occur. In December of 2021, he again said I am serious about this and the USA blew him off. Ignored him. And, again in a move to prove he was serious he began to amass troops on his borders.
The insanity of this is that the USA simply does not want to be told what to do. We want to beat our chests and wave our flags and drop our bombs and enforce our sanctions. Ukraine was never going to qualify for NATO admission so to keep it as a buffer was a diplomatic move that would have avoided all of the current drama. Yet the USA could never concede the obvious solution.
Nearly every NATO nation has said it does not want to go to war with Russia for Ukraine precluding Ukraine from joining NATO. This being said all the USA had to do was to assure Russia that Ukraine would remain a buffer zone.
What the USA has done is even worse than imaginable because with our bravado we have pushed for no reason other than our hubris Putin into carrying out his threats and left Ukraine defenseless. No one is rushing into their defense.
Two things need to happen to restore sanity to the situation. The USA needs to humble itself and face reality and tell Putin that Ukraine will not enter NATO and remain a buffer zone. Of course, that will never happen and so the next best course of action is for Ukraine to state that it will remain a neutral nation and a buffer zone.
There is no way to convey strongly enough the disastrous results of the USAs arrogance. What is going to happen is yet again lives will be lost, property destroyed because diplomacy and sanity were lost to ideological hubris. The situation is only going to escalate with Ukraine having no way of defending itself. And, none of this had to happen.
None of this had to happen. None of it.